The last two weeks have been quite hectic, so much so that I missed last weeks weekly update. In the last two weeks I have:
- Spoken in one of the plenary sessions at the ARMA conference. I talked about the future landscape for research policy, and got some really useful insights from the audience in the Q&A. I intend to blog about some of this in the coming weeks.
- Attended an interesting panel discussion in Leeds University on open access in the social sciences.
- Caught up on the plans the ESRC have for facilitating access to administrative data for social science research.
- Discussed the policy implications of the excellent Nuffield Council on Bioethics report on Emerging Biotechnologies
- Reflected on how often I should aim to post on this blog, and then hardly posted at all because of competing time pressures…
- Went to see The Hothouse, a strange and disturbing play by Harold Pinter. Great performances from Simon Russell Beale and John Simm.
- Contributed to the first meeting of a working group, convened by the Research Information Network, that will be developing a framework for monitoring the progress towards open access.
- Attended my first meeting of HEFCE's Research and Knowledge Exchange strategic advisory committee. Interesting discussions of Industrial Strategy, the Witty review, the value of HEFCE's research funding, and the international context of research.
- Worked on my team's forward plan, following our planning day earlier this month
- Admired the display of poppies in the fields around where I live.
- Been bemused by the Govenment's approach to restarting the debate about GM crops. I have a blog post coming on this, but in the meantime I strongly recommend posts by Paul Nightingale and Hilary Sutcliffe.
