Throughout my career, I’ve always had a very distinctive feeling at this time of year. You know that Autumn is in the air. The mornings are a little darker and a little cooler. The leaves beginning to turn. The “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” is upon us. Despite a careful reading of Keats’s poem,…

This blog is a week – to be more accurate, a week and a day – later.  I took a week’s leave last week. and we went away for a week of walking, cycling and exploring to a remote corner of Herefordshire.  We might have chosen a week of better weather, but it was nonetheless…

We are all beginning to move out into the world again. About ten days ago, I set off to Shirecliffe in north-east Sheffield for what was probably my first visit on behalf of the university for fourteen months. In Shirecliffe, the University has partnered with Save the Children, Sheffield City Council and Watercliffe Meadows School…

A couple of years ago, before the pandemic, I hosted a dinner for Hallam alumni who lived in an overseas city where I’d been doing a lecture tour. It was a great evening, drawing together Hallam alumni from several decades ago as well as very recent graduates. They all got on very well. At one…

I try to go for a walk early every morning – a half hour turn around the streets near home.  Although it’s an urban walk, as the mornings have got lighter, there are unmistakable signs of spring: bulbs in verges, trees coming into leaf and into blossom, birdsong.  It’s a reminder that behind the timetables…

On Monday 16 March 2020, a group of the university’s senior staff met in the Vice-Chancellor’s office to work through the changing coronavirus situation and emerging government guidance.  We knew the Prime Minister was to address the nation the next day.  We’d worked through information on students, courses and the campus, and had already made…

The most important and interesting ideas in politics and policy are abstract.  ‘Opportunity’, ‘equality’, ‘freedom’, ‘fairness’, ‘choice’, ‘quality’ and so on are all ideas which are powerful driving forces but need to be given context and meaning in order to make a difference to people’s lives and to society.  A good deal of policy disagreement…

There used to be a market for almanacs of predictions about the year ahead. Perhaps there still is. These almanacs were always frankly unbelievable, not simply because the future is by definition unknowable but because the predictions were always on the apocalyptic side – the way to sell these things is to veer towards the…

The 1970s were the apogee decade for Christmas hits: by turns cheesy, embarrassing and, very occasionally, memorable. They still get piped endlessly in shops each year. John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s was from 1971. The lyrics are far from Lennon’s best, but the song essentially begins with “So this is Christmas/And what have you done/Another…

Universities are complex organisations. Sheffield Hallam – 4500 staff and 32000 students – is the size of a small town. That remains true even if, over the past few months, the town has become a series of connected hamlets as we have all become used to working in radically different ways. Our core purposes may…