The First Blog Post

This is the first blog post on my new website. Here I will be blogging about all sorts of different things, including my research, my teaching, and my writing. I will also be writing about more general thoughts and ramblings. To be honest, this will be a bit of a meeting place for all the different areas of this website. They all have their own neat sections on the website, but on the blog you will find - as in my life - that they all run together. This whole enterprise makes me a little nervous, as I think that often academia is about neatly compartmentalising - both in life, and in research. I find this difficult. I don't know when my research begins and ends, I don't shut down at five o'clock (and I should add that as a terrible morning person I don't usually start up at 9 o'clock either before you think I'm making out that I'm so virtuous!). My work is something that I am passionate about, and it certainly permeates both my teaching and my own creative writing, as well as being part of my life. My partner, Paul, is an academic - a classicist - and he likes to talk to me about Ancient Greek (which I don't understand at all), and mythology (which I understand a little), and storytelling (which I do understand, and love to talk about). My conversation with friends and colleagues can move pretty seamlessly from Mary Wollstonecraft to Made in Chelsea. The point is, for us, it's all fun.

Here is a picture of Chris and I from a recent 'work meeting'

(Please don't kill me, Chris!) The point being that five minutes before this photograph was taken we were sitting around my kitchen table with the other third of the 'Devouring' team, Mary, having a conversation about links between domesticity and national identity in Victorian England. Then we went to the park. Then we ate cake. Then we talked about a collection of essays that we are trying to put together and drew up a first draft book proposal. Life and work are good and messy, and smushed up together - and I think this is what you can expect from the blog, too!