Blog listing

Celebrated annually during the month of October in the UK, Black History Month recognises the contributions, culture and history of Black people. This year, we hear from Society Champion, Mariam Bhadmus (University of Huddersfield, UK), who has reflected on this year’s theme of ‘Honouring Our Communities’.

Each month, the Microbiology Society publishes the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology, which details newly discovered species of bacteria, fungi and protists. New to Science is a monthly blog series unravelling these latest microbial discoveries.

📣 Episode 187 is out now! It's the most abundant eukaryotic microbe in humans… But what role does it play in our bodies? For decades, Blastocystis has been thought of as a parasite just like other protists that lurk within humans, such as Plasmodium or Giardia. But research is increasingly finding the opposite to be true, and scientists across the world are fighting to change this perception.

As part of the Society’s grant scheme, microbiologists who have been members for a year or more can apply for Society-Supported Conference Grants to help them in organising scientific conferences. That’s exactly what the organisers of the London Infection Network for ECRs (LINE) did ahead of organising their annual symposium for early career researchers (ECRs) in June 2026. Below, they reflect on the experience of organising the symposium and the importance of the event to the community it serves.

Our Champions Scheme allows members to promote microbiology and the Society in their local areas by providing funding and resources for a variety of activities. In November 2025, Champion Akpan Friday (Solina Centre for International Development and Research, Nigeria), organised an outreach project, to promote World AMR Awareness Week (WAAW), the Society and our Knocking Out AMR project. Below, Akpan Friday shares his insights and reflections on the activity.

Dr Mehrad Hamidian at the University of Technology, Australia, takes us behind the scenes of their latest publication 'The (un)successful global spread of Acinetobacter baumannii ST3', published in Microbial Genomics.

Becoming a Microbiology Society Champion has provided me with a new and unique opportunity to think about how we share microbiology beyond the lab. So, when I was invited to see A Microscopic Odyssey at the Edinburgh Fringe, I was intrigued by the opportunity to experience microbiology, not within a lab or through reading a paper, but through theatre.

To mark the month, we spoke to Chien-Yi Chang, a lecturer in the School of Dental Sciences at Newcastle University, about his journey from studying Plant Pathology in Taiwan to researching how bacteria sense and respond to stress, the mentors and colleagues who have shaped his career, and what representation means to him.