Inventing Ourselves: Responsibility and Diversity in Research

This piece was a contribution to the wonderful book by Gavin Brown, Chapter X in How to Get Your PhD: A Handbook for the Journey (OUP, 2021). It shares one view on how we, as scientists, can respond to diversity and inclusion, and hopefully interesting to everyone (beyond the early-career scientist). A letter to the new research student. You are entering a world of knowledge and research that is constantly changing. For so many of us, that is its allure. Yet, for all our investigations into the natural, informational, mechanistic, or structural world, nature does not shape the world of … Continue reading Inventing Ourselves: Responsibility and Diversity in Research

Racialised Lives and the Life Beyond

I spoke at the 2019 Equality in Science Symposium at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. This is the text of  my contribution, and you can watch the video (jump to 2:20:50). Read in 15mins.

[dropcap]It[/dropcap] is truly an honour to be here with you today. How amazing to be in this historic city of Liverpool, and here amongst we who work to the use of Science for Good. Thank you to the organisers for having me - how truly humbling to be part of such an inspirational panel.

Before I begin, having been recently to Ghana and now standing here in Liverpool, I would like to acknowledge and pay my respects to those people who once took that same journey. These were people neither welcomed nor respected, but instead despised and enslaved. Their spirits and memory pass through this place. Of course, Liverpool issued its apology for slavery in 1999, and remains today committed to forever remembering the slave trade and its ills. I would like us to give a moment’s silence for this remembrance. [30s silence]

Continue reading "Racialised Lives and the Life Beyond"