a little stuff about me

Welcome to my personal blog! It’s still under construction, so please visit again soon to check out new content!

I’m Pearl Agyakwa, a Ghanaian diasporan, born in the US to an academic and a nurse, and spent my childhood and early teens in Cape-Coast, Ghana and Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria. I’ve been settled in the UK since the early 1990s.

I’m a materials scientist and interdisciplinary researcher, and I’ve been a post-doctoral researcher since 2004. I’m fascinated by things and stuff: why materials behave the way they do, what we make things out of, how and why. I explore how the physical properties of materials are shaped by their nanoscopic characteristics and how these characteristics shift and evolve as we interact with materials in different ways.

I am also fascinated by how materials smell, sound and feel- the crinkle of autumn leaves and the crunch and of fresh snow crystals underfoot being a couple of my favourites. I get the tingles from crunching the ice cubes in my gin and tonic and from walking in powdery snow… What is it about materials and about people, that gives materials these other-worldly properties?

I’ve recently begun to explore the human aspects of materials, and of making and manufacturing processes, looking at more expansive interpretations of materials structure, properties and performance relationships beyond engineering contexts. This includes how we relate to materials, how political, historical and cultural contexts shape materials properties and manufacturing methods, and how these affect society.