Thursday 25th October 2012 - The pleasures of an urban geographer

Although most of my days are spent in university administration and other related roles, I am an urban geographer at heart.  This trait comes out most clearly when I find myself in London or some other major city (other than Sheffield - although the way that Sheffield works also interest me).  I yearn to understand how people live their lives in the city: what degrees of choice they have; how they are constrained by, for example, the housing market or the transport system.  And I am interested in how all the different ways of life of ordinary citizens add up to the vibrancy of city life - the daily and weekly rhythms of activity.

Whenever I have meetings or other events to attend in London I try to get a train that will give me a little time to get the feel of the streets - either by walking to my destination or my getting the bus.  Yesterday afternoon I arrived at St Pancras at 1730 for an event in St James's at 1830 and I took the bus as far as the Strand.  It did the journey in 15 minutes.  The traffic was light and there were relatively few passengers.   A 1730 bus journey in Sheffield would be a very different story - London and Sheffield work on different daily diaries, with many of those working in London being at their desks until well after Sheffielders have gone home.  And when I took the tube much later that evening to sleep on my daughter's sofa-bed in her north London flat I was in the midst of others who were just going home from work.  But unlike many in Sheffield who go home first and then go out for the evening, those surrounding me had been out for a drink or a meal on their way home.  London works in a different way from most other UK cities.  Some years ago I found that there were similar differences between the daily rhythms of Paris and of its suburbs.  I was writing a book on Paris and came across an unpublished government report that enabled me to represent diagrammatically the life of the whole metropolitan area throughout a 24 hour cycle.

People sometimes ask me which is my favourite European city.  London is in some ways the one I know best, having been partly brought up there.  But there are vast swathes of London that I hardly know (except from maps - and I prefer to get the feel of a city through the soles of my feet).  I do still get a buzz in observing the changing scene in London - revisiting neighbourhoods after a gap of a year or two and seeing how things have changed.  Fitzrovia and Bloomsbury in the city centre; Richmond and Camden in the outer and inner suburbs - these are areas that I enjoy being in.

But for places that really excite me with their atmosphere, and the challenge of trying to understand urban life in a different cultural context, some of the best for me are the following:
- Sitting in the Hackescher Hof at the centre of the former East Berlin, or in a cafe in Prenzlauer Berg, and reflecting on the changes in ways of life in the city since the fall of the wall;
- Shopping in the so-called 'Turkish Market' along the Landwehrkanal in Berlin on a Tuesday afternoon, and watching the interchange of ethnicities and the breaking down of many potential inter-community barriers;
- Sitting outside the Brasileira cafe in Lisbon or walking up the nearby side streets to the Carmo and looking at the relics of old Lisbon in a neighbourhood that has yet to feel the full force of gentrification;
- Returning from time to time to the estate known as the Quinta do Mocho ('Owl Farm') near the airport in Lisbon and watching the 'normalisation' of life in what was once probably the most ghetto-like ethnic minority neighbourhood in the whole of Europe (I can explain why if asked!);
- Strolling the avenues in le Vesinet in the western outer suburbs of Paris, and seeing how some of the traditions of French rural life permeate the French capital.

These are the experiences that have driven my academic curiosity.  I look forward to my next visit to London - in less than two weeks time.  

Thursday 18th October 2012 - Social mobility and widening participation

The publication of the latest Milburn Report on social mobility led to me being interviewed on Radio Sheffield once again today.  The Report seems to me to have two foci - one around the encouragement of young people from widening participation backgrounds to stay in education beyond the age of 16 and then to aspire to go to university, and the second around the difficulties for students from such backgrounds going on beyond their undergraduate studies to take postgraduate qualifications.  It was the former that the Radio Sheffield interviewer wanted to highlight, although it was the latter that I would have preferred to deal with on air.  I have become a cracked record in various places over a number of years with my view that we are doing few favours to students from impoversiehd backgrounds who arrive here with career goals that will inevitably involve a postgraduate qualification, and who then find that there is no support for them undertaking that - despite a relatively generous support package at undergraduate level.  That is not something that universities can fix: bursaries and other support for postgraduates are not 'countable' as part of our commitment to the Office for Fair Access.  I know that because we have tried it: four years ago when Martin Harris was the Director of OFFA, and again only a couple of weeks ago when the new Director, Les Ebdon, visited us.  The Vice-Chancellor recently was told, at an external event,  about the extent of this glass ceiling problem for widening participation students in one area: any such student wishing to become a barrister after taking a qualifying law degere will find that there are only 6 scholarships available nationally to do so.

The focus of today's interview was, as I have indicated, on support for 16 year olds.  Milburn has suggested that universities should pay bursaries to young people from low-participation neighbourhoods to enable them to stay in education until 18, and should work with them to improve attainment and aspiration.  I will leave on one side the fact that we do the latter already.  The former suggestion is nothing new.  Until this year the government paid Educational Maintenance Allowance to relevant young people: it has now withdrawn that and replaced it by a much less generous bursary scheme, distributed to schools to administer (at great cost to themselves), and in such a way that many schools have allocations that are greater than they can spend whilst schools in real areas of hardship have seen a massive cut in the funds available to their students.

We had a governors meeting last night at the sixth form college where I am a governor.  The principal of the college reported that she had been at meetings with other sixth form college heads where they had indicated that because they didn't have enough call on their bursary allocation they were using it to give merit awards to students with full attendance records, whilst in our college - with one of the most deprived catchment areas in England - potential claims from eligible students add up to over three times the available funds.

The withdrawal of EMA is a disastrous policy, but for the Milburn Report to suggest that the cost of replacing it should be borne by universities would be to try to paper over a crack in education policy that is widening by the month.  Actually, to speak about 'education policy' in relation to widening participation is probably a misnomer.  The withdrawal of EMA, the ending of the AimHigher project where universities, schools and colleges worked together to seek to raise aspiration and attainment, the ending of support for the 'Excellence Hubs' for gifted and talented children from widening participation backgrounds - all of these things suggest that there is now no real political drive to raise higher education participation for those who might, by some in power, be possibly labelled as 'plebs.'

Friday 12th October 2012 - Respect comes from more than titles

Last week one of the students on my final year option addressed me as 'sir'.  It was not in front of the class.  But I gently told him that I much prefer to be known as 'Paul'.  I've said that to many people around the University. It's now generally only the porters who call me something else - usually 'Prof' (which I confess I'm not keen on).  When I asked one of them why they wouldn't call me Paul he said that his supervisor had told him not to, as a mark of respect.

Some people feel that they can gain respect through the use of their title. My own feeling is that one should earn respect via what one does and how one does it rather than assuming it through the use of particular forms of address. I suppose it goes back to a protestant ethic of justification through works rather than through formulae.

Today I was reminded of that student last week because I had an e-mail exchange with a long-standing research colleague in Portugal.  I have known her for over 12 years, since she was a PhD student.  She is now a full lecturer.  We have worked on research projects together, attended conferences, edited materials for publication. Yet she wrote to me today as Dear Professor White.  I responded instantly by replying Dear Dra ..., using her formal title - and told her that she really ought to be addressing me as Paul.  Her response was 'It seems cheeky', but she did at least address the email Dear Paul.

A few years ago I was involved in a joint research project with a German professor.  We both had relatively junior colleagues working with us and supporting us.  Mine always referred to me as Paul: the junior German colleague gave her professor his full title. (Well, not quite: I've known German colleagues who have insisted on being introduced as Herr Doktor Professor ...)  When the two German colleagues visited Sheffield the German assistant confessed to my junior colleague that her professor had told her that she could address him by his first name here in the UK (because my assistant was on those terms with me) but she must never do so when they were back in Germany.

But perhaps in asking my Portuguese colleague to call me by my first name I am being culturally imperialist.  Perhaps I should accept how things are done in Portugal, and not expect her to adopt the 'English way'.  But when I go to visit my colleagues in Portugal I know that I could easily get the cultural niceties wrong.  Every meeting starts with a handshake for all the male participants and kisses on both cheeks for all the females.  Not to participate would seem stand-offish.  Perhaps we in England are more comfortable with establishing relationships via naming rather than by actual physical contact.