Posts

Physics Girlies – young female science students review the ScienceGrrl 2013 calendar

By Dr Heather Williams / April 11, 2013

One of the aims of the ScienceGrrl 2013 calendar (now sold out, sorry!) was to show young women that science is for people just like them, and hopefully inspire them to pursue a career in science. But did we manage it? I asked the Physics Girlies at Holly Lodge Girls’ College in Liverpool what they…

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Maths?… no thanks

By Dr Heather Williams / April 3, 2013

Last week I was sorting through my ScienceGrrl e-mail and came across a really encouraging message from a lady who’d just returned to study Maths in her 50s. I thought it sounded like she had a story to tell, and asked her to write a blog for us. Which she did. I give you –…

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ScienceGrrl celebrates International Women’s Day – with TASTE, in Uganda

By Dr Heather Williams / March 18, 2013

I’m really chuffed – as we say in Yorkshire – to introduce this guest post from Amy Buchanan-Hughes, founder of The African Science Truck Experience (TASTE). TASTE runs a mobile science laboratory in rural Uganda so that students in underprivileged secondary schools can get a hands-on experience of science. According to an earlier post on…

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Hatching a plan – the ScienceGrrl strategy for 2013 onwards

By Dr Heather Williams / March 15, 2013

ScienceGrrl started out as a reaction to *that* EC video, which spawned the idea to create a series of images representing who female scientists are and what they do – the ScienceGrrl 2013 calendar. In the process we collected a network of people who are passionate about passing on their love of science, technology, engineering…

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ScienceGrrl and International Women’s Day

By Dr Heather Williams / March 13, 2013

International Women’s Day celebrates the achievements of women worldwide. In Russia (and elsewhere, I believe) it’s a public holiday. Here at ScienceGrrl, we wanted to take the opportunity this presented to highlight the great work that women are doing in science. The recent WISE report highlighted that only 13% of the STEM workforce are women,…

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First ScienceGrrl AGM

The first ScienceGrrl AGM!

By Dr Heather Williams / February 20, 2013

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Isla Stevens, who will now regale us with merry tales of Friday’s first ever ScienceGrrl AGM. Over to you, Isla! Last Friday I was lucky enough to be able to fit in a trip to London for the first ever ScienceGrrl AGM – calendars, tote bags and posters everywhere.…

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The amazing adventures of the ScienceGrrl 2013 calendar

By Dr Heather Williams / February 17, 2013

It’s mid-February. When you have spent the last 4 months of your life flogging 2013 calendars, mid-February is a good time to be able to say ‘we have none left’. A mere 2 hours before the ScienceGrrl launch party in October, I took delivery of 1500 copies of the ScienceGrrl 2013 calendar and arranged them…

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Cooking up a twitter storm. Or: What not to do about the gender divide in science

By Suzi Gage / February 6, 2013

Today, an article appeared on the Guardian website, not in the science section (it was on the US news blog), but tweeted by @guardianscience and containing the word ‘science’ in the title. About girls and science, its headline claimed to explain ‘why the gender gap exists and what to do about it’. I’ve written about…

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Feminine Science Role Models… and other bad ideas

By Dr Heather Williams / February 4, 2013

News of research indicating that feminine scientists may actually put girls off science raised a few eyebrows at Soho Skeptics last month… so we asked the fantabulous Michelle Brook to do some digging and find out what that paper really said: What does a scientist look like? In an ideal world, if we asked a…

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…and a Happy New Year!

By Dr Heather Williams / January 7, 2013

2012 was quite a year for ScienceGrrl. We formed in June, and in just over 4 months produced our beautiful 2013 calendar. Following the launch party in October, over 850 copies of the calendar have flown out to take their places in homes, schools and offices across the world. The Christmas break has given us…

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Our Strategy Day

By Dr Ellie Cosgrave / December 10, 2012

The alarm went off at 8.00am which, although unusual for a Saturday, was not begrudged; it was the ScienceGrrl strategy consultation day. Today we would find out what people thought of us, what we should be doing and would start thinking seriously about our future. I knew we needed to ask people what they wanted…

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Hopefully, with the help of groups like ScienceGrrl, this can change

By Dr Heather Williams / December 3, 2012

Here’s the second of our guest blogs from a female A-level science student, Becky Maggs. Thanks very much to her for her honesty – we’re honoured that she’s found ScienceGrrl an encouragement and inspiration. “There’s a lot of pressure for everyone at A-levels. This isn’t helped when you’re the only girl in a class full…

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Mission Discovery & ScienceGrrl

By Dr Heather Williams / December 1, 2012

We’re very excited about the projects that we will be able to invest in using the proceeds from the sale of the ScienceGrrl calendar 2013. We currently have a consultation open to help guide what we should be doing, but have already committed to one particular project – we’ll be funding a team of 6…

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All hail Suzi, Queen of Science Blogging

By Louise Crane / November 26, 2012

Here at ScienceGrrl HQ, aka Crumble Towers, we would like to thank the Good Thinking Society and Soho Skeptics for awarding Suzi Gage on behalf of ScienceGrrl the joint-first place prize for people who can write good and do other good stuff too. ScienceGrrl is delighted that this award goes to our month of April.…

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“ScienceGrrl is just what I need”

By Dr Heather Williams / November 16, 2012

Over the last few weeks ScienceGrrl has been fortunate to get a few e-mails from young women who have found out about us and are encouraged in their love of science by what we are doing and how we are doing it. This, in turn, encourages us a great deal – we are getting something…

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Opening the gate to the road less taken

By Dr Heather Williams / November 8, 2012

I may be slightly biassed, being married to a teacher, but I think they get a pretty rough time of it. Most teachers work hard during term-time (and a fair bit of their ‘holidays’ too), often doing a demanding job under less than optimal conditions. And when anything goes wrong in society, you can bet…

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SCIENCE GRRL IS GO!

By Suzi Gage / October 20, 2012

Barely three months after the idea was conceived, the calendar is a physical entity. And to launch it, a group of glammed up calendar stars, press types and various others convened on Thursday 18th October at the Smith Centre, part of the Science Museum. My day started when I met ScienceGrrl director Heather Williams and…

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Calendar13 September – Fran, Gia, Katie, Kate, Gareth and Carmen

By Sara Williams / October 15, 2012

This is the September page from ScienceGrrl’s 2013 calendar. It stars: Fran Scott is a science demonstration developer and presenter. She has an MSci in neuroscience but her interest now lies in producing novel, high-impact (and dangerous) demonstrations… usually involving fire, explosions and a lot of mess. Gia Milinovich is a science groupie and TV…

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Calendar13 August – Lucy, Sheila, Helen and Daniel

By Sara Williams / October 15, 2012

This is the August page of ScienceGrrl’s 2013 calendar. It stars: Lucy Olukogbon is a physiology undergraduate at Cardiff University. She works closely with schools, Sixth Forms and colleges to bring creative and interactive science education to the classroom. She loves engaging with students who may have previously written off science, and in her spare…

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Calendar13 June – Suze

By Sara Williams / October 15, 2012

This is the June page from ScienceGrrl’s 2013 calendar.  It stars: Sujata Kundu, PhD, completed her doctorate in materials chemistry at UCL during production of this calendar in 2012. For her thesis, she designed materials capable of capturing energy from the sun and then using that energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. This…

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