It really made my morning to wake up in a hotel in Taichung, Taiwan, yesterday morning to find Anna Gilmore’s work on the actions of tobacco companies highlighted as a major story on page 6 of The China Post, which was delivered, unsolicited, to my room. I’ve long been a fan of Anna’s work as reported in the media and was disappointed to miss the live transmission of Panorama earlier in the week because I was on a plane, but this really made up for it. Such influential work, and media exposure most of us can only dream of.
Recent events in Paris have affected all of us in different ways, and of course people have been talking about it a lot on both social and conventional media. Following the downing of a Russian jet by a Turkish missile, David Galbreath (PoLIS) wrote an article in The Conversation which was read over 130,000 times in under 24 hours. He joined his colleagues Aurelion Mondon and Bill Durodie whose thoughts on the events in Paris and their consequences also attracted huge audiences over that last week. Meanwhile, William Wadsworth says laser pointers are more dangerous that we generally recognise.
With the Green paper, the Nurse Review and the Comprehensive Spending Review all now out in the open (if not actually behind us!) it’s good to know that colleagues are bringing in funding under the existing systems! Special recognition to Katie Maras (Psychology) and Michael Donnelly (Education) for being awarded prestigious and very competitive ESRC Future Leaders funding. I am confident that they will live up to the name of the scheme, and am really proud to have them working here in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. One step behind them, and with the final hurdle still ahead, Kate Fraser, Jannis Wenk, Min Zhang and Mike Bird, all from the Faculty of Engineering and Design, have done well to get through to the final stage of major fellowship or Challenge competitions. Best wishes to them for the final stage.
Reports from the summer conference season: the Academy of Management conference is an annual Management bunfight (not their description!) with more than 10,000 people in attendance including plenty from our School of Management . Stefanie Gustafsson, Juani Swart and Nick Kinnie were awarded the ‘Best Overall Paper Award’ in the Careers’ Division and Sergio Costa, who joined the School of Management in September, was awarded the Entrepreneurship Division's Heizer Award for the best doctoral dissertation. Meanwhile, I was very happy to be asked by organizer Susan Johnson to attend the opening of the Development Studies Association Annual Conference held here in Bath. The University Hall was packed.
I’ve been learning about new ways in which our colleagues are supporting Early Career Researchers. Marianne Ellis is leading the Engineering and Design Futures Award, nurturing research leadership, whilst Jeanette Müller is starting a programme of networking sessions for research staff. Working with junior colleagues is one of the best things about being at a University, and we all have an obligation to do our bit to support them.
