Dear blog,
What follows below is a blog post written in 31st March but which couldn’t be published till now because the University took all the blogs down. More recent blog to follow…
So, the University of Salford announced 65 redundancies across the University yesterday and 3 of these will be in English. These are horrible times, with people being asked to reapply for their jobs, go for interviews, and whoever is still around after this process will be asked to teach more than we are at present. We’re trying to see if there’s a way to stick together in all of this and present a united front, instead of being pitted against each other.

I was in the British Library for much of the past week, reading stuff that the libraries in Manchester don’t have and which I need to have read for my book. One fascinating activity was comparing Coleridge’s notes to Humphry Davy’s Syllabus for a Course of Lectures. Coleridge attended Davy’s lectures in 1802 and the Syllabus gives us some idea of the topics covered. Coleridge’s notes show how interested he was in the subject and he often notes the experiments that Davy used to explain things. One brilliant line in his notes: ‘If all aristocrats here how easily Davy might poison them all’… I also spent a lovely morning reading Davy’s notebooks, checking quotations and discovering afresh how much there is in them. For now though, I need to stop work on the book and write the article I’ve promised on Frankenstein and natural history to a special edition of a journal.

I spent yesterday interviewing candidates for the AHRC doctoral award we have in English. It was really excellent to see all the different projects that people are proposing and to speak to some really bright and engaged students.

Professor Ian Haywood came to Salford last Wednesday to speak about his latest project on caricature. He had some brilliant material to discuss and there was a small but select audience to listen to his ideas and ask questions.

While in London I saw In Basildon, by David Eldridge, at the Royal Court, which brought back lots of memories of Essex life for me. I also saw the Jeremy Deller retrospective and David Shrigley exhibition at the Haywood Gallery. Deller was my favourite by a street; he’s so politically engaged and thought-provoking.

More soon,

Sharon