Title: A blog from the President, Professor Gordon Dougan FRS
Posted on November 19, 2025 by Professor Gordon Dougan, FRS
In his third blog, the Society’s President, Professor Gordon Dougan FRS, writes about his experiences as he approaches the end of his first year in the role.
As President, I am keen to keep communications with the membership going by writing my own updates and blogs. I have now been in position for ten months and will cover here some of my early impressions, identifying opportunities and challenges. Although I have been a Society member for most of my career, I was not part of the Governance structure until January, so in a way, this gives me fresh eyes to look at where we are.
One of the biggest bonuses of being President is regularly meeting fellow microbiologists and listening to their science and opinions. I really enjoyed the Annual General Meeting in Liverpool in this regard. Liverpool is one of my favourite cities, as my son went to university there, and we were able to explore the city and surroundings as a family.
The Society has the next four annual meetings already booked, but we are considering if we need to change the format or the venues just to keep things fresh. Perhaps moving to new venues or having a year of smaller meetings. We are also starting to use the Society headquarters in London for more meetings. Earlier this year we organised a workshop on Vaccines and AMR. This involved the staff and influencers in the field, including many members of the Society. This has led to important interactions with government policy makers (e.g., the Joint Committee on Vaccines and Immunisation) and vaccine regulators (e.g., the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority). Consequently, we might be able to create policies that link the power of vaccines to reducing AMR. A report on the meeting is available in the Journal of Medical Microbiology.
It has been a busy first few months with lots of meetings and visits to headquarters. I was lucky enough to attend the Early Career Microbiologist of the Year competition to hand out the prizes to our winners. Please think about entering the competition next year if you are eligible – the whole day is a positive and worthwhile experience. I have been able to meet some of the Society Champions and have learned about the vital work they do for us. I also recently attended the Society’s Annual Meeting in Ireland, held in Athlone. As someone who worked at Trinity College Dublin as a young lecturer, I know how important they are for our Irish contingent. It was a great venue and a brilliantly collegiate meeting.
I have been getting to know the Society staff and regularly spend time at our Headquarters. It is a modest train journey away from my home in Cambridge. I have been able to work closely with the staff and learn more about meeting organisation, publishing, and governance. Good governance in the Society is vital as we are a not-for-profit publisher and membership charity run by a mixture of paid staff and volunteers. We reorganised our governance structure just before I became President and we have been recruiting Trustees to bring us up to full capacity. We are now getting to know each other and learning how to work together. We must provide leadership and good management to ensure our future.
I recognise the key role our publishing team and our Editors play in the Society. Over recent decades, we have been heavily dependent on publishing income and still are. This is now becoming a challenge as publishing income has dropped, as we quite rightly move towards a more open publishing model. Consequently, we have been running a deficit for some years, which we need to eliminate. I would like to do this as soon as possible and certainly within my tenure as President. The world is rapidly changing, and we are in tough economic times, so we need to be flexible but determined. Again, more on that over the next months.
We rely heavily on our voluntary Editors-in-chief and their teams of Editors. Many are university academics who face constant demands from their employers and students. We need to recognise their work and support them by publishing regularly in our journals. This is something I have done throughout my career and continue to do. I recently wrote a blog covering my own experiences as an Editor and I will be following up with more blogs covering different topics. The next one will cover the history of microbial genomics in the UK that led to us developing Microbial Genomics.
On a final note, we want to run an open Society that serves its members. Despite our honest efforts, we may not get everything right, particularly in this time of change. Even the President only has three years to make an impact. If you have ideas that might help us be even better as your Society, please do contact us.