Dear Blog,

Well, the snow has come as promised and we are officially snowed in. Taxis are refusing to pick people up from St Deiniol’s and the place looks like a picture postcard, quite like the picture on the website in fact: http://www.st-deiniols.com/. The students have been making a snowman of Gladstone outside apparently. It’s just beautiful here and there’s a fire and good comfort food to keep us going.

It’s been another great day so far. I taught my session this morning ‘Mono-, Inter-, Multi-disciplinarity’ and it was lots of fun. I asked students to tell me about their own research – what’s their primary discipline and how do they know? The answers were fascinating – we have self-identifying English literary critics, Historians, Historians of Science and of Medicine, and even a Midwife among us. I was even more impressed by the multitude of reasons that people gave for being able to tell what their discipline was – ranging from methods (‘I work in archives’, ‘I always go back to the text’, ‘it’s the kinds of questions that I ask’) to the practical (‘it’s on my visa’). We spoke about whether interdisciplinarity is ever, truly possible and finally, whether it matters. I was really encouraged and inspired by the session.

Then Stephanie Snow gave a thoroughly informative and thought-provoking talk, surveying the shifts and changes in medical knowledge and practice from 1500- 1900. What a feat, and not only this, her talk threw up all manner of interesting connections and continuities in this survey from the Greeks to moderns, such as the idea of whole body therapies. I learned many new fascinating facts, even about the historical period in which I work, and about much more. Stephanie finished with the example of cancer and the way that our understanding and treatment of it has changed over time.

Next we heard from Katy Price about how she has used history of science in her work on relativity and literature. Her talk offered some practical advice for the students – that we need to be careful when we  assume similarities between writers/painters/scientists of generally similar historical moments; that incorrect science can still offer us valid and informative views; and that the science itself is perhaps less important for such studies as ours when compared to analysis of the way that it is communicated.

Tonight we will hear from five more postgrads on their research and I’m looking forward to that.  

More soon,

Sharon