Category: Historical research
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Final Countdown
This afternoon I had my mock viva, which was an interesting experience. It was reassuring, in that I survived and there was only one question that I felt I completely flunked. That said, there were several others that brought home to me the need to be certain of my own position, which of course is…
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2015: Happy New Year
New Year’s Day, and I am back at my desk for the first time in several months, mainly in a late attempt to put together a panel for the Reading Early Modern Studies conference in July, for which the call for papers closes very soon. It’s galvanised me into thinking properly about ballads again for…
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“And what are your conclusions so far?”
“And what are your conclusions so far?” I was asked that a couple of weeks ago, and I was slightly taken off guard. It was because I couldn’t immediately come up with an answer that I decided I needed to take stock! I am convinced that the ballad music has more links with…
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Easter holidays
This week is the first week of my children’s Easter holiday, so I am juggling childcare with work. Cramming little bits of work into wherever it will fit isn’t easy and it certainly doesn’t allow for extended research or writing, for example. But there are little things that I can do. I went through a…
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Lyndal Roper and news
I’ve spent a lot of time in the company of Luther in the last few days, courtesy of Professor Lyndal Roper and Manchester’s Dr Jenny Spinks. Prof Roper’s seminar on Thursday evening described Luther’s polemical writing as an expression of his masculinity, but surprised many of the audience with his scatology and lewdness. On Friday…
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It’s gone!
I have finally sent off my commonwealth chapter to my panel, ahead of my meeting with them next week. I’m in a slightly different position to normal in that I was able to send it with a message telling them where I wanted help and where I hoped to expand it when I come to…
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Tidings of Good News
I was warned on Wednesday that my luck will have to run out eventually. That may not sound too much like good news, but the converse is, of course, that, in order to provoke the comment, things must be going relatively well at the moment. Work on the commonwealth chapter continues, with some quite major…
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Finally, a good week!
After a couple of dodgy days at the beginning, the week has definitely ended on a high. I spent quite a lot of time at the beginning of the week consolidating the ideas that my trip to the British Library generated and I wrote a thousand words in a couple of hours, bringing together my…
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The British Library
I spent this week working in the British Library, looking at lots of old manuscripts and some printed music. I’ve been looking for ballads in commonplace books and found some really interesting stuff. Yesterday I looked at the two oldest known pieces of English sheet music, which was amazing. Highlight of the week, though, had…
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Dread Again
[I’m told that for some people this dangled mid-sentence and never got to the point I wanted to make, so I’m trying it again] It has been a relatively quiet week. I spent two days working on my chapter, determined to get something that vaguely resembled a draft ready before I went to London. …
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