I’m sure I will! Been a bit of a rough few months with the old mental health again but coming through the other side! Hope you and family are ok?

*three hands 😉 many many congratulations! I don’t come on here much but I heard last night was great so came on to say boom! Looking forward to reading it and being transported back in time through your evocative writing.

Ah thank you for thinking of me!

I’m so sorry for your loss but what a life and a legacy! My grandad was my constant so this has brought many emotions ❤️

One of your better jokes 😂

Yes and it’s nice to have a CQC colleague nearby!

I feel like you live right near where I grew up if you know about Milk Maids! (Atherton/Westhoughton)

Congratulations! I remember you getting excited about the Sierra Leonean cafe all those years ago!

And by lying down I mean curling up in a corner of my bed that is not overflowing with stuff I’ve accumulated over my 34 years. Ugh.

All good thanks! Hope things are with you too!

I’m rambling, but for those people already ‘in’ the academy, MBS1 might have felt like ordering sandwiches and booking rooms, for those of us wanting to get in, it felt like much more. And yet here we are, a decade on, and things are much worse.

In ten years time, what will the field look like? That q is not divorced from what is happening in society, so much of scholarship will simply be those who made the cuts, there are huge politics at play. If those politics are ignored in this conference, it would be a shame.

But! maybe when people are worried about their jobs, about redundancies, research funding being cut, and about AI, thinking about where scholarship is and redefining the field again feels incredibly privileged, especially to those ‘on the outside’. Will this cultivate engagement?

My perspective now has obviously shifted, I chose to quit, in as much as there was ever a choice. Maybe getting a room full of people to talk history is all a conference needs to do?

But, the bittersweet element, so many of us in that room and in those conversations will not be present at this one, because we did not ‘make it’, because the academy didn’t change, because it got worse.