Monday 21 July 2014

Research, sport, research, sport

So, summer has been full of excitement so far. The past few weeks have been full of sport chez Warden: football, golf, cricket. A certain gentleman (D) wearing a Mario Gotze Germany shirt was extremely happy with the final World Cup result.

What have we been up to? We've seen both sets of parents and enjoyed BBQs and just hanging out. Living pretty far away from our families means that when we do catch up it is always super fun.

In other news: we signed off all the marks and students received their results. Happiness seemed to be the over-riding emotion of our third years. We enjoyed our research day away on the 7th. Our department has five research groups: I organise the one on Popular Performance. Lots of interesting projects in the pipeline. And I enjoyed a jolly trip to London to participate in my PhD student's performance project. This was the second time we have ventured out to the Olympic Park to take part in this and we had a great day: certainly warmer than the last time we did it!

Apart from this, we've both been working hard in the lead up to our summer trip. The final weeks of July are all about clearing the decks. Often it means pretty long days. My research summer has been going pretty well. After starting with hugely ambitious plans to write a load, I realised that actually the best way I could use summer was to plan the whole book. This has meant days of thinking where I have been disappointed at my lack of words. However, today I finished my final book plan and I am delighted with it. I really feel I've got a strong project now. Cue relief...lots of relief. I've also been writing short articles, sorting out guest editorships for journals and filling in funding forms,  as well as writing my paper for the TaPRA conference coming up once we're back from holidays. All in all I'm pretty happy with the way the research is going.

I've also spent a good deal of time thinking about future goals and plans. Funnily enough I still work from September to September so am more likely to make 'new year' resolutions in September than in January. I've been enjoying a mixed exercise regime and am hoping to ramp this up in the new term, perhaps take on a really big challenge...but that is for the future.

In the meantime, I hope everyone is having a terrific summer whatever you are doing: a bit of work and a bit of play.

CSW

Tuesday 1 July 2014

A great conference

Howdie friends!

So, last week I had the great pleasure of heading down to London and presenting at the British Association of Modernist Studies conference, 'Modernism Now!' It was such a great week of modernist scholarship - loads of lovely folks, some amazing research and a chance to sneak into the British library to do a bit of reading. This conference was all about updating historical scholarship and asking what it has to say to us today. This is one of my central enquiries right now so it was exciting to be at a conference that had this as the focus.

Apart from that, we've had a certain someone's birthday (he is pretty old but won't, unfortunately, ever be as old as me) and I did the 10K Race for Life at Clumber Park. Given that I am still getting back to fitness after my April illness, I was pretty chuffed that I completed it in a respectable (if not particularly speedy) time. It was a really nice place to run anyways.

The end of term came and went. Marks were signed off and all went well. It is lovely to now be deep into research time. I am spending long days reading, writing and thinking. This is one of my favourite months of the year. It is made all the better by the sunny weather, the little family of ducks who are still hanging around, the baby rabbits and (this morning) a bright green woodpecker sunning itself in the garden.

This week I have a few meetings and things, some writing to do and the great joy of the in-laws arriving at the weekend. Hoping for sunshine so we can BBQ.

Hope everyone is doing really well.
CSW