New Position at IASH

If education, as Stefan Collini said last night in his Enlightenment Lecture at the University of Edinburgh, is “more or less like a pizza — with knowledge being delivered from point A to point B”, then I’m grateful to have placed an order for an extra-large. I’ve just taken up a position as a researcher at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, and will be in residence in Edinburgh from now until the end of the summer. I’m looking forward to studying a wide range of topics, among them, the cultural history of the haar — the freezing fog so famous along the eastern coast of Scotland (and what greeted me as I left the flat this morning). And, of course, what the Scots have invented in order to combat its effects.