Stories

by Dr Andrew Hopkins, Honorary Research Associate, Department of Science and Technology Studies, University College London In May 2021 the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced that transitioning to net zero carbon by 2050 would mean no new oil or gas fields could be developed.[1] Not only did this put the oil industry’s future firmly in the spotlight, the warning also posed searching questions for many geology and engineering departments at… Read More »Will Climate Change Fuel Changes for Geology Departments?

by Kristien Hens, professor of ethics at the Universiteit Antwerpen, currently leading the ERC project NeuroEpigenEthics Laat mij beginnen met een op het eerste gezicht  banale praktische kwestie. Mogen studenten tijdens examens naar het toilet gaan, en onder welke voorwaarden dan wel? Vaak zijn hier strikte voorwaarden voor. Het mag, maar bijvoorbeeld pas als er een bepaalde tijd is verstreken, er moet altijd iemand van de surveillanten mee etc. Soms… Read More »Mededogen, geen medelijden

by Jeroen de Ridder, associate professor of Epistemology and Metaphysics at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Op 10 april 2019 om 15.00u ’s middags toonde de Nijmeegse sterrenkundige Heino Falcke vanuit het hoofdkwartier van de European Research Council de wereld de eerste foto van een zwart gat. Falcke was op dat moment voorzitter van de wetenschappelijke raad van de Event Horizon Telescope, een grootschalig samenwerkingsverband van sterrenkundigen waarin ze radiotelescopen over… Read More »Groepsdeugden

by Philip Muijtjens, PhD candidate in History of Art at the University of Cambridge No-one will disagree that productivity is a high virtue in academia. One outcome of this, however, is that many a student often ends a day of work wondering if it was actually ‘productive enough’. Indeed, the scholarship with which students are confronted on a daily basis for our own research projects may seem rather daunting as… Read More »Conspicuous productivity

by Dirk van Miert, Associate Professor of Early Modern Cultural History at Utrecht University, specialized in the history of knowledge “Ze mag wel wat zichtbaarder zijn.” Het was een veelgehoord zinnetje in een recente ronde gesprekken tussen afdelingshoofden en departementale bestuursleden over de wetenschappelijke medewerkers van het departement. Zichtbaarheid is een belangrijke deugd voor academici. Als anderen binnen en buiten de organisatie je naam vaak tegenkomen, dan is dat een… Read More »De zonde der onzichtbaarheid

by Arnoud Visser, Professor of Textual Culture in the Renaissance in the Department of Languages, Literature and Communication of Utrecht University In the history of knowledge the gadfly, at first sight a rather wretched animal, plays a remarkably intriguing, symbolic role. Known as an insect with the annoying habit of biting cattle and humans alike (in order to drink their victims’ blood), producing painful stings, the animal was also famously… Read More »Hypercriticism, or the spectre of Momus

by Remko Fermin, third year PhD candidate at Leiden University working on correlated electron matter with a focus on unconventional superconductivity Last year, Andrew Mackenzie, section director at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids in Dresden, published ‘A personal perspective on the Unconventional Superconductivity in Sr2RuO4’[1], which for me contains two important virtues of the natural sciences. In order to explain these properly, first a small introduction… Read More »Cool heads and open minds: dealing with the potentially vanilla S-wave superconductor Sr2RuO4

by Edurne de Wilde, PhD candidate at Scholarly Vices: A Longue Durée History I recently came across an intriguing essay by Joost de Vries, titled Echte pretentie (‘True pretension’).[1] De Vries closely examines the notion of pretension by discussing a variety of contexts in which it can be encountered, ranging from wine to politics. While De Vries admits that pretension is mostly considered to be a reproach, he keeps an… Read More »The ‘search’ in ‘research’

by Anne Por, PhD candidate at Scholarly Vices: A Longue Durée History It is widely agreed that it is good to be social. Social people supposedly create a good working atmosphere, and it is clearly beneficial to have a good network. Vacancies generally list requirements dealing with social conduct and applicants are expected to elaborate on their social competences. Grants are awarded to those who are seen as capable of… Read More »Sociability on the spectrum between academic virtue and vice