The Plashing Vole

Note: first paragraph uses the N-word in the context of classroom discussion. Hello from the end of a long, draining, but also exhilaratin...

I seem to have been thinking about race and empire a lot recently, thanks to the way my teaching and reading have worked out. Earlier in the...

In haste today, as I'm teaching all afternoon (the Frankfurt School applied to Black Panther); got the Open Day talk (shout-out to the ...

Another Friday rolls by and I feel both aged and exhilarated. Aged by the relentless series of organisational failures that have enraged stu...

It has been - even by Induction Week standards - a humdinger. We have students, though an amputee could count them on her finger. They are i...

Good morning. It's late September and the temperature here is 22 Celsius. That's not right. Today is also the date of the short Clim...

OK, so I'm back from my Carol Ann Duffy and the Laureateship conference . With a cold and lots to think about. I was pretty shocked to d...

I am trying to write my conference paper on Carol Ann Duffy and the Four Nations, honestly, but this Cambridge University summer course cau...

You find me much refreshed by my sojourn on the west coast of Ireland - goats were crowned on towers, the Black Atlantic was swum, sun burne...

I am going on holiday. To Ireland of course, packing Factor 50 and a thick pair of gloves for use on the same day, if experience teaches ...

A friend asked me to take some pictures of the rebuilt Birmingham New Street station for a book project. I have Views about the place: as fa...