We all understand the relationships between physical activity and wellbeing. As Sheffield Hallam’s Steve Haake, Director of the Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre, puts it, it comes down to a simple proposition about more people moving more, more often. But physical wellbeing is also intimately connected with mental wellbeing. Thursday 2 March is University Mental Health Day…
I’ve worked in Sheffield for just over a year now – I’m still a newcomer – and perhaps I will be for a very long time! I came to Sheffield to lead what is one of the UK’s largest universities. Sheffield Hallam teaches more than 31,000 students at any one time. It educates young people…
There are almost endless numbers of books and business school courses on strategy, but, really, strategy comes down to two very simple questions – what do you want to do, and how are you going to make sure you do it? Last week, Hallam’s Board of Governors signed off the University’s reshaped strategy – setting…
Desiderius Erasmus was born in the late 1460s, probably in Rotterdam. When he died in 1536, he was one of the most feted humanist scholars of his age. He had studied and taught at Paris, Turin, London, Cambridge, Leuven and Basel, moving easily across Europe which – in the course of his lifetime – was…
The great sociologist and social entrepreneur Michael Young had a reasonable claim to be one of the most influential shapers of contemporary Britain. In 1945, he wrote the Labour Party manifesto, which paved the way for the establishment of the NHS, the post-war Welfare State, public ownership, the National Parks and the new towns. In 1958, his…
If you stand on the hill behind Sheffield rail station – near the memorial to the victims of the 1832 cholera epidemic – and look across the city, Sheffield Hallam University dominates the centre of the city. Without it, there would be a large hole in the city centre. Universities do this to their cities.…
To be honest, Friday evenings are not normally the most energizing time of the week. At the end of a long and tiring week at work, they are normally a time to flop out, hoping there’s enough in the fridge to make something to eat. So it was very good to have a different Friday…
Those who work closely with me know of my tendency to draw on The West Wing as a frequent source of quotations and parallels. A recent survey of the best TV drama series rated it eleventh – above The Wire but (wrongly in my view) below Mad Men. If you are not familiar with it,…
It’s coming to the end of my first year as Vice-Chancellor. As I reflect on the year that’s been, I wanted to thank each of you for your contribution to my first year as VC and to think about what’s ahead: Thank you to the many Sheffield Hallam staff, students and colleagues from elsewhere who…
You can bring logic into every situation. How does Father Christmas manage to deliver presents to every child in the world over one night? Tom Chivers is a man with too much time on his hands, and calculated that if we assume that Santa has to travel 342,510,000 km on Christmas Eve, and that he…