What do you do? Dr. David Alderson, EAS Research Officer

As Research Officer, I'm responsible for implementing our research strategy and for monitoring our progress in the lead-up to the next Research Excellence Framework in 2014. The latter ranks academic departments in the UK on the basis of the research they carry out, and distributes funding on the basis of that. At the moment, we are ranked joint second in the UK, and it's partly because of this that Manchester is recognised as one of the major English departments internationally. I also oversee the John Edward Taylor Fellowships which bring two eminent academics to Manchester each year in order to give lectures open to everyone and seminars to EAS postgraduate students and staff.