Dear Blog,

The final ever LitSciMed programme event will take place at Leicester and Keele Universities this Thursday and Friday. It’ll be the end of a year and a half programme, which began with a very memorable event in St Deinol’s in January 2010. So much has happened since then and so many students have taken part in events! I’m planning to write a final report on the programme and reflect on its successes and challenges. I’ll certainly post something on this on this blog in the coming months.

I spent a very enjoyable and immensely useful three days in Aberdeen University last week with a select group who were called together by Ralph O’Connor (author of The Earth on Show, 2007) to consider ‘new directions’ in ‘science and literature’. The event brought together a lovely group of people from both history of science and literary studies to thrash out some important issues concerning our… what shall I call it… sub-discipline, field, ‘dynamic zone’ (this last was one of the delegate’s suggestions)? It was a great opportunity to think about what it is that we do, what is needed now, and hear others’ ideas on this. Personally, I shall be mulling these ideas over for some time and thinking far more carefully about my own methods and their justification in my work.

I really hope that the LitSciMed programme, which is officially titled ‘Theories and Methods: Literature, Science, and Medicine’ has also helped students to think about their methods and whether there really is such a thing as ‘LitSciMed’ or whatever we want to call it.

Next time I write, I shall include a report on our final event. Please can students who are coming along to the event make sure to give their opinions on the discussion group set up for this event – there’s only a few days to go… (http://litscimed.org/groups/event-6/forum). Thanks to Joanna and Darren for starting things off. I hope to see everyone’s name there over the next few days.

All best,

Sharon