Author Archives: Athene Donald

Systematic Errors of Judgement

To tie in with International Women’s Day, last month Nature ran a series of articles about the issues still facing women in science and also a podcast with Uta Frith and myself debating some of the issues. The interviewer, Charlotte … Continue reading

Posted in Science Culture, Women in Science | Tagged , , , | 15 Comments

Lecturer Spotting

The Easter break, relatively short though it may be, offers me an opportunity to introduce another raft of characters from the Athenian University to join my previous lists of Dramatis Personae/ character assassinations. Here I describe variations on the theme of … Continue reading

Posted in Education, Science Culture | Tagged , , | 9 Comments

Trying to Get Away from It All

I’ve been away briefly this week, to an extremely cold and windy Suffolk coast.  Not the kind of break one comes back from tanned – other than with wind-burn – or with skiing fractures, but remembering there is a world … Continue reading

Posted in Science Culture | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

Learning the Foreign Language of Twitter

Any time I go to Europe, as this week, I come back ashamed of my lack of linguistic skills. This time I struggled through a brief conversation in French with a Brussels taxi driver trying to talk about the impact … Continue reading

Posted in Communicating Science | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Fixing the Numbers (well maybe)

This week I read that the Labour party was attempting to redress the lack of women candidates by using all-women shortlists, as women aren’t faring well in open competition to get selected as Parliamentary candidates. In Europe, meanwhile, we see … Continue reading

Posted in Science Funding, Women in Science | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments