In January 2018, I started noting down some goals I had for the year ahead, both professional and personal. My last post in this category was January 2020, and we all know how well the intervening years went in terms of long-term planning. Ooft. You can read the 2020, 2019, and 2018 editions. So with...

Continue reading

You can find previous “By The Numbers” posts here: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013. I didn’t do one in 2021. 5 Years I’ve been in this job as the curator in charge of birds at the Natural History Museum. It’s going well! Though to be honest, I still feel like the “new kid” sometimes. 9 Papers published this...

Continue reading

In January 2013, I was a postdoc, about 18 months through what would be a 36-month position with Environment (and Climate Change) Canada in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. It was the heady days of Stephen Harper’s premiership in Canada, noteworthy for his right-wing anti-evidence, death-by-a-thousand-cuts approach to public services, and the muzzling of government scientists (where to...

Continue reading

Alas, the ongoing crumbling of Twitter means I’ve been locked out because of a glitch in their two-factor authentication. After a decade, nearly 16k followers, and 130k tweets, I’ve got mixed feelings. Hence a rare revival of the blog. On the one hand, Müsk is trash, and I’d been slowly disengaging from the site since...

Continue reading

Read previous years’ By the Numbers: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013 Top posts by views Amusing bird names explained: Fluffy-backed Tit-babbler (2016) Personal academic websites for faculty & grad students: the why, what, and how (2013) Free project ideas in ecology & conservation (2020) What’s in an affiliation? (2016) Overseas field courses and equity, diversity & inclusion (2020) How did we learn that birds migrate (and not to the moon)? A stab in the dark (2013) The advantages…

Continue reading

Well, it’s certainly been a year. Looking back at the last 12 months, it seems unfathomable that anything close to normality could persist, and yet despite lockdowns, a global pandemic, massive curtailing of international travel, and a massive shift in how we work, we try to carry on. Which may not have been the best solution, to be honest. It’s a bit of square peg/round hole. And that is likely to be the source of…

Continue reading

About 2 years ago, I opened up my inbox for you to ask quite literally anything about being LGBTQ+ in science. Since then, some things have changed in the world, and I’ve had a chance to engage with lots of new folks around equity, diversity, inclusion & access both in science, in the museum, and more broadly. Pride Month this past June was also exhausting, and I know from speaking with a few people that…

Continue reading

For many fields in science, field work and field courses can be an important (some would argue necessary) component. Geology, geography, ecology, conservation, anthropology, archaeology, taxonomy, and more involve, to some extent, the study of parts of the natural world. And it’s an attraction to some part of the natural world, be it a species, a place, a feature, or an experience, that draws many of us into these fields. Speaking personally, you may be…

Continue reading

I know I’m not alone in feeling like there’s far too much wibbily-wobbly timey-wimey lately. We just passed 100 days of working from home because of Covid-19, the bubbling undercurrent of anti-Black racism and police brutality has (finally?) has broader recognition (though not without tragedy), and Pride Month has largely been replaced by Wrath Month (traditionally celebrated in July, but brought forward by unanimous consent after a Big Queer Meeting in which it was the…

Continue reading

It’s coming up to Pride Month in June, and this summer also marks 15 years of marriage equality in Canada, so I find myself in a particularly pensive and reflective mood. This is especially true with the lockdown in the UK at the moment which affords my brain ample time to run amok. This is also not much of a sciencey post. Last weekend was the 30th International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT),…

Continue reading