My fiend hasn’t featured much lately in the blog (so if you’ve only arrived here recently, you can be forgiven for wondering what I’m on about), but a few weeks ago, when I was completely snowed under with work that meant I was working 14 hour days, he sent me Mary Lindemann’s presidential address to…

For the first time since I go tmy PhD, I know before the summer vacation that I’m going to be teaching next academic year. I’ve got 5 dissertations to supervise and the possibility of a module on a distance learning course, but the thing I’m really looking foward to is creating my own 3rd year…

Back in April I spent a wonderful day in the company of the Post Workers Theatre and several academics working in the field of precarity and the marketisation of education. It was the culmination of the Post Workers Theatre residency at the University of Gothenburg, and the idea was that we would all contribute ideas…

I recently took part in an online study day on Ballad and Song in the History of North West England run by the Regional Heritage Centre at Lancaster University. Although I’ve taken part in a lot of online activities over the last 12 months, this was a little bit different. Back in April we speakers…

I’m really proud to announce that at the end of April, I was made an Honorary Fellow of the Historical Association. I’ve done an awful lot of work for the HA over the years, not least in being secretary of the Bolton Branch for some long time and of course I was Associate Vice President…