Old blog, new blog (The RED Team)

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Old typewriter on one side of a table. Sitting back-to-back with a new laptop
Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

In November 2013, at the height of the blogging revolution, the Research Education and Development (RED) team at La Trobe started a blog called the 'RED Writing Hood'. The first 12 posts celebrated and reflected on the first ever LTU Academic Writing Month. 

The blog was very much of its time. Before SEO, before the professionalisation of blogs, having a catchy name was the game. If you could have a pun even better. After a few years, the blog was renamed 'The RED Alert'. Still pun-tastic, but reflecting a platform that was reaching far beyond just ‘writing’. RED initiatives, personal research stories, and the wide range of workshops and events at La Trobe were all now in scope.  

Over the next decade, hundreds of blog posts were written by RED team members, graduate researchers, and experienced researchers from across La Trobe’s campuses and schools. Some of our most-read posts included ‘Industry mentoring? What’s that about?’, (2017) ‘Tackling illness and a PhD’ (2018), and ‘What I wish I’d known when starting my PhD’ (2025).  

In 2026, we are delighted to continue the work of the blog, with a full refresh. So much has changed on the web in the last 13 years. We launched at the dawn of the wide-spread smartphone era, when universities weren’t sure about all this interactive social content. We blogged through the rise and fall of academic Twitter (RIP). We blogged through multiple seismic changes in research culture, funding and policy-settings in Australia and globally. But we’re still here. And blogs are back (again).  

To reflect where we are now, we’ve made some changes. We have moved platforms (farewell Blogger, hello WordPress), and are now fully integrated into the La Trobe web infrastructure. We now have a modern, visual, responsive, mobile-friendly design. We’ve updated the name to the Research Education and Development (RED) blog – it does what it says on the tin.  

But, just as importantly, we have moved over every single post from the old website, ensuring that those 13 years of contributions remain fully accessible into the future. This was no small effort and huge thanks must go the folks in Web Operations who made this possible (and to Katherine who was determined to see this done, down to even writing most of this blog post, except the bit Meagan has edited to add this in).

If you are reading this post on the old RED Alert site, this will be the last update at this location. Head over to our new blog site at: https://red.blogs.latrobe.edu.au  

If you are joining us at our new location, welcome, or welcome back! Use the tags archive to browse through our back catalogue, or use the search function to find something specific. Sign up to our weekly Shut Up And Write (SUAW) email reminder for regular RED and SUAW news – including about new blog posts, here.

Goodbye RED Alert, you served us well! Welcome RED blog, here’s to more of the same!  

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