Scientists’ Expectations for Brexit Mostly Grim

Some researchers have already been negatively affected by the U.K.’s decision to leave the European Union, though opinions on the eventual outcome remain mixed.

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ISTOCK, DNY59On June 23, 2016, the UK electorate voted 51.9 percent to 48.1 percent to leave the European Union. As a community, scientists were overwhelmingly opposed to leaving: a Nature poll from March of that year showed that 83 percent of UK researchers were pro-remain, and only 12 percent pro-leave—the rest being undecided.

As Britain tries to work out the details of its exit, or Brexit, U.K.-based researchers speak to The Scientist about what the referendum result has meant for them.

“It’s thrown a spanner in the works.”

A British and Australian passport holder, Tom Johnstone, the head of brain imaging at the University of Reading, credits the U.K.’s “top notch” research university system as a major factor in his decision to settle in England a decade ago. But a year on from the referendum, he’s already seeing untoward effects on that system.

The result has complicated a multi-institution grant consortium that Johnstone has been working on for years to secure funding for doctoral training and research in neuroscience. Due to uncertainty about the U.K.’s post-Brexit capacity to ...

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Meet the Author

  • Catherine Offord

    Catherine is a science journalist based in Barcelona.
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