Science journalist, author and communicator

Editor of the Year award

Posted on August 22

I was delighted to win Editor of the Year at the Association of British Science Writers awards in 2022. This was for my work as Chief Magazine Editor for Nature, leading the team of 65+ people who produce thought-leading journalism and opinion articles for one of the world’s leading science journals. I set the vision and strategic direction for all our magazine content.

What we do is truly a team effort, and it’s always been a privilege to work with Nature’s talented reporters and editors. My role was to set up the conditions and direction under which they could thrive.

Here are just a few of the achievements of the team in 2021:

  • We published >2600 high-impact news, features, opinion and multimedia items.
  • We grew our global reach: online, we reached 6.2 million unique page views per month in 2021, up from 4 million in 2019.
  • We were shortlisted for or won 20 international awards for journalism, multimedia and design.
  • I led the team during the COVID pandemic, setting the strategy to best serve readers in a global health crisis, including to always offer accuracy, authority and depth.
  • I fought for funding for a new diversity-focused news internship, which we launched in 2021.
  • We completed a project to build an impact tracker, a tool and database to track the real world influence of our journalism and opinion e.g. when articles change policy or funding. In 2019, I had led a successful pitch to the Google digital news innovation fund for the €430K project.

The picture above shows me with broadcaster Vivienne Parry (left), who presented the awards, and Sarah Richardson (right), who also won an Editor of the Year award for her work on Research Professional News.

Other News

What to Believe – my new book

Posted on October 20

I’m starting on a new book, provisionally called What to Believe, to be published by Princeton University Press. The book will tell the story of how multiple disciplines have embraced…

Nature at 150 lectures

Posted on October 19

This year, Nature celebrates its 150th anniversary. As part of this I was lucky enough to be invited to give a public lecture at the University of Dunedin in New…

TED Summit 2019

Posted on August 19

Red Circle Speaker Community Workshops at TEDSummit: A Community Beyond Borders. July 21-25, 2019, Edinburgh, Scotland. Photo: Bret Hartman / TED I attended the TEDSummit 2019 in Edinburgh from July…

2018 talks and events

Posted on February 18

On March 5th, I’m delighted to be taking part in the Chief Scientific Officer’s annual conference at the Royal Society in London. The panel is titled Why Data Matters, and…