The History of Medicine centre at UCL is under threat of closure, since the Wellcome Trust are withdrawing funding. I first became aware of the work of the centre when I was doing my PhD and working on Michel Foucault’s account of madness, discipline, medicine and sexuality. Roy Porter was a key figure there at that time.
A petition is here – http://www.petitiononline.com/WTCHOM/petition.html
Anyone considering voting Conservative in the British General Election this week might want to think about their foreign policy. Have a look at the Henry Jackson Society, for instance. This British neo-conservative project has two Conservative shadow cabinet members as signatories to its statement of principles – Michael Gove and David Willetts. Ed Vaizey is also on there, plus a host of other assorted names, including Labour MPs.
Klaus Dodds and I wrote a piece a couple of years ago that discussed this – “Thinking Ahead: David Cameron, the Henry Jackson Society and the British Neoconservatives”, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Vol 10, 2008, pp. 347-363.
If you have access through an academic library you can find it here; if not then it’s available here.
Foreign policy has not been a key theme of this campaign, perhaps other than Europe, and the shadow Foreign Secretary has been largely absent. Nonetheless the last line of this piece still seems relevant: “the new British conservatism is not so different from Blair. Given the terrible cost of Blair’s foreign policy that is precisely the reason we should be concerned”.
A suggestion here. I can imagine this being the beginning of a good seminar discussion
These are not exhaustive reasons, but… they organise great conferences and workshops; my PhD supervisor did his PhD there; they are one of few places in the UK where you can study European/’continental’ philosophy, and certainly one of the best; several of the staff there are involved in the journal Radical Philosophy; the research work of their staff is terrific; some of the best recent PhDs have come from their department…
The crazy thing about this whole story is that they were by any reasonable expectations a really successful department. They recruited to a popular MA course; they scored well in the last two Research Assessement Exercises; and they were able to get research grant income for some of their projects. None of these are small achievements. And yet the Dean, while recognising their research excellence, says that they offer no ‘measureable’ contribution to the University. Perhaps it is the measures that are wrong, or indeed the whole idea of measure?
Many people will have heard the dreadful news that Middlesex University is planning to close its entire philosophy programme – undergraduate, a successful MA course, and its PhD programme.
There is a facebook group here – http://www.facebook.com/?sk=2361831622#!/group.php?gid=119102561449990
A petition here – http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/save-middlesex-philosophy.html
And most important, info on how to contact the Dean, Vice-Chancellor etc. here – http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/2010/04/msex-philosophy-closure-more-people-and.html
A piece in the journal Progress in Human Geography, entitled ‘Land, Terrain, Territory’, that is basically a shortened version of the introduction to the book I am writing – http://phg.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/0309132510362603v1
A review essay in Political Geography on three recent books on territory – http://tinyurl.com/33qbw8d
My academic profile is http://www.dur.ac.uk/geography/staff/geogstaffhidden/?mode=staff&id=932
I try to keep this uptodate, and it has links to publications. If you’d like pdfs of journal articles and you can’t get them through your own libraries, please contact me.
Welcome to Progressive Geographies… a place where I will post things about my writing, politics, music and whatever else comes to mind.
