Marc Scully

I recall one evening a lad over from London wanted me to book him and his girlfriend into the VIP section of the trendiest nightclub in the city and just stared at me when I said, “err, I’m not sure such a thing exists in Cork”.

Yeah, the sudden ballooning in the size of tips are my main memory. Even the difference between working in a restaurant in 2003 (tips were handy extra money) and 2005 (the amount you’d take home in tips on a busy night would comfortably outstrip your actual wages) was notable.

A popular meme. A woman grimaces under the caption: “The first draft two months before the deadline” The same woman makes a more appreciative face under the caption: “The exact same draft the night before the deadline”

In my experience, it’s more like:

After writing the first draft: “This is … not good, but I’ve plenty of time before the deadline to fix it.”

**Teaching, admin and life intervene**

Revisiting the draft the day before the deadline: “Hmm. You know what, this is better than I first thought!”

⚠️ discourse alert

we are receiving reports that bluesky is currently experiencing severe discourse conditions. residents are advised to go outdoors and avoid replying to any post if the context is unclear. use extreme caution when looking at any comments.

Anyway, I don't have an official OA copy of the above, but you'll find it here on p.155, if you're so inclined.

Perhaps of interest is how Cornishness is constructed in relation to other 'Celtic' national identities, particularly Irishness : d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/61506630/Dis...

Not the Tamar?

Anyway, solid praxis, also applicable to the South Dublin railway line.

Always good fun to respond to people who say they’re taking a ‘four nations’ historical approach to a particular topic with “Ah yes. England, Scotland, Wales & Cornwall”.

Helpfully, one of my slightly more obscure publications, on discourses of Cornish identity at the Lowender Peran festival, addresses this: www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edi...

YouTube video by Virginia Braun Dr Braun(love) - or: how I learned to stop worrying and love GenAI (yeah nah)

Here's a talk I gave as a keynote for the BPS @qmip.bsky.social conference (July 2025) - the result of @vicclarke.bsky.social & I recognising we needed to "dive in" & grapple with the beast that is GenAI & qualitative/(reflexive) thematic analysis
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zFQ...

Ah, that’s wonderful.

Oh no. The loveliest of storytellers. He was my primary teacher. Still recall the smile and warmth behind a great beard. Would read us stories, some his own I guess, and say one day maybe he’d be a writer. Then one day I saw his name with Janet’s in a bookshop, and lit up like a child.

bert from sesame street is reading a book with a bird on it . Alt: bert from sesame street is reading a book with a bird on it and slowly raises his head with an expression of surprise

I think the moment the penny drops that the story being told in Peepo is that of a father’s last day on domestic leave before going back to fight in WWII is something of a parental rite of passage, right?

An illustration of two pages from the children’s book ‘Peepo’.

WRT the last repost: Allan Ahlberg RIP.

There was a wonderful thread on the previous place detailing the sheer amount of period-specific detail in Peepo that you may have missed even after reading it 100 times for your kids. I wonder is there any way of bringing it over.

a good children's book teaches toddlers to count to 3 and makes their mother google "how much was widows and orphans pension WWII officer poplar adjusted for inflation 2025 USD"

New variation on the Streisand Effect!

Join us and our fetching collection of academic robes by the banks of the broad, majestic Shannon for the 2025/6 academic year!

We promise:
- an atmosphere of collegial conviviality!
- friendly and engaged students!
- a rich cultural hinterland!
- free coffee!

#HEJobs #PsychSky

Himself: I don't understand why people are so worked up about there being no Irish authors on the Booker longlist.

Herself: Well, it'd be like if they announced the Hurling team of the year, and there were no Cork players on it.

Himself: What? Don't even say that. Why would they even do that?

If you're Irish, come into the parlour!

(Please first complete a 300 word abstract outlining how your research aligns with the goals of the parlour.)

Still jaundiced from the govt funded Big Diaspora conference that had a cfp along the lines of “we encourage all disciplinary approaches to the Irish diaspora! From historical studies of literature to literary studies of history and everything in between!”

(Minor paraphrase. But not that minor!)

Can’t link properly from Facebook but Gaelscoil Bhreifné in Cavan seem to have produced one last Christmas.

Anyone on #spéirghorm have any idea where I can find a cooking book as Gaeilge? Can be literally any type of food. Its something I would love to find but cant find anywhere (including siopa leabhar)

That sounds like the kind of thing gaelscoileanna or gaelcholáistí might compile for fundraising/charity purposes?

I remember Mick Billig saying to me once, à propos an attitude change experiment showing a statistically significant shift of 0.8 on a 7-point scale:

"But how many of them actually changed their minds?"

Whisper it, but one day it might be interesting if the government funded a post looking at British-Irish relations through a lens other than the historical...

The triumph of the aggregate and the hegemony of the binary.

So many conversations with students over the years who have an interesting topic to investigate but then tie themselves up in knots over "but I need a group to compare this to, though".
- Why?
- "Because that's what research *is*"!

Ah! I look forward to it.

Cf. psychology.

The first research skill we tend to teach our students is how to do a t-test. I wonder has anyone ever traced how that shapes students' subsequent understandings of what psychological research *is*.

*So* much research starts with difference-based questions and researchers' categories/assumptions - helping to feed or legitimise communication myths and stereotypes. But the evidence about what people say/do in actual non-lab non-post-hoc accounts of interaction shows something else entirely #EMCA