Dear blog,

This has been an eventful week. On Monday I did my last stint as external examiner to the Literature and Medicine MA at King’s College, London. I’ve been an external for the MA since it began and this was my fourth and final year. It’s an excellent MA with some really great modules that I would have loved to have taken myself and I recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone thinking of taking this kind of course: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/depts/english/pg/masters/litmed.html. Of course King’s has also secured Welcome money to set up a Medical Humanities centre, which is very exciting too.

Tonight I will be attending ‘Wonder: A Scientific Oratorio’  in Maxwell Hall at the University of Salford. The music will come from the BBC Philharmonic, BBC Singers, Salford Choral Society, accompanied by visual images from Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre and the BBC, to celebrate the International Year of Astronomy, 40 years since the moon landings and 200 years since of the death of the great composer Haydn: http://www.arts.salford.ac.uk/more_info.php?id=81.

It’s only a week to go till the Thomas de Quincey, Manchester, and Medicine, 1785-1859 conference that I have organised for Friday 4th December. All seems to be in hand (hopefully) and the programme looks great. After the day’s event we will be going on an organised walk with Emma Fox as our tour guide, exploring some of the places associated with de Quincey and early nineteenth-century science in Manchester: http://www.iscpr.salford.ac.uk/iscpr/news/article/?id=41

More next week,

Sharon