Helen Smith
@conversiontales
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Following
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Professor, @UoYEnglish . Opinions mainly culled from the dustier corners of the sixteenth century.
University of York, UK
Joined March 2011
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Last Seen Profiles
Proofs. And now that I have reached peak title, I guess it's time to start planning my retirement.
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Repeat after me: if you bring students from all over the UK (and beyond) and put them together in halls of residence, it is not okay to blame *them* when they contract Covid-19.
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Your regular reminder that when a manuscript is in a library, catalogued, available on microfilm *and*, in this case, published in facsimile it has not been 'discovered' by an academic, no matter how great their research is.
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'What is a PhD, mummy?'
'It's when you're interested in something and you learn lots and lots about it for a long time.'
*thinks*
'I've sort of done a PhD in dinosaurs.'
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I just feel that when they asked me to be Head of Department, they could have mentioned it would involve an email folder labelled 'Pandemic'.
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@LozzaFox
I really admire this. Takes a lot of guts to go from a stalled acting career, to a hopeless mayoral bid, to stone-cold comic genius. Well played.
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Delighted to share the news that
@UoYEnglish
is hiring! We're looking to recruit seven lecturers, six on permanent contracts, and one full-time for three years. I know I'm biased, but it's a wonderful department and a fantastic place to work!
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Fellowships are great. Residencies are great. But oh how I would love to see institutions embrace the challenge of making these open to people with caring responsibilities in a meaningful way.
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Please spread the word: six fully-funded
@UniOfYork
PhD scholarships for UK candidates who self-identify as being from a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic background. A fantastic opportunity to join us in lovely
@UoYEnglish
!
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If you are a private school, discrimination is at the heart of what you do. When universities take steps to recognise the merit and talent of those excluded from an elitist system, it is nonsense to complain of bias against the privately educated.
Selection must be on merit, says education pressure group Campaign for Real Education as 72.5% of new undergraduates at the university will be from state schools
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Thank you for your email. I have reverted to the age of the gentlemen scholar, and will be pondering great thoughts until noon. If your message is urgent, I will reply in June.
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I am writing a promotion application, and cannot shake the feeling that once I have written the line, 'I have been Head of Department during a global pandemic', I might be allowed to skip the remaining 59 pages...
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I was really upset to read yesterday's
@ucu
email from
@DrJoGrady
. It's not okay to ask colleagues to 'create work for your manager'. Managers too are tired. Managers too are overloaded. Most are working really hard to support colleagues in difficult circumstances.
#ucustrikes
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I am sure each individual prize is richly well-deserved, but the fact that six of this year's thirty Philip Leverhulme prizes have gone to academics at Oxford is the name of a problem.
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You know what's better than 3-year degrees? 4-year degrees. Why do we want to rush students through what can and should be a transformative experience?
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Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson.
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I'll be on the picket lines next week as part of the
#UCU
strikes. Please don't forget how much of a difference collective action has made to you and your working life -- whether you're a member of a union or not.
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Okay, hear me out. What if Jacinda Ardern says that *she* won the US election, and we all just run with it?
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It's University Mental Health Day! To support wellbeing among staff and students, try these simple exercises:
- don't issue zero hours contracts;
- close your institution's gender and BAME pay gaps;
- pay colleagues for the work they do. All of it.
#UCUstrike
#UCUstrikesback
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I'm sorry to be slow in responding to your belated reply to my very delayed response to your apology for my apology about my tardiness in getting back to you.
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I think we can all agree that what's really needed at this difficult time is me gloating in unseemly fashion about the late afternoon sunlight in my new study. Enjoy.
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Feel free to ask me to publish details of all my university-related expenses
@guardian
. I hope you'll also be running a story on the millions of pounds* academics pay out of our own pockets each year to fund our research and support our students.
*I mean collectively, obvs
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Loving the
@UniOfYork
advice: 'Set ground rules for those you may be sharing space with'.
Oh hi, let me introduce you to my 4-year old, middle name 'I laugh at your boundaries', currently working on her debut album, 'I've never met a ground rule I couldn't test to destruction'.
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Newsflash: universities are not fictional places. We and our students are real people living and working in the real world.
Personally, never thought of academics as 'experts'. No experience of the real world.
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I have written to
@UniBristol
letting them know that if they do not change their punitive actions in relation to ASOS I will be resigning as an external examiner, and will no longer recommend Bristol as a place to work or study.
#USSstrike
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Absurdly lovely: Keith Thomas on note-taking.
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Okay, so who would be interested in a printing / rare books / fine press summer school in beautiful York? And by interested, I mean either attending or joining the faculty / partnering up.
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UCU members: I feel somewhat ambivalent about the Marking and Assessment Boycott and not at all sure how to respond.
Universities: Here, let us remind you how little we value you and the extraordinary work you do and fill you with a towering and incandescent rage.
#UCURising
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Late to the outcry, but if you want to make GCSE English more manageable for students facing huge disruption don't drop poetry. Stop making them memorise it, stop treating it as an exercise in literary trainspotting, stop pretending it's a thing of the past.
#YorkPoetry
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Alright, lovely friends! I have created an Open Letter to
@UCEA1
, urging them to see redress of pay deductions as a pragmatic step and a powerful recognition of the passion university staff bring to all they do. This cannot be the reason negotiations fail.
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Please, PLEASE don't subtweet without dropping me a discreet message to let me know exactly who it is that everyone except me knows who it is and exactly what has happened.
This has been a subtweet.
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Just over 20 minutes until I'm supposed to be lecturing. The lecture is written, the slides prepared, the jokes virtually tell themselves.
@UniversitiesUK
are wasting everybody's time. Get back to the table (properly) and let us get back to class.
#USSstrike
#RatherBeInLectures
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The proposal on Monday was for an independent valuation.
This promises an 'independent' review designed to explain to us why the valuation is right.
These are not the same thing.
Stop playing around,
@UniversitiesUK
, and start negotiating.
#USSstrike
Universities UK is announcing today that it is to establish a panel of independent experts to review the processes behind the valuation that put the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) deficit at £6.1 billion. See full statement:
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Petition for an AHRC previous generation award scheme.
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Someone just emailed me out of the blue to say they really enjoyed something I had written. That was a very nice thing for them to do.
#academic_kindness
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Feeling low? Have you considered being rich?
It's
#MentalHealthAwarenessWeek
and we'll be sharing some tips and information about how you can support your mental health. First up, our research shows that spending time in the garden is linked to similar benefits such as living in wealthy areas.
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Up and down the country, universities are tying themselves in knots trying to change their rules, iron out unworkable policies, backtrack on their errors and coerce their staff. The amount of hours being spent on this is STAGGERING.
#ucuRISING
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@SamGyimah
@guardian
In universities we like to teach students how to engage with and understand an argument, how to avoid pointless clichés, and when not to use gratuitous quotation marks. Pop along sometime, and we'll be happy to show you around.
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Possibly the only thing more heartbreaking than spending my Sunday writing individually to the 171 students who do not yet have sufficient credit for a classified degree is receiving their extraordinarily thoughtful and generous replies. 💔
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A warm welcome to me as new co-editor of *Literature and History*. Send your marvellous articles on early modern themes my way!
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‘Most other trades and professions after some seaven yeares prentiship, are enabled by their craft to live of themselves. … Only Schollers, me thinks are most uncertaine, unrespected, subject to all casualties, and hazards.’
- Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy
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As an external examiner at
@durham_uni
I am pleased to have had the opportunity to ask the VC and PVC to support their staff and ensure their students can graduate by making a public statement calling for
@UCEA1
and
@ucu
to
#settlethedispute
.
@ucuatdurham
@ucu
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No quotation marks for indented quotations
No quotation marks for indented quotations
No quotation marks for indented quotations
No quotation marks for indented quotations
No quotation marks for indented quotations
No quotation marks for indented quotations
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If it was found THROUGH THE ONLINE CATALOGUE, I'd say it wasn't 'previously unknown'. A little credit to the archivists please!
A previously unknown parchment of the Declaration of Independence was found and scholars are scratching their heads
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Feminist solidarity empowers everyone. The movement must be trans-inclusive | Zoe Williams
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Oh good lord. Putting lectures online DOES NOT MEAN putting teaching entirely online. The quality of reporting around the Cambridge University announcement is pitiful.
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My amazing
@UoYEnglish
colleagues and I have made a short, glorious and free online poetry course. It will be available from 17th August, but you can sign up now. Please spread the word!
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Me, proofreading our departmental REF Environment Template: 'Shoo, child'.
Anna: 'Is this important?'
Me: 'Yes'
Anna: 'Very important?'
Me: 'Very, very important.'
Anna: 'Oh. You should do it in different colours, so they can tell.'
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Honestly, if UCEA return to the table on the terms proposed by
@ucu
, I would absolutely vote for an immediate end to the MAB. I want it to end, I want our students to get their marks, and I want to put this painful, gruelling period firmly in the past.
#settlethedispute
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The government have had four-and-half months to work out a credible way to handle the cancellation of A-levels. Four-and-a-half months to gather and analyse predictions and mocks, model algorithm results, consult with schools & universities. This shambles is utterly shameful.
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Just a shame that all these years after getting the vote, there's still only one female historian in the UK.
Watch
@lucy_worsley
of
@HRP_palaces
talk about some of the incredible women who fought for the right to vote in Britain - and visit our exhibition on Trafalgar Square today as we mark
#100years
#BehindEveryGreatCity
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Delighted that
@UCU
and
@UCEA1
are meeting tomorrow. Time for both parties to put every last drop of energy into resolving this dispute and letting our students move forward. Please, please, UCEA, put our students first and
#SettleTheDispute
.
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My daughter was in hospital with Covid-19 last Thursday,
@BorisJohnson
. More children will be in hospital with Covid if you drop Plan B restrictions.
This is a pitiful attempt to cling on to your job at the cost of the health and wellbeing of thousands of UK citizens.
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A colleague has cheered up a gruelling day no end with the news that her three-year-old daughter (who sees me only as a tiny square in zoom meetings) calls me 'Helen Beans'.
'Why?'
'Because I like beans and I like Helen.'
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I'd love to know who's out there doing great work on early modern women and marginalia. Self-promotion very welcome!
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The inequities in UKHE are scandalous. A 17% pay gap between black & white staff in the sector, 15.1% gender pay gap, & 9% disability pay gap. Universities are as relentless in proclaiming a commitment to equality as they are slow in doing anything serious about it.
#UCUstrikes
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Really,
@UniofOxford
? Asking students affected by the MAB to get their dissertation supervisor to write, confirming they have read it, giving a review, and providing a predicted mark? One of the reasons we are in this dispute is that workloads are at crisis point.
@ucu
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I'm not saying our new timetabling software is a godawful mess, but I've just found out that when you click on it to find where a teaching room is, you get directions on how to reach the City of York.
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RIP to beautiful, faithful Sherlock. Sweet, patient, playful and gentle. She had a wonderful last walk in the sunshine yesterday, when she forgot her 13 years and her wobbly legs. Much loved.
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Feeling pretty good about this footnote, not gonna lie.
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I'm really delighted to share the news that we are hiring again in
@UoyEnglish
. As some people know all too well, we had longlisted for four posts which were then frozen. Two of those posts have been released (Renaissance and World Lit) and we're also advertising in...
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School has encouraged Anna to create a worry monster, a way of articulating her deepest fears. So far she has one: 'that time when I though daddy was going to eat all the chorizo'.
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Anna and I, fighting over the correct spelling of 'that'.
Me (whispers): I *am* a Professor of English.
Her (giggles unstoppably): Now you're saying silly things.
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Congratulations to those receiving positive fellowship news today -- and to those who aren't, the reminder that your research is awesome and exciting, and there are lots of us out here hungry to learn more about it.
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I am genuinely horrified at how much time universities across the country are willing to devote to attempts to punish & undermine lawful industrial action instead of doing the one thing which would put students first and end this dispute: negotiating with
@ucu
.
#ucuRISING
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Repeat after me: academics live in the real world and it is sodding offensive to suggest otherwise.
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I'm in a meeting in which I'm being told that I need a critical friend, because if I discuss an idea with friends and family they'll just tell me it's great. I feel as though these people have never met my friends and family.
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My daughter has spent most of the past hour sitting in a cardboard box, drawing a little picture and singing to herself, and I have to admit this is what I always dreamed parenthood would be.
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"At the University of York we are clear that negotiations must restart to enable a different path to be found."
Thanks to the
@UniOfYork
VC and to the
@UcuYork
exec for calling on
@UCEA1
and
@ucu
to reopen negotiations and
#settlethedispute
.
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Aw. I have another nibling on the way. Hurray for small people!
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You know that sneaking feeling of not wanting to look inside your new book in case you find something wrong?
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I am on strike. I will be back anon with some kind of pithy and devastating tweet about working conditions, but right now I am going to sleep.
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One of the things I've been reflecting on is how much universities' appalling threats of punitive pay deductions are a mockery of the realities of our working lives.
#ucuRISING
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Closed the door to my HoD office for the last time this morning. It's not quite the end:
@jenniebatchelor
& I have a two week handover in which to test the adage that two Heads are better than one! Very glad to see such a brilliant, inspiring woman taking the
@UoYEnglish
helm.
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I am on strike.
@UCU
has balloted its members and achieved a mandate for industrial action. When I, individually, need my union, I want it to be there for me. That means I have to be there, in turn, for my union, my colleagues, my peers and the next generation.
#OneOfUsAllOfUs
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Our collection, Conversions: Gender and Religious Change in Early Modern Europe (title as chosen by twitter!) is out now from
@ManchesterUP
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Don't tell anyone, but I am in a library! Looking at books!!!!
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Big news from
@UoYEnglish
: we're recruiting our next Head of Department! We are hugely excited to be appointing a new Professor. I hope somewhere out there is a successor to this role who will cherish, as I have, the chance to work with our incomparable staff and students.
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I hate to suggest there is too much bureaucracy in academia. But. Rather than buying a colleague a bunch of carnations and a bottle of wine, I am required to create a departmental rewards policy, have it approved by HR, advertise the criteria, and convene a small committee.
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Give me your best winter scenes in literature. Please.
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@MattHancock
You misspelled 'I am so sorry we have criminally underfunded the NHS, to the point that a four-year old boy ended up sleeping on a hospital floor'.
#VoteLabour
#SaveOurNHS
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I'm not using the World Mental Health day hashtag, because it's a binfire. But here's my tweet anyway.
Universities, we can and should be doing so much more to take seriously the impact of the past three years on our staff, as well as on our students.
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Teaching English (and Related) Lit to students is an extraordinary and fulfilling experience, and endlessly restorative. I have doubts about lots of things, but never this.
#EnglishLit
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Me, soothing my fevered child: 'Back to sleep now. Maybe in Dreamland you can ride in a frozen boat across a frozen lake, and eat ice cream. That would cool you down!'
Fevered child, sternly: 'I will dream what I like, thank you very much'.
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So disappointed to hear that
@UniversitiesUK
say they aren't in a position to respond to
@UCU
proposals before Wednesday. Their delay means more days of
#USSstrike
and more disruption to students.
I would so, so much
#ratherbeteaching
.
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Today I have written to Professor Charlie Jeffery,
@UniOfYork
VC. I have thanked Charlie for his previous clarity on pensions and urged a confident, positive joint statement with
@UcuYork
. Each and every VC has it in their power to change the course of this dispute.
#UCUStrikes
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I have eaten
the soup
that was on
the painting
and which
you were probably
saving
for outrage
Forgive me
it was delicious
so art
and so cold
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