Day: November 27, 2017

Winter is Coming!!!

/ Michael

Hello again,

This week has been a pretty eventful one on campus! As some of you may have heard Lancaster received a good deal of rain over the last week or so and it all came to a head with some rather large puddles all around the university. The underpass even became flooded due to the near-monsoon conditions (which some students are calling Storm Desmond 2.0!). The good news however was that the water soon disappeared and has allowed the university to return to normality, the wet conditions will certainly be missed by Lancaster University’s resident ducks though!

In more serious news this week was also a big one for the PPR careers team as Lancaster hosted Chris Webber from the Cabinet Office in London who came to talk to students about opportunities in the Civil Service. Chris’s talk was fascinating and focused around the potential career paths open to those with an interest in working within government, the Civil Service Fast Stream, as well as providing some useful insights with respect to applications and successfully navigating the selection process. The session ended with a Q&A and which was a superb chance to gain an even better understanding of what a life in the Civil Service can provide.

Outside of work I also took part in the weekly ParkRun event in Williamson Park in Lancaster. The run happens every week at 9am on a Saturday morning, so you will only find hardy souls on the start line (especially as winter draws in!) This week the route was a little muddy due to all the heavy rain, but this fact did not dampen the spirits of runners and volunteers who dug deep and got round the 5km course – despite this a long shower was definitely a welcome treat come the end!

Until next time…

Special Subjects

/ Pietro

Hi everyone!

For this week’s post, I’ve decided to tell you a bit about a distinctive selection of modules offered by the PPR Department at Lancaster: “special subjects”. Whereas a typical module will be centred around lectures delivered by an academic, special subjects run as seminar classes, or reading groups, with the tutor convening the group and moderating discussion. The tutor will generally be an expert in the field, and may be writing or researching on some of the topics covered in the module.

Sometimes, academics make use of special subjects to discuss what they’re working on at the moment with students. For example, of all the modules I’m taking this term, “Philosophy in Progress: Autobiography, Narrative, Self-Knowledge, and Self-Realisation” is a special subject intended as direct engagement with the tutor’s current academic work. Seminars are chaired by Sam Clark, an academic philosopher from the PPR Department, and the module’s aim is to read and engage with the draft of the book he is currently writing, and in doing so discuss the philosophical questions and issues it raises. At the end of the module, you are then asked to write and submit a 5000 word paper, where you focus on a specific topic covered in Sam’s book and critically engage with it.

I think special subjects are a great opportunity because you really get to engage with some contemporary developments in research on a given field, and you also get to discuss the topics with the person who may have written the very work you’re asked to read. This is all quite exciting as it gives interesting insights into what doing research at the professional level is all about. Moreover, special subjects’ peculiar structure allows you to explore a different learning format, where you’re supposed to play an active role by giving presentations and making contributions to the group’s discussions.