November is an important time for war remembrance, at least in UK and other commonwealth countries. Two minutes silence falls every year on the ‘11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month’ marking the exact anniversary of the armistice that brought an end to world war hostilities in1918. The month is also… Continue reading Remembering and remembrance
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Seeing through other eyes: City twinning
I have covered more global themes on this blog but now something local. Coventry, where I live, has been putting on events as part of its UK City of Culture status. There is very little extra money associated with becoming a city of culture but it is a good boost for community arts around the… Continue reading Seeing through other eyes: City twinning
Book of the year
I spend so much time picking apart books and articles that it is a release to look back and think about what I had enjoyed reading this year, not necessarily something published in 2019 but just something I happened to read. In respect to big ideas I went back again to Michael Polanyi’s ‘Personal knowledge’… Continue reading Book of the year
Academic writing retreats: are they worth it?
The university in which I work puts on two-day writing retreat events – these are not residential but just an opportunity to work on something in a dedicated space, in the presence of colleagues all doing their own writing. I try to go to these when I can, I find I can concentrate better in… Continue reading Academic writing retreats: are they worth it?
It does not make the job very appealing
Although my work focuses on education and technology, rather than party politics, the book I enjoyed reading the most last year was Harriet Harman’s biography [1], or more accurately her reflection on a career as a leading Labour politician in UK. The book is largely about being a woman in a man’s world. Harman was… Continue reading It does not make the job very appealing
Graffiti and comment forums: An essentially social act gone wrong?
When I find myself disappointed by the tone of online comment forums my mind goes back to toilet graffiti. I am no expert, but there was, I think, a spike in interest in researching toilet (or what Americans might call ‘restroom’) graffiti in the 1970s and 1980s. It is not difficult to see why. Graffiti… Continue reading Graffiti and comment forums: An essentially social act gone wrong?
Football, schools and a changing world
Every year our research students put on a conference and the theme for this year was education in a changing world. For me one of the most obvious but far reaching features of this changing world is our interconnectedness. What happens faraway can have a resonance in ways that were not envisaged in the past.… Continue reading Football, schools and a changing world
Post-truth and a good argument
The term post-truth was, according to Oxford Dictionaries, the Word of the Year 2016. It was defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2016 In USA of course the term became widely used in the context of… Continue reading Post-truth and a good argument
Summer Reading
This being the summer period in UK, there is much in the review sections of the newspapers about what to take as holiday reading. My own suggestion is a short story by Julio Cortázar. Cortázar (1914 – 1984) was an Argentinian writer, who was born in Europe and spent a lot of time in France.… Continue reading Summer Reading
Interdisciplinarity and Education
Our research students are putting on an interdisciplinary conference on education [1]. This is something I very much welcome, but I don’t imagine it to be straightforward to get agreement on how or why education research should be an interdisciplinary undertaking. In my own case I came to education research around mid career through teaching… Continue reading Interdisciplinarity and Education
Michael Hammond 
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