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Tom Higginson

Welcome to my personal website.

Orignally from a large town in Surrey, I have been living in Bristol since September 2019.

I am a PhD Student at the University of Bristol researching Active Galaxies, my UoB page is available here.

Roots in Surrey soil,
Bristol life since twenty-nineteen,
PhD in bloom.

Research

My research interest is focused around jets from actively accreting supermassive black holes - or Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). Originally being interested in the effect on star formation, my research interest has now evolved to look at kpc-scale 'wings' that appear in some jetted sources.

I am part of the Black Hole group, in the astrophysics department at the University of Bristol, which is lead by Andy Young.

I work mainly with X-ray and LOFAR (LOw Frequency ARray) observations and have joined the LOFAR-VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometery) collaboration.

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Teaching

I currently teach the following modules:
  • First Year Undergraduate Labs
  • First and Second Year General Drop In Sessions
  • First Year Stars and Planets (Marking Only)
I have previously taught the following modules:
  • Second Year Cosmology

Academic

I currently work on active galaxies, specifically FRII Quasars with strong X-ray emission. I work with Chandra (X-ray), HST (optical) and VLA & LOFAR (Radio) using multiwavelength data to investigate emission mechanisms of active galaxies to understand the ongoing processes. Recently I have gained an interest in Galaxies that have a distinct 'X'-shape in X-ray emission and LOFAR emission, such that there is emission near-prependicular to the jet axis.

Publications:

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Interests

Along with Astrophysics I have a many other interests.

  • Football: I closely follow Woking FC and Southampton FC
  • Hiking: Anywhere is great but nothing beats a Mountain hike
  • Building a league table for Bristol Pub Rankings