This week has mainly been taken up with preparing for the Social History Society Conference (largely sending emails and trying to chase things that haven’t been finalised yet) and catching up on many of the papers I missed at the Soundscapes in the Early Modern World Conference last summer! Because I was running the SHS online conference at the time the Soundscapes one took place, I was only able to catch up on a few papers before the conference recordings were archived, but because I was asked to review the conference by the organisers, I was able this week to access the archive recordings and catch up on many of the papers. This is great in one respect – I found many of them fascinating. For example, the panel on bells that I might otherwise not have attended to was far more interesting and relevant to my work than I could have expected. On the other hand, it has a slightly melancholic feel, as I would love to be able to spend more time on my research – I’ve got so many things I want to do across various projects, but at the moment I’m trying desperately to get everything else done so that I get some time in the summer to concentrate on research.

So this week I’ve also marked the exams for Hist235: Making Modern Britain, c.1660-1720 and put together the information for the external examiner, as well as prepared a list of all the work I need to undertake on my courses to prepare them for next year. At least that way I know what I need to do, and I can just tick off the bits as I go alone. I’ve managed a bit of that already, as I’ve decided where to put a session on decolonising the currirulum in our MA core course next year. But the list is really quite long, and it has to be balanced with all the supervision and meetings that I need to go to, and the GCSE exams that I’m invigilating at one of the local high schools (such is the life of a sessional lecturer)!