Blog Roll

Passion - or frustration - led us here.
Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash

I started writing my blog, Research Fundermentals, a decade ago. I wanted a way to share information, notes and thoughts across the University of Kent, but also to reach out to other research managers and administrators. In effect, I wanted to ask, ‘is it just me, or…?’

I was inspired by the University of Lincoln’s blog, which is a great example of how to use an online platform effectively to communicate with the wider academic community.

Since then I’ve discovered a whole host of wonderful online resources that help me in my work but, just as importantly, make me realise I’m not alone.

Cash for Questions
Written by Adam Golberg (Nottingham), this is a really useful, thoughtful and funny resource for those supporting colleagues in the social sciences. However, many of the posts are just as relevant to those in other disciplines, such as avoiding cut and paste text in applications, or the more existential questions of whether it’s worth going for research funding at all.

Research Whisperer
Covering a similar sort of beat on the other side of the world are the magnificent Jonathan O’Donnell and Tseen Khoo (RMIT University), self-styled researcher whisperers. They offer advice on a broad range of subjects, from the specifics of applying, to developing your career. They may be in the southern hemisphere, but the advice is as relevant to us in the north.

LSE Impact Blog & Wonkhe
Both of these bigger, multi-contributor platforms offering commentary and analysis on broader issues in higher education. Worth reading, particularly when a new strategy or roadmap is introduced by government. They cover everything, from Plan S and metrics, to student recruitment and grade inflation. As an extra perk, Wonkhe hosts Registrarism, a wonderful sideways looking at crazy league tables and true crime on campus. Delicious!

Athene Donald, Dorothy Bishop & Pat Thomson
At the other end of the blogging spectrum are three very personal takes on life as a jobbing academic. Athene Donald (Cambridge), Dorothy Bishop (Oxford) and Pat Thomson (Nottingham) speak with disarming candor about the challenges they’ve faced. Athene, for instance, recently wrote about the problems of interdisciplinarity, and ‘how incompetent one can feel when setting out into the unknown territory of a new field.’ Of the three, Pat offers the most practical advice, writing recently about ‘finding the gap’ in your field, or ‘giving feedback’.

Once you’ve dipped your toe in the water with these, push out into the deeper waters and swirling currents of thought, analysis and advice. Blogs come and go, but each will help to inform and deepen your own knowledge. And that can only be a good thing.

This was first published in Issue 9 of Arma's Protagonist magazine, and is republished here with kind permission.