It’s probably time I start posting some of the live illustration events I did last year!

Here’s one for Newcastle University I initially had no clue what it was about but particularly enjoyed designing the cover for: Interdisciplinary Impact Clusters (sounds delicious).

If you’re hosting an event online or in Leeds/West Yorkshire area and would like to have it captured via live illustration, get in touch :)

#NewcastleUniversity #Research #NIHR #ResearchCommunication #LiveIllustration #SciComm

Short, Intensive Workouts Help Fight Bowel Cancer

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.goodnewspost.co.uk/short-intensive-workouts-help-fight-bowel-cancer/

Newcastle University offers a fully funded MSc Urban Planning Scholarship through the Commonwealth Shared Scholarship. Apply by December 9.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/gsilvestre_urban-planning-msc-postgraduate-activity-7395125357739253760-Ff4T/

#urbanism #urbanplanning #scholarship #newcastleuniversity #commonwealthscholarship

New #openaccess publication #SciPost #Physics

Acceleration-induced transport of quantum vortices in joined atomtronic circuits

Andrii Chaika, Artem O. Oliinyk, Ihor V. Yatsuta, Nick P. Proukakis, Mark Edwards, Alexander I. Yakimenko, Thomas Bland
SciPost Phys. 19, 005 (2025)
https://scipost.org/SciPostPhys.19.1.005

#KNU #Weizmann #NewcastleUniversity #GeorgiaSouthernUniversity #UNIPD #INFNPadova #FMIPInnsbruck
#NRFUkraine

End Unnecessary Redundancies at Newcastle University!

A petition is being circulated to halt a programme of redundancies at Newcastle University. Academic staff positions are being cut while the University, like so many others, suffers Death by a Thousand Managers. I understand that staff in Physics are directly threatened by the plans.

Here is the description of the issue you can find on the petition:

Newcastle University staff are in dispute with their senior management over the threat of ill-considered and unnecessary redundances that are imperilling the future of our institution. We call on the University Executive Board (UEB) to abandon this destructive policy.

On Thursday 8th May 2025, 153 academic colleagues were summoned at short notice to meetings with UEB where they were told they have been placed in ‘redundancy pools’ with 38 of them to be laid off. In an unpleasant twist, they will be forced to compete against each other in an academic equivalent of ‘The Hunger Games.’ 

To add insult to injury, on the day staff were threatened with redundancy they were also invited to a ‘Doodling for Wellbeing’ session. ‘Let your pen dance across the page,’ they were told, as ‘a perfect escape from the everyday hustle and bustle.’ 

Such crassness is emblematic of the disregard for genuine staff wellbeing that has dogged this unhappy episode. For example, for migrant staff members recruited only months previously, after paying for skilled worker visas, the NHS surcharge, and moving young families from abroad, dismissal threatens the loss of all that, and even deportation. 

For many more, these redundancies will be career-ending. But even for those not immediately at risk, the climate of uncertainty and fear unleashed by UEB is demoralising. As one academic put it, this ‘callous’ policy shows ‘no thought to people as people; we are just figures on a spreadsheet.’

We recognise that this is a tough financial environment for universities. But Newcastle has a relatively strong cash and borrowing position. Through voluntary redundancies and other cost-cutting measures, we have achieved £15.8m of savings against a target of £20m. Nevertheless, UEB is pressing ahead with compulsory redundancies, even though other institutions have stepped back. 

There are other options. Debts could be renegotiated and the pace of cuts slowed. Recently announced capital expenditure projects – including a £274m student accommodation block replete with luxuries like a cinema and gym, and even plans for a campus in India – should be reviewed or delayed. 

Costs could also be cut by pruning management salaries and structures. Since tuition-fee rises in 2012, the number of staff drawing six-figure pay-cheques has mushroomed. 

Worried about their own futures and the future of the university, hard-working frontline staff are taking industrial action. As a result of the turmoil unleashed by what the UEB euphemistically calls ‘Workforce Resizing,’ many academics are looking for jobs elsewhere and students are seeking to transfer to other universities. Reputational damage will make future staff and student recruitment harder. Current redundancy plans risk forcing our great university into a death cycle. 

We urge the University Executive Board to abandon these cuts and work with all their colleagues to secure the future of Newcastle University.

Please sign the petition here.

#NewcastleUniversity #Redundancies #UniversityAndCollegesUnion

I'm still on #UCUStrike. Yesterday people in targetted groups at #NewcastleUniversity got emails inviting them in for a "resizing" meeting. Management say they're still going ahead with redundancies, though they still haven't moved to compulsory redundancies.

So, unless something changes, I won't be working for the next two weeks, at least. And to be clear, since some people are surprised by this, I won't be getting paid either.

#Introduction
So here I am, someone who tried and failed Twitter numerous times, now attempting to get a handle on this 😂 I don't know if I'm on the right server, I guess time will tell!

I'm a #PhDStudent at #NewcastleUniversity using #animalBehaviour, #neuroscience, #physiology and #socialScience to improve #laboratory #animalWelfare (jeez that's a lotta hashtags!). 🐀

In my spare time I enjoy hunting, identifying, and sometimes even eating #fungi. I also like #photography and #baking vegan goodies 🍰

So here I am, not in Barcelona. On Thursday night I flew to the fine city of Newcastle upon Tyne to act as external examiner for a PhD candidate. Since I knew I would be arriving quite late I stayed in a hotel near Newcastle Airport. It was just as well I did so because, it being Ryanair, I arrived even later than expected. On Friday morning I took the Metro from the Airport to Haymarket and spent the morning in the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Physics at Newcastle University ahead of the viva voce examination.

The PhD candidate was Alex Gough (pictured right, after the examination, with supervisor Cora Uhlemann). Cora being German we were treated to the tradition of successful PhD candidates having to wear a elaborate hat, after the examination (fortunately not during it). Some champagne was consumed, followed by dinner at a nice Indian restaurant on Clayton Street.

For those of you not familiar with how the PhD system works in the UK, it involves doing research into a particular topic and then writing up what you’ve done in a thesis. The thesis is a substantial piece of work, often in the region of 100,000 words (200 pages or so), which is then assessed by two examiners (one internal to the university at which the research was done, and one external). They read copies of the thesis and then the candidate has to defend it in an oral examination, which was what happened on Friday, after which they make a recommendation to the university about whether the degree should be awarded.

There aren’t many rules for how a viva voce examination should be conducted or how long it should last, but the can be as short as, say, 2 hours and can be as long as 5 hours or more. The examiners usually ask a mixture of questions, some about the details of the work presented and some about the general background. The unpredictable content of a viva voce examination makes it very difficult to prepare for, and it can be difficult and stressful for the candidate (as well as just tiring, as it can drag on for a long time). However, call me old-fashioned but I think if you’re going to get to call youself Doctor of Philosophy you should expect to have to work for it. Some might disagree.

Obviously I can’t give details of what went on in the examination except that it was quite long primarily because the thesis was very interesting and gave us lots to discuss. At the end internal examiner Danielle Leonard and I agreed to recommend the award of a PhD. In Newcastle as in other UK universities, the examiners simply make a recommendation to a higher authority (e.g. Board of Graduate Studies) to formally award the degree, but they almost always endorse the recommendation. I’ve never been sure exactly when a successful candidate is allowed to call themselves “Doctor”, actually, but congratulations to Dr Gough!

Anyway, the celebratory dinner ended just after Women’s International football match between England and France (which France won) had finished at St James’ Park and the Metro was consequently crammed full, but I got back to the hotel at a reasonable hour. Thank you to everyone in the group, especially Cora and Ian Moss, for being so friendly and making me feel so welcome during this brief visit.

Tomorrow I shall be heading to the part of not-Barcelona known as Oxford, where I believe there is a University of some sort, to give a lecture about which I’ll post more tomorrow.

https://telescoper.blog/2024/06/02/flying-visits/

#AlexGough #education #NewcastleUniversity #PhD #research #thesis #vivaVoce #vivaVoceExamination