It’s been a funny old month. With only a few weeks left at Teesside before I leave and start my exciting new job at Maynooth University, it quickly became time to start thinking about how I was going to shift my research over to Ireland. The thing about being in one place for so long, …
It’s that time of the year again where we start to think about holidays and annual leave. Maybe you fancy a little city break, or a spot of camping (although God knows why, it’s the worst). Maybe you fancy a trip to the beach, kicking back in the sand and letting the warm waves wash …
I never learn. Which is ironic considering the sector I work in. Whenever I get asked if I’d give a paper at a conference, I always think “Oh, that’s ages away, literally months away, I’m busy now but it’ll be fine by then…”. But it never is. Such was the case when I was asked …
Read more “Biocultural Taphonomies: Teasing apart taphonomic filters in bioarchaeology”
Last week I was invited to give one of the keynotes at the DigiDeath: Public archaeologies of digital mortality conference hosted by the students of the Archaeology department of the University of Chester. And as an aside for learning & teaching folks, the student-run conference forms part of their module assessment. Anyway, I was delighted …
Read more “#DigiDeath: Should we be Socially Distancing from the Dead?”
As we all know by now, when it comes to academia, I’m pretty chill. I’m both easy and breezy, and I am hardly vengeful at all. So it takes a lot to make me sit down and type furiously at this keyboard brimming as I am with righteous indignation. Although the fact that an earlier …
While I was having a bit of a digital clear-out before the Christmas break, I stumbled across this piece which I had written back in 2017. To be honest, I’d totally forgotten that I had written this and I thought it’d be interesting to revisit it in light of the developments that have occurred during …
Read more “Developing and disseminating digital tools – 3 years on…”
As you know, I am not one for willingly turning down an opportunity to talk in front of an audience, so I was delighted to be asked to give a talk as part of the series of guest lectures run by the Sherlock Institute of Forensic Science India. I was following some great talks over …
So, I’m a terrible person. Hilarious, but terrible. I was in the kitchen last week and saw the remnants of my youngest’s birthday cake (made by the uber-talented Becky Gowland) and I couldn’t help but notice how it looked a bit like a slice through bone. Obviously my next thought was to take a picture …
Read more “This is the way – Baby Yoda and the power of the Force (on decision-making)”
Now I’ve done a fair bit of media work in the past (Shock! Academic known for being a bit of a show-off has history of being a bit of a show-off…) but nothing to the intensity of this past week. Our paper reinterpreting the context of death for victims of Vesuvius at Herculaneum has finally …
Read more “BREAKING NEWS: Only I could make a 2000 year old volcanic eruption all about me…”
I’m going to assume that you’d like nothing more than to hear about my Christmas holiday exploits. That nothing would fill you with more cheer and joy than knowing what I got up to in New Zealand while you were at home. Now I could go on about the whale watching, or the sunny beaches …