Author: environmentalscientivist
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What I learnt from 12 months on the academic job market (as a new mum)
#PhD #postdoc #career #sink #swim This post is dedicated to PhD candidates and post-docs to help prepare them for the academic job market – new mums and dads in particular. With the possible exception of top institutions, pay, quality of life and possibility to have impact is all better outside of academia. This is especially…
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It’s high time to rethink low carbon innovation policy in New Zealand
This article was was written for PureAdvantage. PureAdvantage is a New Zealand based communication platform led by Simon Millar to get New Zealanders engaged in thinking about the relationship between the environment and the economy. New Zealand’s ability to build domestic clean technology industries and respond effectively to climate change is handicapped by a deep-seated rigid notion…
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The sceptical mother – Part II
I promised several people that I would follow up on ‘The sceptical mother – Part I‘ in which I describe the first year of my life as mum, which, quite frankly, was bleak. It was of course dominated by tears, nappies, poo and milk. Mentally though, every day was about fighting the idea that my…
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Collectively building inclusive, relevant research communities
On the long way home from ‘Energy and Society’ in Exeter, I am reflecting on how some of the most interesting work is being done by relative ‘unknowns’ in their field. I also saw a groundswell of exceptionally talented but increasingly frustrated post- docs (and no, I am not talking about myself here :-)), and…
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Strategies & choices for early stage career researchers
Dear friends. I was never very strategic about career choices, terrible at self promotion, led pretty much purely by what I thought I needed to learn to do policy relevant research and contribute to sustainable development in some meaningful way. It’s not worked well for me; I got walked over and undervalued. All the time.…
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On Doughnuts: a conversation with an economist
If you are anything like me you have been at one too many conferences where an economist ends up butting his head with a sociologist or political scientist. You sit there, toes curling, and ask yourself : why can’t these two academic subspecies ever seem to have a constructive conversation? When my mother came across…
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The sceptical mother – Part I
I had to be convinced into motherhood. I had spent all my life not wanting children, not really understanding the obsession with them, unable to imagine myself enjoying whole days of what I essentially thought came down to nothing: doing laundry, changing nappies. I thought with 7.5 billion people and not a great legacy for future…
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Public media in New Zealand – can we do better?
Nearly 80000 New Zealanders signed a petition for one man – Mike Hosking – to be removed from hosting the 2017 election debate. Speaking to my neighbours, who chose to boycot the debate instead of watching Hosking chair it – it was clear that what drove this petition was not just a notion that Hosking…
Environmental scientivism 