Dear blog,

I’m so pleased to see so many blog postings already with people’s object descriptions up, and they are fascinating. The text-based description (rather than on-the-spot oral presentation) has really allowed people to reflect a little more on the object chosen and on the ideas raised by choosing objects at all. The questions after presentations on the final day of the event last week were really very interesting but we had such a short time for them that I’m hoping these blogs can really continue the work of the event and continue to pose questions and invite discussions. Please do read the blog entries and then write comments. I’d love it if we were able to use this social space to continue to talk over the ideas raised when we met.

Yesterday we heard that myself and two colleagues (Ben Harker and John Callaghan) had been successful in securing an extended programme of AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Awards, working with the amazing but in much need of funding Working-Class Movement Library <http://www.wcml.org.uk/>. I’m so pleased!  This means we’ll be able to fund a PhD each year for the next three years (the first student will start in October 2010; I guess the final student won’t be finished till 2015!). The Library has a brilliant collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century journals in its (still-not-quite-catalogued) archives and the first student, who I’ll be supervising with Mike Sanders from the University of Manchester and Lynette Cawthra from the Library, will be examining the appearances of Shelley’s poetry in Chartist and other radical periodicals. It’s all very exciting. Watch out for the adverts and tell any MA students who might be interested in applying!

Another colleague, Peter Buse, was awarded a Leverhulme research grant yesterday for his work on Poloraid cameras, so last night Salford English department was celebrating with glasses of fizzy wine all round!

Have a lovely Easter break all of you,

Sharon