Dear Blog,

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a relaxing Christmas and is looking forward to all that 2010 will bring. To start off the year we have the first of our events in the AHRC training programme: ‘Theories and Methods: Literature,  Science and Medicine’ taking place at St Deiniol’s near Chester http://www.st-deiniols.com/ from tomorrow till Friday 8th January.

It’s a good time to be going to St Deiniol’s since only a few days ago, on 29 December, it was the two hundredth anniversary of William Ewart Gladstone’s birth in 1809. Gladstone founded St Deiniol’s library and his books, with his annotations in them, are there. The place itself is beautiful and a real retreat for academics and others — I’m hoping that there will still be snow there and that the fire in the cosy common room will be lit each night.

The programme for the week can be seen here: http://www.litscimed.org.uk/page/event1_programme. We’re hoping to send material back from the event and incorporate material generated by those not at the event itself into the sessions. Students will give presentations on their work and will complete a reflective diary (in whatever form they chose) that we can mount on the social space or the LitSciMed website after the event. Plenary speakers will be filmed or recorded and their powerpoint presentations will be uploaded so that the event is captured online and can form a teaching resource after the training programme has finished. Please do send me any requests that you have for information (reading lists, discussion topics, accompanying materials) that we should cover in the programme or that we can use on the site.

The reading pack is online too: http://www.litscimed.org.uk/page/readings if you would like to keep up with the programme as it unfolds.

All best and watch this space…

Sharon