There’s a well-used trope in sitcoms, in which the protagonist manages to arrange an evening where they go on two dates at the same time! Hilarity and humiliation always ensue. Well, that was basically me last Friday. I had been asked by two sets of conference organisers if I’d give a Keynote talk. It’s always very flattering to be asked, and I am very supportive of the academics who were working on both events, so I agreed. Besides, I thought, there’s six-day window for these…Continue Reading “Time flies…”

We’ve pivoted. We’ve shifted. We’ve migrated. Take your pick – but whichever one you go for, university academic staff have moved our face-to-face teaching online to allow us to support our students during our various COVID lock-downs. But now a number of friends and colleagues who work at other universities have been told to start thinking about increasing the online delivery of degree courses. And they’ve got the summer to do it all in! Now when I was Associate Dean (Learning & Teaching) in SSED…Continue Reading “Where we’re going, we don’t need roads…”

Now I’ve done a fair bit of media work in the past (Shock! Academic known for being a bit of a show-off has history of being a bit of a show-off…) but nothing to the intensity of this past week. Our paper reinterpreting the context of death for victims of Vesuvius at Herculaneum has finally come out in the journal Antiquity. To be honest, this paper should have been out a year ago but it’s been a bit of a battle to get it finished….Continue Reading “BREAKING NEWS: Only I could make a 2000 year old volcanic eruption all about me…”

Last night, I was thinking a lot about giving lectures. This is not unusual, but this time it wasn’t the content that interested me, but the mechanics of lecturing. Three things happened over the past two days which brought this to the forefront of my mind. First, I’d come back from a fantastic 2-day leadership development residential; second, I’d just given four hours straight teaching, and; third, I’d just watched Jerry before Seinfeld. The leadership workshop was great. Run by the Leadership Foundation for HE…Continue Reading “Comic Timing…”

I’ve been spending a bit of time this week working on Science & Justice. We’ve had some interesting new papers come in, there have been some useful reviewers comments to read through, and some decisions to make on manuscripts. Regardless of whether the decision is Accept or Reject, I never take these decisions lightly. I’m an academic myself, and I know what it’s like being on the receiving end of Editors’ decisions. Anyway, this post isn’t about editorial decision-making (as enthralling as that sounds…), but…Continue Reading ““There Are Two Typos Of People In This World: Those Who Can Edit And Those Who Can’t””