Pragmatism not idealism

16 Jun 201716 Jun 2017

keeping in contact with old friends It was twenty years ago today, went one of the contenders for greatest album ever. It was twenty years ago today since I and…

Doreen Massey (1944-2016)

12 Mar 201612 Mar 2016

I came into academia via a fairly circuitous route. After a degree in sound engineering (which I left pretty sure I never wanted to enter a recording studio again; although it…

Beauty is in the streets

7 Mar 20167 Mar 2016

  The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it. Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach. I never realised that, like party politics, academia…

The Other immigrants of Carribee Island: Wolverhampton’s Jewish community 1

1 Feb 20161 Feb 2016

My PhD research focuses on a small section of Wolverhampton town centre in the nineteenth century that was well-known - perhaps notorious, even - for it's substantial Irish immigrant population.…

“Slums” of the Black Country: Darlaston

16 Nov 201521 Dec 2015

I've ummed and aahed a bit about what to write about the Post's report on Darlaston. It's really the same old story: surface drainage, evils, abomination, bubbling and seething, stagnant, over-flowing, the…

“Slums” of the Black Country: Eel Street, Oldbury

2 Nov 201521 Dec 2015

The Post's next community is one I'm loathe to try and explain in detail. Oldbury was infamous as one of the most polluted towns in the country - so much so that…

“History breaks down into images not into stories”

8 Sep 20158 Sep 2015

On the night of 25th September 1940, a middle-aged German-Jewish academic took his own life with an overdose of morphine in the Hotel de Francia, Portbou, on the Spanish side…

Land of my fathers

30 Jun 2015

I've been reading Henri Lefebvre's Rhythmanalysis lately. I'm no expert on continental philosophy or cultural theory really, so I've enjoyed this - it's light and possible to read in an impressionistic sort…

All the pieces matter

2 Jun 20152 Jun 2015

Disclaimer: I'm no expert on American history, not at all. I'm keen that any theory I want to study be portable though, so I'm attempting here to look at a…

Empty space

1 May 20151 May 2015

Warning again: I'm going to be talking Black Country history a little further down, but I've been interested in what maps do and don't show, so the preamble is a bit...…