Star Wars Ep 2 | Attack of The Clones

I feel like something of an interloper as I write this month’s post because Star Wars is not my field of expertise by any measure. I am a sci-fi afficionado (it must be true because it says so in my bio), but the great battle between the Jedi and the Sith is an area I’ve…

Spineless Wonders | National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth

On the 17th November I pulled out the posh coat and ventured forth again into the world of academia, attending the Spineless Wonders conference at the National Library of Wales. It didn’t seem, on the face of it, to really have much to do with my field of research but I’m so glad I went…

It’s Always Christmas Eve in Bedford Falls

In my eternal quest to explain my academic research to my friends, “but seriously, what is it you actually do?” I like to transplant the ideas I have about digitisation, and manuscripts, into more familiar contexts. And so, the materiality of absence becomes a Pink Floyd song, and the cultural significance of a physical manuscript…

Wales & the World | Cynefin, Welsh Manuscripts & Digital Colonialism

So, way back in June I attended two conferences – one at the University of Wales, Trinity St David, and one at the National Library of Wales – and at both conferences I presented similar papers. I’ve included my presentation here from the NLW conference, as it gives a broad view of both talks. I…

Slow Digitisation & the Battle of the Books | Andrew Prescott

We are in a war between the moderns and the ancients, according to Andrew Prescott – and I have most definitely picked a side.

#DH is exclusionary

I’ve had a bit of a week of it, to be honest with you. Without going into too much detail, it’s been a real slog. And earlier today, when Small accidentally killed a slug by petting it too hard, it just put the tin lid on what’s been an absolute crapfest. The world, I mean….

We seek refuge in the digital at the End of the World.

I have reached a momentous occasion on WordPress. The writing I have done within this blog has ebbed and flowed with the tide of my research and subsequent employment (or lack thereof). It seems appropriately grandiose, though perhaps a touch inauspicious, that I now find myself in a darkened room, huddled over the glow of…

Pokémon GO and the cultural sector

Gotta catch them all? Many of you will remember the original Pokémon phenomenon: my cousins, who were small boys during the height of the craze, would frequently watch the show whilst visiting our grandmother. There were the usual anime tropes: “big eyes, small mouth”, the Americanised theme tune, and lots of cheering. With its catchphrase ポケモンＧＥＴだぜー！which translated…

Monetising knowledge in New Academia

I’ve always wanted to be an academic pirate. When I say I’d always wanted to be a research  pirate, I hadn’t actually realised that that was what I’d always wanted until I read a similar phrase in an article on the website I Fucking Love Science, entitled: “Research Pirate illegally makes millions of scientific papers…