Research as art, new music and defeating writer’s block

Lots of impressively creative people in this issue!

Swansea University’s annual “Research as Art” competition, in which researchers distill their research topic into a single image, recently announced the 2021 winners. The overall winner was Ken Griffin’s photo of a resident of Luxor, Egypt, looking at the face of a pharaoh mummy. Griffin’s research focuses on the considerations around whether human remains should be on display in museums. 

Ken Griffin @DrKenGriffin

Delighted to have received an email this morning informing me that Mohamed Shabib and I are the overall winner of the @ResearchAsArt competition. The title is Reflecting on the Past: The Display of Egyptian Mummies, with details of the entry here: flickr.com/photos/swansea…

June 29th 2021

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The international winner is a surprising microCT scan of a shark. Mason Dean scanned the shark to study its jaw cartilage, but discovered a fish hook lodged inside the shark’s body!

 You can see the rest of the winning images on the Research as Art website. 

Music by MusiSci - Charlie Foxtrot Piano Collective

Charlie Foxtrot Piano Collective is the musical alter ego of genomic medicine researcher Caroline Wright, who just released her album “Open Up”. “People Watching” is one of the tracks on the new album. 

Interesting links

• How “The Print Shop” Turned People into Banner Wizards in the 1980s, by Benj Edwards on How-To Geek

• Alom Shaha, author of Mr Shaha’s Marvellous Machines, is hosting free online “make-alongs” for schools that purchase his book

• Using "DNA" as a metaphor? It's in English's DNA, by Olga Mecking for Salon

Things I wrote

• Even picking up music as an adult may boost your memory, for Forbes.com

• Defeating writer’s block in the face of deadlines, for Medium

SciComm events 

This newsletter is for everyone, but I suddenly have a lot of things to share that are mainly interesting for science communicators or scientists, and my other newsletter is on hiatus at the moment so I’m leaving these here for now, especially as some of these events are reaching quite a broad audience. 

• Finding Ada online conference for Women in STEM - July 20-22 (free) (NB The first talks start on the 19th if you’re in Europe or the Americas!)

• Science Journalism Forum (SJF) - August 30 - September 2 (attendance fellowships available)

• VOICES (Virtual Ongoing Interdisciplinary Collaborations on Educating with Song) - September 26 (free)

I’ll be speaking at SJF about virtual coworking events for science writers. Speaking of which… the next Online SciComm Coworking Session I’m hosting (for writers and other types of science communicators) is on July 29th. To take part, join the Discord server and tune in on the 29th at 1PM (British Summer Time). 

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