About me and about this website

I have a background in biological science, science communication, and art.  These all link for me to ideas of knowledge and the unknown, truth and metaphor, improvisation and rigour, decision making and creative flow, intention and interpretation, cultural context and personal beliefs, the individual and the collective, questioning and trust.  They are all, importantly, fields of practice, where the occasional expressions that arise that we call papers, essays, art works, or events are manifestations of practice: useful as milestones and as objects that can be shared, but only partial and of the moment, and do not define the practice.  

This site is an attempt to draw my manifestations together in a way that makes sense to me, and encourage me to do new work and document it. It also allows people to visit, and could be the starting point of a conversation. I'm hoping I can also collect here some links to other people's work and ideas that resonate or might act as stimuli for my thoughts, in a way that feels useful for me.

The art and the writing reproduced here have been produced sporadically over several years, as assignments, as experiments, occasionally as commissions, sometimes for the love of it or because I feel a need to do it. So there is no overall plan. With both writing and art, one purpose is exploration: I end up in unexpected places, I find things are not as they seemed, and I am changed through reflection. More recently I’ve been learning about music theory, and enjoying composing pieces that please me.

One advantage of having stepped away from the obsessively intense and narrow focus of active scientific research, is being able to look at science more broadly, and from a height that gives a different perspective.  I'm interested in how I and others engage with the outputs and culture of the scientific world, how both experts and non-experts interpret the results of science.

At the moment I’m back in the science part-time at the Centre for Clinical Microbiology in University College London, and enjoying being part of that community. I help the UCL-wide TB community connect to each other and the outside world through UCL-TB. Part of my initial role here involved working with genome sequences, which are now magically easy to produce, and I’m aware more than ever of the importance for all scientists to be able to explore big data. I’d say that most lab-based scientists find that hard to do because of time, training, a physical and cultural separation of the wet and dry worlds, and human inertia. But it’s so empowering for a lab-based scientist to be able to find and process data themselves, and then to be able to talk to full-time data scientists on level terms, and I try to encourage this.

I have no expectations of how might use this site, or what you take from it.  My training and instinct lead me towards under- rather than over-explaining, and allow you to make of it what you will - and I also realise that sharing my own meaning can help others connect with me, and work out what their own response is.

My Background:

 Contact me:

If you would like to ask a question or connect, email me at:

  • stoker.neil AT gmail.com

  • n.stoker AT ucl.ac.uk