Ideas and abilities are important. So are the skills that get them across in ways that do justice to them and to you. This is what Ann Shearer, Imperial’s Writing Fellow, is here to help you develop. She is not a scientist! But she is a writer with considerable experience of the pleasures and pitfalls of communication across a range of media and to many different sorts of audience.

Ann offers half-hour consultation sessions on Tuesdays and Wednesdays during term, bookable in advance. You can have as many sessions as you and she agree will be helpful. It’s up to you to choose which aspect of your academic work you want to talk about – essays, theses, presentations, project proposals and CVs are examples.

The Writing Fellowship is sponsored by the Royal Literary Fund, which has similar Fellows in other universities and colleges across Britain. When you first visit Ann, she will ask you to fill in a form giving basic information about yourself, how you heard of her and why you are consulting her. This is to help the RLF to assess how its scheme is working; later in the year, it will be mailing you a questionnaire asking for your views. But remember: this, like Ann’s consultation work, has nothing to do with the college or your tutors. She will make no assessments of your work and no reports.

Ann has been in the communications business all her working life. In her long association with The Guardian, she was first a staff reporter, then social services correspondent, and subsequently a freelance contributor, before becoming a page editor. She set up, and was for many years involved in, a pressure group on behalf of people with learning difficulties (now called Values into Action), which taught her a whole new set of political communication skills. Now as a Jungian analyst as well as lecturer and writer, she is still working to help people to communicate what is important to them.