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
In praise of Kazuo Ishiguro
Last week the Nobel prize for literature was awarded to the writer Kazuo Ishiguro - Ishiguro was born in Japan but grew up, and continued to live, in England, and took UK nationality. The news of his award was covered widely in the papers and on television and Ishuguro himself appeared well regarded by his… Continue reading In praise of Kazuo Ishiguro
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
Photography and social research
I have often felt in doing research that I have missed out on using photographs, but when it comes to it I am not sure what an image tells us. Or rather my suspicion is, to borrow a phrase from Ryle [1], that an image gives you a ‘thin’ description’, it shows you what is… Continue reading Photography and social research
Language learning: a thing of the past?
Language classes started again at our university and I have re-enrolled at intermediate German. From a technology point of view why bother? Online translation programmes are free and efficient and speech recognition has improved to such an extent that there is frequent talk of mobile translation devices that can really work [1]. In fact progress has… Continue reading Language learning: a thing of the past?
Looking Back: Herbert Marcuse
I attended a conference on computer interfaces the other week. This provided a mix of the stimulating and not so stimulating, but above all it was a break from education based research. There I found unexpectedly frequent references to the Frankfurt school [1] including one reference to Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man [2]. ODM was published… Continue reading Looking Back: Herbert Marcuse
social theory
For the past few months I have been working with academic and student researcher colleagues on a project to produce an online resource about social theory. It has raised design questions but the most interesting aspect of the exercise has been talking to academic colleagues (again academics and research students) about the role of theory… Continue reading social theory
Imagined communities
I have recently been looking at discussion of online community and I have been struck by the extent to which writers (particularly in the early days of the Internet) tended to exaggerate the ‘newness’ or uniqueness of being online. For example, many saw a sharp divide between physical community (based on face to face interaction)… Continue reading Imagined communities
Michael Hammond 
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