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Thursday 27 March 2014

Connections

My PhD has grown from the work I'm involved with at the BSU Archive, and there are days when the two things are so intertwined that I lose sight of the goals slightly.
However, there are other days when this is a great help. 

Here's an example: We have established contact with Anne, daughter of the College head gardener in the 1950s, and her good friend Bill, who is Mary Dawson's nephew. Bill used to spend holidays with his Aunt Alice (her full name was Alice Mary Dawson) 

The two have been friends since their childhood days in the 1950s, when they had the run of the Newton Park grounds. During the meeting we had a couple of weeks ago, they reminisced happily about playing in the ice house, boating on the lake and exploring together.

Beyond this initial meeting, both Anne and Bill have offered further help. Bill has family photographs and information about his aunt, the sight of which will allow me to build up a fuller picture of her in situations away from her professional life as College Principal. 

Anne, a former teacher herself, is a keen family historian with access to further sources through her own college. She attended the Froebel Education Institute in London, where Miss Dawson had links, and on her recommendation. The Institute had connections with Whitelands College (Miss Dawson's previous job had been as education tutor there.) Both were later incorporated into Roehampton University. 

True to her word, Anne has forwarded census data, birth certificates and teacher registration documents, using her Ancestry UK membership. In addition, she has made personal contact with the archivist at Roehampton; something I had tried last year to no avail. 

So getting in contact with these two people has proved enormously helpful already. Its exciting to speculate where their contributions will lead me next. 
 
Alice Mary Dawson and her family, on the 1911 Census
sent to me by Anne 


Sunday 16 March 2014

Catching the thoughts...

Through the tunnel
thoughts rush along, to one point of illumination which reveals a perfect thought, phrase, opening sentence, chapter heading or even, as once happened, a perfect paragraph - seen in clarity - such clarity that you could never imagine losing it.

Fail to catch it there and then, however, and it disappears like smoke.
On other days, the thought tunnel is clogged, fogged, duvet-filled and impossible to work through. Instead I begin to think about dinner preparations, whether I left the iron on, or what members of the family are doing.Thoughts drift...

Monday 10 March 2014

Stringency, standards and the bigger picture

Recently I was given the opportunity to sit on a Periodic Review panel, as part of the university's wide-ranging quality assurance programme.

This took place over four intensive days, and featured a series of meetings and visits to review the academic provision of one particular school. Of the nine members of the panel, three had a direct connection with the field, and the rest of us were a range of other subjects and roles.

The chair and head of quality assurance impressed me through their professional, efficient and good-humoured approach to a very demanding programme. All meetings kept to time, and were highly focussed on the task in hand, namely, to assess the academic, practical and organisational provision of courses in the department. The end result, using the expertise of the whole panel, was a thoughtful analysis of the four days' investigation.

My perspective was that of a student of Bath Spa University, and drew on the past few years of my experience at this institution. This has included undergraduate and postgraduate work, and covers multi-site and cross-disciplinary study, as well as an appreciation of the needs of many ages and types of students.

The experience of working on the panel has been invaluable, as well as serving to contextualise my own work and knowledge. I've been able to reflect on my own practice, whether that includes studying, researching, mentoring or teaching, and to appreciate where this all fits into the bigger picture of university life as a whole.

Academics are often accused of working too much within their own fields; of 'silo' mentality. Working as I do across the spectrum of History and Heritage (I have a degree in each) this has been a frustration to me on several occasions, and I continue to include myself in both camps. I find this useful, as it widens my perspective in a number of ways. These four days on the panel have shown me more reasons why this introversion might occur, why it is difficult to change, and also why it should change. Academics have a lot to offer one another, not least the opportunity to reflect on excellent practice. We need to know what works, why, and how it could be even better.