So this is where I'm going to wreak my magic from today: I've just started as "Impact Development Officer" in the Humanities Division of Oxford University. Wish me luck!
Things that will not save your job either:
- you are really good at it & love doing it.
- you jumped through every hoop (REF, TEF, NSS, whatever).
- you always went the extra mile to support students, colleagues and the community.
- you think that university is a common good.
If there's anything I learned during the past days, it's this: Don't wait for something horrible to happen to tell people that you value them, that you respect their work, that you share memories, that they are brilliant colleagues and friends. Just do it anyway.
#Solidarity
@kakape
@Nick_Wellings
On the plus side, maybe the monkeypox spread finally raises awareness in the global North that it takes a global effort to fight diseases when and where they arise, not just once they inconvenience rich nations.
Academics rarely have internal ways to hold management to account, since most universities have abolished senates & are led by bureaucrats in life-long posts, rather than academic in rotating roles. So going public often feels like the last resort if managers are not listening.
Should academics be free to publicly criticise their own institutions and managers/administrators without career consequences? Tell us in our Academic Freedom Survey
@GaspardWinckler
Good for the
@nationaltrust
! I've had enough of people moaning about how the NT are doing historical research and conservation, just because they can't cope with unflattering history!
@TomBewick
@martinrsmith
As these will be people paying quite substantial taxes, they are actually cross-subsidising these services for the large swathes of the homegrown population who are tax-inactive.
I'm going to miss the music team. Of course I'm still in Oxford, so will see them again soon, hopefully, but we won't be the music team anymore. Thanks everybody for the good times, and for sticking together during the bad times.
No wonder people prefer to believe that "classical" music is fusty-dusty. The misery of the music section in a well-appointed book store: one bookcase on "classical" music, which contains only popular surveys by famous names, and a handful of biographies of the usual suspects: 1/
Clearing out my office, I'm putting the books to which I have contributed over the years on one shelf before they go in the box. It could have been worse, I guess.
It is with great sadness that I report the death of Prof Manfred Hermann Schmid. Anybody who worked on Mozart knows his work, everybody else should read at least his genius introduction to Mozart operas. His Wagner writings were most refreshing. A great loss for the discipline.
I'm really heartbroken - the School of Arts finally returns to the Humanities, and I'll be made redundant at the very point that I could take up again the connections with my colleagues in History, History of Art and Drama, which were severed 10 years ago.
We are calling a Branch meeting for this Friday to discuss the communication and proposals from the management about restructuring and portfolio review. The VCG’s plan is to reduce management costs by reducing the number of Faculties from 4 to 2. (1/3)
@hm_voss
I would be really wary of any researcher who, one year into a big project, already knows what's going to happen. That would indicate serious lack of imagination! I found the main "hook" for my PhD thesis 4 years after completion, when I rewrote the intro for publication.
It was an honour to give my first ever keynote at the Medieval & Renaissance Music Conference in Granada - on the topic of "Dissolutions" (very cheerful!). Thanks to
@ascmaz
& Tess Knighton for the invitation, to Laurie Stras for chairing, and to so many colleagues for coming!
@shona5000
@CaptainKim
Churches have always been safety nets - that was one of Christianity's USPs in its first centuries. But I know what you mean - charity & charities should only be necessary for emergencies, not for keeping people alive in a dignified way.
I'm very happy that I'll be able to focus on writing my long-planned book "Cloistered voices: music in monasteries in early modern Germany, 1555-1632", thanks to a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship.
@britac_news
#nuntastic
@hl_murray
@GoingMedieval
As many have said before: I can't even make my students include page numbers in their footnotes or read a 20-page article between lectures. Never mind political indoctrination.
@superduckhunter
@arthistorynews
@doctor_oxford
That's not correct. The point of lockdowns was to play for time and delay infections until vaccines were introduced and treatments found that did save lives.
@_AaronL__
Still waiting for the judges to say at least one critical thing about Angela Rippon's peformances. Why do they fawn over her, when much better dancers get a barrage of criticism?
#StrictlyComeDancing
Went to see "Fidelio" in Augsburg tonight; the theatre is still being renovated and performances take place in a former industrial compound. Audience of all ages, with many 20- and 30-somethings; attire from hoodies to evening gowns. So much for "opera is elitist" and "old"!
I think bringing back a place where staff can socialise, have a decent lunch or could meet over a coffee to catch up on new projects _in peace & quiet_ would do more for staff morale than all other initiatives put together.
3) Like many others, I think it also made me recognise how much we've lost as universities - the loss of SCRs where we can meet and interact, the loss of time to actually think, the loss of community under the leadership of pseduo-CEOs...
Großes Kompliment an
@DieMaus
und
@WagnerFestival
für die fantastische Sendung "Wie macht man eine Oper?" Super-informativ für Opern-Neulinge, unterhaltsam für Profis, und tolle Musik von Wagner und Maus - hat großen Spaß gemacht!
#bayreutherfestspiele
Thank you! I arrived in 2002, after having been an exchange student in 1997/98. I invested a lot of time and effort in this country, and its education system, just to be told in 2016 that I'm here on sufferance.
#AlreadyNotFine
Today my heart goes out to all dear friends who went out to study in the UK back in the 90s and decided to invest their lives & careers there as young EU citizens in a progressive country. What they're going through almost 25 years on is disgraceful
#BrexitChaos
#AlreadyNotFine
@SuzanneEvans1
As a Christian, I don't see anything on that lanyard that would strike me as problematic. Maybe you should check in with your spiritual adviser, parish priest, pastor, confessor or the New Testament?
@TanjaBueltmann
@Tesco
I wore a mask to the shops when I had a bad cold, and nobody said anything. Seems like that security person was seriously overreaching.
Answer: Because quartet players who all play from Western notation actually read the same "language". (Never mind that musical notation isn't a language, and that Western music certainly isn't universal, but hey, you're a scientiest so don't let get facts in your way.)
A quartet knowing not a word of each other’s languages can sit down together and make beautiful music. How come musical notation is so much more universal than language? We can’t even agree on a standard for electric plugs. Or drive on the same side of the road. Why music?
The absolute professionalism of the dancers, singers and acrobats who performed these intricate routines in the pouring rain, and the sound and light engineers, camera people and technicians who supported them! What a showcase for the
#arts
!
#openingceremony
@stene1978
@Richardmassey82
@SusanSt51
Friends, colleagues, neighbours, playmates are great. But the government, the media and many random people who like to vent their spleen have made it very clear that non-Brits are not welcome anymore. We used to be here based on a reciprocal right, now we are here on sufferance.
@NeedlesslyWordy
Even a "smattering" is evidence. There's only a "smattering" of kings and emperors in history, but that's not a reason to leave them out.
@GeeDee531182184
@Otto_English
My evidence is a report commissioned by the government. Your evidence is your gut feeling that you envy educated people and want to send them to the wall. I rest my case, GeeGee.
This country’s greatest moments came when we showed courage, not when we appeased.
Friends and colleagues tell me to appease Brexit voters. I say we must not patronise them with cowardice. Let’s tell them the truth. "You were sold a lie."
#MeaningfulVote
#BrexitVote
@lea_ypi
@DarwinCollege
@spectator
He should come to my lectures: I'm blond, overweight and frumpy, so he could listen undistracted to my paper on nuns (!), and he can complain about dowdy women academics afterwards. Win-win!
On my way to London to give a lecture-recital with the fabulous emsemble
@stileantico
featuring music for (Margaret of Austria, Mary I, Elizabeth I) and by women (Casulana, Aleotti, Cesis and Suor Leonora d'Este). It's going to be a
#nuntastic
event!
@PeterMandler1
Strictly speaking, you don't rewrite the past, you rewrite the history, or even the historiography (the way history is written). It's a problem that "history" can mean both "what's in the past" and "what we know / think about it".
@BongosForKevin
@vmochama
@Chinchillazllla
Oh yes, we can. If students want to cheat rather than learn, it's not my problem. Like me fixing my step counter to my hamster isn't my personal trainer's problem.
@GaryLineker
Me too. The one where English hooligans booed another country's national anthem, booed their own team for taking the knee, and calling a crying child a Nazi c*. I hope your dream was nicer.
At a time when history books, events and documentaries are immensely popular, and when there are passionate debates about the interpretation of the past on every (social) media outlet, it is unacceptable how universities shirk their educational duty to the public.
#history
I always said in the run-up to this disaster that we'd lose 20%-30% of all university History posts in the country, perhaps a few more. Being completely borne out in reality. 😖
where you can find quite specialised stuff about post-Roman Britain, mughal India or Germany in 1923, alongside the inevitable time travellers guides and "a day in the life of". As a music historian, I really wonder why I should bother writing anything. /rant over.
@LaLeggeBastiat
@jathansadowski
Thuringia and Saxony have low levels of immigration, which is exactly why it's so easy to whip up hate against newcomers in those areas.
On our way to the polling station, our boy bumped his head. Luckily our local GP surgery was still open, so we could drop in immediately, and now he has magnificent plastic stitches. All done for free and with good humour at the end of a long day for the doctor.
#SaveTheNHS
For those interested in 19th-century reception of
#earlymusic
, my chapter about "Josquin in der bürgerlichen Musikgeschichtsschreibung des 19. Jahrhunderts" has just been published in the TroJa series. Access for free at
#josquin
#reception
#musichistory
On my way to London to "Discover the Ring"
@TheRoyalOpera
. I will participate in panels on "Wagner's women" and "Is there anti-Semitism in the Ring" - wish me luck!
@ResearchTDE
@ObertoBrookes
Today I'll give a paper for the Friends of the Bodleian Library, on "Spoils of the Secularisation: monastic music sources in the Bodleian Library". There will be many
#monktabulous
(and some
#nuntastic
) manuscripts and prints, plus live music examples!
@bodleianlibs
@ZareerMasani
@CharlesJSturge
Like you, I've got a DPhil from Oxford University. Petty jibes like yours are an embarrassment to the scholarly community there and damage the "Oxford brand".
On my way to Royal Holloway for my guest lecture on "Infirm Singers and Dyslexic Dominicans: Negotiating Disability in Late-Medieval and Early-Modern Monastic Institutions".
#nuntastic
#monktabulous
This is nonsense - universities STARTED with imparting thinking, writing and problem-solving skills when they became a thing in the Middle Ages (trivium, anybody?). They were turned into job-skills providers in the late 19th and 20th centuries.
“Universities are shifting focus from simply imparting job-specific knowledge to nurturing critical thinking, communication and problem-solving abilities – skills that empower students to adapt” - Urbi Ghosh looks at how HE needs to evolve
#THECampus
Laurie Stras reports on her discovery of Brumel's Lamentations in Florentine sources - an extensive cycle with an intricate dramaturgy and a keen sense of loss and desolation.
#MedRen2019
I have just added my voice to the backing chorus for the music department at Royal Holloway. Today is the day if you want to support our friends and colleagues!
We have an impressive portfolio of letters of support and protest from around the world (alumni, students, musicians, colleagues in HE). If you haven't written in and feel able to do so, there's still time to send. Full text of our statement here:
Very refreshing to hear a leading politician talk about Beethoven, Shostakovich and Schubert knowledgeably and with love for their music - and well done for batting back the perennially stupid elitism question. Let's hope this translates into more support for music & education!
My former colleague Craig is manning the music stall at the Open Day, because it is important that
@oxford_brookes
will still have a choir, orchestra and music ensembles in the future. That is dedication, and the University should appreciate it more!
#HelloBrookes
@BrookesUCU
We are here in the Forum. Come and talk to us about our thriving musical culture at Brookes and all the ensembles and societies you can join.
#thisisbrookes
#keepbrookesmusicalive
@w_carruthers
Nor can today's PhD students know what it was like in the 2000s. But of course they'll assume that it was easy, and that they are the only ones who've run into difficulties over their project, or life, or stuff.
Proud of my colleagues Matt and Craig, who have been nominated for the Brookes Union's teaching awards! At least the students respect and appreciate your fantastic work ...
It is somewhat bittersweet that music lecturer Dr Matt Lawson and music director Craig Prosser have both been nominated for the Brookes Union teaching awards. Nonetheless: fingers crossed!
@BrookesUnion
@brookes_ucu
@oxford_brookes
Chopin, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Vaughan Williams. Only book about a woman Florence Foster Jenkins. Nothing about a place, an institution or a genre (apart from two Cambridge Companions). No *serious* history that would challenge comfy stereotypes. 2/3
I was only 13 when the Berlin Wall came down, but I understood completely how important it was for the GDR citizens not only to travel freely, but to work and live wherever they wanted or needed. People died for this fundamental right.
#GermanUnity
#deutscheeinheit
#brexit
@chrisgreybrexit
Happiness isn't an argument that should carry any weight. Let's stop Brexit and everybody who's unhappy about that gets a free hankerchief.
I guess government won't be impressed until there are 17.4 million signatures, but let's give it a try: Revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU.
#Article50
#stopbrexit
My last lecture today for the next 15 months focused on nuns and their music, featuring
@SuorAnonima
's lovely "Felix namque". Very fitting start to a year when I can devote time to my book on monastic music!
#nuntastic
@AndrewGant3
Broad Street should be like the piazza in Siena or the Rynek in Wrocław - a space where people want to spend time in nice surroundings. Get the cars out and create sitting opportunities where one doesn't have to pay for an overpriced coffee.
@Utilit_Aria
If arts funding is cut, it won't translate into better housing and social services (that seems to be your pitch). This is not how this government - who hate the arts and despise the poor - operates.