Dear Blog,

I’m really very excited now about the second event in the LitSciMed programme, which takes place between 25 and 27 March (ie next week!) at the Wellcome Library, King’s College London, and the Royal College of Surgeons. We have 22 people on this coming event, 9 of whom didn’t come to event 1. We have a target of getting 10 students to attend the whole programme so I’m still hoping we’ll make that but it’s great to meet new people too. There’s a real range of interest in the research these students are doing, from early modern to contemporary literature, madness to brain injury, and transplant to genetics. I am hoping that the social space will be used to allow those who aren’t attending in person to participate and to begin pre-event discussions, such as the ‘Using objects in text-based research’ which we’ve already had. Students will be asked to complete a final task for this event and these will be posted online for others to see.

I’ve been to Hull twice in the past week, which is unusual given that I probably haven’t been there for more than 15 years before this week. I went to see the hugely impressive Hull History Centre <http://www.hullhistorycentre.org.uk/> with some of the library and archive staff from the University of Salford. It really is quite an achievement – funded by a Heritage Lottery Grant, it brings together the archives of the city and the university, and event though they’ve only be opened 6 or 7 weeks, they’ve already had 10,000 visitors through the door!

One Wednesday I went to Hull University to speak about the successes I’ve had with AHRC schemes such as the Collaborative Doctoral Award and the Collaborative Research Training scheme. It was very nice to meet people and to talk to someone who currently holds a CDA with the National Maritime Museum.

Finally, a piece of nice news. I’ve been nominated to be a Fellow of English Association (http://www.le.ac.uk/engassoc/), which is a real honour and I was very pleased to accept the nomination. 

More soon, probably after our next event…

Sharon