Sunday 31st July 2016 - Final thoughts

This will be the last blog in the series that I started in January 2010 when I was a Pro-Vice-Chancellor.  Over the last six-and-a-half years I have made 259 entries.  I started blogging as part of the scheme for members of the University of Sheffield’s executive board to mentor senior women with a view to increasing their representation at the topmost levels of the university: I was trying to contribute to greater transparency on what a Pro-Vice-Chancellor did.  I can’t take the credit, but since I started the blog the number of women in academic positions on the executive has gone from zero to 4.  At first the blog was only visible within the University of Sheffield, but with changes to the initial platform (it is now on Google blogger) it has gone worldwide – and some posts have gone ‘viral’.  Others have been controversial.  The pageview data over the last two years shows that after readers from the UK the next most represented countries, in descending order, have been the USA, Russia, Ireland, France, Germany, Ukraine, Spain, Italy and Turkey.  I find the presence of Russia, Ukraine and Turkey in that list particularly intriguing. 

Although this is the last blog under the ‘Paul White DVC’ banner it’s not the end of my blogging.  Anyone interested in reading my thoughts can turn to, or bookmark, ‘Paul White places’ or a new blog I have just started under the title ‘Paul White Europe’ – take the following links to do so:

http://www.paulwhiteplaces.blogspot.co.uk

http://www.paulwhiteeurope.blogspot.co.uk

So, why I am I stopping this blog now?  Because today is my last day in employment by the University of Sheffield.  After 42 years (well, actually it’s 41 years and 11 months, but it’s easier to round it) I am retiring.  I have wondered about making a small selection of these 259 posts and privately printing it or distributing it to interested colleagues (tomorrow they will be ex-colleagues!): if anyone thinks that would be a good idea do contact me – my email address will remain the same: p.white@sheffield.ac.uk

I’ve been reflecting on the differences between the university in 1974 and today, and those thoughts will conclude this series of posts.  Inevitably I am largely thinking of my own department and discipline of Geography here, although I guess there may be echoes of these contrasts in a number of other departments.

Of course, a first difference is that the university was very much smaller.  There were about 7000 students then as opposed to the around 26000 now.  The staff complement was also much smaller – and that meant that there was a great deal more mixing.  A high proportion of staff used the ‘Senior Common Room’ and got to know colleagues from other departments: many actually ate ‘proper’ lunches instead of, as today, snatching a sandwich.  And many of today’s university buildings weren’t there – or had other owners.  There were also departments then that we don’t have now – Latin, Geology, Economic and Social History, Ancient History, Mining Technology.  But similarly we have new departments such as Journalism Studies or Nursing and Midwifery (for which in both cases I played a role in establishing in the university).

In my interview for my lectureship all the questions had been about what I could teach – I don't remember a single question about my research ambitions (the faculty administrator present at my interview is still alive so perhaps I should see if he corroborates that memory).  I was still completing my doctorate, which was successfully viva’d early in my second year in post. In my third year, as I moved towards the end of my probation period, a head of department asked me whether I had been doing any research and whether I was thinking of publishing anything.  (His predecessor, head when I was appointed, had, I think, published only two articles in his whole career, and my doctoral supervisor at Oxford had published only one, so these ideas of research and research dissemination were not well established in my mind.)  Fortunately I had published material from my thesis, and had already got a research council grant to move into a new area of research – but there had been no university mentoring or advice to do so.

Teaching took up a much higher proportion of a young lecturer’s time than it does (at least in my department) today.  In my first year I had a teaching load of 13 hours contact time each week – plus a very significant amount of marking – made up of practical class supervisions, small group tutorials (6 each week), and my own final year option class for which I was producing completely new material.  I point this out not to indicate that staff today don’t teach enough, but to indicate that Sheffield was still largely a teaching university with research taking second place and being fitted in round the edges.  Colleagues around me were active in the vacations in writing books – but these were student texts.  It was a new professor appointed in the same year as me who started to raise interest in research in my department and by the end of the 70s that aspect had come much more to the fore – although there were a number of my colleagues who never embraced it.

In the mid 1970s the connections between schools and universities were much closer than they are now (once again, at least in my department).  Several colleagues had started their careers as teachers.  Every summer many people turned from university scripts to A level marking.  School teachers came to guest lectures and seminars in the department, and a number of colleagues held positions in the professional body of geography teachers – including taking on the role of president of that body.  We went out to talk in schools, and teachers came in for short courses we put on for them on new ideas in my subject.  (I had taken Geology as a compulsory course as an undergraduate and I still have my notes where, in the final session, the lecturer had said ‘there is also the notion of continental drift but no one has proved it yet so we won’t deal with it’: within 5 years I was supporting first year students in tutorials on this by then accepted fact of life.)  These links between schools and universities were taken as ‘natural’.  They were not part of an agenda of widening participation, or to boost recruitment.  They were just part of the established landscape of continuity in education.

The student and staff body in the 1970s was also different from today.  My department had a postgraduate course, financed by UNESCO, which brought in overseas students – many from Africa or the Middle East – but they were the only exotic elements around.  I don’t remember teaching a single non-British student for many years (the first ‘foreign’ students I recall having contact with were from Gibraltar – and I recall one English girl whose father had been Governor-General in Hong Kong, but she had never lived there).  Most students were, I suppose, lower middle-class.  But over the years we also had quite a crop of public school students – including in one memorable cohort two Etonians.  Why do students from the ‘top’ public schools not come to Sheffield now, I wonder?  In one way, however, Geography at Sheffield was a very modern department in as much as there was a balance of male and female students even in the mid 1970s at a time when in the university as a whole over 60% of students were male.

We did have one Dutchman amongst our academics but no other ‘immigrants’. Today Geography has staff from, amongst other places, Argentina, Australia, Greece, Hong Kong, India, South Africa, and the USA.  But 40 years ago there were ‘overseas’ interests in the department through the fact that a number of staff had had experience teaching (and in one or two cases even researching) in countries of the British Commonwealth – New Zealand, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Uganda and elsewhere.

But there was a keen interest in ‘other places’ and it is perhaps odd to reflect that my retirement brings to an end the continuity of teaching about the Geography of Europe that goes back to at least the early 1950s (although field classes on the European mainland will continue).

One element that has changed hugely during my working life in the university has been the use of technology.  I spent many hours in my first year or two in the department teaching students how to draw maps and diagrams with mapping pens.  Today diagrams are produced in Excel – and students scarcely ever think of producing their own maps now, taking existing ones from the internet (too often without proper acknowledgement!) instead.  The first session in my practical class on quantitative methods was spent teaching students how to use the hand-cranked calculators that had recently been purchased and screwed to large boards to prevent such valuable commodities being stolen.  Student handouts were produced on ‘Banda’ machines which made use of chemical fluids that I suspect could have provided ‘legal highs’ if mis-used.  Lectures were illustrated by 2-inch slides, the material for which had to be provided some weeks earlier to the technicians to convert.  Anything for typing was handed in to the departmental office.  There was no photocopier in the department.  And on my corridor there was one external telephone in a booth at the end.  I am not someone who argues that ‘everything was better in the past.’  Indeed in these and many other aspects of university life things today are much more exciting and provide many more opportunities than they did when I started out.

So finally, what are the ‘best’ memories of working in a department over 42 years?  Teaching my own specialist option to interested final year students must be one (and I have done so in each of the 42 years I have been on the staff – even in years when I had sabbatical leave, when I taught in the semester when I was here).  The thrill of opening a parcel to reveal the published version of a new book with one’s name on the cover is an obvious one.  But above all it is the contact with students that is most memorable.  Watching the timid first year develop into a confident and knowledgeable graduate provides a huge reward.  Seeing how a group of students actually learns new things and develops new skills through a single module has been greatly satisfying. Listening to the broad and impractical thoughts of starting postgraduates, supporting them as they narrow their PhD topic to something manageable, and then seeing their careers develop in later life is a privilege. 

And that is the note I shall end on.  Spending my working life in higher education has been a great privilege.  And if you’ve read this blog as far as this, thank you for doing so.

Friday 29th July 2016 - Divided society, divided networks, and the referendum

At the graduation reception for my department last week several new graduates said they had expected me to blog and give my reactions to the Brexit vote in the recent referendum.  I had put one or two opinions on my Facebook page, but I wanted to let the dust settle a little and to reflect on the outcome.  In doing so I have also heard the reactions of many others around me.


And those reactions have led me to reappraise my position - not because they disagree with me, but because they all feel as I do that as a country we have made a huge mistake that will be damaging both to the UK and its citizens but also to Europe as a whole - and probably to the wider world.  And this has led to my reflection that although I know many people both across the University, in Sheffield as a whole, and more broadly across the UK, almost everyone I know shares the same opinions on this key issue.  What that says to me is that my network is actually rather skewed - probably to people rather like myself.  Put simply, I hardly know anyone who would have supported an 'out' vote or who would have been likely to do so.  But at the same time I realize that there must be many people who, like me, have social networks where everyone thinks the same way as them - but where they all voted 'out' and don't know anyone who would have voted to remain in the European Union.  Of course I have seen the data that suggest that there were disagreements over the desired result in 15% of households - but that leaves 85% where there was probably a common view.


What this indicates to me is something about the increasingly fragmented and divided nature of British society, where there is reduced contact between social groups defined in a variety of ways.  Over the last 30 years or so I have taught, researched and written about social polarisation, social exclusion, segregated societies and the like - not just in Britain but in other parts of Europe.  But I suppose that like many academics I have increasingly been looking at these issues from an elite perspective - someone in a steady and well-remunerated job, living in a middle class suburb and surrounded by a network of friends and colleagues - both at work and more broadly - who share similar backgrounds, interests and aspirations.  Certainly I have been to some extent a field social scientist, getting out into poorer and more deprived neighbourhoods - I have walked the streets of Page Hall in Sheffield and talked to those who live there, I have undertaken both field and desk-based research in the poorest and most racially tense of the social housing suburbs of Paris, I have done policy-influencing research in the old shanty-town areas around Lisbon.  But there is clearly a gap between my articulations of the circumstances of significant sections of society and the way such people see themselves. 


Two of the most distressing aspects of the referendum campaign were Michael Gove's statement that people had had enough of listening to experts; and the line taken by one of the advisors to the 'Out' campaign that facts were irrelevant and the tactic that should be pursued was to reinforce people's prejudices.  And that is incredibly easy to do in this age of ubiquitous social media which has legitimized the opinion of everyone - however poorly informed or plain wrong - and reduced the value to be placed on the views of those who do actually know what they are talking about in the increasingly complex globalized environment we live in.  I suppose I, along with many many academics, count as one of those now-shunned 'experts', emphasizing facts and objective analyses that may not line up with the visceral beliefs of many people in the wider world.


I'm afraid I don't have an easy solution as to how to lead discourses and rhetoric back to objectivity, and understanding of complexity, and the acceptance of the views of those who have spent a lifetime working on particular areas - be those the attraction of foreign direct investment, migration flows, health policy, or terrorism.  It may seem a cop out for someone involved in education to point to the importance of that sector: but I firmly believe that education has a major role to play - and at a much younger age than amongst university students. 


It is too late to ask for reform of the press in some way - although the half-truths  and untruths pedaled by the populist press were a dismaying feature of the referendum campaign, with no countermanding rebuttals put forward.  (And I know that there were half-truths told by both sides - the fictitious necessity for an emergency austerity budget in the case of an 'out' result argued by George Osborne, contrasted with the carefully-worded but misleading statements about 'controlling our borders' by the out campaign which never actually said 'we will reduce immigration' although they were read as such by many people, or the probably deliberately misleading statements about the £350 billion contributions to the EU budget (note GROSS contributions rather than NET after receipts are taken into account) and the repurposing of this inaccurate 'expenditure' figure to the NHS.)


My first reaction on 24 June was to feel that the 'out' vote had been a victory of the uninformed over the informed, of the old over the young, and of those with a rosy view of a past world that no longer exists over those with a more realistic understanding of the present and the future.  To an extent I still hold to those views.  But the crucial questions now are about how to improve the level of understanding of today's world among many sections of society.  This is not to blame them - but to point to inadequacies in the flows of information within the UK (and more broadly) which result in the identification of simple scapegoats - the EU for deindustrialisation and the fragile economic prospects of significant sectors of society (whilst the wider influence of globalization remains misunderstood); immigrants for shortages of school places, GPs and hospital beds (whilst long-term under-funding of public services - including the NHS - and poor service planning against predictions of future demand go unremarked).  Many of these gaps in information availability come back to rest with politicians and with the political system more generally - those who deal in soundbites rather than real discussion of  complexity, those who are responsible for resource allocation and national economic management. 


We can't now turn the clock back on the referendum - even though there are now increasing indications that many 'out' voters are having second thoughts.  We must look to future debates on major issues.  And as educators people like me need to redouble our efforts to reach beyond the 'normal' recipients of our messages.  Exactly how to do that most effectively is unclear to me.  But we need to involve politicians and the press, to engage with social media  - and perhaps we also need to broaden our own understanding of the world views and understandings of those who voted 'out' in the referendum.  Perhaps we need to get out and about (even) more and stop talking only to people like ourselves. 

Friday 22nd July 2016 - Graduation week thoughts (again)

I've added another three ceremonies this week to my tally of Sheffield degree congregations.  I could count them up with the help of my diary, but I would guess that they now amount to around 175 since I was appointed a Pro-Vice-Chancellor in 2004 (plus one or sometimes two each year during the previous thirty or so years when I only went to the ceremonies where my own students were graduating).  So that must make over 200.  But I never get bored or see attendance as a chore - they are symbolic occasions when almost all the different elements of the university come together in a celebration of what the institution is about - the successful development of student skills.

People are often curious as to why I, rare among colleagues today, own my own graduation robe.  How that came to be is a curious story.

My mother was secretary to a doctors' practice.  She, perhaps naturally for a mother, boasted to her employers when I was successfully examined for my doctorate - it was in early December one year.  A few days later one of the doctors came through to her office. One of his elderly female patients had remarked that she was busy clearing out the flat of her deceased sister in Oxford.  That sister had been head of an Oxford college, and her executrix was finding it difficult to know what to do with her sister's academic gowns.  And so it was, after my mother had made a small donation to the bereaving family's favourite charity, that on Christmas morning, about three weeks after my oral examination, I was presented with a full set of Oxford DPhil academic dress (Oxford would call its doctorate degree by a different name than almost all other universities!) as my Christmas present.  And I have cherished them and used them ever since.  (Although I will add that the main doctorate gown is heavy wool and not as practicable in the hot weather we have had this week as more recent gowns made of a lighter fabric.)  But I notice that some of my colleagues with Oxford DPhil degrees wear the gown with a hood over a suit and tie - and they also wear their mortar boards in procession.  It may be a fad - but I stick to the correct form of Oxford academic dress for a DPhil: gown with NO hood, mortar board carried but not worn (except in the presence of the Chancellor of Oxford itself), and a white bow tie.  I'm not generally one for unnecessary tradition, but this one is quite nice.

I want to share one reflection from this week, and it's about the languages ceremony.  This year ALL our linguistics and area studies specialists graduated together - so we had a range from Spanish to Japanese, Russian to Chinese, Luxembourgish to Korean.  I haven't looked at the statistics to prove it, so this is just an impression, but my perception is that a higher proportion of graduates this year were males than has been the case in the recent past; and a higher proportion were from British ethnic minority backgrounds.  If I am correct, those are both good things.  For too long languages seem to have been the preserve of white women (and often from middle-class backgrounds at that).

I do wonder about the backgrounds of some of the students, I must confess.  It does seem to me that a student who has been brought up bilingual with, say, a Spanish father and a British mother has something of an advantage in taking a degree in Spanish alongside students who do not have that family background.  I know that a languages degree is about much more than simply developing a proficiency in the language, and that there are swathes of cultural materials (and even what I would see as social sciences) to be mastered.  But it must surely be easier to get a very high mark in the language components if one is a native (albeit bilingual) speaker.  Perhaps 'value added' could in some way be incorporated in student assessment.

Someone the other day said to me that there would be less need for graduates in European languages as a result of Brexit, because we would not be contributing civil servants to the Brussels directorates. It seems to me that there could be MORE need for linguists - particularly those with another element to their cv.  In the past we have had one set of negotiators for EU matters, now we will be negotiating many things bilaterally with individual states.  I know that there is anxiety that we just don't have enough trade negotiators, for example, because over the last 40 years we have been represented in trade negotiations by central staff in Brussels.  But NOW we will need our own negotiators with, for example, China, Russia, Brazil, Argentina and other countries where a knowledge of the local language will be crucial for the successful conclusion of discussions.

So the route to a post in the European Union institutions may be about to close for our language graduates, but employment within various government departments here in the UK - and probably in the London offices of many multinationals - seems to me likely to grow in the future.  I am optimistic about the need for languages graduates - and their increasing diversity is a further positive sign.

Tonight we shall celebrate the end of graduation week and of another academic year. This evening I shall try to seek out the fascinating Russian honorary graduate for whom I undertook the oration yesterday, but otherwise it will be an occasion to relax.  And then next week is generally the quietest in the university's year.  More from me then.

Friday 24th June, 2016 - Exam Boards past and present

I've just attended what will probably be my last 'final exam board' for the award of degrees.  I cast my mind back to the first I attended as a new lecturer.


Everything then was done by reading out the names of each student in turn.  We weren't far in when a senior colleague responded to one name by calling out "fishwife".  Whilst I was surprised, others were used to this: it apparently indicated that the senior colleague felt her standard of written English was somewhat below par.  I'm not sure why fishwives were presumed to be particularly illiterate.


At that time a great deal of extraneous information was brought into discussion about candidates - not all of it relating to the marked assessments.  Contributions to field classes (and not just academic contributions but also social) were mentioned, along with performances in the cabaret at the annual GeogSoc Ball.


I for one was very happy when, a few years ago, we moved to anonymising each candidate on the mark sheet for decisions.  We had already, under successive chairs of boards, moved to tighten up the conduct of board discussions to concentrate on academic performance.


Another thing that happened in my early days was the selection of a small number of candidates for viva voce examinations.  Some were chosen because they were on borderlines and we wanted the external examiners to give an assessment of them overall.  Others were chosen because they were somewhere in the middle of a class and the belief was that seeing these individuals would give the externals an idea of 'level' from which to base their assessments of the borderlines.  Vivas were a nightmare for the poor students (and I later discovered that they were an equal nightmare for the externals).  But they could also be manifestly unfair: I remember when I was an exams officer objecting to the suggestion that a particular student who was well below any borderline should be given a viva - the staff member putting the individual forward for this role knew that she was so articulate in oral discussion that she would wow the external into recommending a class of degree that would mean she leapfrogged several others with much better marks. 


When I became an external examiner I had to conduct vivas at two institutions.  At one I was put in a small room with students for whom I had not been given any of their exam papers, and asked to chat to the individuals for 30 minutes and come up with a view.  The other place where I had to conduct vivas was rather different - there were accusations of serious misconduct and the viva was effectively a court of law where two accused individuals, gowned up, had to appear in front of  a set of 6 examiners with the two externals present asking the questions.  Perhaps fortunately for all concerned, the students pleaded guilty to their misdemeanors on arrival (having earlier denied them) and we were all spared the task of cross-examination.


Vivas had no quality control mechanism built into them and great  weight was put on the opinion of the external examiner from a brief conversation.  I was pleased when we (and almost all other) universities got rid of them - although I can see their value in certain subjects such as Architecture where an examiner can converse with, and challenge, a student about their creative work.


Many of these old practices survived because we were operating solely with 'gut instincts'. What changed the nature of exam board decisions - and of the whole context of examining from both student and staff perspectives - was the creation of criteria to identify different levels of performance.  I think this is the biggest single factor explaining the rise in the proportion of good class degrees in UK universities.


When I did my finals - a long time ago - I had no idea about what it was the examiners were looking for.  All I had was the marks on weekly essays as a guide.  I was awarded a First Class degree without fully comprehending what that meant I had done (other than get good marks).  That year there were 4 Firsts awarded in my degree school: when I acted as external examiner in the same department many years later we were awarding perhaps 15  to a cohort of about the same size.  David Willetts challenged me in a public forum a couple of years ago to admit that standards had slipped.  My argument was that that had not happened - but that we had now made clear to students what it is that constitutes a First class, an Upper Second and so on.  And students have responded to that by sharpening up their acts in an attempt to fulfill those criteria.


Finally we have also, as universities, tightened up our regulations on the award of degree classifications.  We now have rules about what average marks or what distributions of performance lead to a particular degree class.  The whole system is much more transparent.


So today I have sat through an exam board that lasted an hour, with no special pleading for individual students (whose names were not known). (I should add that medical cases and special circumstances had already been considered by a small group.)  We did not have long discussions about conversations in vivas, or about the dress sense, dancing ability or general sportsmanship of individual students.  We had clear recommendations from the application of a detailed set of rules (which I had helped to write when I was a Pro-Vice-Chancellor).  There were more Firsts awarded than when I first arrived in the Department.  But we had no calls of "fishwife". 


There has been progress.


(It might have been expected that I would blog today about the Brexit vote.  But I haven't yet gathered my thoughts fully about what that might mean.  For an earlier view readers might like to consider my blog of 13 June.)

Monday 20th June, 2016 - What has the EU done for me?

The 3^rd June Times Literary Supplement had an interesting item in which about 30 people from the world of the arts were asked what difference the UK’s membership of the European Union had personally meant to them. It set me thinking about what my answer would be.

It is possible that, if the vote on 23 June is for the UK to leave the EU, my career as a university lecturer will largely match the period of British membership.  We joined in 1973, and I started lecturing the following year.  And 2016 could see both a vote to leave and my retirement.

When I started my career almost everyone I worked with was British.  All my colleagues were, and while there were a few research students from overseas the majority were from the UK.  That has hugely changed – in part through globalisation, but also through the free movement of labour and people within the EU.  When I stepped down after three years as head of the Department of Economics we had appointed to the staff a Finn, a Romanian, and a Spaniard, all without any red tape.  (In contrast the Human Resources Department had had to go through various hoops for us to appoint two Indians and a Turk).  Had we not been able to appoint these ‘immigrants’ we would have had to go for less well-qualified UK applicants, and the standard of education and research we could offer would almost certainly have suffered.  But these colleagues also bring diversity, different viewpoints and experiences, and provide insights that are immensely fruitful in teaching students about the complexity of the contemporary world.

In my own department, Geography, one of my close colleagues is Greek and I have employed a Dutchman to help with my teaching while I was on the University’s Executive Board.  I did a conference presentation recently with a colleague from an administrative department – she is Romanian.  In other parts of the University I have worked closely with several French, Germans, Italians, a Portuguese and so on.  In my view it has been the opening up of the European Union that has created the mentalities for such mobility.

And I have seen that amongst my ex-students.  Back in the 1970s my graduates all sought jobs exclusively in the UK.  Today they know that the whole of the European Union’s labour market is open to them.  I have seen graduates go off to employment in Italy, France, the Netherlands, Germany and to international companies that want the flexibility to send their trainees anywhere easily.  Membership of the European Union has certainly opened up the employment possibilities for young graduates.  It annoys me that the debate on EU membership concentrates so easily on immigration, when the possibility of emigration is one of the great benefits of membership for many people.

I was responsible for setting up my department’s first ERASMUS programme, creating student exchanges around Europe.  Our first partners were in Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland (not an EU state but one that paid to be part of the exchange scheme).  Over the years dozens of students have flowed in both directions, with the benefits being met by ALL students whose seminar groups have been influenced by the experiences of those from other origins.  And I like to think we have created some ‘soft power’ through these exchanges as well.  I was interested a few years ago to attend a conference in one of our partner countries where I found that a significant proportion of the younger academics there had been on exchange to Sheffield and had been more successful in their careers as a result – and felt very warmly towards both Sheffield and the UK as a result.

But it’s not only a question of undergraduate exchange students.  I have also supervised PhD students from the Czech Republic, Germany and Italy, as well as advising doctoral or postdoctoral visitors from France and Spain.

In recent years I have been on work commitments to a number of countries which, in the 1970s, would have been unimaginable destinations – Bulgaria, Estonia, Romania – as well as working with colleagues from the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland.  Many commentators see the existence of the European Union as driving aspirations within parts of the former Soviet Union and its satellites, leading ultimately to the events of 1989-1991 and the revolutions overturning Communism, as well as the independence of the Baltic States.  My experiences, and through me those of my students, have been enhanced by the visits and contacts I have made.

In total it is my view that the University has been immeasurably improved by the mobility of staff and students – and by the mentalities encouraged by such mobility – resulting from the UK’s membership of the European Union.  We are a far less parochial institution than we were in the 1970s.  And I’ve only dealt with the teaching aspects of my career here – not the research topics, connections or partnerships that have been fostered through membership.

And there is one more thing that has changed.  Writing this in mid June, I know that a number of my colleagues are packing for their summer visits to their second homes in France, Spain and Portugal, and in some cases they are on track towards retiring there.  And I know that they bought these properties with international mortgages that did not exist before the European Union came into existence.

Monday 13th June 2016 - Looking back from 2026

I have just finished my final undergraduate marking task.  And having done that, I had a dream.

...

It was 2026, and I had just come across the ring-binder with all the papers from my delivery of my final year course ten years earlier, in 2016.  I turned the files over and came across all the topics we had studied then (the course was called 'The Social Geography of Europe').  We had dealt with welfare regimes, citizenship structures and ideologies of national identity, separatist movements, minority language communities, Islamophobia as well as the fortunes of communities such as the Roma and Jews across Europe.  We had looked at problems of social inclusion in  cities as well as the changes being brought by new wealthy elite groups.  We had looked at continuing issues in the break up of Yugoslavia, and we had looked at changes in Central and Eastern European cities since the end of Communism.  Looking through the files and papers I got to musing about what would be different now if I were to give the course again - ten years later.  

That summer of 2016 had seemed important, even at the time.  The UK referendum on whether or not to leave the EU had gone the way many expected - or feared: a clear majority for exit.  In my course I had not dealt with the EU and its politics directly - perhaps I should have done.  Although I knew that almost every student of the 69 on the course then had intended to vote to stay in.  

I had predicted that Scotland would go for independence within a couple of years - and I had been right.  With the Scots having voted 'in', they felt they were being ignored yet again by England and a second independence referendum was called in the summer of 2018.  What surprised me at the time, and still surprises me, is what happened in Ireland.  I suppose I should have expected the Northern Ireland electorate to vote to stay in the EU, but the way in which the financial turbulence in what was still then the UK played out during 2016-18 was very interesting in the one part of the kingdom that used both the Euro and the pound.  The Irish government played its cards very well, but they were helped by the assertive UKIP / Conservative coalition in the UK who proposed sealing the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, just as they were doing between Scotland and England.  In effect now, in 2026, Northern Ireland is in a limbo position - effectively reunited with Ireland with the apparent agreement of the Protestant community who see themselves as better off than they would be allied to England and Wales where economic growth over the last few years has been poor.  Yet that de facto  position has not yet been fully ratified internationally.

But I remember in that summer of 2016 thinking that the biggest changes in Europe might not actually be set off by the UK referendum but in France.  What happened over the last few years has been distressing in the extreme - to see a major country brought to its knees by what has been in effect ideological obduracy in a number of forms.  Back in 2015 the French refusal to yield on their assimilationist views about what everyone else saw as legitimate minority communities was a partial backdrop to the atrocities of that year.  The headscarf legislation was just one sign of a French mentality that continued to insist that there was only one way to be French, and that involved adopting secular values and dropping all cultural difference.  I know that other countries were ideologically moving in something of the same direction at the time, but France was taking this to extremes.  With one of the biggest Islamic populations in Europe, but a refusal to even accept the idea of ethnic difference, something had to give - and it was the patience of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who saw themselves as having a hyphenated French identity but remaining outlawed in French thinking.  Their uprising in a series of popular protests that reminded me of East Germany in the autumn of 1989 was also triggered by the economic crisis created by the impossibility of  French governments, of different complexions, being able to pass legislation to de-regulate the labour market and thus kick start economic growth.  The obduracy of the unions, particularly the CGT, coupled with the ineffectualness of governments, contributed to France failing to share in even the modest economic growth occurring elsewhere in the late 2010s.  The French welfare model effectively collapsed in 2021, after five years of on-off strikes had crippled the national exchequer.  It was painful to watch Christine Lagarde, still head of the IMF, pulling the plug on French finances.  Belgium, of course, went the same way a year or two earlier - never having really got its act together after the atrocities of late 2015.

Islamophobia, already on the rise for over 15 years by 2016, just got worse over the last ten years.  In England and Wales it was fuelled by the triumphalism of the populist Brexit movement that had made a great deal of immigration issues during the final days of the referendum campaign, and which certainly led to the bigger majority for 'out' than had been expected.  The way the English Defence League jumped on the bandwagon after the referendum result and starting calling for Islamic 'migrants' (most of whom were UK-born anyway) to be 'sent home' was most unfortunate: and the rump government at the time was too concerned with trying to govern at all to do anything to contradict their rhetoric.  

Germany handled the Islamic question surprisingly well, given the huge numbers of Islamic refugees the country accepted.  Merkel hanging on to power in the 2017 elections proved a blessing since she used her mandate to introduce some of the most far-reaching integration policies in Europe - convincing the German population that immigration, and Islamic immigration at that, was the best solution to their demographic problems, and introducing labour market policies that got migrants and minorities into work and also provided cultural training for them - AND for German natives to understand the new communities (and some long-standing ones) around them.

I remembered that in 2016 my students had expressed the view that European welfare models could survive another ten years.  They were right for some countries but not others (particularly France).  Spain also suffered badly from the independence in 2020 of Catalunya (as we must now spell it) which followed from the Scottish independence referendum two years earlier.  

Turning to Eastern Europe, I recalled the fact that my students back in 2016 had known very little about the whole region when they started the course, and said that they felt they had learned a lot in just four months by the end of it.  The most distressing development, which some of my students had predicted in 2016 in essays they wrote for me then, was the reoccupation of the Baltic States by Russia on the pretext of protecting the interest of the sizeable Russian minorities there - particularly in Estonia and Lithuania.  NATO had been powerless to intervene when US President Trump, elected to a second term in 2020, had adopted an isolationist stance.  Economic growth in other parts of Central and Eastern Europe had been bolstered by overspill from the German economy to some extent.

In the last ten years the EU has lost England and Wales, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania as members - and Greece still teeters on the brink.  But it has new members in Catalunya and Scotland - the latter admitted remarkably quickly in part to spite the out-voters of England and Wales (in reality England).  And following the 2016 referendum in the UK the Commission actually got its act together and introduced some fiscal policies to support the Euro in a way that did not seem likely ten years ago.  T

However, the element that I suppose none of us foresaw in 2016 was the way that Chinese interests would come to dominate throughout Europe.  I do remember going to a postgraduate conference in the summer of 2016 where a paper was given on the rapid growth of elite Chinese migrants bringing investment and entrepreneurial skills to new markets, but I never envisaged the speed with which this would happen.

I had been in Hong Kong in October 2014 when the Chinese announced the ending of the one-child policy, but by 2018 it was clear that this was having no effect on the Chinese birth rate - and the moves made then by the Chinese government with the IMF to create a sort of new Marshall Plan for Europe were astounding.  They saw Chinese economic growth as now being in part fuelled by profits from off-shoring various activities.  Trump's isolationist policies in the US, and some stereotypically racist comments he had made about Chinese physiognomies, meant that the Chinese did not look to the States for opportunities.  Instead they are creating rapid investment streams in a number of European countries - Portugal, Italy, Ireland (north and south), the Netherlands, Scotland (access to the whisky market helps) and several countries in Eastern Europe, particularly Poland, Romania and Bulgaria.  Finland and Sweden have also done well through Chinese interests.  And with Chinese investment has come new Chinese migration: the new elite migrant communities today in Berlin, Frankfurt, Milan, Bucharest and elsewhere are Mandarin-speaking and several thousands strong (and growing rapidly).  

England and Wales have not shared in this growth of Chinese investment and communities because of the anti-immigrant policies of the government there - and indeed many of the EU residents in the UK in 2016 went 'home' soon after the referendum, driven to do so by the unremitting rhetoric against EU migrants which failed to differentiate between doctors and fruit pickers, restaurateurs and care workers.  In fact such numbers went home during the first five years after the referendum that labour shortages hamstrung a number of employment sectors in England and Wales - the hotel and catering trade in London almost collapsed, as did parts of the farming industry; and elder care became unaffordable for thousands without Eastern European care workers.

Some things haven't changed much since my students discussed them in 2016.  There are still tensions in various parts of former Yugoslavia - Slovenia's mediation efforts came to nothing, and Greece still refuses any settlement of the Macedonian question.  Although it looks as if within a year or two both Kosovo and the western part of Macedonia will be absorbed into a much-enlarged Albania.  Boundary redrawing, once anathema in Europe, has become commonplace with the creation of independent Scotland and Catalunya.  Greece is still bankrupt, and is preoccupied with the  rapid growth of Turkey which looks set to exceed Greek GDP per capita within a year or two.  But Greece shares some of the problems of France - a refusal to deregulate markets, and an ideology that does not recognise 'other' ways of being Greek.  Cities in the former Communist bloc continue to develop under capitalism, except it is often now Chinese-run capitalism.  The Roma continue to be discriminated against almost everywhere.  (However the problems and tensions in France have resulted in the big Jewish community there migrating almost in its entirety to Israel - following the invitation in 2015 of the then Prime Minister Netanyahu who said French Jews should return 'home'.  Interestingly, this French Jewish population has added to liberal ideals in Israel and Natanyahu's government was voted out and replaced in 2022 by one that is more sympathetic to a two-state solution to the Palestinian issue.)

But then .... I woke up.  It was all a dream.  But it set me thinking about whether the students on my course this year (and I am talking 2016 now here) have got the background knowledge and the skills to interpret changes of this nature over the next ten years as a result of taking the module.  Only time will tell - but as I write this there is still ten days to prevent one of the key elements in this dream from happening.  The UK could still vote  against Brexit.

Thursday 29th April 2016 - Keeping reviewers sweet

I don't know how many referees' reports I have written over the years on manuscripts submitted for possible journal publication.  I suspect it runs to well over a hundred.  Sometimes I turn requests down because I already have a couple of manuscripts in my in-tray.  I always endeavour to keep to deadlines set - but that may result in journal editors seeing me as a reliable reviewer and sending me more manuscripts to consider.

But one of the frustrating things about reviewing for many journals is not knowing what the editors' decision then is.  I can say that a paper is unpublishable, and then a year later I see that it has appeared completely unchanged from the appalling version I had been sent - and with no word back to me from the editor as to why.  Journals which I don't normally read sometimes send manuscripts which I spend some time on, making detailed suggestions for improvements, and then I hear nothing. Sometimes it's only years later that I find out that the article, revised along the lines I suggested, did appear - and I feel rather pleased that I played a role in improving it.  I'm not looking for a mention or acknowledgement - but it would have been nice if the editors had told me, or had even sent me an offprint of the article.

Reviewers are unsung heroes of the peer review system, taking on significant tasks, often spending considerable time and effort on them, and getting nothing back.  Indeed, we are often kept in ignorance of the decision-making process that the editors have gone through on the basis of the reviews they receive.

It would be very easy to send out a brief message telling us what is going to happen to the articles we have considered - and if they are published to send us an offprint so we can refer to the article (it would benefit its citation count and therefore be in the authors' interest).  But a nice thing happened to me this morning.  I received a message from a journal indicating the outcome of the editors' deliberations on a manuscript that I had scratched my head about and finally decided was not redeemable.  It is nice to have confirmation that they had endorsed my view (and presumably that of the other reviewers).  It brings that one to a close.  And I will be very happy to review for that journal again in the future.  On to the next manuscript.