Consumer Culture Vulture

"hello, Before I said to you hale me to write my reference, you ask my information? my name is X, my student number is Y, do you need my exam's performance? Good luck."

Week three of teaching done and all I want to do is curl up and sleep for my weekend solid. However, I have going through my head a half dozen activities and tasks am trying to get right for my classes next week. Something to do with holiday choices; trolling students facebook profiles in order to critique consumer identities; a blind date based market research session... it goes on. To get right, a good lecture activity probably takes five or six hours to work out. For about 15 minutes class time. It is an exhausting ratio; but if it goes well then can recycle in one form or another forever after. This week I have had three lectures based on a Jeremy Kyle type audience baiting TV show for instance. In one we were yelling at a bin representing BP after the 2011 Gulf oil spill. In another the poor pot plant in the corner was standing in for Kim Jong Un and his repellent regime. I have no idea if the students learnt the points about sustainable and ethical disaster management, or polit...

I can't seem to Google 'celebrity plastic surgery disasters lol' these days without coming across yet another attempt by a formerly beautiful star, attempting increasingly vainly to cling on to their youthful, long-gone, previous self. Insert gratuitously schadenfreude-filled photograph of wonkily botoxed/botched boobed actress on the downswing of her career here Now obviously growing ever closer to death is a bit chilling. And even a generous mind might admit that sagging skin, haggard bags, and balding pates, are not what immediately springs to mind when getting into the mood for a quick flick of the wrist. However, is it really so great; that younger fresher self? I spent most of my teenaged years ultra depressed and wildly unshaggable. The two overlapped to a great extent in the Ven Diagram of life has to be said.   I suggest, as a cure to all of this youth obsession, attending any freshers fair currently underway. The truth of what it is like to be young will h...

How to animate sessions is always on a lecturers' mind. Fortunately marketing is quite a fun subject already. Some of the concepts can be a bit dry however, and don't always stick in students minds. This summer I have been working on introducing celebrity marketing across my lectures as a way to make more irreverent, but also get across the key points in an engaging and memorable way. Here is one I made earlier using the Kardashians and the BCG Box. I'm not saying Kris Jenner thinks like this herself. But she does.   My colleagues suggestion to do the same thing with terrorist organisations is certainly interesting. However, no.

This weekend I spent 2 full days installing a new kitchen sink. In between cursing to myself, and my poor partner sheltering resigned in the garden, I got to thinking how similar DIY is to journal article writing. Both take far longer than you expect to complete. Both will need several touch ups later on. The more preparation time you put in the first place the better they both come out. And both will be subject to critical evaluation afterwards. So wrench or pen; you're lumbered either way I'm afraid. The only upside is when you become sick of one, you can give the other a go. And then when your thumb can take no more awry hammer strokes, or Endnote has sent your eyes fuzzier than a peach, go back to the other and it seems a positive relief.

Just an update to yesterday's post. The European Commission website is an excellent resource for finding out about the latest funding opportunities across the continent. Would highly recommend. Plus they have a nice map I wanted to share.

I have been discovering, through incidental conversations with colleagues, a number of useful websites. I thought I would pass them on, a downside of lecturer's independence being that we often don't realise what/how/where/when resources are available. Hence... The UK research council : can register with these for alerts on UK funding opportunities etc. Researchgate is a sort of facebook for academics (which sounds a bit like facebook with all of the fun sucked out of it, but my colleague swears by its networking charms). The European Commission , who I follow on facebook facebook, are regularly updated with interesting research findings and funding opportunities. Plus they have good graphics to be inspired by. Those are the ones I have so far. Hope they are of use. I will keep my ear out for more...

I've just been googling myself (personal and academic vanity aside, I was legitimately looking up my past papers so I could reference them alright) and have discovered that I have been cited three times by people who aren't me! Oh my gosh this is very exciting. It means somebody other than my mum and dad (and I suspect from the 'that's nice dear' summary they gave me that their review may have been less than thorough) has read my papers. Well they must have at least read the abstract. Probably. So that works out at around 76 hours writing per reader thusfar. Hmmm.

I'm not sure it counts as research and enterprise activity (I should be so lucky to get it into ref 2020) but I was last week doing a tiny part to promote tourism in the Isle of Man. Us academics are supposed to be involved in spreading the word. On Sunday, at the annual Festivale InterCeltique , I helped carry a flag and hand out sweets, supporting the Isle of Man dance group Ny Fennee , as they represented the island in the Grand Parade of Celtic nations (my sister was dancing hence how I got in - and she's not even a fancy PhD like myself). Give me a bit of flag waving over article editing any day. The crowds are much nicer. And their feedback far more positive than my first round reviewers ever are. Why can't my submissions ever just be clapped and cheered? One day, one day... One devious idea might be to tag some sweets into my appendices. The crowds went mad for them after all...

We might have defeated them at Agincourt, Waterloo, and bailed them out in WW2 (lets just gloss over 1066, Jean d'Arc, and all that), but in the battle for tourists, the French clearly have us licked.  I have just come back from my first ever paid holiday (the guilt of it was washed away pretty quickly with local beer, don't worry folks). Ten days in France. And when I wasn't congratulating myself on my good fortune to land a rare job that still gives generous vacations, or realising that for the first time ever I could afford to buy real Orangina, not Top Budget Orangey Lite, I was observing how deeply developed tourism across the Channel is. I appreciate this every year, but even more so this time. Perhaps after four years of budget cuts in the UK becoming increasingly apparent in our ever more unkempt town centres, shabby civic spaces, and frequently pruned back tourist initiatives, the difference is all the more stark. The modern, clean, accessible facilities fou...