I've been touting the benefits of blogging for developing student writing skills, ever since 2006, when I learned how to write posts for the Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability website, after I became its director. On my return to full-time teaching in 2014, I immediately added Blog writing assignments to all my Biology […]
Sustainability
My #SciComm (not Cricket) Tour of India, Bangladesh, Australia & Pakistan
There truly is nothing like a well-planned and structured sabbatical for giving professors the intellectual and emotional space to reflect on and crystallize what their previous five to six years of long days and hard work has been most fundamentally about. This is why, in my view, where they still exist, the sabbatical should be […]
Crowdfunding Science and Scientists Has Its Benefits
A week or so ago, Glen Wright's very funny book, Academic Obscura, finally arrived in the mail. I learned about Glen from his twitter account, and donated in support of his book quite some time ago. Everyone who has ever done research should read Glen's book! I'm incredibly grateful to the people that reached unexpectedly […]
At long last, the subway to York University has arrived!
I arrived at York University in 1990, to start a job as an assistant professor in Biology. I was returning to Toronto from six years in England, at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, doing doctoral research, and afterwards, holding a couple of junior research fellowships (post-docs). I was excited to join York, a new […]
Must-read books for scientists: 2. The Invention of Nature
When I launched this lab website in 2013, I had a vague idea that I would write one to two posts a year, in which I urged fellow scientists to read some book that I had found particularly inspiring or educational. My first post in 2013 was about Stephen Clarkson and Stepan Wood's A Perilous Imbalance. Sadly, Stephen Clarkson […]
Science, Art, Policy and Politics at the United Nations Climate Change Meetings
I'll be posting 12 blogs between December 1st and 24th to reach my goal of 24 posts for 2017. I'm behind because my sabbatical has kept me too busy to maintain my blogging schedule! Back in 2009, when I was director of the Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability (IRIS), I applied for York […]
From university professor to University Professor
At last week's York University convocation for the Faculty of Science and Lassonde Engineering School, I was made University Professor. That's me with the Dean of Science, Dr. Ray Jawawardhana. But, I'm already a university professor, so what does this mean? University Professor is an honorific title that exists at many North American universities, including University of Toronto […]
Gardening for biodiversity & local food in Carolinian Canada
Two excellent Canadian documentaries, The End of Suburbia (2004) and Escape from Suburbia (2007), discuss the enormous implications of our unsustainable North American car culture, which has spawned sprawling suburbs and gridlock in southwestern Ontario, and the Greater Toronto Area. These films include fascinating conversations with "futurists" about how people will convert their (sub)urban lawns into vegetable patches to grow local […]
YorkU's COP22 delegation will debrief on 11 January 2017
Every November and December, the news fills with reports about the United Nations climate change talks. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC, is one of two main international platforms where climate climate change impacts, mitigation and adaptation are addressed, the other being the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The Kyoto Protocol and […]
Why academics should regularly attend conferences where we don't present our work. Pt 2
Update: in response to Twitter peer review by @JWoodgett, I added a short section for people like him & me (STEM types) at the end, with clear, concise explanations of the concepts I discuss. If I had a penny for every colleague and student at York University who mentions the topics of colonialism, post-colonialism and our need to decolonize, […]
