How to govern differently

It seems that caring for other websites led me to neglect this personal one. So I’m belatedly documenting some of the intervening time, and–as I sometimes do–preparing a backdated post to keep things in some kind of chronological sequence.

When I first began work with the Jam and Justice team, the post was a 9-month filler, with a view to obtaining follow-on funding to develop some of the Linguistic DNA resources for use with schools. Continue reading “How to govern differently”

Drunkenness and naughty vicars

Small figure with drinking vessel and the title of the Intoxicants project

In the first half of 2015, I worked as a research associate on the AHRC and ESRC-funded project Intoxicants and Early Modernity. My work coincided with the transcription and modelling of intoxicant-linked events from consistory (church) court records. 

Archived documents from the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries included repeated accusations of illicit brewing, alcohol-fuelled adultery, and other extra-marital deviance (including some unpleasant tales of sexual assault). Continue reading “Drunkenness and naughty vicars”

On biblical literacy

Header from the Biblical Literacy conference with titlepage of King James Bible in background

In the run up to the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible translation, I facilitated a conference at the University of Sheffield exploring how shifts in biblical literacy affect teaching in a range of academic subjects. The three-day conference brought together professional educationalists from school and university contexts, to improve our understanding of issues posed by biblical illiteracy and share different ways in which the Bible could be encountered productively in the classroom.

Delegates heard results from a comparative study of texts in religious education undertaken Continue reading “On biblical literacy”