As the UK government lowers the Covid-19 alert level to 3 and more shops and businesses start to open their doors again, there is a sense that we are beginning to return to normal: the news over the last week, of crowded beaches suggests a suppressed desire for a traditional summer. But the reality is,…
If you ever believed that the world is not deeply intertwined, 2020 has disabused you. A virus is transmitted across species, almost certainly in a Chinese live animal market, and within a matter of months economies around the world are closed down in response to a global pandemic. A man is killed by police on…
Lockdown is now ten weeks old. Spring has slipped into summer; evenings have lengthened and the days have warmed: last week was glorious May weather. At Sheffield Hallam, as elsewhere, our minds are increasingly turning to the next season, to Autumn and to the new academic year. We announced last week that the university campus…
At least the weather has been good. Every day, after hours of zoom meetings, e-mail processing and document drafting, I’ve been able to jump onto my bike and cycle around the Mayfield Valley. I’ve seen the tiny lambs of late March grow, the grass become greener and lusher and the cow parsley shoot up. There’s…
We are all – in this and every other university – adapting quickly to a new way of working as the nation responds to the challenges posed by the Coronavirus. Just a fortnight ago, it was unclear what impacts the virus would have on the nation; just a week ago the Prime Minister asked everyone…
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…