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Title restraint

I do not share Richard M. S. Wilson’s enthusiasm for standardisation of terminology across all UK universities (“Title scramble”, Letters, 9 January). But if we are to be so blessed, perhaps a good...

16 January 2014

Thought leaders - The subjects students have favoured and forsaken over 15 years

THE Scholarly Web - 16 January 2014

Weekly transmissions from the blogosphere

Boris Magasanik, 1919-2013

A pioneer in the field of bacterial gene regulation who forged the Massachusetts Institute of Technology into a leader in biological research has died

Grant winners - 16 January 2014

Royal SocietyUniversity Research FellowshipsAward winner: Constantinos PapageorgakisInstitution: Queen Mary University of LondonValue: £440,397Using Yang-Mills theory to understand objects with five...

World in brief - 16 January 2014

United StatesCourt stymies NYU expansionA leading US university has seen half of its building expansion plans unexpectedly blocked in court. A state judge announced last week that New York University...

News in brief - 16 January 2014

Doctoral training centresIt pays to recycleAt least 19 additional centres for doctoral training in engineering and science were announced by universities and science minister David Willetts on 9...

Piled Higher and Deeper, by Jorge Cham - 16 January 2014

Material limits

In her review of Robert Bartlett’s Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things?, a study of the Christian cult of saints from the martyrs to the Reformation (Books, 19/26 December), Helen Fulton helpfully...

Russian research risks

Sheila Fitzpatrick has written an enthralling and lightly humorous account, A Spy in the Archives: A Memoir of Cold War Russia, of the trials and tribulations of researching in the Soviet archives...

We have students’ backs

In reference to Daniel Sokol’s letter “Legal allies in student David v Goliath battles” (2 January): in my experience, student advisers almost always assist in “the drafting of the critical ‘appeal...

Immigrant songs

In relating how scholars from outside the European Union struggle with the UK’s visa regime, the feature “Life on the edge” (2 January) focuses on harsh rejections, administrative errors and...

Inadequacy and anger

I thoroughly agree with the basic tenets of the feature “I shouldn’t really be here” (9 January). A group of us at the European Association for Institutional Research recently identified that we all...

Points to consider in widening participation

The article “Poorer students present ‘financial risk’ ” (9 January) provides a thought-provoking insight into the link between retention and low socio-economic status. It focuses on higher education...

Mind your own FoI business!

Shocking new statistics reveal that our university leads the field in the number of times it has refused to answer Freedom of Information requests