Dear blog,

I’m off on holiday for two weeks tomorrow (yippee!) but before I go wanted to say thanks to everyone who was involved in LitSciMed event 5. I particularly enjoyed the second day at Birkbeck College where it really was a privilege to sit as a student and listen to the excellent talks given by Steven Connor, Isobel Armstrong and Esther Leslie. I’m a card-carrying historicist in my research and it was such a treat to think outside the box about such matters as ‘thing theory’, glass in nineteenth-century literature, and liquid crystals. In fact it was fascinating. I feel fired up to go away and read more Hegel and Benjamin so that I could properly engage with the discussions that were going on. The other events we have had have, I think, been dominated by historicist methods and it was a really interesting departure to think about ‘things’ in new ways.

Last weekend was the British Society for Literature and Science conference at Cambridge, which a number of LitSciMedders attended. I heard some great papers and really felt that the sub-field, or sub-discipline, or whatever it is that we are and we do, is thriving. The day before the conference I went to the Fitzwilliam Museum and the University Library, Cambridge to read the Davy letters there. This was fun but there were some crucial words in these few letters that I couldn’t read. I therefore asked the Fitzwilliam for copies of two of these letters and have just been told that it will cost £248 plus VAT for this service. Of course, I’ve said no thanks.

On 6th April I went to take a look at Richard Badnall’s ‘Undulating Railway’ material that we house in the University of Salford archive (http://www.library.salford.ac.uk/resources/special/badnall.xml) in the august company of two of my colleagues: Professor Alison Adam (who began her research career as a Historian of Science) and Professor Richard Knowles, a Professor of Transport Geography. It was such a pleasure to look at the material there, which includes the original, beautifully ornate patent for the railway. It turns out too that Richard Badnall wrote poetry. I need to take a look at this to see whether it’s any good, but certainly he seems like a figure who is worth spending some time with.

On 5th April I went to Leicester for a planning meeting for Event 6 of LitSciMed – our last event! Application forms and programmes for this event (to be held at Leicester and Keele) should go online on 3rd May at http://www.litscimed.org.uk/. I’m trying to think of ways to make this last event really special – we’ve already planned a reception – let me know if you have any ideas.

All best,

Sharon