Battle Conference 2008 report

It’s the day after the conference for five days before. The fact that I am exhausted, but more than content with life will tell the seasoned conference goers reading this that the 31st Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman studies was superb; the best conference I have been to in fact. I expected to hear some very well-argued papers; enjoy some stimulating conversation; and perhaps walk the battlefield at dusk, but I didn’t expect to play Jenga in the dark. More of that after giving you some idea of what was discussed.

The many levels of explanation

A few weeks back I spent a few days trying to explain the work that we do in my field. As we do this all the time, it’s usually not a big deal. But at the Royal Society Summer Exhibition, one minute you’re explaining to school children and the next to a Nobel laureate. How do you explain effectively whilst keeping faithful to the science?

Textile Conservation Centre: no help from the government

I have blogged previously about the imminent closure by the University of Southampton of the Textile Conservation Centre at Winchester School of Art, and exhorted people to sign the petition. The government has made its response and a, frankly, unhelpful one it is too.

IMC Leeds 2008 report

The International Medieval Congress 2008 will be memorable for two things in particular: rain and cloves. It was the wettest Leeds for a good few years and it did cut down on the opportunities for catching up and bumping into people on the grass. As for the cloves, more of them later.

Looking forward to Battle 2008

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned that I was also looking forward to attending the Battle conference on Anglo-Norman studies, which will be held later this month. Rumour has it that this will be the last time for a while that Pyke House (bordering the site of the actual Battle of ‘Hastings’ will host the conference, so it looks like the conference may be moving into a new era.

Today I got angry and joined the Fawcett Society

I am down right fed up and angry today. The anger isn’t a sudden thing, it has always been there, but today I read something in the Guardian that brought it back into the open. I have always described myself as a feminist, ever since I became political animal. For that reason ‘I’m not a feminist, but …’ are five of the most depressing words to be found in sequence in the English language, especially when used by my students, who seem to think all the battles have been won and think we live in a ‘post-feminist society’. On top of that, there has been a steady drip, drip of worrying news for women, particularly in relation to pregnancy, employment rights and opportunities for women in minority groups, but equally insidious is the rise of ‘raunch culture’ and its knock on effects. Just after Christmas, the Guardian published a small piece in its ‘Women’ section on ‘Random acts of feminism‘ that kept me smiling for a couple of days, largely because I’d turned round all the lads mags in the service station shop on the way to my parents for Christmas. However, such small acts of defiance have never been enough and after another semester of female students using what I now refer to as ‘five words banned in sequence’, combined with an atmosphere of sexism in the archery club Reivers and I attend that, at times, has made me feel incredibly uncomfortable, and latent (not so latent?) misogyny in other areas of my life, I have joined the Fawcett Society and will be encouraging other men and women of my acquaintance. I think I will also buy a job lot of Jackie Fleming cartoon postcards and distribute them around the place (particularly the archery club).