Connected

Grand Theft Hamlet

Grand Theft Auto and Shakespeare are not two things you would normally put together. But Reading alumnus, Mark Oosterveen, did exactly that when he staged a production of Hamlet within the Grand Theft Auto video game world. Mark, who graduated in...

Rowing to romance

From training on the Thames to competing at the Olympics – Sam and Natasha Townsend share their story of going from teammates to soulmates.  Natasha and Sam’s love story began at the University of Reading, where they met through a shared...

Journalists Are Never The Story

“Well, except just this once,” said Reading alumnus Phil Creighton, as he wrote in his final column in June 2024, after nine years in the editor’s chair of Wokingham Today and Reading Today. Phil, who studied typography &...

Headline Stories

Transforming Lives

Launchpad – which started as a soup kitchen run by Reading students – is now Reading’s leading homelessness prevention charity. Ian Caren, the Chief Executive Officer at Launchpad, tells CONNECTED what inspired him to...

Preventing Homelessness

Vice-Chancellor of the University of Reading, Professor Robert Van de Noort, recently became a new patron for Reading’s leading homelessness prevention charity, Launchpad. This week, CONNECTED speaks to Reading graduate...

Talking Race

Led by Dr Ellen Pilsworth, the Department of Languages and Cultures at the University of Reading is proactively listening to their students and creating space to talk about race, as part of the University’s commitment...

Changing Tomorrow

Sarah Haely, a second year student at Reading, shares with CONNECTED how she channelled her frustrations of experiencing racism into working with the police to understand racial tensions in the criminal justice system...

Supporting COVID-19 Research

In June, the University of Reading launched a fundraising and volunteering campaign to support research, led by Dr Al Edwards, into developing accurate and safe COVID-19 antibody tests that can be conducted at home...

Engaging In The Conversation

As part of the University’s commitment to understand and tackle racism, CONNECTED speaks to Professor Uma Kambhampati about her own experiences of discrimination, as well as the initiatives she’s leading to understand...

Neutralising COVID-19

Last month, we shared with you how a llama herd at Reading was helping to find treatments for COVID-19. CONNECTED now brings you a fascinating update – early research has shown that llama antibodies can neutralise the...

Achieving Dreams

As our finalists prepare to embark on their journeys beyond university, CONNECTED shares what two of our inspirational alumni have achieved since graduating from Reading. With graduation ceremonies unfortunately...

Sniffing Out COVID-19

Reading graduate, Heather Shute, is a volunteer with the charity Medical Detection Dogs. She tells CONNECTED about their incredible work – training dogs to identify people who are carrying COVID-19. The dairy business...

Speeding Up Testing

Dr Sarah Needs and Dr Sophie Jegouic, biomedical engineers at Reading, share with CONNECTED how they are developing low-cost technologies to speed up tests to detect antibiotic resistance and COVID-19 antibodies. We...