Pre-departure

It's Monday night. On Friday morning we say our last goodbyes to all the animals, leave the house in the care of our trusty house-sitters, and head to the airport for three months away.

I am planning to return to this blog to track our adventures once we get going, and to meditate on the idea of "leave" but an important part of the pre-departure travail is to keep track of hours and days as

Conference report The Making of the Humanities

Here you can read a conference report of The Making of the Humanities III, written by one of the participants, Laura Meneghello. Thanks Laura!

Proceedings of the previous (2010) conference now online

The proceedings of the 2010 conference in Amsterdam, The Making of the Humanities II: From Early Modern to Modern Disciplines, is now online and can be downloaded here.

The proceedings of the 2012 conference in Rome (The Making of the Modern Humanities) will published and presented at the 2014 conference -- on which more info will follow soon.

Thanks for a great conference!

The Making of the Humanities III is over. Thanks so much to all speakers and participants for your contributions! You were wonderful.

Information about the next conference in 2014 will be posted soon.

Best wishes,

Rens, Jaap and Thijs (the organizers)

Conference Handbook and Abstracts Are Online

The conference handbook with the full programme, abstracts and some practical information is online, and can be downloaded here. You will receive a hard copy version of the handbook at registration. A quick outline of the programme can be found here.



Some last practical info:

We cannot accept pin or credit card payments at the registration desk. So please bring cash for the conference fee and (optional) dinner -- see below under Registration for the exact costs.

There are direct trains from Fiumicino airport to the center of Rome. Taxis to the city center (i.e. within the Aurelian Walls) have currently a fixed standard fare of 48 euro; click here for more information.

Looking forward to seeing you all in Rome!

Six Years Down

It is six years, almost to the day, since I went under the knife. I have just had my annual mammogram, ultrasound and review with my wonderful surgeon. I wrote about Suzanne a lot in the first months (here, here and here, especially) : she was a revelation to me, about how a brilliant technician could also be a calm, intelligent leader in the workplace. From my various encounters this morning,

Teaching the History of Emotions

This year the Faculty of Arts introduced its controversial new coursework program. Until this year, the PhD in Arts at Melbourne was taught entirely by research thesis, externally assessed by examiners who had no contact with the student. Over the first year of their enrolment, our new students now must enrol in one of seven 2-hour fortnightly workshops, for which they