Thursday 17 December 2020

Nuclear Spot The Difference #10

 I wonder if readers have noticed the similarity between footballer & sex-symbol George Best and nuclear wunderkind and Nature-botherer Liam Gaffney?

Best Gaffney



Thursday 10 December 2020

Bell Burnell Diversity PhD studentship at Surrey

My department are offering a fully-funded PhD studentship to candidates from under-represented groups.  It is loosely tied to the IoP Bell Burnell Scholarship, and we would seek to submit an application to the IoP for the successful candidate, though the university guarantees funding even if the IoP bid is unsuccessful

More details are here.

I did post this on Twitter already, trying to see if anyone there might be interested in applying for the studentship with me.  I got one angry (or "disgusted") respondent who does not like this kind of scheme.  The point is that the word "under-represented" means less represented than you would expect if there were not a long-standing systemic bias against particular classes of people.  Those who don't fall in the "under-represented" category already have plenty of opportunity to get into they system, as seen by their over-representation. 

This studentship is unusual (compared with any other studentships that have been used to fund students I've taken in the past) in that it even international students are eligible, which is usually not the case for government-funded places.