Author Archives: Stephen

Photographs of 2021

Posted on 30 December 2021 by Stephen

Continuing the theme of gently exercising the writing muscle by composing posts made mostly of pictures, I present here the round-up of what I think are the best photographs that I took in the past year. 2021 has been a … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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In the garden

Posted on 27 December 2021 by Stephen

What is it about living through a pandemic that has quelled the motivation to write? I suspect is may have something to do with the unstructuring of time, or rather its reduction through confinement to rhythms that bore through repetition. … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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For my mother

Posted on 30 November 2021 by Stephen

Black masked, weighed down by grey grief, We carried you into the church To be wrung out of our sodden farewells. But you had already gone. It was a slow journey to that sombre altar. In the last years the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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A Reckoning with Huxley’s Legacy

Posted on 23 November 2021 by Stephen

Recognition and Redistribution for Imperial College’s Community This is a guest post by my former colleague, Dr Rahma (Red) Elmahdi, in which she lays our her reaction to the Imperial College History Report, and in particular the recommendation to rename the Huxley … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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The Huxley Question

Posted on 19 November 2021 by Stephen

Writing in The Observer a couple of weeks ago, Kenan Malik cast a sceptical eye over a report published by the history group at Imperial College that had been asked to reflect on “the current understanding and reception of the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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To be or not to be exceptional?

Posted on 23 May 2021 by Stephen

I can’t remember how I came across this video from philosopher Alain de Botton, but I feel seen. Like many academics, I guess, I have always prized scholarly achievement. And of course, within our systems of research assessment, we are … Continue reading →

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Books of 2020

Posted on 29 December 2020 by Stephen

I made what I think was a smart move at the beginning of 2020. Instead of waiting until the year’s end and then struggling to recall what I thought of the books I had read, I created a Twitter thread of … Continue reading →

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Photographs of 2020

Posted on 27 December 2020 by Stephen

My computer tells me that I took over 2,400 photographs in 2020. Here are my favourites. I’m afraid I have failed to whittle them down to fewer than seventy-five. Click on the first image, taken on a winter walk on … Continue reading →

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No, DeepMind has not solved protein folding

Posted on 2 December 2020 by Stephen

This week DeepMind has announced that, using artificial intelligence (AI), it has solved the 50-year old problem of ‘protein folding’. The announcement was made as the results were released from the 14th and latest competition on the Critical Assessment of … Continue reading →

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Nature’s new open access option – a few first thoughts

Posted on 24 November 2020 by Stephen

A news article published online in Nature this morning discusses the announcement of new open access options in the Nature family of journals. The details are in the article, but the basic story (written by Holly Else) is that authors … Continue reading →

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Teaching online: how to use an iPad as a whiteboard

Posted on 22 November 2020 by Stephen

Last week I gave my first online tutorials where I needed to scribble on a whiteboard and to show the students their exam scripts from last term, which has been posted to my home by the university. To solve both … Continue reading →

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In defence of the bureaucracy of equality, diversity and inclusion

Posted on 28 September 2020 by Stephen

The UK government’s new policy to reduce bureaucracy in research institutions aims at an easy target. But the bonfire of administration lit by the Prime Minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, risks burning down the foundations of much-needed efforts to value … Continue reading →

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Our Beirut Brexit

Posted on 13 September 2020 by Stephen

At 6:18 on the afternoon of Tuesday 4th August a huge store of ammonium nitrate exploded at the port of Beirut. The blast, one of the most powerful non-nuclear explosions in history, killed nearly 200 people, injured thousands more, and … Continue reading →

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In our elements

Posted on 25 August 2020 by Stephen

I have been coming to the Lake District on and off for much of my life. It is my favourite corner of England. I first came in 1981 when I was seventeen, as one of half a dozen venture scouts … Continue reading →

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Comet NEOWISE – catch it if you can

Posted on 21 July 2020 by Stephen

Comet NEOWISE has come but not yet gone. If there is no cloud cover for the next night or two, you might be able to catch its wispy presence low in the north-west before it fades from view. Don\’t feel bad … Continue reading →

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