Castles and Coprolites

Over the past few weeks, I've been working on an editorial marking the forthcoming 40th anniversary of Geoarchaeology , which has been a great to chance to spend some time reading through the journal archive. I've been spending time revisiting classic papers that helped shape the field, while also discovering newer papers that slipped past my attention when they were first published (and of course, the first 14 years of the journal were published before I even started my academic career - the journal is only 4 years younger than I am!). One of the joys of working through the archive is being reminded of the remarkable breadth of geoarchaeology. The journal's pages chart the development of approaches ranging from micromorphology and sedimentology to landscape archaeology, provenance studies, heritage science, geochemistry and isotopic analysis. Many of the questions that remain central to the discipline today including site formation processes, environmental change, human-la...

This week, reports emerged that the Department for Education (DfE) intends to remove teaching grant support for creative and performing arts courses in English universities as part of a wider reprioritisation of the Strategic Priorities Grant (SPG) . The rationale is that scarce public funding should be concentrated on subjects considered most critical to national skills needs, particularly healthcare and high-cost STEM provision (though, grants for nursing are also being cut). At first glance, this may seem like the familiar debate about the relative value of arts and sciences. In reality, it raises a much bigger question, that is how coherent is government policy across higher education, skills, research, innovation and economic growth? Just over a year ago, the UK Government's Modern Industrial Strategy identified the Creative Industries as one of eight priority growth sectors . The accompanying Creative Industries Sector Plan described a sector contributing £124 billion in GV...

It's that time of year when many recent PhDs and ECRs are thinking about their next career move. I am currently fielding a number of enquiries about this, from people interested in working with us in the NEMCAS lab , and it made me realise yet one more thing that is not always made clear to people early on in their academic careers. The word postdoc is used to generally to describe roles that a researcher undertakes after their PhD, but it's a broad label that actually conceals important distinctions. The biggest distinction is between a postdoctoral research associate (PDRA) employed on someone else's grant, and an independent research fellow holding their own funding. Both have PhDs, both are researchers. Both may publish papers, supervise students, and contribute to major discoveries, but the relationship they have to the research itself is fundamentally different. A PDRA is employed to work on a project that has been conceived, designed, and funded under the leadership ...