My first degree was in history. One of the most difficult things in learning, and teaching, history is to avoid the trap of inevitability: the belief that what happened in the past was in some way bound to happen. It’s the belief that the great turning points of history were unavoidable: that the first world…
Of course you noticed: we tried to make sure that you couldn’t miss it. On Friday the University formally opened the Advanced Well-Being Research Centre. After five years of hard work, the handsome new building at Attercliffe is open. It could be the single most important investment anyone will make in the north of England…
For me, at least, it’s the human details. The single shoe, the pile of discarded spectacles. Seventy-five years on from the end of the Second World War, the sheer scale of the Holocaust is almost impossible to comprehend. Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. In the next decade, perhaps a little more, perhaps a little less…
All new years are in some way new beginnings, which is, I suppose, why so many of us begin them with new resolutions – despite the experience we have each year of failing to stick to them. So many of us will be beginning 2020 with good intentions to get fitter, to exercise more, to…
We are a few days before Christmas. You don’t have to be religious to find meaning in the Christmas story – a young couple far from home and in desperate need of shelter. This perhaps makes this a good time to write about Sheffield Hallam’s decision to sign a promise to expand its support for…
The election results are in. The political gridlock of the last three years – to which we had all become accustomed – is over. The outcome is, if nothing else decisive. It’s far more decisive than I had hinted as a prediction in my blog just after the election was called. We now have not…
Like Christmas, graduation comes but once a year, and, like Christmas, never fails to be engaging in all sorts of ways. It is, of course, an enormous logistical exercise designed to produce flawless occasions: it is essentially a two-week run of performances to full houses at Sheffield City Hall with a shifting repertory cast. I’m…
The General Election will take place on the 12th December. It’s going to be a long six weeks running through the shortening days of the Autumn: a season of vicious political debate, a fair amount of mendacity and, doubtless, numerous twists and turns. The nation is deeply divided. There are deep political, economic, social, cultural…
It was badged as ‘Super Saturday’: the day on which Parliament made a definitive decision about the Prime Minister’s negotiated deal with the European Union. That might have meant that Brexit would be almost over, or that the difficult discussions were just beginning. Which of these judgements you make on Brexit probably depends on your…
The campus has come alive again. Students are spilling out of lecture theatres, seminar rooms and informal study spaces. The campus feels busy and engaged; teaching has begun and students I’ve talked to in the cafes, lifts and corridors are already feeling enthused about their studies. A new academic year is underway. On Friday 27…