All reviews can be found on the Reviews page.
PubhD #11: 19 November 2014
- Alex Wilcox (Biology) at Nottingham Trent University and is studying the effects of different mutation rates on evolution.
- Ken Duncan (Astrophysics) studies the growth and evolution of galaxies over the first few billion years of the universe (~11-12 billion years ago) as part of the largest project in the history of the Hubble Space Telescope.
- David Younger (Art and Design) is studying in the Art & Design department of the University of Lincoln. His research is in the creative design techniques involved in theme park and themed entertainment design.
PubhD #10: 22 October 2014
- Clare Burrage (Cosmology) is a Theoretical Cosmologist, trying to understand mysterious Dark Energy. She spends her days trying to find out if it’s possible detect its interactions with ordinary particles.
- Bart Pander (Biology) is a Microbiology PhD student. He is looking into how we can use bacteria to improve production of biofuels, which can help meet our increasing energy needs.
- Sera Baker (Archaeology) is a Roman Archaeologist who spends her days trying to understand the lives of non-elite Romans such as slaves, the poor and the middle classes. Sera spoke at the first ever PubhD about shops in Pompeii. This time she spoke about her research into non-elite death and burial practices.
PubhD #9: 17 September 2014
- Lauren McCarthy (Business) is a PhD student from the International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility here in Nottingham. She is researching gender equality in cocoa supply chains.
- Laura Lantz (Psychology) is a research student at the University of Leicester. “Re-reading” is a technique very common in skilled readers, which suggests that it may be an important process for understanding text. Laura is using eye tracking technology to understand this process.
- Louise Kettle (Politics) is studying how the Foreign Office, Ministry of Defence and the intelligence agencies try to learn from history, using their experiences of recent wars in the Middle East.
PubhD #8: 20 August 2014
- Rehma Chandaria (Medicine) is researching regenerative medicine. She is trying to grow stem cells in artificial structures to create tissue grafts that might be able to help sufferers of Crohn’s Disease or Colitis.
- Stuart Bowe (Physics/Nanoscience) is in his second year of a PhD in physics. He is looking at how we can change the magnetic properties of materials so that they can be used in ultra-fast computers. He spend most of his time squeezing something called Galfenol.
- Lisa Common (Management) is a midwife and full-time PhD student. Her research is exploring how change is successfully introduced to maternity services that enables more women to safely give birth to their children at home.
PubhD #7: 16 July 2014
- Stephanie Zihms (Geoscience) works at the British Geological Survey. She is part of the Radioactive Waste team and is looking at how heat generated by radioactive waste affects underground storage facilities.
- Isabel Story (History) is a first year PhD student in the Spanish, Portuguese & Latin American department at the University of Nottingham. She is examining the possible Soviet influence on Cuban cultural institutions.
- Hardeep Naghra (Biology) works in Microbiology at the University of Nottingham and is studying bacteria that cause infections. In particular, she is looking at the genetic diversity of a particular “opportunistic” bacteria to observe how rapidly it changes, even in the laboratory freezer!
PubhD #6: 18 June 2014
- Ben Everest (Physics) works in condensed matter theory (Quantum Mechanics) as a PhD student at Nottingham University.
- Salamat Ali (Economics) is a PhD student in the Nottingham University School of Economics. His research focus is on evaluating the impact of trade facilitation measures in developing countries on the promotion of exports and growth in GDP.
- Hannah Murray (Literature) is a first-year PhD student at University of Nottingham, Department of American and Canadian Studies. Her thesis explores racial liminality in works of nineteenth-century American literature that prominently feature the space between life and death. The primary authors being studied are Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville and Charles Brockden Brown, as well texts from the American Spiritualist movement of the 1850s-90s.
PubhD #5: 14 May 2014
- James Gurney (Biology) is a PhD student in Microbiology at Nottingham University. His area of research is socio-microbiology. This is the study of how social structures of bacteria populations affect things like virulence. They use evolution theory (kin selection) to examine relationships within bacterial pathogens. He also writes the ‘History of Infection‘ blog.
- Philip Boast (Music) is a PhD student at the Department of Music at Nottingham University. His research area is Music Performance and Phenomenology, with the focus being on rhythm and temporality.
- Emily St.Denny (Politics) is a PhD candidate in politics at Nottingham Trent, investigating the role of ideas in shaping contemporary French prostitution policies.
PubhD #4: 16 April 2014
A neuroscience special, featuring one multidisciplinary team.
- Noah Russell leads the multidisciplinary Neurophotonics lab at the University of Nottingham, who are developing a novel system, a Simple Living Artificial Brain (The SLAB), in order to understand fundamental aspects of information processing in the brain. Noah will provide us with a short introduction to the research programme, which will give context to the three main speakers.
- Alex Johnstone (Engineering) is a third year PhD student in the Neurophotonics lab. He is developing microfluidic technologies for the SLAB system that house cultured neuronal cells, and deliver vital nutrients and signalling molecules to them.
- Nitzan Herzog (Neuroscientist) is a second year PhD student in the Neurophotonics lab. His project involves recording and stimulating neurons grown in a dish to induce learning and produce simple behaviours in the SLAB system.
- Jamie Williams (Linguistics) is a second year PhD student in the Neurophotonics lab. He works on applying concepts and models from theoretical linguistics to the development of a conceptual framework for the SLAB system that links neurobiological signals to behavioural and cognitive processes.
PubhD #3: 19 March 2014
- Leora Hadas (Media) is a third year PhD student at the University of Nottingham in the department of film and television studies. She works on branding and promotional texts (posters, trailers, etc.) in the United States film, TV and video game industries, and more particularly on famous media creators like Joss Whedon and J. J. Abrams.
- Hollie Harvey (Medical) is a first year PhD student in Academic Rheumatology at Nottingham University, studying pain in Osteoarthritis. She is also interested in genetics and writes the ‘Genetics: a little known fascination‘ blog.
- Tom Baker (Philosophy) is a third year philosophy PhD student, researching the role of the ‘lower-senses’ (smell, taste, touch, etc.) in aesthetic experience of artworks and everyday artefacts.
PubhD #2: 19 February 2014
- Julian Onions (Astrophysics) works in the simulation of galaxy formation and the making of universes in computers. A pinch of Dark Matter, a load of gravity, a box the size of the universe, stir and see what comes out!
- Steph Smith (Biology) is a third year PhD student in plant sciences. Specifically, she looks at cell signalling in roots.
- Ricardo Rato Rodrigues (Literature) is a second year PhD student at the University of Nottingham. His research is about the relationship between Mental Illness and Literature. It’s focused in the Portuguese writer António Lobo Antunes (who is translated in English), but explores the broader links between the two areas.
22 January 2014 (Inaugural PubhD)
- Sera Baker (Archaeology) is a doctoral researcher in Archaeology at The University of Nottingham. She studies the small shops of Roman Pompeii before they were destroyed by the AD 79 volcanic eruption of Vesuvius. She can also be found on Twitter @SeraECBaker.
- Dave Farmer (Physics) is a PhD student at the University of Nottingham. He spends his time studying the elastic properties of polymer films. He does this by hitting them with a stick and watching them wobble; the neat thing is that the stick is actually a table-full of laser and the films are 1000 times smaller than a human hair.
- Christian Perrin (Psychology) works in the domain of forensic psychology at Nottingham Trent University. Broadly, Christian is investigating the question: what can be changed about prisons to make them more effective in terms of reducing re-offending? More specifically, he is looking at meaningful and purposeful activity in prisons (i.e. peer support volunteer roles) and exploring how such activity can impact on a prisoner’s life in prison and in the community after release.
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