In 2012 I, along with three other Irish academics will organise one of the largest molecular evolution conferences in the world that year.  There will probably only be one other meeting that is bigger than it in that year.
We will bring 1,300 delegates to the conference and probably about 200 of them will bring a […]

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As some of you probably know, I wrote a letter to the Irish Times where I outlined the problem with the Employment Control Framework, Mark II that became law a few weeks ago.
The case has been debated vigorously on twitter (look for the #ECF11 hashtag) and a number of the candidates for the TCD provost […]

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I run a research group of somewhere between a half dozen and a dozen people.  They are mostly post-graduate level students, but usually with a couple of post-doctoral researchers included in the group.
The funding for post-docs has come both from national funding sources - H.E.A. PRTLI, Science Foundation Ireland, etc. - and from international sources […]

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The following is an extract from a document written by Colm Kearney concerning the Employment Control Framework in Irish academic institutions.  It relates to TCD, but the points are general across the board.
Staff can be compulsorily redeployed within the third level sector. This could be interpreted to mean that
TCD academic and other staff are told […]

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I’m very interested these days in how the various social media can be used in order to improve learning in universities.
Notice that I wrote “learning” and not teaching.  Learning is different to teaching, learning is what the student does, teaching is what the teacher does.
Ultimately, the student has to learn and the proposition for the […]

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In 1994 the Fine Gael / Labour government abolished university tuition fees.  The reason that was given was that this was a barrier to some people going to university.  This was, of course, complete nonsense.
At that time, those from less well off families received grant support that paid their fees and indeed some received additional […]

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