Author Archives: Athene Donald

The History of Keeping the Damned Women Out

It is easy to forget that what is your daily life today is tomorrow’s history: history is not just about the great white men long dead and buried. A talk I attended a few weeks ago vividly brought this to … Continue reading

Posted in Education, Equality, Women in Science | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

The Cost of Education

There are many myths about the University of Cambridge (and indeed Oxford), based on historical misinformation, literature and a general feeling that it is ‘different’ from the rest of the world. Novels like Brideshead Revisited – admittedly referring to Oxford … Continue reading

Posted in Education | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Professional Bodies in the Diversity Frame

All male invited speakers at conferences or a senior leadership team that contains not a single woman are common across the employment landscape. In the physical sciences and engineering the problem is particularly acute because the numbers of women who … Continue reading

Posted in Science Culture, Women in Science | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Beyond the Silo Mentality

I have been fretting about the challenges of appropriately evaluating interdisciplinary work for many years. My specific beef has been about grant assessment in the Research Councils at the interface between physics and biology, because that is where my research … Continue reading

Posted in Interdisciplinary Science, Research | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Evasive Tactics?

If my last post discussed an important point that doesn’t typically receive much notice – although I’m glad to say the post, and its accompanying repost on the THE website both did – this current one is meant simply as … Continue reading

Posted in Science Culture | Tagged , | 2 Comments