university | hannah dee

Academic conferences. Who pays?

August 6, 2015 / 0 comments

My friend Cate Huston has written a post about tech conferences, and the thorny question of who pays for speakers to attend. You can find it here: Uncomfortable Conversations About Money. I was going to write a comment on it, but then realised I had a bit more to say, so here’s a post instead….

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Best in show?

December 19, 2014 / 0 comments

One of the great things about the REF is the way every one’s a winner. Well, not everyone. But there are three different categories of stuff being measured, and two obvious choices of modifier. The things being “measured” are: Outputs: these are the actual papers Impact: this is a measure of how an institution’s research…

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5 things I hate about the REF

December 17, 2014 / 2 comments

The Research “Excellence” “Framework” is how university departments are judged on their research. It’s more than that though. It determines our funding, and it is effectively the only way that an institution can influence how much money it gets from the central funding agencies. This is in part due to the fact that under the…

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Teaching computer vision

September 20, 2014 / 1 comment

I’m really pleased to be teaching computer vision this year. It’s the subject I research in, it’s what my PhD is in, and it’s my favourite part of computing. Challenging, mathematical, and very very visual. The previous lecturer (Fred Labrosse) is on sabbatical this year, and it’s great to take over from someone as good…

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The new Department for Education

July 19, 2014 / 8 comments

Inspired by an infographic showing that all of the current education ministers went to private schools, I have just spent 10 mins on Wikipedia investigating the Higher Education experiences of the current department for education: Nicky Morgan is 41, so didn’t pay uni fees for her Jurisprudence degree from Oxford. Nick Boles is 48, so…

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Gregynogging

November 14, 2013 / 0 comments

In the last four weeks I’ve been to Gregynog Hall 3 times. Luckily for me it’s a beautiful place – a stately home in the middle of Powys, with superb gardens, and really nice cake. The first visit was with our first year students, who we take there every year for a team building weekend….

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Mathematics playground

October 18, 2013 / 1 comment

This summer, Amanda Clare and I won a small grant for teaching development. The idea was to use the stuff I teach (HTML5, JavaScript) to help students learn the stuff Amanda teaches (Mathematical concepts for computer scientists). We won just under £2k from the Aberystwyth University Learning and Teaching Enhancement fund, and we spent most…

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