Authors: Jack Barton and Laura Hemming

Welcome to the new home of the doctoral academy blog with a snazzy new name, the Research Hive. The prime purpose of this new blog is to engage interested readers from the Postgraduate community and beyond on the ground-breaking research going on here in the University of Manchester. We hope that this blog will provide a new hub of science communication opportunities for those who want to get stuck in as writers. As we grow, we are keen to put on more training for those specifically interested in writing as a form of science-communication.

As early career researchers, we are keen on improving the way in which research is communicated and, ultimately interpreted by the public and other scientists. As a result, we won’t be pitching these blogs and stories to our lab groups but to a wider audience who are still interested in new research but who are not experts in specific fields.

Linked to this point, there are many opportunities to get involved in science communication here in Manchester. Yet, relatively few of which are promoted widely or are specific to those keen to write instead of present. We see this blog as a perfect opportunity to plug that gap and promote the resources and training opportunities for those keen on sci-comm with a focus on science writing. Both myself and Laura have experience of writing science targeted at a general audience and are keen to publish writers with little experience of this but who want to improve or give it a go.

With all of this in mind, we currently have 5 fantastic sub-editors who are writing about the exciting research going on here in Manchester in an engaging and accessible way. You can read a little more about each of our sub-editors here. The main aim of this blog is science communication and, therefore, we have 4 of our 5 editors dedicated to getting this across. We also have a wellbeing sub-editor, Jason, to push what is on offer to postgraduates here in Manchester and to promote wellbeing opportunities.

Although we have plenty of content coming up (watch this space for our first post on Thursday), we are keen to showcase the work of any writers who might be interested in contributing from the faculty of biology, medicine and health. You can contact any member of the editorial team to pitch your ideas as you see fit. We’d love to hear your ideas about exciting work from your research team, your own PhD, or just something cool and science-based which is going on here in Manchester.

We’re open to new ideas so don’t be shy.

Jack and Laura

PS if anybody has any cool ideas for a logo for Research Hive we’d love to hear from you!