Five years on

It would appear that On boundaries is five years old. Given my readiness to hide away for periods of time and Reivers’ general unwillingness to communicate through the medium of words, it is a small miracle that we have managed to keep this blog going for a reasonable length of time and contribute to a number of debates, albeit in a small and rather quiet fashion (at times very quiet). Some posts are good, some are not and some are downright rubbish. There are, I think, several pieces which are as relevant now as they were then so to speak, and I want to highlight my selection below.  Reivers is also compiling a list. His will be more amusing, I promise.

It is important to remember, especially at the end of a long and tiring academic year, why we do research and, in my case, history. It’s exciting, and I hope I capture some of the wonder and excitement of looking at the past in this post about faces.

The nominal topic of this blog is boundaries, especially the boundaries between scientific and humanistic ways of thinking about life and scholarship. We are also interested in ways in which aspects of our own life cross boundaries. You’ll find one under faith at the end of this post, but here faith, the middle ages and modern life all collide. Reivers has been known to blog about the past, in this case King Alfred, and I’ve occasionally ventured into the realms of science.

It’s probably fair to say that I am better at blogging about conferences and the such like than Reivers. Most of the medievalists who blog tend to write up Leeds, Kalamazoo, the IHR seminars etc. but I haven’t seen any others on David Bates’ Ford lectures. These lectures are at the forefront of my mind for various reasons that I will write about later, but you can read about them by following the links here.

Scholarship, pedagogy and education in general are big topics, both on the blog and in life. In the light of the recent funding cuts to HE, then just about all the posts that we have written about our work could be highlighted, but in terms of explaining what it is we try to do, then Reivers’  post, ‘What is 2+2 4?’ from our first month blogging needs reiterating. Of course, the questions have changed somewhat. In these testing times, will the RAE/REF be put in its proper place by fees? Will we finally see a more balanced teaching and research role for academics?

What would life be without a rant or two? Now, I’m given to sudden explosions when I think people are being idiots, but in the lights of recent events, I’d have to pick this one. I’m still trying to think of a suitable medieval punishment for anyone who starts an argument with ‘Why should tax payers…?’ or ”As a tax payer…’.

After ranting, in the words of a colleague, we need to ‘calm the fuck down’, so finally, faith, hope and caritas (if I may stretch a definition).

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