In which we tell a story: on metaphors in science and life

Posted on March 29, 2026 by Jennifer Rohn

There is such a stark divide between those who understand scientific complexity and those who urgently need or want to. The onus falls on the former to translate their messages in a comprehensible way. Perhaps it’s a radical claim, but even though communication is a two-way dialogue, I believe that the blame for anything lost in translation lies squarely and one hundred per cent with the communicator. There is, in short, no excuse.

As my teaching winds down for the academic year, I’ve just given my last undergraduate science writing workshop – a sort of gun-for-hire side hustle that, via word-of-mouth, has gradually spread across multiple modules offered by the Faculty. These interactive sessions are not so much about technical science writing, although I do cover those aspects, but rather the strategy needed to engage readers of any level of understanding.

While I cover a lot of the basics, such as the importance of clarity, balance, brevity and understanding the needs of the audience to whom you are pitching, I think my most important lessons lie in two areas: strong story-telling, and creative techniques for achieving that in the most engaging way.

My own personal way of understanding the world involves a lot of imagery. I am forever making little sketches in my notebook, when I plan experiments or try to understand a particularly complicated paper. There is nothing that brings me more joy than a clean whiteboard, multiple colours of pen and a conducive group of colleagues happy to brainstorm. The paper just accepted for formal publication from one of my postdocs started out life as an ink drawing on a cocktail napkin in a restaurant. Pictures and mind maps allow me to boil down complexities into visual constructs, herding the elusively abstract into something tangible and, therefore, knowable. Just as you cannot teach something you don’t know inside-out, you do not truly understand a concept if you cannot draw it.*

(*Exceptions may apply to disciplines such as cosmology or quantum physics! Fortunately, most biology is reassuringly tangible.)

How, then, do we draw pictures with the written word? The MVP on the bench is clearly the metaphor. In my workshops, I show them examples from the popular press – for example, pieces by Tom Whipple of the Times (a master craftsman), or from the Guardian science desk – where metaphors are such common workhorses that they appear in every single piece. I invite my students to magic up metaphors for biological phenomena. Some are easy: the infiltration of immune cells during an inflammatory response, for example, being readily likened to the fire service being called in to quench a blaze. Others are hopelessly abstract and require more thought.

I encourage my students to avoid metaphors that are so overused that they have become clichés. Prime example? The powerhouse of the cell. (Pity the poor mitochondrion, eternally type-cast and never given a fresh take!) Or those cursed building blocks of life. I present lists of metaphorical scientific terms that are so ancient and established as proper scientific nomenclature that we have forgotten that they were ever metaphors in the first place: transcription; translation; proof-reading; editing. Funny, isn’t it, and pleasingly circular, that so many of our scientific terms are derived from writing itself?

Metaphors are so useful that I put them to work to help understand my everyday life and the interactions I have with people, institutions and the demons of self-doubt that crawl out of my brain at 3 AM. My journal is full of them: tiny narrative universes of possibility. I cannot imagine my world without them.

So this is why I want my students to understand the power of metaphors, and to deploy them liberally whenever they are struggling to get across their own scientific stories. The battle for truth may be lost, but in some ways, we have no choice but to keep fighting.

Posted in Academia, Research, Scientific papers, Students, Teaching, Writing | 1 Comment

In which we build the perfect scientist

Posted on March 22, 2026 by Jennifer Rohn

The work universe bubble at home

They say it takes a village to raise a child. But I’ve been wondering recently what it takes to raise an independent scientist. Specifically, I’m thinking of the “valley of death” between a postdoc and a well-functioning group leader with a team.

A senior colleague once likened the transition from the former to the latter as “escape velocity”: the difference between milling around on the launchpad with too much fuel (ambition/ideas) and not enough hardware (the rocket ship and crew that will actual propel you into a stable orbit). It’s a brilliant metaphor, which he presented to me after the disappointing news that my major fellowship interview had not been successful.

At that moment, more than a decade ago now, I was despondent, on temporary contracts and about to enter into a massive teaching commitment to earn my keep at the university – a teaching commitment that I still bear. Although it was a long time ago, I still recall the mix of emotions: relieved that at least I could carry on taking home an academic salary and trying to grow my lab, but wondering how on earth I would manage to succeed with such little protected research time – research time I had to actively buy out from my multiple grants, all stitched together to create a day or two a week.

Fast forward to now, and the good news is that everything turned out for me. Against the odds, I managed to craft enough competitive grant funding to secure my salary and to hire a sizeable team long-term. I’ve maintained a group of between 5-7 people ever since, alongside my own salary buyout, through a combination of very hard work and not a little luck. Collaborations turned out to be key: when I stopped acting like a lone wolf and started seeking out like-minded individuals, more opportunities opened up. Today, I operate within a small but close-knit group of collaborators who share my values, interests and (unexpectedly importantly) sense of humour and fun*, and who also embody a Venn diagram of complementary and unique skill sets.

(*One of my colleagues, who I consider especially wise, once told me that they had long ago resolved never to work with people who did not bring them joy or could not share a laugh. I promptly adopted this as my new mantra and have never looked back. Life is, frankly, too short to work with assholes. These I have shed with the utmost relish.)

I am now privileged to act as a mentor to more junior scientists who are where I was a decade or so ago. They, too, often feel despondent and pessimistic about their chances. Sometimes, like I did, they think about bailing out of the profession altogether.

I, personally, have done the experiment. It’s rather inferior to a randomised control trial, as there is no “control me” who took alternative paths. Instead the study design is what is known as a longitudinal “crossover”: I have been a scientist, and left research for publishing, and returned. It is not perfect, but I know that when I clipped my wings and tried to bow out of science, I had a more stable life, but I was ultimately unhappy. And I quite soon realised that I had made a grave mistake. Returning to research made my life more difficult in some ways, but also, overwhelmingly, more fulfilling and happy.

Revisiting the original question, what does it takes to raise an independent scientist? I think the most important thing has less to do with intellect and resilience, and more to do with home environment. Succeeding at academia is very difficult if you do not have a supportive home life and good work-life balance. I have been blessed with a family who understands my need to travel and to work hard. Although I sometimes feel guilty when I have to fly away, work late or spend time on my computer on the weekends, this guilt is entirely self-inflicted: nobody ever makes me feel that I am not doing enough, and we have wonderful experiences working around my constraints. I even have time to pursue my hobbies, albeit on a rather restricted schedule: making music, learning languages, writing, sketching, ham radio, gardening. As a result, my home life is grounded and fulfilling, yet I still manage to get everything done.

But it’s not just about a permissive and supportive home life. None of this would be possible without the lab team behind me. The more senior members look after the more junior members, and all of them keep the lab running effortlessly without me needing to intervene much, or sometimes even to think about it. The older members hand over to the newer ones to ensure continuity. For this, I am eternally grateful: a village, indeed.

There is, of course, a gap between the “team of one” and the fully functional team that even the most supportive family or home life cannot bridge. For this, only the luck of a few successful grants can really fill that gap, rewarding you with the team who will shoulder the quotidian load and free yourself for more advanced tasks like publishing papers and dreaming up more grants.

Escape velocity.

And the secret formula? Engaging with collaborators and submitting as many grants as humanly possible – meaning that for a time (months? years?) your own work-life balance will invariably suffer.

Whether it is ultimately worth it depends on the outcome, and the temperament of the individual in the midst of their own particular career experiment. For me, it was: for others, it may not.

Sometimes you just have to do the experiment.

Posted in Academia, Careers, Domestic bliss, Nostalgia, Research, Staring into the abyss, The profession of science, Work/life balance | Comments Off on In which we build the perfect scientist

In which we’ve lost the scientific argument

Posted on March 7, 2026 by Jennifer Rohn

Montage of the 2010 Science is Vital rally

From the archives: Science is Vital rally, London 2010 (RIP Colin Blakemore, being interviewed with me in the lower left panel) Most photos by Joe Dunckley

Today in the United States, researchers are marching in Washington DC and across the country in a Stand Up for Science National Day of Action. Their problems are admittedly a lot heavier than ours here in the UK, although a friend emailed yesterday musing whether something like Science Is Vital, the street rally and affiliated political activities I co-founded back in 2010, might be needed to protest the recent clumsy funding pause enacted by the UK Research Councils.

Sometimes I’m surprised people even remember Science Vital. But scientists marching in the streets, so commonplace now, was actually rather a rare thing back then. So perhaps it did stick in the mind.

I messaged back that maybe so, but it was definitely a younger person’s game. Besides, things have changed so drastically in the world in the meantime that the whole endeavour now feels rather quaint.

A decade ago, in my frequent university science communication lectures, I’d talk passionately about the need for scientists to connect with the public, to engage in dialogue, be open and transparent about how their work could help make the world a better place. Now (as recently as last week), I stand in front of the undergraduates – many glued to their phones as I speak – and admit that, actually, there no longer seems much point.

How can anything I say counteract the toxic deluge of misinformation that firehoses us on a daily basis? Politicians can look the camera in the eye and tell us that black is white, with absolutely no repercussions. A Health Secretary in one of the most powerful nations on earth can proclaim that vaccines cause harm, and peddle unproved snake-oil alternatives while preventable childhood diseases sweep through the land.

How can one well-meaning scientist counter that? Or even a million? The other side is bankrolled by dead-eyed billionaires.

So yes, it seems I’ve grown cynical in my old age. Having lost the rational argument against a bunch of grifters, we may now be beyond the point of no return. The pendulum will one day swing back, of course, but perhaps not in my lifetime.

In the meantime, ask the earnest undergrads in the front row who are actually paying attention, what can we do?

What, indeed?

Posted in Nostalgia, Policy, Politics, Science is Vital, Science talking, Students, Teaching | 1 Comment

In which I ponder: could scientific angst beat nuclear war in a fair fight?

Posted on March 1, 2026 by Jennifer Rohn

When you are a scientist, your daily concerns revolve around mundane issues, so mundane that most normal people would struggle to recognise them as urgent: primarily funding woes, like I wrote about last week. But also publications, teaching, the dozen new academic chores that sprout from the hydra’s bleeding neck each time you finally manage to chop off a head. (This metaphor is brought to you by a recent Bluesky exchange about the surprising goriness of Ancient Greek mythology.)

All this stuff is vital, urgent and ever-pressing to me in my little academic bubble. It feels, sometimes, like the most important thing in the world. And it can consume all of my emotional energy, until my tank is empty.

But there is a bigger world out there, beyond the lab. Most scientists I know are interested in many other topics: art, music, film, sport, theatre, literature. And politics – especially politics. Like me, they tend to list to the left on most issues, though of course not universally.

As I write, two countries with hefty nuclear arsenals are in the process of poking a lion with a very large pointy stick. A lion with a lot of powerful friends.

Perhaps some of us will shrug and think, well, nothing truly bad will come of it. After all, the pointy stick has been deployed many times over the past few months.

As a scientist, I can’t help wondering how we have all become so inured to violence – so inured that we forget that violence might well lead to serious consequences. We witness on our news feeds those rogue states (you know who you are) killing and bombing with limited oversight, so frequently that it sometimes does not seem as urgent as this grant, that scientific manuscript revision. It is so commonplace that some forget about cause and effect, in a way that people, like me, who grew up during the Cold War (think, existential dread punctuated by nuclear attack drills in school) never fully can.

But we do forget, as a society. We forget about the Butterfly Effect. We learned in school that World War I was catalysed by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. This event seems, today, almost quaint, that something so small could have led to something so catastrophic. Arguably, the person assassinated today was a hundred times more consequential. Yet surely these days we are buffered by so much news, by so much going on at once, so many small, daily insults, that one isolated act couldn’t really push us over the edge.

But what if, actually, it could?

It’s safe to assume that if the unthinkable does happen, the scholarly pursuit of science will be the first thing to grind to a halt.

And if this happens, it’s these funding and publication worries that will seem quaint, in the grand scheme of things.

Posted in Politics, Staring into the abyss, The profession of science | Comments Off on In which I ponder: could scientific angst beat nuclear war in a fair fight?

In which we watch and wait

Posted on February 22, 2026 by Jennifer Rohn

People chatting in a lab

The lab family: a snapshot in time

Precarity is the one constant of academic science. Themes of instability thread themselves through everything we do: experiments that inexplicably cannot be repeated. Once-sound theories that fall into pieces as a result. Job contracts that end after only a few years; even permanent contracts vulnerable to systemic university redundancy plans. And of course: the funding that underpins all we do.

Labs are such a patchwork: as the head, you cobble together a shifting-sand group of people who start and stop at different times, overlapping with one another sometimes for years, other times, just a few weeks. Every person under your care is the product of a grant you have agonised over, often for months, submitted into a pool that can be as competitive as tankful of sharks scrabbling over a single piece of meat.

Once you welcome that person into your lab family, the clock is already ticking: 18 months, two years, maybe three if you’ve been lucky. As soon as they start, you are already worrying about the next grant, as you’ll need to put in multiple grants to ensure that one will succeed.

It’s not just the lab head feeling the strain; it’s much worse for the individual researchers, whose continuity in the system absolutely depends on that next position. Unlike me, they have no buffer system. While I can function for a while with a smaller team, even on life support, there is no such safety net for the individual team of one.

Which is why the news that a number of UK Research Council grant schemes were being temporarily paused, ahead of a reshuffle in priorities, came as such a shock to the research community. One of my own grants in progress was labelled “rejected” on the system just days before Christmas (even though it wasn’t due until March). Hundreds of other grants suffered similar fates, most tragically those that had already successfully passed a stage-one application with positive reviews.

We are all of us on edge, as we have to wait a few more months until we find out exactly when we can apply for grants again, and what those grants will look like. On edge, and in limbo.

For me, it could be a lot worse. I have a team of seven, a few of whom are funded through to 2027. We have four papers under review and even more than that number nearly ready to submit, so any grants I do submit are likely to be well-bolstered with evidence. In my field, there are a few funding charities with whom I have had success in the past, and which remain available. The Almighty Wellcome, too, is still up and running – although much as a road closure diverts all the traffic to somewhere else, people assume that these alternative sources will only become overwhelmed.

But the people I really worry about are the early-career researchers (ECR), the ‘teams of one’, who need to find their next post-doc, fellowship or faculty position. Anecdotally, I understand that the bleak scientific news from the United States has already driven an increase in overseas applicants to the UK and Europe – themselves saturated job markets that can ill-afford yet more contenders. A common way of taking on post-docs in my field, for example, is via the ‘project grant’ route: one of the paused schemes.

Even if I am able to submit a project grant in the summer, such is the protracted nature of the process that any associated position will take another year to become available. What happens to all the ECR who are ready to move on now, or in the next few months? There is the very real possibility that this strategic pause will actively drive young researchers out of academia – perhaps forever. It is a tragedy, all the worse for seeming wholly avoidable. Surely this pause could have been worked into the system seamlessly? Surely live grants could have been grandfathered in? None of it makes any sense.

For now, I try not to worry, and I’m busy making strategic plans which will allow me and my collaborators to move in any number of possible directions once the way is finally signposted. While I am no stranger to imposter syndrome, I also know, objectively, that my grant success rate has been high of late and that my area has been remarkably fashionable. I can weather this, from the lab perspective. And I will do all I can to support my team to cling onto their academic dreams despite the odds – heaven knows I could write a master class on that particular subject.

But for now, I can only watch and wait along with everybody else.

Posted in Academia, Careers, Research, science funding, Staring into the abyss, The profession of science | Comments Off on In which we watch and wait

In which we pause

Posted on December 27, 2025 by Jennifer Rohn

snowdrops blooming on grass

Silent night.

Well, not really night anymore, as I first opened this page at 4 AM. Out the window brittle stars burn, though the faintest of glows already encroaches. That limbo before morning, when the house is utterly silent, the central heating’s hum not yet kicked in. Even the chatty robins still sleep, and no cars or planes rumble past. After three days of windstorms, the air too is completely still: no branches shushing or chimes tinkling. I could be the only person awake in the entire world, driven to this state by the bad cold that befell me, typically, on my first full day off work.

It is also that limbo between Christmas and New Year, when everything has dried up: work emails, chatter from friends, even – thankfully – the guilty compulsion to chip away at academic chores. All that remains is your dear family, the larger world pushed away from its glowing, essential core. There is food to prepare, LEGO to assemble, hugs to enjoy, movies to watch, wrapping paper and cartons to recycle, long-postponed chores to consider: sweeping the last of the fallen leaves from the garden paths, for example, or tidying (once and for all) the loft. There are walks to take in the chill afternoons, muddy boots and untidy woods full of berries: holly, ivy, hawthorn, the remains of the sloe. There is the cold North Sea to be plunged into, while passers-by bundled in hats, scarves and gloves stare as if you are mad.

But reality will resume soon enough. The first snowdrops are already blooming in the village gardens and – along with the January crocuses pushing through the ragged lawn – the abandoned list of academic deadlines will soon once again become unavoidable.

Yet for now: silent night.

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In which I thank my stars for country living

Posted on October 4, 2025 by Jennifer Rohn

The three ingredients for a happy life


When I first moved to London in 1997, I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Long hours in the lab would spill into the evening streets and underground tunnels of a city so large that you could never experience it all. When I think back to those evenings this time of year, it’s all wet leaves slicked against grey pavements, streetlights bleeding colours, the smell of fireworks exploding in the chilly air.

My companions were fellow postdocs, and this whole period in my life is tangled up in how I thought about being a scientist, inexperienced and trying to work it all out. High highs and low lows, too young to have worked out the balance of things – the memories saturated with blue. Blue but beautiful, and the thought of not being in that place was incomprehensible, even when it hurt.

Of course, it was never going to feel that way forever. After Joshua was born, the compact two-bed flat in Canada Water was too small to contain us. And at that stage of life, a few decades on, it was possible to imagine a different kind of life. It almost broke my heart leaving the canals, docks and woodlands of the Rotherhithe area I’d grown to love, but the first time we’d stepped into the back garden of the Kentish house we now call home, our fate was sealed. It was vast, green, full of trees and potential – about as far away as you could get from the postage-stamp-sized council flat plot where we’d carved as many vegetables beds as was humanly possible out of the the rough grass – much to the bemusement of our indifferent neighbours.

I’d always dreamt about keeping chickens and bees, and a garden full as many of edibles as possible. Today, I fulfilled the long-standing ambition of making Torrone Sardo (an Italian nut-filled soft nougat) with only our own ingredients. Hazelnuts are an acceptable traditional substitute for almonds, and this year the cobnuts and filberts we’d planted ages ago were finally mature enough to give a decent crop.

Filberts and Kentish cobnuts from the back garden hedge

So today, we shucked two large bowls of nuts from their frilly casings, then experimented as a family with the best way to crush the shells in a high-throughput manner (the grape mangler was a bust, but a large brick against the paving stones worked wonders).

A failed experiment: crushing hazelnuts with the grape wrangler

I separated the whites from three pretty green eggs laid by Luna, our new Cheshire Blue, whipped them to peaks and folded them into a pound of melted honey from last summer’s harvest. It needed stirring continuously on a bain marie for 45 minutes, then 30 minutes more after adding the nuts I’d roasted for 15 minutes in a 180 degree oven. It was relaxing just to sit there on a stool by the stove, writing and stirring, and now the mixture is setting in a cool room between sheets of parchment.

Torrone Sardo, which I first tried on a trip to Sardinia at the turn of the century

There were other garden chores: Richard has been harvesting grapes for wine, collecting medlar fruit to “blet” into over-ripeness, and gathering the last of the apples and pears. It’s been a great year for fruit, thanks to the extended heat wave. But I’ve been happy to welcome the autumn, with its stormy rains, cold mornings and brilliant blue skies. Soon we’ll be picking the last of the tomatoes and cucumbers, and harvesting pumpkins and parsnips.

The right tool for the job

London is miraculous, and I still love working there. But country life is all I’d hoped, with space to breathe, grow and work the land. I can go for hours without thinking about science, or the anxieties that tinge my campus existence. I never stop remembering how lucky I am – not just for the quality of my life now, but for the colourful journey that brought me here.

Posted in Academia, Domestic bliss, Gardening, Nostalgia, The ageing process, Work/life balance | Comments Off on In which I thank my stars for country living

In which I make contact

Posted on July 20, 2025 by Jennifer Rohn

Back in the late Nineties, I was interning at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. During the working week, I threw myself into the lab with all the evangelical fervour of a pilgrim who had finally reached her own personal Santiago de Compostela. But during the long summer evenings and weekends, I was spending a lot of time with new friends, euphoric with the freedom of living far from home.

handheld radio on a table

Hello world

During these times, I got to know Jon, an amiable man who was heavily into amateur radio. I loved watching him work the VHF network with his handheld. It’s striking that when I sat down to write this post, it took some time to remember Jon’s name, but his callsign – KD3FG – was still etched into my memory.

Ever since that summer, I’ve wanted to take up the hobby myself, but life has always got in the way. Last autumn, I decided to start studying for my Foundation License. It was a long, slow process, because facts and figures no longer stick so readily in my mind, and I’ve never had a strong affinity with physics or electronics.

All that season, and into the winter, I’d set aside an hour or two a week to study the curriculum, lying on the sofa in front of the wood stove in the summerhouse. Over and over I’d read the chapters, absorbing the relationship between power, voltage and current, summing up theoretical in-series and in-parallel batteries, learning how signals propagate through the different layers of the atmosphere. I memorised the phonetic alphabet from Alpha to Zulu, and studied the shapes, pins and threads on images of various connectors – PL591, N, SMA, BNC – until I could tell them apart at a glance. I learned what causes interference, and how to avoid it. I marked up the long, densely populated Band Plan which tells you which type of user can use which stretch of the spectrum, alongside the maximum allowable transmission power. (One must steer well clear of other users, such as MI5, who own the 431-432 MHz turf within a 100 mile radius of London’s Charing Cross.)

At the beginning, I didn’t know my Sporadic E from my elbow, and I was continually frustrated. But eventually, all the information started to soak in. In the meantime, for my birthday in 2024, Richard bought me a beautiful Yaesu transceiver and a few bit and bobs to go with it. I started taking mock exams, and early this spring, I was ready to sit my online theory test with the Radio Society of Great Britain. I was stupidly nervous on the day; the invigilator let slip that women very rarely took part. So he seemed particularly pleased to let me know that I had passed (missing only one question). A few days later, I was assigned my unique callsign: Mike Seven Hotel Zulu Tango.

It was at this point that I came face to face with the reality that theoretical knowledge will only get you so far. Ultimately I wanted to “work the world” – that is, use the High Frequency band (3-30 MHz) to contact users other countries, maybe even astronauts on the International Space Station. But I quickly ran aground. I’d need to do a lot more reading even to decide where and how to erect an antenna for my permanent high-frequency shack. To bridge that imposing gap, I bought a cheap VHF/UHF handy (for the more accessibly 30-3,000 MHz frequencies). I was full of hope, but the way my house is situated on the side of a hill, the only thing I could pick up with the tiny in-built antenna was the BBC, and random static on other channels. The space around me seemed utterly sterile; no one answered my calls. It was all very discouraging.

Then a friend put me in touch with the neighbourhood Ham Club – a grand name for two local guys on WhatsApp who turned out to be super friendly and helpful. I don’t understand even a fraction of what they chatter about most days, but they were generous with their time and advice. Ian lent me a massive pneumatic mast which could elevate my “white stick” vertical ground plane antenna nine meters into the air, with plenty of clearance to send and receive over the Thames and even to the airspace west of the massive hill shadow. Meanwhile, Stuart came around to look at our back garden, advising on HF antenna placement and gifting me a coaxial cable with the right attachment to connect my handy to the antenna mast. There was just enough slack for me to sit on the summerhouse porch and have a go.

What if there was no one there; or worse, there was, but no one wanted to reply?

Reader, I felt like the belle of the ball. The airspace around me was not empty, but full of life and chatter. People were queuing up to talk to me in the FM calling zone of 145.500 MHz, establishing contact and then moving up or down the band to find a free frequency. It was like being at a cocktail party, but instead of talking about what you do, you chat about your radios, your antennae, your physical locations, and how good (or bad) the mutual sound quality and signal strength is. Like a geeky cocktail party, except you’re the only woman in the room. Later, Ian and Stu confirmed that most operators were committed to being supportive of “YLs” (Young Ladies), which I found amusing. I signed off my final 73 feeling thoroughly exhilarated.

I still need to hire an aerialist to erect my white stick into a more permanent position on the roof, drill some holes into the house for cable access, and erect my end-fed long wire HF antenna across the back garden to access more far-flung operators. All in all, though, I was happy with my first foray into the airwaves.

I enjoy doing science, and despite all the stress and heartache, I still love being part of the profession. Yet it’s not escaped my notice that most of the ham enthusiasts I’ve encountered are retired. I do sometimes look forward to day when I can spend my time doing other things I love – lifelong hobbies alongside brand-new adventures.

Posted in Domestic bliss, Ham radio, Nostalgia | Tagged | Comments Off on In which I make contact

In which I lurk on the edges of the playground

Posted on May 5, 2025 by Jennifer Rohn

Sunny path lined with blooming cow parsley, nettle and hawthorn

I’ve just finished Richard Powers’ latest novel, Playground. This is not a book review (although I can highly recommend it), but more of a reflection on its aftertaste. Cryptic spoilers below.

I’d consider the book ‘lab lit lite’ – there are three scientist characters whose work is ancillary to the main plot. This is not really a story about science as a profession. It’s more a cautionary tale/homage of artificial intelligence and human over-reach, somewhat reminiscent of two of his earlier works, Galatea 2.2 and Bewilderment, with a Gaia-esque dash of The Overstory thrown in.

And at its base, like a celestial plug-hole, the hard gravity of Urbana-Champaign, pulling the reader into the author’s recurring collegiate dreamscape. Like most of us, I suppose, there is nothing more compelling than the place where we learned to adult for the first time. I have similar feelings for the small campus in Oberlin, Ohio, where the scent of apple blossoms in the present day never fails to propel me back to the springtime of senior year, when I was riven with unrequited love and about to set off to earn a PhD in Microbiology on the other side of the country. It is no exaggeration to say that the future seemed to stretch out into infinity, then, much as it probably does now for my 11-year-old son.

As always, Powers has made me feel existential. Not that I need much of a catalyst in that department, these days. The slightest thing can set me off as I move ever further along the timeline, and occasionally contemplate what might lie beyond. I feel genuinely old: I am plagued by aches and pains, alongside low-level exhaustion of the body and spirit. The deaths of singers and actors that inspired me as a youth seem to happen on a weekly basis. Meanwhile, the roller-coaster of lab-related acceptance and rejection hurtles onward – one grant and paper in the former category this past week, and one grant in the latter – but it no longer feels so high or so low – just the bland normality of my precarious academic situation, averaging out.

In my heart, I also sense the cooling down of political fire to the numb embers of resigned acceptance. The thought of organising a petition, let alone a full-scale street rally, seems like something from another life. I have passed the torch long ago, and do not envy them the fight ahead.

And does anything lie beyond? Most days, I think not. But occasionally I get glimmers of potential. Yesterday, after Joshua’s last rugby training session of the year, I felt weary and sat down on a bench well away from the furore, watching my son queuing for a sausage bap and then fussing over the ketchup packets, while across the crowd, Richard was chatting with another rugby dad, smiling at some shared joke. Neither of them knew where I was, nor had yet registered my absence. And that’s when I wondered if this might be what the afterlife is like: not being a ghost, inserted no matter how incorporeally into the lives of your successors, but simply a silent point-of-view. A regard of fondness and familiarity, with the grief of separation totally blunted. You could follow your friends and family forever, a mute, all-seeing omniscient narrator who no longer has skin in the game. I am not sure if this is heaven or hell, to be honest. But, as I write these words, I suddenly realise that this concept might be part of what Powers was getting at when he skilfully unfolded his jaw-dropping reveal at the novel’s end.

Meanwhile, back in reality, it’s the dregs of a bank-holiday weekend, cold and blustery. I’ve crossed a few gardening tasks off my list, admired Richard’s runner bean supports, made stinging nettle soup from plants (carefully) foraged from the path behind the rugby club, enjoyed some me time.

Still very much of this world, and taking nothing for granted.

Posted in Careers, Domestic bliss, Gardening, Joshua, LabLit, Staring into the abyss, The ageing process, The profession of science | 1 Comment

In which I mark a milestone

Posted on April 22, 2025 by Jennifer Rohn

A garden scene with table and computer

I have been putting off writing about a special twenty-year anniversary. But first, apologies are in order.

Yet again, I find that another season has passed without me writing here. This was never meant to be a quarterly affair, but so it’s proved in recent months. The neglect is not solely down to lack of time – I find that the slowly unfolding horrors of the world (wars, bird flu and climate catastrophe, alongside bigotry, cruelty, and the wholesale dismantling of democracy and science in a certain quarter of the world) have stifled my inspiration. What can one possibly say that could encapsulate – gestures weakly at all of that – ? Future historians will have plenty of material to dissect, so I’ll leave them to it.

My paper journal, which I still tend to most days, is so lost for words that it’s lapsed mostly into descriptions of my garden, whose inspiration, on the other hand, is boundless. I feel a strange urgency to record its infinite charms, even though there are only so many ways that I can rejoice in my tulips, or the way that it feels to tug a particularly long chain of sticky goosegrass from among them. Flip through its pages and you will occasionally find other musings: impressions from my many travels, jotted down in airports, hotels, foreign café tables, interspersed with worries about keeping the lab stocked with fresh grants. Otherwise it’s the orderly succession of snowdrops to crocuses to daffodils to hyacinths to tulips to bluebells. Seedlings in indoor propagators under artificial light slowly graduate to larger pots in the greenhouse, waiting until it is reliably warm enough to plant them out in the beds, where they will battle it out with weeds, slugs, drought and insects. All of this, playing out each year like a well-oiled West End production, with only a few minor variations keeping up the tension: one year it took three successive sowings to get courgettes that did not rot away, a mystery that we never solved; this year, it is the etiolated tomatillos that have terminally failed despite multiple attempts, and the first rows of parsnips did not germinate at all.

graph showing increase in lab lit by year

An encouraging upward trend of fiction about scientists

But I promised you news, appropriately belated as are all things in my blog now. March marked the twentieth anniversary of LabLit.com, my humble science/literature/cultural magazine launched as part thought experiment, part guerilla action, to shed light on the relative scarcity of scientists in novels and, perhaps, in my own small way, to try to rectify it. LabLit.com still has a following, despite recent years of shocking neglect, and I’m proud of having hung in there despite lacking the time and energy to coax it into anything bigger. Alongside the original fiction we publish, its crown jewel is the List, a curated database of realistic fiction featuring scientists plying their trade. When we launched in 2005, the compendium only contained about a hundred novels – now it stands at 495. While part of this is down to continual searches amongst older literature, it’s also driven by a year-on-year increase in new ‘lab lit’ novels, as you can see from the graph above that we complied for the magazine’s anniversary edition. (If you’re interested in reading more about the project and the people behind it, all the links can be found in my 20th anniversary editorial.)

Today is my last day of Easter break before returning to the lab. It’s been a restful and much-needed time away from the stresses and anxieties of work, with cold sunny days spent in the garden and not much accomplished (a good thing in this case). I’m sitting here at my table under the grape arbor in the far back, next to the cascade with its soothing rush of water. The pond into which it empties is a green baize of duckweed dotted with pink cherry blossoms; beyond it our bees seethe industriously around their hive. The air is scented with blossom. Birds sing, and the sun warms my face. All is green, liquid, dreamy.

One last day, just for myself.

Posted in Domestic bliss, Gardening, LabLit | Comments Off on In which I mark a milestone