Research Records

Neil Lawrence is the inaugural DeepMind Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge where he leads the University’s flagship mission on AI, AI@Cam. He has been working on machine learning models for over 20 years. He returned to academia in 2019 after three years as Director of Machine Learning at Amazon.

His main interest is the interaction of machine learning with the physical world. This interest was triggered by deploying machine learning in the African context, where ‘end-to-end’ solutions are normally required. This has inspired new research directions at the interface of machine learning and systems research, this work is funded by a Senior AI Fellowship from the Alan Turing Institute.

Our latest guest is an internationally recognised expert in a particularly exciting, compelling and hugely topical area of research … the relationship between human beings and the technology we create. Tony Prescott is Professor of Cognitive Robotics at the University of Sheffield and the co-founder and former director of Sheffield Robotics, a cross-disciplinary research group across both of the city’s universities.

Tony’s research brings together robotics and artificial intelligence with psychology, brain theory and philosophy. He aims to answer questions about the human condition by creating synthetic entities which have animal, or human-like capacities, such as emotion, perception, memory and a sense of self. For many years he has written and spoken about the impact of robotic, AI, and virtual reality technologies on human society and culture. He is the co-creator of the award winning animal-like robots Scratchbot, Shrewbot and the world’s first commercial brain-based robot MiRo, now into its second generation as MiRo-e. He’s lead editor of the Scholarpedia of Touch and co-founded and co-chairs the annual international Living Machines conference. He’s published well over 200 papers and won grants totalling more than £10m.

Tony has also co-founded two robotics spin out companies - Consequential Robotics, which develops education and assisted living technologies, and Bettering Our Worlds, which develops software to make it easier to program robots. He’s featured regularly on print and broadcast media including the One Show, The World at One, the Discovery Channel and CNN.

But for Tony it all began at secondary school in Edinburgh where he developed an interest in psychology after reading Carl Jung’s biography Memory, Dreams, Reflections. This led to an MA in Psychology from the University of Edinburgh which included study of computer science, philosophy of science and moral philosophy.

Our guest is at the forefront of medical research into neurodegenerative illness, principally Motor Neurone Disease. MND, as it’s usually known, is a relatively rare condition that affects the nervous system, causing progressive muscle weakness, resulting in loss of dexterity and mobility problems in the limbs with maybe difficulty swallowing and slurred speech. It happens when cells in the brain that connect to your muscles, known as motor neurons, gradually stop working and die. No-one really knows why these cells die, but Professor Janine Kirby is one of the people at the University of Sheffield trying to find out and use this to eventually help develop a cure for a distressing illness that is so often fatal within 2-3 years of diagnosis.

Janine is Professor in Neurogenetics in the Division Of Neuroscience within the School of Medicine and Population Health and based at one of the University leading research institutes, SiTran, the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience. Her research at the moment concentrates on using gene expression profiling to identify markers of the disease.

But it’s not all cutting edge medical research. Janine is faculty director of postgraduate teaching and helped develop several leading masters programmes, including one in translational neuroscience and another in advanced cell and gene therapies. She also sits on Senate and the University Council.

And while Janine has worked in several places over the last 20 years, Sheffield is really where it all began….

Professot Rachel Falconer had a trans-Atlantic upbringing: born to a Scottish father and Canadian mother, in the village of Iffley, Oxford. She was first transplanted to Glasgow, and then to Toronto, where she attended a Francophone school, but spent the summers back in Oxford with her grandparents. A move to Chappaqua, New York, was followed by Yale University and a bachelors degree in Classics in 1984. A semester's study in Rome led to a second BA in Oxford University, this time in English Literature, and an Amelia Jackson Scholarship that led to a DPhil in 1989. At this point she transplanted herself to teach English literature at the Charles University in Prague just as European history was being written all around her during the Velvet revolution. Two years later she came back to the UK, and after a short sojourn in theatre journalism she took up a teaching fellowship at the University of Sheffield in 1993. She moved swiftly through the ranks of Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Reader, becoming a Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature in 2009. Having been involved in the more conventional research and teaching of English literature throughout her career Rachel’s time in Sheffield was characterised by the building of bridges between the Arts and Science. In 2010 she moved to be Professor of Modern English Literature at University of Lausanne and served as HoD in 2017 and 2018. She is currently focussing on contemporary literature’s engagement with the existential crisis of our times: climate change. So having begun with a trans-Atlantic childhood, she’s now living a trans-European existence between the UK and Switzerland

Professor Allan Pacey went Snaith Secondary School then Goole Grammar School before moving a bit further down the Humber in 1984 to do a BSc in Biology at Hull University.  His 1991 PhD is from St Andrews in spermotoza biology and following this he moved to France to become a Royal Society Research Fellow at the Station Zoologique in Villfranche sur Mer.  

In 1992 he made a career-defining move to Sheffield, first as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, then followed by a lectureship in Andrology in 1997, Senior Lecturer in 2001 and Professor of Andrology in 2015.  He was made Head of Department of Oncology and Metabolism in 2017 and then Head of the Department of Infection, Immunity & Cardiovascular Disease in 2022.

Allan is a pre-eminent figure in Andrology and Fertility, his contributions cover world-leading research, the training of healthcare professionals and the improved public understanding of the science of reproduction. 

He has been the Chair of the British Fertility Society, Editor-in-Chief of the journal Human Fertility.  Was made a fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and most recently an Honorary Member of the British Fertility Society (only the 38th honorary member in 50 years).  In 2016 the Queen made him Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) for Services to Reproductive Medicine.

Allan will be familiar to many through his work on radio, television, and film to explain the science behind human reproduction and infertility, including ‘Me, My Brother and our Balls’ (BBC Three (2020) & the ‘The Great Sperm Race’ (Channel Four (2009)  and at one point was Allan’s single-handedly responsible for 10% of the University of Sheffield’s media interest.

Sadly recorded this on his last day at the University of Sheffield as he is moving to take up a senior post at the University of Manchester.

It’s worth remembering that this podcast began life as the offspring of a charity. Inspiration for Life was set up in memory of Tim Richardson, a much loved Reader in Physics at the University of Sheffield who died from cancer in 2013. Tim began the 24 hour Inspire - a lecture marathon featuring back to back half hour talks on well, life, the universe and everything.

So it’s fitting that today’s guest was closely involved in Inspiration for Life and indeed did his PhD with former trustee Richard Jones before ending up as the charity’s treasurer. Mike Weir is himself a physicist now working at the University of Nottingham as a research fellow in the School of Physics and Astronomy and specialising in polymers. He began his career in Nottingham with a Master of Science in physics but moved to Sheffield in 2006, then did his first post doc at ANSTO in Sydney, Australia. There was a diversion into scientific publishing as an associate editor, but a return to Sheffield for two more post docs - the second once more with Richard Jones. In 2020 he returned to Nottingham.

But for Mike it all began in Coventry where he describes himself as ‘interested in everything’ with an eclectic set of A levels in Maths, Physics and Art. Music, however was a big distraction - he played in a band with his brother and a friend and blames that in part for losing out on a place to study physics at Imperial.

Sharron  Hinchliff is a Professor in Psychology and Health at the Division of  Nursing and Midwifery in the Health Sciences School at the University of  Sheffield. She leads a programme of research into ageing, gender and  sexual health and wellbeing. She’s also the School’s Director of  Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.

It’s been quite a journey as no doubt Sharron will explain. She  started university aged 22, studying psychology at Sheffield Hallam, did  her PhD at Sheffield Hallam straight afterwards and got her first post  doc role at Sheffield. Sharron is a first generation academic,

Sharron’s particularly interested in negative social attitudes to  gender and ageing and from 2018 she collaborated with Sheffield artist  Pete McKee on the Age of Love project, which uses art and humour to talk  about the intimate relationships of older adults. Earlier in 2022 she  launched the UK’s first sexual rights charter to tackle age  discrimination.

Athene Donald has a Natural Sciences MA and a PhD in Physics from Cambridge University. After 4 years further research in the USA she came back to Cambridge, initially to the Department of Materials Science and Engineering before returning to The Cavendish Laboratory in 1983. She became a Professor of Experimental Physics in 1998 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1999. Her research is in the field of polymers, soft matter and where physics and biology meet. 

She has published over 250 papers. Not only is she a distinguished researcher, winning prizes from the IOP and Royal Society and holding many honorary degrees, she was the 2009 Oreal/Unesco Laureate for Europe, She is also a great contributor to the academic community and society more widely. She has served on The Cambridge University Council and was the University Gender Equality Champion.

She was a member of the Scientific Council of the ERC and has been a Trustee of the Science Museum and is still a member of their Scientific Advisory Board. She chaired the Scientific Advisory Board of the government Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport and was the Chair of REF2021 Interdisciplinary Advisory Board. She has been a leader in equality and diversity and, amongst other her other roles, served on the Sheffield University Equality and Diversity Board since 2015. 

She was appointed DBE in the 2010 Birthday Honours for services to Physics. Since 2014 she has been Master of Churchill College. 

Research Records is a monthly podcast hosted by Professor Marie Kinsey (Journalism) and Professor Tony Ryan OBE (Chemistry) from The University of Sheffield. Each month they are joined by esteemed guests from The University of Sheffield (and occasionally further afield) for a lively and engaging chat about their personal and professional journey alongside their own soundtrack to academic adventure, all over the course of about an hour.

Our latest guest is a qualified medical doctor and an international expert on global health. Andrew Lee is a Professor of Public Health in the School of Health and Related Research at the University of Sheffield.

Professor Lee qualified in medicine at the University of Edinburgh and trained in paediatric and tropical medicine before running primary health care and tuberculosis control programmes in Afghanistan. He’s been a Public Health Consultant in Nottingham and a director of primary care and population health with the NHS as well as a consultant in communicable disease control with Public Health England and the UK Health Security Agency.

His research and teaching now focuses on health protection, particularly disaster response, emergency planning and control of communicable diseases. Unsurprisingly, Professor Lee’s expertise made him a go-to figure during the worst of the Covid pandemic.

Our latest guest is an eminent geographer and educationalist, someone well known not just to the University of Sheffield community but around the world as a researcher, and to generations of students as the man who believed that walking round a city was the best way to learn about it.

Professor Paul White’s career spans 40 years at the University of Sheffield with roles from lecturer to Acting Vice Chancellor. He spent ten years as only the second Pro-Vice Chancellor for Learning and Teaching. He led nationally and internationally on higher education policy and had a huge impact on raising the profile of teaching and teaching quality within the university, steering it to the accolade of University of the Year in 2011 in the Times Higher Education Awards. In 2016 he was appointed OBE in the New Year Honours List for services to higher education.

Paul is now retired and Emeritus Professor of European Urban Geography. He still goes walking - most recently from Sheffield to the homes of his sisters-in-law in Stafford and Ledbury respectively, a distance of some 145 miles or so. Not all in one go, of course.

Chris Jackson is Chair in Sustainable Geoscience at the University of Manchester, worked in the energy industry for NorskHydro (now Equinor), and having spent 16 years at Imperial College. Chris works in the general area of sedimentary basin analysis. When not studying rocks, Chris gives geoscience lectures to the public and in schools, having appeared on several, Earth Science-focused, television productions and podcasts. Chris is engaged in efforts to improve equality, diversity, and inclusivity in Higher Education. He runs too.

Today our guest could be described in many ways as salt of the Earth. He describes himself as a lover of weird plants. Duncan Cameron is professor of plant and soil biology at the University of Sheffield in the School of Biosciences. He’s co-director of the university’s flagship research institute, the Institute for Sustainable Food and lead academic for the N8 AgriFood programme. His research examines the physiology and chemistry of interactions in the soil between plants and microbes, which is not only hugely important for food sustainability but a way of understanding the biology that drives soil quality. The better the soil, the better the farming, the better the food, although that may be oversimplifying a bit.

Duncan’s research is highly interdisciplinary, bringing together science, social science and the arts and for him public engagement is key. His projects have included the multi-media sci-art collaboration, Gaiamycota, the Sound of Science, and AquaKulture.

Duncan did his undergraduate degree at Sheffield, his PhD in Aberdeen and came back to Sheffield to do his post doctoral work. He’s held international fellowships in Germany and Australia and has extensive experience in translational research in the UK and overseas where he has taken his basic research findings into agricultural practice. In 2013, he received the World Economic Forum’s Young Scientist Award for “extraordinary scientists from across academic disciplines and geographies, under the age of 40, who commit to integrating scientific knowledge into society for the public good”. Most recently, he has worked with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to develop micro-agricultural systems for the production of fresh food in Jordan’s refugee camps.

But it’s not just about his research. Duncan actively supports equality, diversity and inclusion at the University as a gay role model, and he does all this while living with a degenerative disease of the nervous system, cerebellar ataxia, which now means he’s a wheelchair user.

Research Records is a podcast hosted by Prof. Marie Kinsey (Journalism) and Prof, Tony Ryan OBE (Chemistry) from The University of Sheffield. Each month we are joined by esteemed guests for a lively and engaging chat about their own personal and professional journal alongside their own soundtrack to academic adventure.

Hosted by Inspiration for Life, the charity that runs an annual 24 hour marathon programme of lectures by staff from across the University. If you enjoy this podcast, please consider donating a few pounds, which goes directly to our charity partners. Thank you.

Kate Morris is a qualified registered social worker, and joined the University of Sheffield in 2015. She was previously Director of the Centre for Social Work and Deputy Head of School, University of Nottingham. She began her career as an academic at the University of Birmingham.

However, Kate gained substantial experience in practice, management and policy development prior to moving into social work education and through her research and her involvement in national and international social work developments has remained very closely connected to practice.

Research Records is a podcast hosted by Prof. Marie Kinsey (Journalism) and Prof, Tony Ryan OBE (Chemistry) from The University of Sheffield. Each month we are joined by esteemed guests for a lively and engaging chat about their own personal and professional journal alongside their own soundtrack to academic adventure.

Hosted by Inspiration for Life, the charity that runs an annual 24 hour marathon programme of lectures by staff from across the University. If you enjoy this podcast, please consider donating a few pounds, which goes directly to our charity partners. Thank you.

Professor Vanessa, Director of City and Cultural Engagement at the University of Sheffield. She was the founder of the National Fairground and Circus Archive at the University of Sheffield Library and holds a Chair in early film and popular entertainment in the School of English. Her research and curatorial practice focuses on Fairgrounds and the Circus, early cinema, particularly Mitchell and Kenyon, with a more recent emphasis on Blackpool, Morecambe and seaside regeneration. But as we will discover she is far more than just another researcher, providing strategic support and creative engagement to the Sheffield city region as well as the production of large scale shows in association with leading artists and companies in the world of new variety, circus and outdoor festivals.

She was born en-route from Morecambe Winter Gardens Fairground to the maternity hospital and went to Our Ladies Catholic High School in Morecambe. Despite being told that aspiring to University was above her station, she came to Sheffield to study Archeology. Following her graduation, she missed out on digging in Jordan because of the start of the Gulf War in 1991. In her own words, she was a bad girl for a few years and went back to the family and the fairground. Having gone all over the world looking for history, she realise it was right there under her feet. So she returned to university, was awarded a Wingate scholarship, then a full PhD scholarship, and set up the National Fairground Archive as a postgraduate – and the rest is history.

Today our guest is Professor Richard Jones, Vice-President for Regional Innovation and Civic Engagement at The University of Manchester and previously Pro Vice Chancellor for Research at The University of Sheffield. Richard was educated at Cambridge University, with a first degree and a PhD in physics. Following a postdoc at Cornell University, he was appointed as a lecturer at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University in 1989. He is an experimental physicist, whose research centres around the properties of polymer molecules at interfaces and ultrathin polymer films. 

He came to Sheffield in 1989, initially to be Professor of Physics and subsequently head of department. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2006 and in 2007 became the Senior Strategic Advisor for Nanotechnology at the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. He has won too many awards and prizes to list here but a couple that we must include are the Institute of Physics' Tabor Prize and the PPG Founders Prize. 

Today our guest is Ruth Blakeley, Professor of Politics and Internal Relations. Ruth is the current head of department and Vice Chair of the British International Studies Association. She’s been lead editor of the Review of International Studies and is a member of the editorial advisory board for several journals.

Ruth joined Sheffield from the University of Kent in 2015 as Director of the White Rose Social Sciences Doctoral Training Partnership, a £20m project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council for training postgraduate and doctoral students across seven universities. She took the job, she says, because she likes a challenge and doesn’t mind herding cats. Joining the politics department was also an attraction.

Ruth’s research focuses on the contested areas of international security, terrorism, political violence and the global governance of human rights. In particular she is co-director of the Rendition Project, which analyses the American CIA’s highly controversial rendition, detention and interrogation programme. The project’s website houses the world’s only comprehensive database of flights known or suspected to have been involved in the rendition of people believed by the state to have been involved in terrorism. For Ruth this raises enormous questions about state-led security programmes, links to human rights and the dynamics of power in the 21st century. She’s given evidence to government inquiries and her testimony shaped the conclusions of the UK’s intelligence and security committee that the UK had colluded in torture. Her work has informed legal action on behalf of the victims of rendition and torture.

For Ruth it all began in the summer between A levels and university when her parents packed her off to Argentina to do...as she puts it...something useful. So she volunteered in a kindergarten in a shanty town on the edge of Buenos Aires and learned for the first time about the Argentine dictatorship and the fight of the mothers of the disappeared, battling to discover what had become of their children, who vanished at the hands of the military government in the late 70s and early 80s.

Our latest guest is Wyn Morgan, who until recently was a Professor of Economics at the University of Sheffield and recently the university’s Vice President for Education. His main research interests are in the economics of food and the factors behind fluctuations in food prices. Throughout his career the pursuit of teaching excellence both personally and institutionally has been a constant driver. In 2017 he was presented with an international learning and teaching award for outstanding contributions to the field. 

Wyn studied economics, economic history and accountancy at Exeter, quickly realising that accountancy was not for him and switching to agricultural economics, where he found his niche. After university he worked for Midland Bank for a while, but an episode covering himself in ink when filling the cashpoint, and another setting off alarms on the counter made him rethink his options. A PhD at Nottingham followed, then landing a lecturing post in 1999, a personal chair 11 years later and moving to Sheffield in 2015. Perhaps an academic career was always on the horizon. Wyn was actually born on what used to be Clifton Campus in Nottingham where his father worked in teacher training.

Research Records is a monthly podcast hosted by Professor Marie Kinsey (Journalism) and Professor Tony Ryan OBE (Chemistry) from The University of Sheffield. Each month they are joined by esteemed guests from The University of Sheffield (and occasionally further afield) for a lively and engaging chat about their personal and professional journey alongside their own soundtrack to academic adventure, all over the course of about 45 minutes.

This is a podcast from Inspiration for Life, the charity that runs the annual 24 hour programme of public lectures delivered by staff from all over The University of Sheffield. If you enjoy this podcast then please consider donating a few pounds, all of which goes directly to our charity partners. Just the price of a coffee will really help us support our wonderful charities. Thank you.

If you like this podcast - please donate to help support the charities that we work with - just the price of a coffee will make an impact.

Our latest guest is Ed Daw, a professor of particle astrophysics in Sheffield. He is the son of professional musicians and went to the local comprehensive school and the then sixth form college in Birmingham. After a Physics degree at New College Oxford he went to MIT for his PhD, looking for dark matter axions and lived in California. He then took a was a postdoc with Rainer Wiess on the search for gravitational waves went to work at the Livingston site in Louisiana. He moved to a lectureship in Sheffield to join the Dark Matter research group and a little later started to work on gravitational waves again. He is an inspirational teacher  of  Frontiers of Physics (to 1st years) Physical Computing (to 3rd years), and General Relativity (to 4th years).

Our latest guest is Brendan Stone, Professor of Social Engagement and the Humanities and the University of Sheffield’s Deputy Vice-President for Education. Brendan is based in the School of English and his research interests focus on the relationship between narrative, identity and trauma; mental distress and recovery, and engaged pedagogies. This mix means his work is consistently outward facing and involved with external organisations, particularly the Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Trust where he’s a non-executive director involved in getting service users and patients to have a say in the development of policy and strategy. 

Brendan’s a founding Director of the mental health charity Sheffield Flourish, a Senior Fellow of the Institute for Mental Health, a member of Medical Humanities Sheffield, a Senate Fellowship Award winner and a National Teaching Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Brendan’s route into higher education was far from conventional. He left school at 16 with few qualifications and didn’t return to education until his mid-thirties via a university  access course.

Jimmy Helms - Gonna Make You an Offer you can’t refuse

Sheila B Devotion - Spacer

Pet Shop Boys - New York City Boy

Al Green - Sha La La (Make Me Happy)

Seals and Crofts - Summer Breeze

Ella Eyre and Rudimental - Waiting all Night

Research Records is a podcast hosted by Prof. Marie Kinsey (Journalism) and Prof, Tony Ryan OBE (Chemistry) from The University of Sheffield. Each month we are joined by esteemed guests for a lively and engaging chat about their own personal and professional journal alongside their own soundtrack to academic adventure.

Hosted by Inspiration for Life, the charity that runs an annual 24 hour marathon programme of lectures by staff from across the University. If you enjoy this podcast, please consider donating a few pounds, which goes directly to our charity partners. Thank you.

Our latest guest is Pam Enderby, emeritus Professor of community rehabilitation and a qualified speech and language therapist. She has had a distinguished career in the University, being in turn Chair of Community Rehabilitation, Head of the Department of Human Communication Sciences, and the first ever woman to serve as Dean of the University’s Faculty of Medicine. Beyond the University she has served as Chair of the College of Speech and Language Therapists and is currently President of the International Association of Communication Sciences and Disorders. In 1984 Pam was the lead claimant in a landmark legal battle for equal pay in the NHS. It involved twenty-six court appearances and eventually it cost the government £30 million in back-pay. Pam has received many awards and honours over the years, and was made an MBE in was awarded in 1984 and OBE in 2018 for her services to speech and language therapy.

Research Records is a monthly podcast hosted by Professor Marie Kinsey (Journalism) and Professor Tony Ryan OBE (Chemistry) from The University of Sheffield. Each month they are joined by esteemed guests from The University of Sheffield (and occasionally further afield) for a lively and engaging chat about their personal and professional journey alongside their own soundtrack to academic adventure, all over the course of about 45 minutes.

This is a podcast from Inspiration for Life, the charity that runs the annual 24 hour programme of public lectures delivered by staff from all over The University of Sheffield. If you enjoy this podcast then please consider donating a few pounds, all of which goes directly to our charity partners. Just the price of a coffee will really help us support our wonderful charities. Thank you.