2023 Report: Black Men Seven Times More Likely To Die Following Police Restraint But clearly, according to Reform, we have 'two-tier, anti-white policing'. inquest.org.uk/news-and-com...

This is great news! Totally fantastic! Now.. can someone explain to me why, if the Ladies Bathing Pond can remain trans inclusive, the Women's Institute can't? Is there a useful legal argument being applied to the bathing ponds that could be applied elsewhere? @jolyon.goodlawproject.org do you know?

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. Or in Farage's case, the eleventy billionth time. But believe it.

I mean, the UK government barred me from speaking to a conference that they literally invited me to speak at and tried to ruin my career because I retweeted SuperTanskii, called Nadine Dorries a car crash, and called Rees Mogg a haunted pencil. Bit nobody can ban Farage from inciting violence?

Really helpful to have the Labour Government's work on Net Zero laid out clearly and in context. Green energy and sustainable industry are the best (possibly only) route to economic growth in this era of recurring energy crises.

Welp there’s no unseeing this

A man at a meeting I attended recently made a big deal about how his office door doesn't say "Professor", just his name, and that's how he encourages healthy research culture. I pointed out that that works for him because, unlike me, he probably won't be mistaken for his own secretary.

Thread below on government impacting UKRI short timescales. Government need to wake up to the damage they're doing. But UKRI also need clear policies on minimum timescales that apply across councils, and well-documented mitigation approaches where these can't be followed.

Brilliant thread from @kirstygrainger.bsky.social Extremely compressed deadlines for proposals... ** cause enormous stress and contribute to burnout in academics and professional services staff ** disadvantage minoritised groups e.g. women with kids & disabled folk ** limit competition & quality.

💥 70,000 signatures! 💥 ...and the petition closes on June 8th. Imagine if we can get it over 100,000 before then - and open a Parliamentary debate in time for the 10th anniversary of the Brexit vote on June 23rd 2026. That'd be powerful. All hands to the pump! Sign and share, share, share! 👇

Made someone cross by being pushy and rude in an EDI meeting... Sadly, after years of being sweet, polite and reasonable in EDI meetings to no noticeable effect, I am not sure there is any other way forward.

It appears I forgot the "Why not both?" option:

Does anyone else sometimes wonder whether life in academia is just so **irritating** that the game is not worth playing? Or is that just a perimenopause thing?

Tired: this meeting could have been an email. Wired: this app could have been a website

I've read 28 out of 100 on the Guardian's list of the so called "best novels of all time" but enjoyed less than half of them. Several books on the list are described in terms that so not denote pleasure: "over-complicated", "notoriously challenging", "impenetrable". www.theguardian.com/p/x4f9v5

Given that Labour are unlikely to enact this much needed electoral reform, everyone who wants to keep the extreme right out of power in the UK is going to have to vote tactically on that basis, even when it involves voting for parties we don't like. Keeping the fascists out has to be top priority.

I'm excited to be one of the new cohort of Inclusion Advocates in the EDI Hub+ and looking forward to working with like-minded people to create change in the UK STEM research community. edihubplus.ac.uk/introducing-...

A reminder to fill out our Community Consultation survey if you are interested in shaping the Facility's future! Your input will play a key role in influencing our priorities and capabilities over the next 5–10 years. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Always love to be reminded of this. A lot of it was hand-stitched too. Really amazing, precise work. Women’s work is so often minimised and forgotten.

I have no information on whether the allegations of bullying against Wendy Thompson are true or not, but I do find it interesting how many powerful women find themselves in trouble for bullying and how many powerful male bullies continue unimpeded. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/see-you...

Emphasis on track record as a way of dealing with the issue of AI usage to write proposals ignores the fact that the use of track records in funding processes is a vessel for bias which leads to accumulation of advantage by white male researchers. More here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

@rikiwilchins.bsky.social 2026 Apr Guardian If you read nothing else today, try this long-form interview with Kimberle Crenshaw on her breakthrough work, early life, the Obama years, and how she saw white backlash against CRT and intersectionality coming which eventually expanded incll. trans ppl.

The language of the UK railways is becoming increasingly Orwellian. I often find myself on a train which, despite making ongoing progress along its journey, is apparently cancelled. Today was my first experience of a train that was apparently not cancelled but also had no chance of turning up.

What is about me & trains? My train home from Birmingham is not cancelled. It just no longer starts from Birmingham. It starts from somewhere else, as yet unspecified. Doesn't really matter where, to be honest, as my route to that unspecified place would be the train that no longer starts from here.

We are attending @sheffielduni.bsky.social Spring Careers Fair today from 12-3pm in the Octagon! We are advertising our funded PhD studentship available in AI-assisted materials discovery: www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

There is so much truth in this article: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

We’re very sorry sir but you cannot bring your emotional support dragon in here.

Folks! The REWIRE Innovation and Knowledge Centre and other associated EPSRC projects are running a call for proposals looking for someone to investigate barriers to the recruitment and retention of minoritised people in the semiconductor centre: rewire-ikc.org/engage-with-...

"you people don't burn folk and sacrifice people anymore, but that's what true faith would mean, y'see? Sacrificin' your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, declarin' the truth of it, working' for it, breathin' the soul of it. That's religion. Anything else is just ... is just bein' nice."

University of Birmingham have a live feed for the nesting Peregrines on the Old Joe clock tower. www.youtube.com/live/4dsZIFf...

Please fill out our Community Consultation survey! This will help shape the future of the National Epitaxy Facility over the next 5–10 years, in line with the UK’s evolving R&D landscape and priorities in semiconductors, quantum, AI, and telecoms. shorturl.at/AIJ1l

Really interesting concept here: including in grants a "bounty" to be paid to readers finding errors in publications arising from that grant. Kinda feel this would be unnecessary if we just supported and scrutinised peer review properly...

I am once again on a train that is simultaneously bowling along happily through the British countryside and also apparently cancelled. Or possibly not cancelled depending on where you look.

Comments I hate from reviews: (1) "Add more references so that more of the broader field is cited". Not "add more references on this specific point, which is currently poorly evidenced". Not "add content on [x] with relevant references to help the reader understand". Just add any old extra refs.

I'm looking at UKRI's EDI strategy again this afternoon... in March 2023 UKRI said they would set up a "people, culture and talent change board" to oversee progress on their EDI Strategy. 3 years on, does anyone know if this exists? I can't find evidence that it does... Has it been renamed?

My initial assumption was that this was the impact of current Trump administration policies, but the data discussed here are actually from 2024. However, we may here be seeing the impact of equal pay intiatives cancelled in the *first* Trump administration. And things may yet get even worse...

Just had to decline a review request for a computer science journal about something to do with GAN. After reading the abstract & doing some googling, I responded: "I work on GaN - i.e. gallium nitride - and not on GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks), so I have literally no relevant expertise. "

Got an email asking for further assistance with this paper. Here's my response: "Unfortunately, I am not keen to engage with the journal further on this matter given the irony of the fact that you repeatedly address me as "Miss Oliver" (rather than Professor Oliver) when..."

I had an experience in a meeting today which showed how old school note taking can actually get you ahead of the game. The meeting involved a document that's about 400 pages long. It's exactly the kind of thing that AI fans would suggest should be summarized by AI. Instead...

All set up for the #CambridgeFestival tomorrow. Anyone want to guess what our demos are illustrating?

Just declined an invitation to review a research study about gender inequities in academia. Mostly declined because I'm too busy, but also a little bit because they clearly couldn't see the irony fo sending me a paper to review on this particular topic and addressing me as "Miss Oliver."

Given we are already in the second fossil fuel crisis of the decade, I really think everyone should be talking more about the opportunity for renewables to isolate us from these shocks!

The Funding Service is such a crappy system. Just found an email telling me I was late submitting a review and panicked slightly, until I realised that I had submitted the review last week, and just within the deadline, but they sent me a message to tell me I was late anyway. 🤷‍♀️

The chair of the House of Commons science committee has described impending cuts to physics funding as “wholly unacceptable” and “a failure” in an excoriating letter to the science minister and the leader of UKRI. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-p...

Oh joy- mandatory in person interviews for applicants who get through all the (massive) initial hurdles. That's not going to have any EDI implications, is it, though I am sure it will help with demand management 😱 www.ukri.org/news/mrc-cur...

The MRC has announced a change to its investigator‑led assessment process: In-person interviews. “shortlisted applicants will be invited to an in‑person panel interview, giving them the best possible opportunity to make their case.” An Equality Diversity & Inclusion🧵 www.ukri.org/news/mrc-cur...

Folks, on #IWD2026, please be aware that the #GiveToGain slogan and hashtag arise from a private limited company who may have been set up to profit from International Women's Day. The UN set the real theme for IWD, the more ambitious and challenging #RightsJusticeAction. 1/2

This appalling fat cat wants to shut the door on all my mature students, many of whom left school after GCSE and give up a lot to go to university. I can tell him that they’re the hungriest for education and far from being unable to graduate, they regularly get the highest grades. Hateful man.

Compare and contrast the funding call in Kristy's post below with the EPSRC EDI action plan: "2.15. Ensure no short deadlines to funding opportunities. Thoughtful deadlines to enable a greater diversity of people to apply." www.ukri.org/publications...

I have completed both my ResearchFish submission and also the final destruction of my soul.