Research Essentials

Why do some funders demand the investment of so much effort and provide such a poor return for most?

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British Academy devotes approximately £630,000 of university funding to making 855 early-career researchers feel depressed.

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I have just spent all day putting together a presentation using Prezi. That’s not all the time it took – because I’ve already spent another day or two planning the presentation, making notes, gathering images and sketching out a plan. Altogether, the presentation has taken about 20 hours of my spare time – and I [...]

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We just received the copyright form for the book on education in virtual worlds that we are editing with Kieron Sheehy. They want it back today. I’m just wondering whether this wholesale transfer of rights and copyright is the norm. More importantly, I’m wondering how it ever got to be the norm – and how [...]

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Long-time classics, international bestsellers, your favourite novel of all time. Hand on heart, is there any one of them that has absolutely no room for improvement? Take Genesis – a grand opening but also a sprinkling of repetition and some confusing plot developments. Pride and Prejudice – a carefully worked piece, but the third daughter [...]

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I submitted my thesis way back in March but, somewhere between CREET and the Research School, the documentation was lost or abandoned for a couple of months. Add to that a spell in hospital when they finally got round to fixing a date – and I’m left with a viva in late August, when my [...]

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Rebecca and I have both submitted our PhD theses. Rebecca dropped hers at the Research School about a week before I submitted mine. Nevertheless its rather nice to have got to this stage pretty much together. Writing up is an intensive business. Past IET students warned me that it would be, as did my supervisors [...]

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My research group spent a successful day this week brainstorming and developing projects together. We began by considering what we enjoy about research, and found that social and affective factors are hugely important to us. We wanted to carry out joyful research – visionary research – research that would engage us and make a difference [...]

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My local junior school is currently rethinking its vision. This isn’t an empty exercise – the school vision underpins everything that happens at the school, and is referred to on a daily basis. We’re asking everyone in the school community ‘If this were the best school in the world – what would it be like?’ [...]

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Glancing through this blog, I realised that it had the tagline “perspectives on an academic environment” and I thought that perhaps I had neglected this aspect somewhat so heres some perspectives and maybe a little perspective too Summer is a funny time in academia. Everybody seems to disappear. Having moved to an open plan space [...]

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