Dear blog,

I’ve not managed to update this for a month; I’ve just been too busy. The highlights of the last month include giving a talk on Silas Marner to Salford City College on 28th February, which was well attended by lots of bright A-level students. I also gave a presentation to Rick Rylance (head of the Arts and Humanities Research Board) when he came to visit Media City on 2nd March. This was quite terrifying but seemed to go well and it was good to hear about the AHRC’s strategy for future funding. We have shortlisted for the AHRC-funded studentship in English literature and interviews are being held for that soon. The Donald Cardwell Memorial Lecture was hosted at Salford University on 6 March and Prof Otto Sibum gave a wonderful lecture on James Joule’s experimental method. Salford Uni has bought James Joules’s house on Acton Square and we able to go in and see some of Joules’s equipment which the Museum of Science and Industry have loaned.

On 7th March I gave a research seminar at the University of Leeds on Davy. There was a tough audience with tough questions that I don’t think I was hugely successful in answering. It was lovely to see an ex-Bangor student who I taught all those years ago and who is now doing a PhD in Leeds, and to see a LitSciMedder, Darren Wagner from York University.

I’ve been to lots of plays too: Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen in Sheffield (excellent), Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls in Leeds (also excellent), and Travelling Light in Manchester (a bit rubbish). We held the second session of the Humanities Doctoral Training in Salford on Wednesday and we talked over some important issues for postgrads: how to get a job, how to get your thesis published, how to conduct interviews as part of research, and (a session I was particularly interested in) Maggie Scott speaking about the Oxford English Dictionary, telling us about the various editions and its aim to describe rather than proscribe language use in the UK.

It’s been pretty mad and all to the detriment of my book, which I have neglected somewhat. Here’s hoping that the next blog post I write I’ll be able to say that I’ve been working hard on it.

A few plugs finally: we have another AHRC doctoral studentship just advertised. It’s in collaboration with the Working-Class Movement Library (http://www.wcml.org.uk/) and its concerns ‘Political Cultures in British Trade Unionism, 1931-79’. Enquiries should be made to Professor John Callaghan (j.callaghan@salford.ac.uk) or Dr Ben Harker (b.harker@salford.ac.uk).

All best,

Sharon