Dr Dave Hitchcock

Yes. There was a programme a while back called the "Canada Research Chairs" which did similar and I'll be honest, I've not seen anything collectively major come of that one either. I'd love to know the "stayed there" rates on those staff too, vs. how many jumped ship for a USA R1 (je regret rien)

Funding big research is good, no one should disagree. Funding it along the lines asked for by economic and industrial strategy is fine. But acting as if one or two bright sparks in Engineering is all it takes is a fundamental misunderstanding of how an innovation flows into an economy, from a lab.

The people envisioned by this programme might well want to leave the USA in particular, but they'd want to arrive to salary lines, lab sizes, job security, low teaching loads, and a fistful of grant dollars to guarantee not having to 'start over'. Most universities can only afford 1 or 2 such.

Canada's PM knows economics, but that makes it sad to see another attempt to either pick the research winners or poach them (bad R&D economics). These programmes almost never pan out the way policymakers desire and talent does not stay. Fund basic, early career, fundamental research, long term.

I guess that sweeps up some Minnesotans though, poor sods

all that work and you could have just gotten us to say we're "outraged about" something, dead giveaways galore

WINTER Term Card:

We are excited to share our seminar schedule for next term! Our slate of speakers cover a range of #18thc British history topics.

Registrations are now open (with paper abstracts) at the link below 👎

@ihr.bsky.social @ihrlibrary.bsky.social

www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

Miller: "There may be a new and less caustic side of Legrand emerging..."

Legrand: "First of all, how dare you? Secondly, being the point most thoroughly propinquant to my first, above, I must set out the ways in which, far from diminishing in my causticity, I am in fact endeavouring to become..."

waah, nthx! I've had a few types in my time but nothing like this.

Turns out our comparative law guy might literally be on a decades-long performative art quest, fleshed out and flourished with florid prose, to critique the foundational concepts of comparative law.

I will say one thing about this guy, he's fun to read about. If he was a character in a campus novel I'd probably read it and be rooting for to him get seriously injured in a mildly comic way and then have a damascene conversion as part of an inevitable, pathetically staged judgement of him.

This article also immediately answers the question of how the heck a 200-page rant masquerading as a 'review' even got published, it's because Legrand was involved in setting up said journal.

As pointed out by @dollyjorgensen.bsky.social there is in fact an entire article about how much of a jerk this Legrand guy is, from 2017. Let that be our reading for this day.
scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/wlufac/545/

OK now this I gotta read.

I think a very (c)rude marxist reading of the manufacturing of class tensions to obscure the structural nature of blocked aspirations gives us a lot here! But I'm also about 300 years from my comfort zone and an adult immigrant to the UK to boot, so

One of the many reasons AI can't produce good writing is it can't hate its own writing. It can't think to itself "Maybe I'm illiterate" during the writing process. And that's essential

Job Opportunity at the University of Kent: Postdoctoral Research Associate Are you passionate about early medieval Britain?  Do you have advanced knowledge of Old English and proficiency in Medieval Latin?  If yes, then you may be interested in this fixed term full time post...

The ad for the second postdoctoral position on our @leverhulme.ac.uk Britain’s Early Medieval Letters project is now live. We’re looking for an Old English specialist (who also works with Latin). 32-month FT post. Deadline for apps is 16 Jan 🙂 jobs.kent.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

No no, I simply must finish my 200 page review of a very short introduction to comparative law, this is my service to scholarship, this rubicon they... shall not cross, they shall not pass &c

Perhaps you could consider... teaching some actual breathing students or something? Maybe try on a minor administrative role of some kind. I know I know, how shameful of me to propose such a banal use of one's TIME as a DISTINGUISHED ASSHOLE at the SORBONNE

Well, I think I found the problem guys.

maybe they're there to ram home the point

It's not a thing I talk about a lot, but last year I went through the *whole* process one can go through when it comes to being made redundant. I am still in post. I have no idea if my experiences are useful to others going through the same now, but if they might be, and you want to talk, reach out.

Ongoing decimation of British universities part 252:

Apx. 1000 academic staff at University of Essex just received formal ‘risk of redundancy’ letters via email.

Please share @ucuessex.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk

Oh Lucy what a nightmare, I'm sorry.

Nearly a third of university 18-year-olds will live at home According to figures from Ucas, a record 89,510 18-year-olds with university offers plan to live at home when they begin their studies this autumn

One of the reasons that emergence of ‘cold spots’ of subject provision matters: 52% of 18 year olds from the most disadvantaged backgrounds (the most deprived quintile in the Indices of Multiple Deprivation) plan to live at home when they go the university
www.thetimes.com/article/22cc...

SKULL OF THOMAS AQUINAS: TAKE A LEFT NOW
PRIEST: No, the GPS says we have to keep going—
SKULL: I KNOW A SHORTCUT
PRIEST: Do you remember the last ti—
SKULL: FOR THOSE WITH FAITH, NO EVIDENCE IS NECESSARY; FOR THOSE WITHOUT IT, NO EVIDENCE WILL SUFFICE

Image of slides showing schoolchildren (1944 or so) with full glasses of milk, smiling.

This evenings @royalhistsoc.org lecture is a tour de force on the history of free school meals, by Heather Ellis. What an incredible way to unpack emotion, education, poverty, and the purposes of the welfare state.

I particularly liked seeing a skill we train: source criticism, used, here, to unpack how cooked the 'data' in the 'AI jobs' report actually was. The report's definition of what we do, and what 'history' therefore can be, is pathetically, obviously, insufficient.

This is very good and goes in front of my MA students next term for sure. It's a lot better than the various medium posts I've written but it's reassuring to see so many people arrive at the same answer after checking. No, AI is not capable of "replacing" historians. Not even close, wrong timezone.

This new 'who does what' #REF2029 bit of the unit submission is interesting. It's year by year in the whole period. I think I welcome this move. New institution statement being 60% is also interesting.