For some months now, I could see from my diary that July 2011 was going to be a very hectic month – it turned out to be more hectic than I could have imagined! For two weeks of the month I was largely occupied teaching and supporting students through doctoral summer schools, one in Ireland, the other at the Lincoln campus. These were both busy, but very enjoyable and interesting weeks. In Ireland the study school was opened by the Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, it was an honour to meet him – in his opening speech, Enda Kenny stated that it was a ’unique and special week in education in Mayo and nationally’ and that the study school was ‘creative and innovative’ – you can see the Lincoln teaching team with the Prime Minister in this photo -
As well as the study schools, I also presented, with colleagues at two conferences this month. The first was the Higher Education Academy’s national conference in Nottingham where we presented on an innovative project to develop and implement our own Professional Standards Framework for Teaching and Learning in Higher Educaiton at the University of Lincoln. The second was the Joint Social Work Education Conference held in Manchester, where we presented on a SWAP (social work and policy subject centre) funded research project to explore students’ experiences of mentoring children and young people looked after by the Local Authority. These are just some of the areas of work that made July such a busy month – all in all, I felt as though I was hardly at home all month! So, I am looking forward to a chance to catch up and have some annual leave in August! 
July started with a few days well earned rest; following the ICED 2010 conference in Barcelona, I stayed on in Spain, but went down to the coast to a lovely fishing village called L’Escala – good weather, good food, good scenery, good company, just excellent! Back at work and July was partially filled with teaching and tutorials on the taught doctoral programme’s summer study schools. I also presented in two sessions at the HECU5 conference in Lancaster (see ‘Conference’ page of this website for details and photographs). Finally the month ended with our Social Work award board, always a really satifying culmination of a year of everyone’s hard work; students, tutors and support staff – great to see so many students progressing really well and others graduating having achieved so much, professionally and personally, over the period of their studies.
June 2010 has been an amazing month. I have had the good fortune to present papers at two international conferences. The first was the International Joint World Conference on Social Work and Social Development held in Hong Kong. I presented a joint paper with a colleague (details on my publications page) and met with some wonderful people too. It was a huge conference, more than 3,000 people! There were almost too many papers and events to choose from, so it whilst it was stimulating and interesting, it was also very tiring Hong Kong was extremely warm and humid throughout the few days that I was there. Here are a couple of photographs taken at the conference venue,
Shortly after getting back from Hong Kong, I went to Barcelona, where I presented at the International Confederation of Educational Developers conference ICED 2010. This was a smaller conference held in a university in Barcelona, again, though there were many very thought provoking papers and workshops to attend. Weatherwise, more very hot, sunny days, but with much less humidity than in Hong Kong. So, a couple more photographs
As if that was not enough travelling for one month, I also had a short visit to Ireland to commence the data collection work on the evaluation project I mentioned in last month’s blog. All in all, this month, my feet have hardly touched the ground … literally!
