Reading in the news - Fri 27 Mar

Centenary celebrations:  presenter Kirsten O’Brien hosted her mid-morning show from campus to celebrate the University’s centenary.

Interviewees included Emeritus Professor Kevin Warwick (Biomedical Engineering) and Dr George Boulos, alumni and author Michael Rosen, who studied Children's Literature, olympic rowers and Reading graduates Natasha and Sam Townsend, Vice-Chancellor Professor Robert Van de Noort, Dr Stephen Burt (Meteorology), Bagelman, past international students, film critic and graduate Rhianna Dillon, graduate David Betts, and PhD student Hardeep Kaur Joginder Singh (Food and Nutritional Sciences).

Health and wellbeing:

• Dr Ian Jones (Biomedical Sciences) was quoted by  and (republished by , ,, and ) on a new Covid variant.

#PlanetPartners: working with global partners to protect the environment

• and provided further coverage of research by Dr Matt Greenwell (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) on colour-changing katydids. From our story: Bright pink insect stands out to blend in, scientists say

• Professor Tom Oliver (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) wrote for  about solutions to solve the nature and climate crisis.

• GB News (republished by  and ) featured comments from Professor Richard Allan (Meteorology) on links between ancient climate shifts, greenhouse gases, and ocean warming.

• Research from Dr Jamie Thompson (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) is aiming to create a cactus database to help conservation, reports . 

•  republished an article written by Dr Luke Elson (Philosophy) in  about the difficulty of deciding how to tackle climate change.

• Dr Akshay Deoras (Meteorology) was quoted by  on how El Niño events impact global temperatures.

Heritage and culture:

• Greatest Hits Radio reported on the University-produced play Glitch. 
• Dr Ollie Douglas, Curator at the Museum of English Rural Life spoke to BBC Radio 4 about World War II and Britian’s reliance on food imports.

Other coverage:

• ,, , and (republished by ) highlighted an upcoming talk by Professor Federico Faloppa (Languages and Cultures) at the University of Camerino.
•  listed Reading as the number one university to study Agriculture and Forestry in the UK. From our story: Agriculture top in UK in QS subject rankings 2026

Alumni:

•  featured alumni Andrew Nyumba, Gilbert Kermundu, Nicholas Alinaitwe, Daniel Ddumba, and others to celebrate the University’s 100th anniversary.

• Victoria Cope, Commercial Director at the Ministry of Defence, who has an MBA from Henley Business School, will be a speaker at an upcoming event for .

• Agricultural Economics graduate and farmer Marek Stefun has won the Brian Chambers Trophy Award, reports . 

•  mentioned Botany graduate Cecil Collyer in an article on his 100-year-old farm, which has recently been sold.