Cutting NSF Is Like Liquidating Your Finest Investment
Look closely at your mobile phone or tablet. Touch-screen technology, speech recognition, digital sound recording and the internet were all developed using […]
Book Review: The Scopus Diaries and the (Il)Logics of Academic Survival
In The Scopus Diaries and the (Il)Logics of Academic Survival, Abel Polese helps to demystify many of the inner workings of academia for researchers and the challenges that these present through a FAQ format that readers can dip in and out of to explore topics ranging from organizing a panel at a conference to arranging your bibliography and writing good abstracts. This is a useful eye-opening guide for new academics that emphasizes the value of setting one’s own goals and personal boundaries when navigating academia, writes Hind Hussein.
Book Review: Research Impact and the Early Career Researcher
Research Impact and the Early Career Researcher presents chapters that reflect on the experiences that ‘early career researchers’ have had in relation to research impact. The collection is not a manual or textbook on how to achieve impact, but instead presents different voices on how researchers experience and react to the demand for impact.
Book Review: Higher Education and Social Inequalities
The higher education system rests on the principle of meritocracy, with entry into the ‘top’ Russell Group universities supposedly the product of ability. This is despite growing attention to the over-representation of independent school students studying at the ‘top’ universities, with state school students and disadvantaged groups less likely to secure admission.
Book Review: Writing a Watertight Thesis
How you structure the thesis itself is only one part of the overall structure of your doctorate. In their new book, Mike Bottery and Nigel Wright discuss the importance of three different areas in which a good structure is crucial to your success…
Book Review: How to be a Happy Academic
In ‘How to be a Happy Academic: A Guide to Being Effective in Research, Writing and Teaching,’ Alex Clark and Bailey Sousa aim to support fellow academic workers at all career stages to become more efficient, successful and happier through focusing on fostering good habits over and above talent or skills. Eddy Li welcomes this insider perspective on seeing, doing and – most importantly – taming academic work, even if it leaves open the question of how exactly we measure and define “success”.
Book Review: A Survival Kit for Doctoral Students and Their Supervisors
In ‘A Survival Kit for Doctoral Students and Their Supervisors: Traveling the Landscape of Research,’ Lene Tanggaard and Charlotte Wegener offer a hands-on guide for both students and supervisors that seeks to engage with the ‘actual and messy practices of doctoral training,’ says Sroyon Mukherjee.
Book Review: Anthropologists in the Stock Exchange: A Financial History of Victorian Science
In Anthropologists in the Stock Exchange: A Financial History of Victorian Science, Marc Flandreau traces the interwoven development of anthropology, global finance and scientific study, placing all three at the heart of late-19th-century British imperialism.
Book Review: Metric Power
In Metric Power, David Beer examines the intensifying role that metrics play in our everyday lives, from healthcare provision to our interactions with friends and family, within the context of the so-termed data revolution. This is a book that illustrates our growing implication in, and arguable acquiescence to, an increasingly quantified world, but, Thomas Christie Williams asks, where do we locate resistance?
