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Dr. Stephen Heard

Written by Dr. Stephen Heard

Dr. Stephen Heard is an evolutionary ecologist and Honorary Research Professor at the University of New Brunswick in Canada. Over his career he has supervised dozens of his own graduate students, and taught or given advice to hundreds more. He is the author of The Scientist’s Guide to Writing, Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences, and Charles Darwin’s Barnacle and David Bowie’s Spider. He blogs about academia, science and many other things at Scientist Sees Squirrel, or you can find him on Bluesky as @StephenBHeard.bsky.social.

How to Choose Where to Do a PhD

Are you looking to pursue a PhD? It’s a big adventure, and you have lots of options as you navigate the path to the degree. Last fall, I offered some advice about choosing a PhD research topic (and supervisor). For many folks, that’s the most daunting of the choices to be made, but it’s not…>

How to choose a PhD research topic

Are you looking to pursue a PhD? That’s wonderful: the world needs smart people like you, equipped by their training to expand and communicate human knowledge. Welcome aboard! But perhaps you’re not quite sure how to decide what to study and with whom. These are big decisions, but some advice can help. Read on, and…>

Mentoring beyond the PhD

Helping academic skills transfer to non-academic careers Thirty years ago, I started training graduate students. I realise now that I had no idea what I was doing. That’s not a big surprise: like virtually all new professors, I’d been taught how to design an experiment and write a thesis, but not (even a little bit)…>

What DO academics do in the Summer?

“It must be nice to have your summers off” – and other things we don’t know about each other If you’re an academic, I bet you’re like me: thoroughly tired, if not driven to hair-pulling and teeth-gnashing, by the well-intentioned comments you get about your summers. Supposing I had 10p for every time I’ve heard…>

Enhance learning with stimulating lectures

Must the lecture be lifeless? See how you can use different teaching methods to enhance learning. Over my career, I’ve given hundreds and hundreds of lectures (and listened to hundreds more). Which is odd, in a way, because there’s a vocal movement telling academics to ditch the lecture in favour of alternative instructional approaches that…>

How to deal with an apparently unhelpful review

If it hasn’t happened to you yet, it will: you submit a manuscript for publication and get back a peer review that leaves you feeling frustrated. “This review doesn’t help me at all! It’s wrong! You complain, “how could a reviewer ever think that?”

Three key tips for successful grant-writing

There’s one tool every academic needs, and that’s research funding. Every academic needs to write grant proposals – and, of course, they ought to be successful ones. Grant writing is a craft, and because it’s a different craft from other kinds of writing, it can seem like a daunting challenge.