September 2014
Un-reclaiming the name - I am not a zoologist
[Disclaimer - this is just my opinion. I do not speak for everyone at EcoEvo@TCD] Recently on Twitter there has been a call to "reclaim the name" of Botany accompanied with the hashtag: #iamabotanist. The response has been really cool - lots of different scientists working on different questions have posted pictures of themselves on […]
PhD students and the cult of busy
Academics often remind me of the Four Yorkshire Men in the old sketch (not actually originally a Monty Python sketch, but famously performed by them in their live shows - comedy nerd out over, carry on), except rather than trying to outdo each with how deprived we were as kids, we're always trying to […]
Night Life! Friday 26th Sept
This Friday, members of EcoEvo@TCD, as well as others from the Botany and Zoology departments and Trinity Centre for Biodiversity Research will present Night Life! in the Zoology building at Trinity College Dublin. The event is FREE to attend and we will be open from 6pm-10pm with the last entry at 9.30pm. Night Life! is […]
Creationism in Science Fiction: Artistic freedom or anti-science?
In the late 90s and early 2000s science fiction fans such as myself had a bit of a hard time. As happy as I was when the last few years brought, amongst others, the amazingly crafted science fiction spectacles Battlestar Galactica (2004) and the long anticipated Alien prequel Prometheus (2012), the more disappointed I became when […]
Learning the art of conferencing
The start of the new academic year marks the end of my second conference season. I attended two conferences; Evolution 2014 in Raleigh, North Carolina and the British Ecological Society Macroecology meeting at the University of Nottingham. They were at the opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of size and specificity but they were […]
Gender balanced conferences - we all need to try harder!
Recently a conference on Phylogenetic Comparative Methods was advertised online, and quickly the Twitter community noted that all six of the plenary talks were being given by men. Normally my response to this kind of thing would be some grumpy tweeting and then I’d let it go. However, this time was different; I know one […]
We're back!
It's that time of year again, the quiet before the storm of Fresher's week and the start of a new academic year. After our short break, EcoEvo@TCD is back and raring to go. You can expect lots more posts about our research, seminar series, outreach activities, conferences and fieldwork as well as tips and tricks for […]