Can we just agree that 'Best wishes'/'All best' as an email sign off isn't actually rude? It's v. exhausting to try to communicate authentic emotion at the end of the 7000 emails I send everyday
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Samantha Walton
@samlwalton
Professor of Modern Literature
Director
wrote 'Everybody Needs Beauty' & 'The Living World'
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wrote 'Everybody Needs Beauty' & 'The Living World'
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she/herSamantha Walton’s posts
it's weird that women need to disclose the most traumatic experiences of their lives to write about nature while men just need a degree from Cambridge and an obsession with finding the world's rarest lichen
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I've just been reminded of REGARDS - that's the one that's supposed to be really really rude. Totally forgot about it. It's not rude either, fyi, please see above etc.
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It’s a call for solidarity with all LGBTQ+ people, & is not meant to diminish the horror of her assault. The problem, as she puts it so well, is that too many people are selective in their sympathy, solidarity & outrage.
truly a bizarre moment in late stage capitalism when nominally not-for-profit education organisations would rather student grief, employee conflict, & massive reputation damage rather than just pay their staff fairly and issue secure contracts
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I am a final year student at Edinburgh University. This week I was told that due to industrial action, my 10k word dissertation will probably not be marked...ever.
I've been talking to staff & students - a quick 
on the *utter chaos* going on at Edinburgh right now.
on the *utter chaos* going on at Edinburgh right now.I've just been asked why fixed term & zero hours contracts are bad for academia. Here's a non-exhaustive list of reasons why:
-it devalues teaching
-staff can't make ends meet
-staff are underprepared
-student experience suffers
-staff wellbeing suffers
#UCUstrike
What’s wrong with zero hours contracts in academia?
It’s like paying
-a footballer only for the games, not the practice.
- a chef only for putting food on the plate, not chopping it
- a decorator only for painting the walls, not going up the ladder or washing their brush
just thinking about how all summer UCU & academics were saying we shouldn't bring 1mil students to campus & we were told we weren't putting student mental health first & were doom-mongering & were rinsing students for fees for worthless online teaching & should all lose our jobs
I'll stop using my title in public when men stop raising their eyebrows or making a patronising little 'ooo' sound when I say I'm not Miss or Mrs #ImmodestWomen
WE NEVER THOUGHT £9000+ FEES WERE DEFENSIBLE.
I literally OCCUPIED A BUILDING protesting these fees. Don't you dare come for academics over fees
Blame 👏 the 👏 Tory 👏government
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Students: your lecturers really don't want to do this. Some are broke, in debt, conflicted over the strike, unsure how they'll pay their rent or feed their children. Your education matters to them, but they can't throw away their pension because of USS mismanagement #ucustrike
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I think the pandemic has made everyone totes emosh in email sign offs. 'Good health to you and your kin,' etc. I agree about thanks though!
I'm going to try out 'thankyouthankyouthankyou' and '[crying emoji]' as my new sign offs
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apparently if you say 'Regards' it means you are going to kill the person that very night
Ok I'm muting UK academic accounts still churning out research-related tweets. C'mon people. It may not seem like a big thing but staff are out on strike to improve equality, conditions & pay for everyone. Promoting your work during this time is in poor taste & counterproductive
In this dire academic job market can we please talk about ECR classifications. Like, is there any good reason to put a limit on what counts as an ECR by years from PhD? Surely 'not yet held permanent employment' should be enough to count for fellowships & funding?
Congratulations to the UK’s two richest universities for coming top in a league table that rewards universities for being rich!
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BREAKING: Congratulations to Oxford university, which takes top spot in our new university rankings for the first time in 12 years, beating Cambridge, which comes third, with St Andrew’s, where Kate and William met, in second place. Full details @thetimes thetimes.co.uk/article/uk-uni
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"To aim for the highest point is not the only way to climb a mountain" 
Adventure into the mountains with Cairngorms author, Nan Shepherd
Adventure into the mountains with Cairngorms author, Nan Shepherd
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IT’S HERE! The Living World: Nan Shepherd and Environmental Thought is out from & it feels unreal to have my author copies. Hopefully the picture of me prancing in the Cairngorms before *all this* communicates my delight
University of Essex’s vice-chancellor's statement on #ussstrike #ucustrike is good. USS changes are unnecessary, unjust, & incoherent. Staff don't want to strike: they just want their pension to reflect the money they paid into it timeshighereducation.com/blog/universit
The Avon between Bristol - Keynsham was filthy today, trees & hedges on the riverbank strewn with plastic from the floods last week. I didn’t photograph that but here’s a plaque that’s recently materialised by a popular wild swim spot
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Academic staff might have spent 10+ years on low or no income desperately trying to get academic work. We weren't saving in our 20s, we may not have started a pension until our mid-30s, or later. Modern academics aren't the ivory towered dons of media imagination.
Nature writing is pretty white, but there are amazing works by writers of colour too!
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Can I suggest the genre label 'white people went outside?' @Waterstones twitter.com/mark_carnall/s…
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most academics I know want to get rid of absurd league tables based on nothing more than wealth inequalities, inherited privilege & elitism, & create a system where anyone can access *free* education at any age in a well-funded uni close to them w/ part time & online options
this is a really good thread of short clips of what happened in Bristol last night. It's the same pattern - peaceful protest is tolerated, until it isn't. When the police move in they use batons, shield edges, boots, dogs & horses to beat people back.
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Replying to @HUCKmagazine
it’s erupted here as the riot police charge forward into the crowd
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✨cover reveal! ☄️
I'm in awe of what have created for my book ~ Everybody Needs Beauty: In Search of the Nature Cure (out 2021)
Expect glitchy florals, post-pastorals, radical empathy & an intersectional search for 'healing nature'
I’m off to launch The Living World: Nan Shepherd & Environmental Thought. A book that taught me how to read a book so completely that it changes who you are. In a way I feel I’m still writing it, as I’m still thinking with the lively generosity of Shepherd’s writing
A heatwave seems the right time to announce that my book 'Everybody Needs Beauty: In Search of the Nature Cure' will be published in 2021. It explores why we seek nature for health & wellbeing & asks how climate change will affect our mental health:
if you're writing about Nan Shepherd's creative output & thinking of linking it to her sexuality / sex life maybe ... don't do that?
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there is SO MUCH expertise & compassion amongst academics & looking at all the local lockdowns & outbreaks I am just SO MAD that we're cast into this hated, Cassandra role where it's basically unfashionable to listen to us or our union on anything - C19, education, mental health
Just sent the manuscript of 'The Living World: Nan Shepherd and Environmental Thought' off to the editors.
Feeling very 'Nan Shepherd chilling in her garden with a cup of tea' right now. 🏔️🥾🏔️🥾
That feeling when you realise to do the job you trained for they want you to be a researcher, educator, writer, campaigner, publicist, policy-maker, insights specialist, events organiser, impact manager, administrator, workshop facilitator, accountant... any others?
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Publication is not enough, to generate impact you need to campaign blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocial
My copies of ‘Everybody Needs Beauty: In Search of the Nature Cure’ arrived, and they are gorgeous!
Feeling giddy, anxious, excited, uncanny, and hugely honoured to be publishing this book with next week (out 22nd July) 🌱
I’m taking about Nan Shepherd’s magnificent book The Living Mountain on #Winterwatch at 9pm! Expect a white hare vanishing in the snow, naked birches lit by bright winter sun, & the plateau glittering on the horizon
"The Twits" "Betrayed"; "Resistance" "The Subtle Knife" "Fahrenheit 451"
This is what happens when you come for English Literature graduates ✒️>🗡️
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Got to be the worst politicians Zoom bookshelves ever.
Except what's that in the top, right hand corner, "The Twits".
School librarian has a sense of humour.
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obviously it would be completely unthinkable to listen to academics when it's easier to frame us as lazy villains in a melodrama created by Tory education policy.
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& most academics said yeah, we actually fought against fees & the financial exploitation of students is really Tory government policy & we can do our jobs safely & well online & student halls will obviously become a new epicentre & maybe students could study locally this year
Happy birthday Nan Shepherd, born on this day in 1893.
I spent years re-reading and writing about The Living Mountain and still feel like I've barely begun to understand it. 'Knowing another is endless', she writes. 'The thing to be known grows with the knowing.'
PROOFS! Ridiculously exciting to see Everybody Needs Beauty take physical form & start making its way to readers (publishing in July)🪁🪶🌪️ t.co/kX9I5kNyt2
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I'm so glad it's not possible to catch C-19 at university and that students & university workers are immune!
It’s publication day for Everybody Needs Beauty: In Search of the Nature Cure 🎉
Thanks to , & for making it happen, and , & for early reading & encouragement 💚
I hope you love it
Can you imagine being as bad as Tory MPs at your job & not getting sacked? When I worked as a secretary I got fired for not confirming a meeting in my boss' diary. I lost a pub job for dropping a pint on a customer. But screw up a nation's A levels & destroy HE? You're cool
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Just the kind of person who shouldn’t be anywhere near students. And yeah, all PhD students have brilliant minds. There are lots of great PhD students, most of whom aren’t rapists. The idea that this one rapist is a tragic loss to science that needs to be mourned is... bizarre.
‘My grief which is the size of the tiny racist island on which I was born, I compress it, I transmute it into something like the wild and collectively inhuman joy of the swifts that circle the city with a frenzy wilder than. Oh whatever’.
Sean Bonney 🖤💔🖤
Why do journalists keep banging on about 'recorded lectures' like they're the worst thing in the world? My recorded lectures are captioned, edited, of good sound quality & directly address the week's reading. Students can pause them & listen again
bbc.co.uk/news/education
Climate change is a fact, not an opinion. The scientific consensus on climate change is not for debate. Earth does move through heating and cooling cycles, but nothing ever as rapid (within 200 years) as the present heating. Learn from actual experts: un.org/en/sections/is
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Um, because the people doing the teaching deserve to have secure employment and to able to afford rent and food? Most students are horrified to discover the precarity their hardworking lecturers live with. A gig economy is in no one's best interest (apart from greedy employers).
Feeling weird about the rhetoric of the ‘fight against climate change’, like climate change is some kind of existential threat external to the human rather than something directly caused by a broken & unjust economic & industrial system
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oh also, universities mess you around with pay. It's much easier to 'forget' to process pay for casualised staff on time than salaried staff. How many zero hours academics had to wait until late November for their October pay because finance messed up last month?
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-staff aren't paid to conduct research
-staff on can't get mortgages, loans, visas, & have trouble w/ rent contracts
-it's exploitative
-staff must reapply for jobs constantly
-staff often have to move for the next contract
-staff with caring responsibilities suffer worst
My PhD supervisor gave me the life altering advice that you should write your PhD like a book.
No examiner is going to turn down a beautifully written, monograph-quality thesis & you save yourself no end of trouble re-writing it when you're viva'd & struggling for work.
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"A thesis is written for examiners, an academic book for scholars in general" - the basics of writing a book from your PhD
wp.me/p4m9em-87C
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-staff miss out on holiday pay, pensions, sick pay & parental leave
-researchers from low income backgrounds are excluded from academia
-it entrenches privilege of race, class, gender & able-bodiedness
The power of that statue being in the Harbourside is unreal.
Keep Colston in the water. Put up a plaque by the site. Create an exhibit in the museum, with film & 3D reconstructions showing how he ended up there & why.
I work in education & trust me this is a TEACHABLE MOMENT
disgusted to discover that getting up early and writing a to-do list really does help you achieve your 'goals' and be 'productive'
I'd probably stop & reflect on how colleagues at post-92s; without research time; secure employment; who are BAME or under-represented, feel, & ask what I can to uplift them. We gain our sense of worth from our contributions to our community. Success isn't just points on our CVs
Like, thousands of brilliant minds are lost to science each year due to lack of funding and discrimination. That is a tragedy.
Lush folds of Witches’ Butter growing in the forest after rain. If you find it sprouting on your door, it means a witch has put a hex on you. Happy holidays!
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Staff are only paid for the hours they teach, plus a couple hours prep. This barely covers marking, or emails, or student care, or secondary reading. It doesn’t pay for all the other work needed to do the job well - the research. It’s them people are striking for #UCUstrike
Is anyone else feeling strangely nourished by the strike?
Universities are meant to foster exactly this feeling. They exist to build a research culture where we meet up, share ideas, learn from each other, help students develop their ideas & become part of an academic community.
Happy birthday Nan Shepherd! I'm reviving this now-vintage film in her honour.
'To aim for the highest point is not the only way to climb a mountain.'
Thanks to Shepherd for making it ok to dawdle, snooze, wander & make friends with the hills
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"To aim for the highest point is not the only way to climb a mountain"
Adventure into the mountains with Cairngorms author, Nan Shepherd.
#Winterwatch
#Nature
#Scotland
Adventure into the mountains with Cairngorms author, Nan Shepherd.
#Winterwatch
#Nature
#Scotland2:11
Reading 3rd yr dissertations & I'm just in awe of students writing in this pandemic & what they've achieved. Who'd have thought 3yrs ago that you'd know so much about this topic? Be confident with this theory? Become interested in these books? Education is transformative, ok?
My first book + SELF HEAL + is a thing in the world! Preorders today, out November 5th 🔥
Interested in reading more nature writing by Black writers? Here's a thread of books by writers of colour, including amazing writers and artists like Ingrid Pollard, J. Drew Lanham and Elizabeth-Jane Burnett #BlackInNature
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Nature writing is pretty white, but there are amazing works by writers of colour too! twitter.com/mark_carnall/s…
well well well. happy international women's day to us.
Fantastic decision from Birkbeck, who note that factors considered in league tables, inc. entry tariffs & retention rates, penalise institutions which predominantly accept students from non-traditional academic routes & those with caring responsibilities or studying part time
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We can confirm that we are to withdraw from UK university rankings as we believe they do not give an accurate picture of the strengths of the College, but Birkbeck will remain part of the international listings. bit.ly/2OJOKcF
I don’t know who needs to hear this but writing a book takes ages and is a massive faff & don’t let anyone tell you otherwise #AcWriMo #amediting
Love the fact the super senior powerful justice delivering the searing verdict chose to wear a huge jewel-encrusted spider broach to work today. It is Halloween season & Lady Hale has no time for your bs 🕷🔥 🥳
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The moment Lady Hale revealed that the #SupremeCourt has unanimously ruled "Parliament has not been prorogued."
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Laing's piece on gardening in a crisis is, I strongly feel, not what I was looking for.
'I thought we’d stay in Cambridge forever, but the problem is that it’s too small. There’s no room for fruit trees and we can’t cram another dahlia into the beds.'
sooo this is what in-person teaching is going to look like. This is the level of protection that's necessary to make it 'Covid-19 secure' #universities
Precarious, zero hour contracts exploit early career academics & keep talented researchers 'junior' for far too long. They've also allowed Russell Group unis to double student nos & push post-92s to ruin. If they paid their staff properly, they could never cover all that teaching
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UK academics must stand up to stop universities becoming sweatshops | Steven Jones theguardian.com/education/2020
NO 👏 WOMAN 👏 WRITER 👏 IS 👏 EVER 👏 'FORGOTTEN' 👏 IT'S 👏 JUST 👏 THE 👏 [patriarchal, elitist] 👏 LITERARY 👏 ESTABLISHMENT 👏ISN'T 👏 CASHING-IN 👏 ON 👏 HER 👏 ARCHIVE
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it's not like they can keep the profits (except in management pay) or hand it over to shareholders. They just ... don't want staff to have it? Why? so universities can grow limitlessly. Also, why? This isn't Amazon. The VC can't actually keep all the money. Just... pay staff?
Scottish botany Twitter! My family have a wee grave in a quiet, forgotten corner of Kensal Green cemetery. Today we visited & found the old crumbled grave next to it had been replaced with this new stone. So, who knows about Scottish plant collector Archibald Menzies, 1754-1842?
Bristol is founded on racism. Streets & buildings are named after slave traders & plantation owners. The wealth created by enslaved people built this city.
But Bristol also has a powerful anti-racist history. Here are some things I didn't know about Bristol until I moved here..
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anyway shout out to & my editors at Bloomsbury for encouraging me to write about nature without disclosing anything v. personal! If you want to find about mental health & nature without finding out about me... ->
Pondering Nan Shepherd's line:
Scientists tell me that the alpine flora of the Scottish mountains is Arctic in origin—that these small scattered plants have outlived the Glacial period and are the only vegetable life in our country that is older than the Ice Age'
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And all the while your boss is paying himself £300k a year & telling you he has no money to pay you to put up your ladder or clean your brush. Just the paint on the wall bit. Sorry!
I would quite like to bring back that tender, apologetic, nervous tone we all used in our emails in deep lockdown 2020. Asking after friends and family's health; 'these strange times' etc
Thoughts on reading Sam Gyimah's telegraph article on student mental health, a thread
I'll be talking ecocriticism on tonight 22.00 w/ eco-icons Harriet Tarlo &
expect chat about the Anthropocene & its discontents, Bessie Head, Lorine Niedecker & Rachel Carson, a lot of eco-anxiety & a glimmer/glitch of hope
A single train ticket Edinburgh - Bristol in 7 weeks is £183
The plane is £36
do you think this is acceptable? A reasonable amount of money? Competitive? Reflective of the service you provide?
Who knew that running for-profit would make rail services worse?
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I just bought a single rail ticket Bristol-Edinburgh for nearly £70 w/ a 1/3 rail card in a month & a half's time. The return will cost £80+
In September, I travelled London-Hanover on high speed trains, including Eurostar, for €65
The flight costs £30
Renationalise now, ok?
It's here! And it contains my first (1st!?) ever published short story!! I'm looking forward to tucking into these beauties later. Thanks
🧊🌊 poetry competition announcement! 🌊🧊
*ICE SONGS* is looking for poems about the cold & frozen parts of our planet
deadline: 25 December, free entry, £300 prize+£50 runners up
sponsored by , judged by earth scientists & poets icesongspoetry.wixsite.com/ice-songs
I’ve been teaching The Hound of the Baskervilles today and the weather couldn’t have been better
I find it hard to believe anyone would choose to get out of bed before 9am
Hi, historian of psy-disciplines here who literally wrote a book about IQ testing, phrenology, composite photography and criminal profiling.
This will not work.
This will also be racist, classist, ableist and sexist.
Positivist science like this underpinned eugenics.
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Artificial intelligence (AI) and face recognition technology is being used for the first time in job interviews in the UK to identify the best candidates. telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/2
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more importantly, I can't think of anything more reductive, offensive, heterosexist & breathtakingly stupid than to suggest she writes sensually about nature because he was unsatisfied & horny
'Common sense' is political. It's not the voice of simple folk wisdom. It's not objective science or reason. It's a bundle of hunches, prejudices, misremembered news reports, the flash of a social media post, free-floating factoids, the vibe you get seeing politicians talk
I'm thinking about that 'I worked hard to get where I am!' lecturer tweet & how we so often (rightly!) talk about privilege in terms of access/identity, but less about simply knowing what you're supposed to be working hard at.
I'm having a *good day* writing about millennial loneliness & pot plants, radical herbalism & big-pharma, indigenous botany & vegetal kinship.
The big 2020 energy for my book is 'nature and wellbeing, but make it destroy capitalism.'
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You don't need to trust me: here's UCU's findings ucu.org.uk/stampout
Solidarity to all HE colleagues entering week 3 of the #ucustrike #USSstrike. I've absolutely in awe of all you've achieved so far, & for all the students offering support. We can do this!
At that weird stage at the start of term where it feels like everything I have to do over the next two months is happening at once, there’s no more linear time, just a to-do list of work & experiences washing over me in big indifferent waves. Please tell me it’s not just me?
As written by Robert McCrum, a feisty journalist with lustrous brown locks who brings to mind Duke Orsino, or Lafeu
theguardian.com/culture/2017/j
Feeling very Carrie at the end of Sex & the City as I find my missing 'Fuck the Tories' necklace in the lining of my handbag
'I wrote a poem about a fucking river' is in ! Thanks for bringing my sweary paean to place into the world. It's from my first collection +Self Heal+ out from on 5th November 🔥
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‘I am repeating on you
this body is a factory, this room, a weaker shade of tea’
A new poem by @samlwalton from her debut collection Self Heal, published by @bhousepress next month.
granta.com/i-wrote-a-poem