Les Back
@AcademicDiary
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Teaches sociology at the University of Glasgow
Glasgow, Scotland
Joined March 2011
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I thought I would never write this but I am leaving Goldsmiths after more than 40 years as a student & teacher. The prospect of drawing my salary while watching colleagues lose their jobs is unliveable. This is not the 'Great Tradition' of learning Richard Hoggart described.
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So brilliant to have footballer and activist Jason Lee part of the discussion yesterday - while Baddiel and Skinner have done a bit of public hand wringing about the racist ridiculing of him on Fantasy Football he said they have never contacted him directly or apologised.
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Really moving today to see students at the University of Glasgow graduation wearing ‘UCU Rising’ sashes. One wore a sign around her neck with the words - “Renegotiate Now”. A lesson in dignity and generous solidarity.
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Last night at the Tesco on Hope St this bottle of whisky was half price. Then I got to the check out was told it didn’t apply to me because I am not a Tesco Clubcard holder. The security guard, got out his card and pressed it on the reader ‘there you go Big Man’. ❤️ Glasgow.
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Thanks for the many kind responses to my tweets from Mayday hospital. Sadly my mum Betty Joan Back died there this evening. She received incredible care. The last tune she listened to on the playlist I made for her was Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline - hands touching hands.
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For all those feeling pressure from the REF results today remember the defeats are as hollow as the victories. The deep value in all intellectual work is cheapened by reducing it to these rankings and metrics.
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The hospital night is so terrifying for elderly patients. Screams of anguish echo round the ward. I decided to put my noise cancelling headphones on my Mum and pipe some Neil Diamond into her ears. She started to sing unwittingly a frail thin chorus of... Sweeeet Caroline 🎸🎧🎶
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Opened my office door to lovely surprise opened the office door to this - today is my 1st anniversary of joining the University of Glasgow. At the end of the day universities are made by the people who do the everyday work. ❤️❤️
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Went yesterday to visit Stuart with all the radical spirits in Highgate cemetery. Left me with a deep sadness. But was able to help a lost student from Chicago find their way here before leaving.
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Last Thursday the PhD students at Goldsmiths threw a lovely farewell party for me… they are making the future of sociology and it felt safe in their hands. Lovely and generous gifts of a ‘zine, books and a bottle of whisky. Perfect. Thank you ❤️
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Makes me so angry hearing stories of the downgrading of the value of colleagues in the humiliation rehearsals also known as ‘Ref dry runs’ or ‘rolling Refs’ or ‘mock Refs.’ Shameful academic cruelty metered out on the basis of guess work on guess work.
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Closing the files and dropping the Mic - thanks to all of you who have written nice things about sharing these fragments from academic life at Goldsmiths. Wish all the very best to friends and colleagues here. To better days ahead. Last batch of UG assignments and exams marked.
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Before I say what I need to say about the imminent sackings at uel, I have been an external examiner there of countless PHDs, spoken at many events & taught sessions without pay because of the kind of students that study there
@ProfBroderick
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Thank you to everyone who messaged me about leaving Goldsmiths. It has been beautiful to reconnect with old friends as well meet and make new ones. I have tried to read and respond to everyone forgive me if I have missed anyone. Deep heartfelt thanks to all.
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Dismayed and heartbroken for the colleagues who have been made redundant at Goldsmiths. The cruelty of sending out the notices in this way and the fact that the custodians of the institution are being so vindictive is an offence to everything that is precious about learning.
Despicable authoritarian clique running
@GoldsmithsUoL
just sent this to staff at 7:08pm on a Friday night.
See you in court.
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I always enjoy visiting local schools to talk about sociology. A teacher told me a beautiful story about a question a student asked about my upcoming visit to their school - ‘is the Professor famous? Will he have a bodyguard?’
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Brilliant start to my Why Music Matters for Sociology course today at Goldsmiths. I gave the students a list of sociologist & theorists and asked them to form imaginary bands - my favourite a French rap duo called The Bourgeoisie featuring Emile Durkheim & Pierre Bourdieu
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Having paid £35 for a digital copy of 8,000 words of my own writing with
@DrLezhenry
if anyone would like a bootleg copy I'd be delighted to share it - just you message me. It is called 'Reggae Culture as Local Knowledge: Mapping the Beats on South East London Streets.
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Finally to wake up to some good news - Paul Gilroy has won the Holberg Prize - so pleased and proud ... yes
@bungatuffie
unashamedly. He’s not bad with Telecaster in his hands either... seriously though fantastic to see the things he values honoured
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Of course the Zoom/Skype screen is two way. Students see into our lives too. 'Nice guitars, Les.' She said, 'Is that a Fender... I always wanted to have a Stratocaster.' We are often cautious about controlling our impressions but as Goffman says we always give ourselves away.
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Am spending a lot of time in Mayday hospital, Croydon - where I was born - again my mother is very sick. Always so moved by the way the nurses & doctors care for the patience across the lines of race, class and culture. A living multiculture of kindness.
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Another letter to a Vice-Chancellor protesting staff redundancies... I mentioned this at a recent conference and someone in the audience complained later I was being 'too political'.
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Devastating watching the heart being ripped out of Goldsmiths as a place of learning now. This is my proudest memory. The dub professor Dennis Bovell
@DubMaestro1
receives an honorary degree in 2017. The expression on Paul Gilroy's
@bungatuffie
face says everything.
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In grim times a gift from anonymous parent to
@SociologyGold
@YasminGun
@EmmakJackson
@Michaelacbenson
@alexrhystaylor
@GoldsmithsUoL
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Spending long nights in Mayday hospital with my Mum. A distressed and disorientated dementia patient is distracted by nurse by asking her about her weakness for Tom Jones and singing ‘What’s New Pussycat’ and ‘Delilah.’ A beautifully absurd tiny miracle.
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Wandering around the University of Birmingham campus found Muirhead tower where I worked quite unhappily 30 years ago. Important things happened here in the 60s & 70s when cultural studies was born right under the noses of the Conservative custodians of the institution.
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Did a session with early career teachers at Goldsmiths today - asked them what are the important values to embody as an academic teacher, writer and intellectual. Here's their list of academic values.
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Spending everyday talking to students on Skype, Zoom and phone. Feels like the main tutorial topic is how to cope with social isolation. Just need to get them to the starting point of study and that feels like the best I can do. So feel for them - hang in there everyone.
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I am not a religious person but I don’t know where nurses find the grace to absorb the confused anger they routinely absorb from people suffering & struggling with dementia. When I left the ward last night I put my hand on her shoulder and just said ‘bless you nurse’.
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An idyllic cycle to work this morning along the banks of the Clyde - tonight got soaked to the skin on my return. Loving Glasgow.
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Just leaving the office before the strike starts tomorrow. Planning to share my favourite sociological podcasts/ YouTube films everyday - not striking from thinking!!!
#GoldStrike
@GoldsmithsUCU
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The most important thing I did at Goldsmiths was in 2017 & Vron Ware's exhibition and photographic document of the Black People Day of Action following the New Cross fire, 1981. So many affected directly came to see the show. Linton Kwesi Johnson left this reflection.
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Picked up this wonderful PhD zine by
@amandasays
in Glasgow. My favourites - 1. Keep a diary/ journal 2. Write down what you read/feel/think/do 12. Find music you can write to 43. Read a thesis so you know what one is 50. The PhD is what you do not who you are.
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Thinking of those disappointed students on results day particularly those who have had results downgraded - grades don’t indicate or define your intelligence, talent or potential. They just don’t!
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Brilliant- Michael Rosen on teaching and the abuses of counting from the Goldsmiths picket line.
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Shamser and I have just had the final sign off from our participants for a new book - ten years in the writing.
@shamsersinha
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Another fantastic read... both a critique of Western academic knowledge and an alternative imagination and way of knowing.
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Young people go out and vote tomorrow and end the disgraceful betrayal of your generation.
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Strikes are learning opportunities too. Lovely tutorial today from 2nd year Sociology student who plans to do her dissertation on the political rhetoric of industrial action using our UCU dispute as the case study. Brilliant.
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Received this little video from 13th April - on the occasion of receiving a Life Time Achievement Award at the British Sociological Association and an opportune moment to honour Ken Plummer’s hopeful spirit.
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The thing that sickens me is the conceit the leaders of UEL shows its students when they can sack beloved teachers in the middle of semester in the midst of a lockdown. In other Unis legions of white middle class parents would storm the campus in protest.
@ProfBroderick
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Fantastic new resource for PHD students from any discipline from nuclear science to fine art - a how to guide, advice companion, project planner and notebook all in one. Brilliant.
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This is is a very powerful statement from the Goldsmiths Sociology PhD community on the 'flamboyant emptiness' of the current custodians of the institution '
@GoldsmithsUCU
@SociologyGold
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'You teach sociology' says the Barrista. 'That's where there are no right and wrong answers?' I reply 'well yes and no.' ☺️
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Ever had one of those days when you feel I am not having it. I sent out this offer. Spent the evening replying to over 50 request from reggae loving history teachers, radio DJs, dissertation writers, ant-gentrification activists, pastors and museum curators - thank you ❤️❤️
Having paid £35 for a digital copy of 8,000 words of my own writing with
@DrLezhenry
if anyone would like a bootleg copy I'd be delighted to share it - just you message me. It is called 'Reggae Culture as Local Knowledge: Mapping the Beats on South East London Streets.
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First photograph at Goldsmiths circa 1981 in what is now the Thirty Five Coffee bar with Sim Colton - boiled ham rolls with Branston pickle! I had a chance of an athletic scholarship at Boston College but chose New Cross instead.
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Was really glad to have done this... feels like a long time ago now though even thought it was only a few weeks ago. Stand by these thoughts on teaching in a time of Covid19 though.
"I don't think I can remember, in my almost 30 years at Goldsmiths, a time when teaching has been more important."
Professor Les Back (
@academicdiary
) on how lockdown has brought the value of talking to students into focus.
The latest in our series of Academics at Home.
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“Go to Glasgow at least once in your life and have a roll and square sliced sausage and a cup of tea. When you feel the tea coursing over your spice singed tongue, you'll know what I mean when I say 'It's good to be alive!” Billy Connolly
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This is outrageous Gargi and Corinne are two of the most insightful thinkers and dedicated teachers working anywhere in UK Higher Education. Shame on you UEL!!! This is disgraceful.
@UEL_News
@Gargi_at_home
.
@UEL_News
Gargi Bhattacharyya and Corinne Squire are important writers, dedicated teachers and energetic union organisers at UEL. It's appalling that the management has targeted them--and others--for redundancy because of their UCU activities Please spread this news far & wide.
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Teaching via Skype & Zoom is a window into how students are struggling to write in overcrowded homes. Enjoyed meeting siblings but most students describe studying 'like pulling teeth' or a struggle to 'get into the right headspace'. 'Just speaking to you helps a lot' one said.
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What’s not always remembered in the discussion of the Windrush scandal is that the philosophical foundations of the current ‘hostile environment’ were laid by New Labour and the Third Way and perhaps Britain’s most famous sociologist!
@bungatuffie
@BaggieJohn
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ITV pundits talking about "the revenge of young people" in this election but it might just be young people being represented at long last. 👏
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@timeshighered
@HKUniversity
This is disgraceful and shame on you - I worked while completing my PhD part-time for seven years. Most students in the UK are working while they study. That’s the problem. Working in order to earn the time to do academic work.
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Amazing to have Canadian sociologist Dorothy Smith participating in our teach out tonight on institutional ethnography. Talking about the importance not seeing people as 'the objects of study' but rather starting with the actualities of people's lives.
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Having fun with students in The Why Music Matters for Sociology course this morning... look no electricity folks!!!
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An institution dies when the public characters that make things work (people in the print, security, administrators, front of house workers) are seen as expendable. Next are teachers on precarious contracts, those that can leave but no one is safe. I never thought witness this.
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Refreshing that at least outside of these Isles a conversation is happening about the nature of British history & society. The BBC content is like banal nationalism meets postcolonial melancholia.
Author Clive Irving tells us what the future of the monarchy could look like following Queen Elizabeth II's death.
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I know exactly what will happen. I would bet my life on the fact that those staff who are threatened with redundancy will be saying to their students - ‘don’t worry I’ll get you through your assignments whether they pay me or not.’
@ProfBroderick
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@FreefromTorture
This reminds me of Primo Levi's reflection on why dialogue is impossible for those people who are complicit in hating.
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At a recent talk a questioner complained that Goldsmiths sociology staff only started criticising the audit culture after we did badly in the REF2014. Pre the digitisation of everything this was published on Tuesday April 24 2001.
@thecucr
It earned me a reprimand from the HoD.
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For all new students starting Uni today - good luck and hope this helps. Looking forward to meeting Goldsmiths sociology students tomorrow.
@GoldsmithsUoL
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The Coronation is less a pageant of national communion and decorative diversity than a display of jewels and riches and gold pilfered from around the globe and the symbolism of an ancient legacy of accumulation and rule - the nausea of imperial melancholy.
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#NotStrikingfromthinking
Day 1. Stuart Hall on thought, self knowledge and the condition of intellectual work
#GoldStrike
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I think this conceit for the students of UEL, many of whom will be the first in their families to go to uni, is almost more offensive than how employers treat us as employees and the threatened redundancies. It’s the deepest shame of all
@ProfBroderick
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So struck this week in on-line tutorials of students struggling to find a routine & be in the right frame of mind to get their work done. Have recorded this lecturepodcast called 'Start Writing and Keep Writing: Notes, Drafts, Proofs, Papers.' Email me if it might help.
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Am just working on a new podcast for the Lockdown Lectures series called - ‘Learning in lockdown: threats & opportunities within the post-pandemic university. Hoping to share it before the end of the week.
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Unfortunately we don't need to be reminded of the content of Enoch Powell's speech again because he has plenty of imitators today. The chorus that 'Enoch was right' will be loud amongst them. It is not doubt, as he claimed, that our culture suffers from but certainty.
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The thing I really love about the public universities I have taught at here in Brazil like UFF & UScar is that the campus are so open and public. Entering universities in US & U.K. by contrast feels like trying break into a bank or being checked by security at an exclusive club.
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Have found myself back in Goldsmiths library today - still a place of refuge and wonder. Amongst books that I read almost 40 years ago. So much has changed but these old friends are still here.
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That’s it… Glasgow is stuck with me. My last box unpacked finally. Forty years worth of notes, books and papers, tapes in 100 boxes.
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Have just finished the essay based on last year’s Antipode lecture at the IBG - it’s called Hope’s Work a nod to the late great Gillian Rose. Feels like the argument for seeing hope as an open empirical hasn’t dated.
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To cheer myself up amongst all the gloom am appearing in Nathan Gidley’s gangster film as a henchman this afternoon- bless you Marlene and her stall in Lewisham Shopping Centre for sorting me out - you are a diamond
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For everyone struggling with writing this summer 'Journeying Through Words' originally published in Journal of the Royal Anthropoogical Institute - now available for free through Goldsmiths Research Online
@SociologyGold
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Still thinking about yesterday’s teach out with PhD students… and how the contemporary university exploits their need to get teaching experience. Have always felt that the most experienced teachers should be teaching 1st year classes.
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With the new Director of the Centre for Urban and Community Research, Dr Emma Jackson, on graduation day. Good luck Emma I know you’ll be brilliant in your new role
@thecucr
@EmmakJackson
@SociologyGold
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The mighty Professor Lez Henry and I will doing one of our reggae walks in New Cross in Week three of the strike (Thursday 9th December
@12
) with music and mobile sounds - hoping for something new from Lez’s lyric book too
@DrLezhenry
#Goldstrike
@GoldsmithsUCU
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I am writing a piece about washhouses and swimming pools and city life. I feel sure that working-class writers and novelists must talked about the place of these institutions in working-class communities but I am struggling to find examples. Any tips are gratefully received.
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Public reading today in Berlin at the place where books were burned in public by the Nazis in 1933.
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Happy birthday Bridget Fowler - 80 years young today. Looking forward to hearing her respond to Matt Dawson’s book The Political Durkheim this afternoon. A precious example to us all as a teacher, scholar and thinker.
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Just had a Zoom workshop with the MSc Social Research students struggling with their assignments. The pandemic is re-drawing the relationship between learning and space (where it happens) and time (when the teaching terms ends). Just feels wrong to be hard and fast about it.
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Such a joy to talk at the Glasgow Sociology Society event with Andy Smith last week. A full room and a great conversation on why thinking about everyday life matters.
@UofGSPS
@UofGSociology
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Will be taking some time this morning to return to 439 New Cross Road and remember the lives stolen there 40 years ago today.
Incredibly moving to listen to the memorial service at St Andrews, Brockley to the victims of the New Cross Fire. As Sandra Ruddock said remember the "empty chairs at the table" and the futures that were stolen from them. Powerful speeches from Jennifer Berbeck and
@JanetDaby
.
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Warm congratulations to all the Goldsmiths students graduating today. Truly inspiring to see and talk to so many of you. You are the embodiment of why the university is still a precious place.
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Just found the manuscript for a book that was never completed called 'Country Got Soul' it was the worst case of peer review sabotage I've ever experienced. I thought fellow travellers who have had this experience might appreciate this exert from the letter I wrote in response.
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What a beautiful thing to discover this recording on YouTube and to hear the sound of laughing and thinking with Stuart Hall… I can’t remember who I gave this to but lovely for it to come back to me now even through the sadness of his passing
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#notstrikingfromthinking
Day 5. Gail Lewis on fragile hope, the politics of kindness, disagreement and inter-generational dialogue with Paul Gilroy
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Oh Laura Harvey, Sarah Leaney & Danny Noble’s book Class: a graphic guide is wonderful. Informed and comprehensive and I love the drawings of the writers and theorists in the book. So lovely read the ideas and see the people behind them. A brilliant book - enjoyable & learned.
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Well done Glasgow’s south side an example to us all 👏👏👏
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Such a fantastic session today in my Why Music Matters For Sociology Course on Bourdieu, music and distinction... the students guessed correctly the social identities of 9 out of the 11 people featured on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs from their musical choices alone!!!
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Correcting the proofs of
@shamsersinha
& I’s book Migrant City. Should be out in June. Been a long journey - a decade in the writing - but feel we were right to take the time reading it now.
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The most hateful diversity conservatism. Stop talking about boats start talking about lives and the truth.
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How cool? Glasgow Caledonian University has an Annie Lennox Building! Made me smile.
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@GrahamScambler
Thanks Graham but the people who feel sorry for are the people with young families and mortgages who are worried about their jobs. It's toxic and destroys the fabric of what a university is at its best.
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Projection on the Richard Hoggart Building last night - what would he have made of Goldsmiths now and that he called the ‘great tradition of extramural education!’?
@GoldsmithsUCU
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I am back at Mayday one last time to give thanks and pick up a death certificate. The guy in the coffee shop knows my order without me needing to say. I ask the Barista how she’s doing today. ‘I am still alive’, she says laughing. ‘Well, kiddo that’s a good place to start.’ 😂
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Good luck to all A level sociology students this morning - remember your grades are not the only measure of your imagination & talent 🤞🤞🤞🤞
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