Category Archives: Education

On Being a Beekeeper

Today is apparently World Honey Bee Day. This is also the time of year when the beekeeper is busy, manging the hives and making sure that the bees have the necessary frames to build their stocks of honey. As I was cleaning out the garage, therefore, over the weekend, I noted the absence of allContinue reading “On Being a Beekeeper”

NSS and the Cathedral’s Group

I have been waiting for this moment for many years. As I looked at the league table provided by THE for the latest NSS scores it was dominated by a new group of universities, mostly new universities and predominantly from the Cathedral’s group. It is something that I have been expecting, and hoping for, forContinue reading “NSS and the Cathedral’s Group”

Negotiating University Growth

Throughout my time at Swansea University, we placed student growth at the centre of our strategy. There were very good reasons for this, but it also presented us with several very significant challenges. In what follows I want to highlight some of the lessons that I personally learnt from that experience. We want to growContinue reading “Negotiating University Growth”

Reflecting on Excellence

We have just come through the league table season, with the Guardian, the Times and even the new look TEF, each offering their versions of the best universities in the UK. On LinkedIn and elsewhere colleagues are finding the numbers that position their universities in the best light and telling the world that they areContinue reading “Reflecting on Excellence”

Following the 2015 Consultation on Higher Education and tracking the divides

In November 2015 the UK government published their consultation document, ‘Fulfilling Our Potential, Teaching Excellence, Social Mobility and Student Choice’. The subsequent legislation, the introduction of the Office for Students and the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), and the response to this from various relevant bodies in Wales were to have a significant impact on myContinue reading “Following the 2015 Consultation on Higher Education and tracking the divides”

Aspirations

In a paper that I read recently on the im-materiality of religion, the author chose to use the word ‘aspiration’ as one of those elements that she described as an immaterial aspect of religion. The authors, Marian Burkhart and Maria Westendorp, were arguing that scholars of urban religion had become too fixated on the materialContinue reading “Aspirations”

NSS and Student Engagement: What I Learnt from Swansea University

As I continue to write new blogs for this site, I have also been reviewing some of the blogs that I wrote in my seven years as Pro-Vice Chancellor and I have chosen to rewrite them as an occasional series of what I have learnt from my time at Swansea University. Over the last sevenContinue reading “NSS and Student Engagement: What I Learnt from Swansea University”

Saying and Not Saying

A recent email request has got me thinking this week. This was from a site that monitors published articles, and they wrote to ask if I had written the paper ‘Listening to the Language, Listening to the Words and Listening to the Spaces between the Words, Rhetoric and Pragmatics in the Performance of Christian-Muslim Relations’Continue reading “Saying and Not Saying”

Reflection on Some Waves of African Scholarship

I have been reading three books recently, all of which have reminded me of something I knew perfectly well, but like so many others, had actually forgotten. Alongside the independence movement across Africa there was a flourishing of confident African writing, both literature and scholarship that began to have a significant impact well beyond AfricaContinue reading “Reflection on Some Waves of African Scholarship”