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…
Universities, as I have already written, have proved their worth in the COVID-19 crisis, responding at speed not simply to their own students and research partners’ changed demands, but to the communities and the national effort. But there is a clear sense that the skies will darken once the immediate crisis abates. The concerns include…
Whether it’s Burberry switching production from trench-coats to non-surgical gowns, Christian Dior from perfume to hand sanitizers, or Formula One companies racing to produce ventilators, the efforts of so many organisations, big and small, in helping fight COVID-19 have been extraordinary. Universities – including Sheffield Hallam – are no exception. Universities have proved their worth…
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…
Last week, the Higher Education Policy Institute published a report written from Sheffield Hallam. The report, Making Universities Matter: how universities can help heal a divided Britain, was authored by Lord Bob Kerslake, the University’s chair of governors, Natalie Day, our head of strategy and policy, and myself. In the report, we set out a…
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…