It was winter in Australia. There had been high winds and rain for several weeks, but the weather had broken and the skies were a crisp blue, with frosty mornings – even if you are on the other side of the world, you have to scratch your head a bit and get used to the…
Our new institute for global security is a model for avoiding dystopia. International collaboration on tackling global problems has never been more important, say Chris Husbands and John Dewar The threats are huge, and they are growing. The technological revolution, which brought such huge advances in connectivity and communication, now feels intimidating. Our computers fill…
Philip Larkin’s poem The Trees begins with one of his most famous lines ‘The trees are coming into leaf/Like something almost being said’. It goes on to mark, with characteristically Larkin-esque uncertainty, the endless cycle of the seasons: ‘Is it that they are born again/And we grow old? No, they die too,/Their yearly trick of…
Last week the Chancellor of the Exchequer made his annual budget speech. The government, and the nation, face a challenging economic outlook. Brexit has reduced the size of the economy by something like 4% – if that doesn’t sound much, it’s actually about £140 billion a year. Unanticipated high inflation – in part, though not…
This week, the University is announcing one of the most significant strategic developments in its history, a development which will be transformational for the University and the communities with which it works. We are announcing the opening of our new campus in London. Over the next decade, the Hallam London campus will become an integral…
Last week, I spoke at two all staff briefings, setting out the university’s strategy and priorities as we emerge from pandemic restrictions. This week’s blog summarises my presentations, a recording or which can also be viewed by colleagues within the university. Two years on from the arrival of Covid-19, the world has changed in ways…
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…
I’ve written about my dad in this blog before. He sadly died last year, a few months after his ninetieth birthday. He had left school in 1941 when he was fourteen. He worked first for a small engineering company and then, after national service, for most of his working life in a textile factory. I…
I’m writing from Australia, where I am a few days into a fortnight of working abroad for the University. In this blog post, I want to explain what I’m doing. Universities are rooted in place. The first thing I spotted about Sheffield Hallam when I came to look around before my interview for the job…
Sitting at the back of a cupboard, we’ve got several boxes full of very old 35mm slides – most of them accumulated when we had to clear out my parents-in-laws’ house. They are a fairly defunct technology now, but it turns out that you can buy slide scanners which convert the slides into picture files…