About

This is an independent blog addressing topical issues in Academia, Higher Education and Scientific Research. It contains only my own personal opinions and not those of any organisation I am employed by or volunteer for.

With that out of the way, what is this blog?

I have now spent 30 years in the higher education sector, 8 years as an undergraduate and postgraduate student, and 22 years as a professional researcher, having slowly made my way up from postdoc to Professor. While most of my career has been spent in Australia, I have worked in the US (2 years), Sweden (1 year) and Japan (6 months), and have done quite a lot of travel around that. I have also had a long involvement in early- and mid-career researcher issues, mostly through my work with the Australian Research Council Nanotechnology Network.

I started this blog in 2014 as a small advocacy project around issues in higher education and scientific research, and it has now been going for ~ 9 years. It’s been a place where I can both post experiences, address topical issues, and sometimes try to interrogate some rather controversial or progressive ideas, often to get a feeling for the extent to which they can be justified (i.e., they are thoughts rather than firm policy positions).

After a hiatus in 2022, I’ve decided to ramp up posts to this blog from mid-2023 as I think Academia is more in need of reform than ever before. As a self-anointed ‘late-career researcher’, I see my role as being to address the issues of early, mid and even late career researchers with a bolder directness than many at earlier career stages can safely project. Unless we are talking about these things, we cannot have any hope of seeing change. Only by speaking up can we make a difference…

I’ll leave you with a key motivating quote for this blog:

“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.” — Angela Davis.

I hope you enjoy the articles and they stimulate useful discussion in the community.

Cheers, Adam