Prime-time for crime scene scientist
Dr Anna Williams
Tue, 01 Jul 2014 12:36:00 BST
Dr Anna Williams has been awarded one of the British Science Association’s Media Fellowships and will work with the New Scientist
UNIVERSITY of Huddersfield scientist Dr Anna Williams has often been the subject of media attention for her research in forensic anthropology. But now she is due to sample life on the other side of the notebook, when she spends a month on secondment to one of the world’s leading science magazines.
Dr Williams has been awarded one of the ten Media Fellowships that have been bestowed annually since 1987 by the British Science Association. Successful applicants are assigned to TV and radio programmes, or newspapers and magazines, where they are mentored for four weeks by a top journalist. The aim is to teach scientists how the media operates and to boost their skills at communicating research to the wider public.
“It will be very useful for helping me to put complicated science concepts into easily accessible language,” said Dr Williams, who is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Huddersfield.
When her application for a Media Fellowship was successful, Dr Williams was told that she would be placed with the London-based New Scientist magazine, which is published weekly and has an online edition. It has a large staff of reporters and more than three million readers worldwide.
“I was very pleased because New Scientist is highly prestigious,” said Dr Williams, who is looking forward to sampling life as a journalist and the challenge of researching and writing about subjects well away from her specialist area.
Her placement at New Scientist will take place in July and August. Then in September, Dr Williams, and the other nine Media Fellows, will be invited to attend the British Science Festival, taking place this year in Birmingham.
“It is about better public engagement with science and improving our communication skills in general,” said Dr Williams, who writes a blog dealing with her life as a forensic anthropologist and has made several appearances on TV science programmes. She also has considerable casework experience, carrying out consultancy work for police forces. Human decomposition and the vital information it supplies to crime scene investigators is one of her key research areas.
