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…
I remember a leadership development programme I participated in. We’d been talking about difference, about leading teams made up of people of different temperament, approach, background, heritage, culture. ‘What’s the difference’, asked the facilitator, ‘that makes a difference?’. In one sense, it’s just a clever phrase but Chris Seeley, who lead this discussion, was superb.…
Look very carefully and you might spot some new arrivals on campus this week. New, and appropriately heart-shaped lapel badges will appear as a visual symbol of our Heart of the Region campaign, celebrating the importance of Sheffield Hallam University to Sheffield and South Yorkshire. We are, as a university, at the heart of this…
There is a rhythm to the year which is recognisable, sometimes reassuring – we all feel good about the familiar – and sometimes mildly irritating – time cannot fly by that fast, surely. So the Easter eggs appear in the shops as the Christmas decorations are put away – squeezing the Valentine’s cards in between…