ALEX MONEY

This week we bade a fond farewell to Daniel Tulloch who is leaving the Smith School to do something exciting around electricity market regulation in New Zealand. Okay, 'exciting' might be overselling it, but it's a terrific opportunity. It is always a bit sad when colleagues leave, but I've come to see that it is a prerequisite for progressive academic research. Oxford is a pretty comfortable environment, and it would be easy, I am sure, to happily plough my own little furrow

What with leaving parties, anniversaries and the general seasonal merriment, I've been doing a lot of eating this week. Oxford is not over endowed with good restaurants, although the new shopping centre may help change that. In the meantime, here are the highlights of my big eating week. On Monday, I had the set lunch at Gees, featuring a very tasty butternut squash starter. Lunch on Tuesday was at the Banana Tree, recently opened on George Street. Big portions, friendly staf

Fancy a job as a research associate? It pays over thirty grand, and involves lots of travel to exotic destinations in Africa. You'll be working on an exciting new project, funded by the British Academy, that is focused on renewable energy, development and the digital economy. It's part of the UK government's £1.5 billion Global Challenges Research Fund. The project is for sixteen months. For more information, and to apply, please visit the website. #MakingLightWork #SmithScho

The call for abstracts has recently opened for 2017's World Water Week in Stockholm. I love this event - had the opportunity to give a talk this year to a gratifyingly full room - and you're virtually guaranteed to make at least one meaningful connection while you're there. Plus, it's a pretty cool city. So, I'm keen to go again, but it's tricky for me to justify the time out unless I'm presenting something, so I've been scouring the themes to see what I might have a punt at.

Students reading for a D.Phil (PhD) at Oxford are formally assessed a couple of times over the course of their studies. Yesterday I assessed a candidate who is exploring questions around responsible investment (RI). At the end of what was a very interesting meeting, my co-assessor asked the candidate and myself what we thought about the future of RI - particularly, did we think it would evolve into the mainstream, or remain a niche activity. The candidate was (probably very s

It's 9th week in Oxford, which means term is officially over for undergraduates. My department suddenly feels deserted, although we're gearing up for admissions interviews next week. On the plus side, when I go to the gym now (great kit, just 20 quid a month, bargain) I can simply walk around feeling overweight and breathless.... rather than old, overweight and breathless. #Chat

My Department's Annual Review came out today, and a cracking read it is too. Billed as a snapshot of the School of Geography and the Environment, it sheds light on things like how much money the department raises each year, where the grants are coming from, and the amounts we're getting. I've worked for and even (ahem) help run companies where nothing like this level of disclosure was available to employees. I think the report is excellent - concise, accessible and engaging.

I give a regular class on Dr. David Johnstone's elective for master's students that looks, inter alia, at water infrastructure. My brief is to ensure that the class has a reasonable understanding of the basics of finance - the difference between equity and debt, what WACC means, that sort of thing. Electives in any geography department probably convene a pretty wide range of backgrounds, and ours is no exception. Usually, this group ranges from folk who have had no exposure t