Vitae Conference

Last week was the very enjoyable Vitae Conference. Lovely to spend time with colleagues who share the same pre-occupations and frustrations .

My stand-out moment was an address by George Walker on a project on how to improve the doctorate. It was not so much what he said as the way that he said it:- full of quiet humour and wisdom

Most attractive was his focus on improving ‘the doctorate’ by understanding it. What were the ‘habit of mind’ that were essential to researchers. Was there a pedagogy of research? Did ‘Faculty’ know and agree what they were doing with thier PhD students? Did they agree on the future of their discipline? (No).

Lovely phrases and ideas: Faculty are the ‘Stewards of their discipline’

They engaged in ‘Unnatural acts of self examination’ how resonant that is for those of us trying to get people to self-examine.

Scholarship segregated is scholarship impoverished.

One of the implications of interdisciplinarity is that you work with others whose knowledge you are unable to evaluate.

Notions of community – intellectual community. Students should not be apprenticed to a faculty mentor- but to several mentors.

I will be pondering these thoughts for a while – and they will help me in keeping focus in my training sessions this term.

Good session on the challenges of working with International staff.

Apparently, at Oxford 40% of academic staff are overseas citizens and <60% of PhD students. top country of origin at nearly 1500 academic researchers and teachers: China. USA surprisingly low at 510.

Newcastle seem to be developing a useful Careers Management framework for academic staff – Attendees at this workshop left in envy of the set-up there.

I went to a session exploring views on the assessment of skill devlopment training. Dubious but  -you know what they say: What does not get measured does not get done.

 

The senior civil servant got away with saying as little as possible a masterclass in the Sir Humphrey school of ‘opinion avoided’. That s their job, i suppose.

What else? Do we iunderstand the impact of digital scholarship form the OU? Answer: no.

The importance of continued research in non-research-intensive universities – a very political and persuasive case made here from Plymouth . 

The Peter Hawkins was OK -if you like that sort of thing which – on the whole I don’t. Squeezing balloons into a box might be a satisfying objective correlative – but it makes me feel uncomfortable.

Night mares – going into dinner with no special friend to sit with. I feel the fear and do it anyway. This tiem I avoided Stephen Tarling who has a wide array of party games and conundrums which make me feel extremely stupid ( a mirror or a distorting mirror?) though my King’s colleagues were on a table doing preciselty this sort of thing. They stayed long adfter everyone had departed.

Also the fear of blanking people whom I know well because I have terrible facial recall. Sorreeee

Failing to get a decent lunch on day 1. You had to mug the waiters to get a tiny pot of food. I now know what ducks feel like in ponds where breadcumbs are thrown.

Enough for now. These fragments I have shored against my ruin.