About Jenny
By day: cell biologist at UCL. By night: novelist, broadcaster, science writer, sci-lit-art pundit, blogger and Editor of LabLit.com. I blog about my life in science, not the facts and figures.
Author Archives: Jennifer Rohn
In which we migrate
After about eight years in residence at the Royal Free Hospital, my itinerant scientific journey is about to embark on its next exciting leg. In a few weeks’ time, my lab is uprooting itself and moving to a new home … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Research, The profession of science
2 Comments
In which I am pummelled into viral submission
I am only happy to write about this today because I suspect it is finally almost over. I’m no longer so superstitious that I think I’m tempting fate by doing so now. In short, I’ve been ill for a long … Continue reading
Posted in Gardening, Illness, Research, The ageing process
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In which I head into the wind
Sometimes joy and sadness are hard to tease apart – there should be a word for the heavy lightness, or light heaviness, of springtime. This time of year always carries ambivalence: a scrum of flowers unfurl, scenting the air, but … Continue reading
Posted in Careers, Gardening, Research, The profession of science
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In which I capture the present, but forget why
I have always been a compulsive chronicler, ever since I was a small child starting off my first journal. I still write an entry nearly every day, taking a few months to fill in all the pages with my increasingly … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Art, Domestic bliss, Gardening, Music, Nostalgia, The ageing process, Work/life balance, Writing
3 Comments
In which my lab is a garden
It’s a grey afternoon, the light already fading. R. and I have just done a circuit of the back garden – ‘inspecting the troops’, we call it. The entire space is dishevelled, as it always is this time of year: … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Domestic bliss, Gardening, Research, The profession of science, Work/life balance
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In which I step over the edge
Another first of January, and I find myself in that fuzzy transition between old and new, between holiday and the resumption of real life. The Christmas tree and its associated trappings give me that look, seeming to realise they they … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
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In which we fall
Fireworks crackle in the darkness: yesterday’s Bonfire Night stretching to fill the entire weekend. The torrential rains have given way to an almost full moon, glowing cold-silver in the eastern sky. November is always a positive month, with the cosiness … Continue reading
In which I cherish useless facts
I’ve just had my first letter to the editor published in the Times (of London, that is, not of New York). It wasn’t an urgent missive about science policy or politics or the state of the world or the Queen’s … Continue reading
Posted in Nostalgia
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In which climate apocalypse feels inevitable
Here in England, we are braced for an historic heat wave. The Met Office has issued its first ever ‘Red Warning of Extreme Heat‘ for much of the UK, with temperatures set to reach a new record of 40 degrees … Continue reading
Posted in Policy, Science fiction, Staring into the abyss
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In which ‘Lab Lit’ escapes its little box
It’s been many moons since I published an article in Nature featuring my graph illustrating the apparent year-on-year increase in frequency of novels with scientists as central characters – or ‘lab lit‘. The trend had looked compelling, but coming from … Continue reading
Posted in LabLit, Writing
3 Comments
