Invitation to research staff to write a blog for the University Bulletin

The Public Affairs Directorate (PAD) would like to hear from research staff who would be interested in writing a blog for publication with the University Bulletin. This is a fabulous opportunity for research staff to give insight into their area from their perspective.

Those interested in writing a blog should contact Rakiya Farah, PAD. Rakiya will need a one-line description of the subject of the proposed blog and an indicative time line that would work for the researcher.

About the blog: We send out a weekly blog with University Bulletin, usually written by a senior member of staff. Several hundred staff read it every week and we are now keen to ensure that our colleagues hear from a broader range of staff at Oxford.

We’d particularly like to profile more Early Career Researchers in the blog to give more visibility to their work, and because research stories are consistently among the most popular articles we share in the Bulletin.

With this in mind, we would like to invite you to write one of our blogs. This would be a platform to describe your work to a (predominantly) uninitiated audience, to reflect on your experiences as a researcher, your motivations, and to share your perspective on research at Oxford.

The brief: • Informal, personal style and tone 
• A reflective piece that gives staff some insight into your area – we tend not to use the blog as a place for formal announcements 
• Content: a guiding question, when writing your blog, might be good to think about what staff across the University would find most interesting about your work and experiences 
• Around 250 words, but can be longer – they can be up to 450 
• Deadline: end of Thursday preceding the Monday edition – unless you are drafting a blog not for inclusion on a set date 
• We are finding that staff are really responding to this style and have been asking to hear from a wider range of staff.

Examples are available online, including these from July 2020 and October 2020 respectively.

Timing: We would welcome a blog that you draft at your leisure, which we can slot in as appropriate. But if you had a particular week in mind, we could also pencil this in provisionally. All of our blogs are subject to final approval by the Vice-Chancellor.


A great example for a suitable blog post is this short article about anchorites by Godelinde Gertrude Perk

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