As I write this, I’m sitting on a train going to London for an HA Historian editorial board meeting. It’s our first in person meeting in 3 years, since the beginning of the covid pandemic. It will be an interesting meeting, where we will be discussing where the magazine will be going over the next few years.

Over Christmas, I moved into my new office. I’ve had a couple of days to sort everything out as I like it. I’ve moved in some of my books and files, and put posters and student work up on the walls. I’ve even got a second-hand armchair, in the (probably vain) hope that I might get a little time to read! It’s probably a bit sad that several of my Christmas presents were office-related!

One of my Christmas presents was a lego castle, which is sitting on top of one of my cupboards. My son and I have added some extra bits to make the scene a bit bigger, and I’ve moved in my lego ballad singer.

Yesterday I started the handover process for my administrator role with the Social History Society. This post has been in invaluable in keeping me in academia until I managed to get my indefinite contract at Lancaster, but the time has come to move on and pass the baton to someone else. I’m enjoying working with Louis, and I hope it gives home the same security it’s given me over the last two years, and that it eventually leads to something more permanent for him.

I’m hoping that the extra day a week will allow me time to continue my research. I am going to keep it, religiously, for precisely that. If I am not going to be allowed to apply for research funding while I am on a teaching and scholarship contract, then I need to preserve time in my schedule for me to continue my work independently. In the short term, I need to complete some work on news, editorial and providence in ballads ready for the EBBA conference at the University of California, Santa Barbara at the end of February, and I have a co-written book for Cambridge Elements that is due for completion about the same time, so I’ve got my work cut out.

In the slightly longer term, I have put together a small grant application for the Social History Society, and I’m in the process of putting together a bigger application for some funding from Lancaster. Both are intended to fund a research assistant who would be able to visit The National Archives for me and transcribe some documents for the Pilgrimage of Grace project. It’s a long shot, but if you don’t apply you have no chance, so I decided I might as well give it a go.