Category: Uncategorized
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EFDSS Broadside Day Part 2
At the end of February, I travelled up to Glasgow to speak at the English Folk Dance and Song Society’s Broadside Day at the Unviersity of Strathclyde. This is the second in a short series of posts about the day. The first of the afternoon’s talks was given by Peter Shepheard on ‘The Master-piece of…
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EFDSS Broadside Day Part 1
At the end of February, I travelled up to Glasgow to speak at the English Folk Dance and Song Society’s Broadside Day at the Unviersity of Strathclyde. This is the first in a short series of posts about the day. Due to a series of unfortunate cricumstances, I didn’t reach Glasgow until 11am, so I…
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Review of Singing the News
I’m pleased to say that the first review of Singing the News appeared in the Folk Music Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society at the end of 2018. It was noticeable that the reviewer, David Atkinson, had read the book in detail, and I really appreciate the time he must have taken…
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Casual contracts and Precariarity
The UCU is currently running a questionnaire on casualisation and precarious contracts in the university sector. I filled in my return over lunch on the first day. Although it is meant to be anonymous, I decided that I would share some (although not all) of my responses. In places these have been edited in order…
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Print Culture on the MA
One of the pleasures of working at Lancaster has been putting together a new MA module on the early modern world. It is a small group of students who are very interested and engaged. After discussing what makes the early modern early modern (rather than medieval or modern) during our first session, our second seminar…
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Speaking to Schools
I do a lot of talks for Sovereign Education, speaking to groups of 6th form students on A level study days. But a couple of weeks ago I agreed to step in and speak for Lancaster Royal Grammar School’s History Society. They meet at lunchtime and there are members from the whole school community from…
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New Year
A busy start to the new year has meant that I haven’t had time to write any posts for the blog. I’ve been preparing my MA course for Lancaster, as well as the seminars for the Civil War course on which I’m teaching. Then there’s the marking – having finished one pile last week, another…
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Christmas
You might have noticed that there hasn’t been a post for a couple of weeks. Normally, I write a bunch of posts and then schedule them to come out over a few weeks. It’s easier that way, because I can set aside a chunk of time and write posts in bulk rather than having to…
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Fun Palaces
At the beginning of October, I took part in Lancashire County Library Service’s Fun Palaces event at Longridge Library, singing Tudor ballads for an hour to anyone and everyone. It was good fun, as I hope you can see from the videos below. I sang several songs, or at least, edited highlights of them. There…
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Starman
Just before the summer holidays, my son took part in his school summer concert. One of his contributions was a cover of David Bowie’s ‘Starman’, which he accompanied on the piano. He taught himself to play in just a couple of months, so here is a ‘proud mum’ moment. Quite an achievement.
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