On 28/04/2010 09:12, Andy Evans wrote:
Hi Rob,

You sound like an academic, so I hope you're not affected by the
savage cuts that are rampaging through the system. I can't think of
any other time when crisis meetings occur almost weekly. In fact I
think I spend as much time sitting in rooms with fellow lecturers as I
do sitting in rooms with students in. I think there's a backlash
developing since meetings tend to be put off two or three times
because lecturers simply inform the management they are teaching/
cutting their toeneails/washing their hair at that particular time.


Ever thus :-)

I teach at Sheffield Hallam, and there's a curious 'austerity'
programme. I think this crunch has been used as an excuse, and has
helped fuel a lot of what managers have been trying to do for a while -
simplify their portfolio and deliver a few solid cash cows that they can
understand and control.

I should point out that I'm not an experimental psychologist, so I
largely evade being peer reviewed. That's another circuit. I
specialise in helping performers with a variety of health issues and
training other people (practitioners, teachers) to do the same. So
it's a heavily people-oriented thing. You do get your name in the
textbooks when you carry out experimental psychology so it's a career
building advantage, but set against that I get more out of seeing and
talking to people, particularly when they are so interesting as a
group. I'm more the GP than the brain surgeon. In fact my brother's a
GP.


I don't know your field, but I'd imagine you could put out a few
theoretical/practitioner based papers. I can guess any of a number of
reasons why you don't - it certainly creates a lot of pressure at my place.

What's your academic involvement yourself?


Almost all teaching and admin, although I still go to conferences and
deliver papers. Also an external at Middlesex :-) I mean to get
something written over the summer, but we'll see, depends on the weather
etc.

Rob