The idea of keeping track of who's doing the labour of parenting is getting a lot of hate here. But in many families, not keeping track tends to mean women do more & that that labour is invisible. Keeping a spreadsheet wouldn't be my choice, but I'm not seeing many suggestions for better solutions.

Interesting article - including an account some someone who switched out of academia and then came back. I think the increasing porosity between academia and industry is a really positive thing, and Universities should encourage these less usual career pathways!

The sad thing is, we have a travel agent that we are meant to use to book University travel, and they somehow managed to combine all the disadvantages of both the old school human-being approach and the modern web-based version.

Perfect opportunity for the bin-faced one.

It appears that certain right wing folk really can't cope with people who don't agree with them being allowed to have conversations that don't involve them.

It's not lack of reporting routes that is the problem. It's what happens when harassment is reported. The answer to that question is too often nothing. Or worse, sometimes the person making the report is effectively the one who is punished.

Article here from chemistry world on the Women in Research charter with some comments from me on why I think it doesn't go far enough. I have a lot to say about this (unsurprisingly) and I'm going to expand below on my comments on bullying and harassment. 🧵 www.chemistryworld.com/news/uk-gove...

Whilst, I am really glad that PhD students are now more likely to have access to paid maternity leave, this "charter" barely even touches the edges of the issues experienced by women in the sector.

There's a very real and obvious unfairness here that the Guardian article overlooks. Students who start off as undergrads on 4 year degree courses don't have to take a post-grad loan, but do get a masters. Students who do a bachelors degree and a separate masters are saddled with punitive debts.

This morning on BBC Today, one of the presenter's somewhat suggested that Kemi badenoch calling Bridget Phillipson a "spiteful class warrier" was justified because Phillipson once suggested a Tory MP was racist. I was aghast at this false equivalence. 🧵 ca.news.yahoo.com/bridget-phil...

Remember that FOUR week turn around for a £40M call @ukri.org. Turns out it was actually a £60M call. How does this meet the Nolan Principles of Openess? UK invests £60m in two university-led AI research labs www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-p...

This is one of the things that bothers me about the ban... disabled teenagers, LGBTQ+ teenagers, even just teenagers with unusual hobbies will lose opportunities to make helpful connections that their schools and commuities may not be able to replace...

Hundreds of strangers in Belfast working together. Doing shopping, providing accommodation, driving kids to school, people to hospital appointments. Have just been told of a woman close to us who hasn't left her house since Monday so we'll be sorting her out today and getting her anything she needs

would be nice if my concerns about racists, fascists, and a white supremacist, who’s called for the government to be overthrown, using his far-right skewed social media platform to spread hatred were seen as legitimate as racists’ concerns

We want all our representatives in Parliament to show such unequivocal rejection of the politics of division.

“What you're seeing is a race-based pogrom. We are seeing men going door to door asking to get the foreigners out based exclusively on the colour of their skin.” www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cr...

Violence on the streets of the U.K. incited and enabled by Elon Musk, a fellow of the @royalsociety.org. When will our national academy stand up for the values it claims to espouse?

Great initiative! Shining a light on the excellent work done by facility managers in microscopy helps facilitate exchange of good practice and will support career development of a sometimes overlooked group. I'd love to see other types of microscopy (and other techniques) get the same treatment!

Rightly angry piece from @iandunt.bsky.social about the Populist Right BS that followed the awful Henry Nowak murder case and how the media/national conversation has been drawn into it. iandunt.substack.com/p/an-abysmal...

Honestly, if we're going to have bots then acting as the personification of Tower Bridge and letting us know when it is open and why is what those bots should be doing.

I often see this with EDI stuff 👇. Serious problems are identified in an organisation, which mean that minoritised people are being treated unfairly. When folk in leadership learn this, they wring their hands and say they wish they could do something about it. But they can. And they choose not to.

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-...