Publications
A short comment article which I helped some students from the PERIODically podcast to write (while I’m proud of their accomplishment, my role here was minor). The piece describes in very practical terms how student lobbying secured free period products in the Chemistry Department, and includes some reflections on inclusive language and ways that the scheme might be made more environmentally sustainable in future.
A textbook collecting organic reactions with annotated curly arrow mechanisms, intended to help students understand how to argue mechanistically through linking general principles to specific examples. The coverage is intended to match the first three years of a typical Chemistry degree.
A NatRevChem comment article in their In the Classroom series, exploring how a more-specialised degree curriculum might let students engage more deeply with the chemistry they study.
A short textbook on paramagnetism, written in a ‘programmed’ style. The reader is given small pieces of information and then immediately challenged to use them to solve problems. They then read the solution to the problem, and are able to immediately correct any misconceptions they have before continuing through the sequence. The book covers: spin-only moments, term symbols, Landé calculations, quenching, temperature dependence and chemical applications of the Curie law.
University education has historically been reserved for a very small proportion of the population, but part of what it means to be a good University in the twenty-first century is to have a more diverse student population. This paper explores how a particular measure of widening participation (WP) in UK HE relates to existing newspaper league table metrics. We showed that a good WP score was associated with low league table rankings, and created a new metric to correct this. Unless we start measuring WP metrics, there is a significant risk of the WP agenda being de-prioritised in Universities’ strategic decisions.
This was an important paper for me. Working with statistically-proficient collaborators was equally challenging and stimulating, and my experiences as a teacher were valuable in ways I hadn’t properly recognised before. It was also useful to see how my individual teaching practice relates to the drivers for the sector overall; I think it is easy to develop a radically teaching-centred view of HE when you are a teacher, and looking at how non-teaching metrics are driving change was instructive.
A short textbook on Wade’s Rules, written in a ‘programmed’ style. The reader is given small pieces of information and then immediately challenged to use them to solve problems. They then read the solution to the problem, and are able to immediately correct any misconceptions they have before continuing through the sequence. The book covers: parent shapes, closo-nido-arachno state, metal fragments, and reactivity. Short (skippable) interludes deal closely with characterising cluster isomers using NMR spectroscopy.
The low cost of the book is intended to allow people to access it readily, and mostly reflects the print costs.
Student-as-partner (SAP) work permits extraordinarily insightful research of local educational environments, but also poses unique challenges. This paper describes the process and the product of SAP research into student views about weighting the first year of chemistry and biochemistry degrees. The report of research is presented alongside a commentary from both me (the supervisor) and Joe Wood (the student-researcher).
My first textbook, a snappy 90 pages of writing based on my experience of teaching an unusually difficult disciplinary skill. The writing follows a ‘programmed’ approach: the reader is taught something and then challenged to apply it immediately. They then get immediate feedback in a low-risk setting and can correct misunderstandings straight away. I self-published it using Amazon’s Print On Demand service, which was an interesting experience for me, but also quite scary. I have complete editorial control using this platform, and can set the price point myself - the book is priced deliberately low to make it more accessible to students and libraries. These freedoms come bundled up with the freedom to fail, and I hope that readers will let me know about improvements I could make to the next edition.
Ruthenium(II) binds to lots of biological ligands in solution, and one might suspect that ‘soft’ sulphur bases ligate preferentially. While this is consistent with crystallographic data, it is hard to reliably infer biologically-relevant reactivity from solid state behaviour.
Using competition studies of fluorinated systems, we were able to show the profound solution-phase preference of ruthenium(II) arene complexes for binding cysteine over all the other amino acids and some of the mechanistic details of this reaction. Both of these contributions should be important parts of designing future metallodrugs.
My first Scholarship paper drew on my experience as Programme Director for the Chemistry courses at Hull. It presents theoretical arguments articulating some of the rationales for selecting certain weightings.
This was my first independent paper. I found the peer review process really supportive. A reviewer challenged my use of the term ‘mastery’ as being sexist, and I have been looking (so far unsuccessfully) for an alternative term ever since.
I made a small infographic summarising the paper.
The first paper of my PhD involved a study of amino acids binding to a metal centre. My computational work complemented the (hard-won) synthetic data gathered by others, which allowed us to propose a mechanism for the hemilability of these complexes. Delicate kinetic control over ligand substitution is an important hurdle to rational metallodrug design.
My first paper, published during my MChem project, involved some challenging air- and water-sensitive manipulations. I found the NMR assignments particularly hard, but the authentic long-form project gave me the time I needed to finally ‘get’ Inorganic NMR.