Dr Harley Stevenson-Cocks
Biomedical, Nutritional and Sport Sciences at Newcastle University, UK

Every year, we celebrate Physiology Friday and call on our members to hold exciting outreach activities to help showcase the amazing world of human and animal bodies. Here, member Dr Harley Stevenson-Cocks from Newcastle University, UK reports on the university’s Physiology Friday 2022 celebration and their ongoing engagement activity centred on the question “What is Physiology?”. The project is growing a video collection of interesting perspectives from physiologists and the general public sharing their thoughts in response to the question.

The cities of Newcastle and Durham were joined by the love of science as part of Physiology Friday 2022 events organised by Newcastle University physiology students and staff. The centrepiece of the day was a public lecture given by Dr Graham Burns, Consultant Respiratory Physician at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle, entitled “Coming up for Air”, which focused on how we breathe, in particular what drives us to take our next breath. Graham gave a fascinating lecture on lung physiology and pathophysiology to an engaged audience, and was kept busy well after the lecture with questions from the public.

Either side of his talk, physiology students and staff from Newcastle University ran a series of interactive sessions for the public, centred on various aspects of physiology including neuroscience and cardiology.

Continuing from the success of inaugural events of Physiology Friday 2021, our students also led two external engagement activities. First, students ran an ECG workshop at Durham Sixth Form Centre, answering many questions and inspiring enthusiasm for physiology among A-Level students.

Second, our students were tasked to record interviews with academics from other universities about their thoughts on “What is Physiology?”. This year, we were fortunate enough to be able to send two of our students, Rebecca and Joe, to the University of Leeds, UK, to conduct some in-person interviews with staff there. While rail strikes scuppered our plans to do the same at the University of Manchester, UK, we were thankful our students were still able to interview some Manchester-based staff remotely via Zoom instead. With thanks to Charlotte, Al, Matthew, Ruth and Sue (Leeds), and Tristan, Liz and Donald (Manchester) for speaking with our students and for some excellent interviews!

We have a growing online repository of our Physiology Friday, and related, engagement activities where you can check out our latest interviews, lectures and associated events (https://doi.org/10.25405/data.ncl.c.5725439). We are keen to encourage contribution to the “What is Physiology?” conversation so please do consider contributing your thoughts on all things physiology by scanning the QR code if you’d like to register your interest to be our next interviewee.