In her first interview since taking the helm, new director-general of the National Trust Hilary McGrady has said she wants things to get “radical” at the charity, by looking to more urban conservation. McGrady told the BBC:

“I want to reach more people, and more people live in urban areas. The days of walking in to one of our beautiful houses and saying a family lived here, that’s not going to do it.

We need to think about what’s relevant – why would someone in the middle of Birmingham say that’s interesting? What is it in Birmingham that they would get more value from?”

The future McGrady sees is one where the trust expands its conservation role into cities by working with organisations including community groups and local authorities. But who is to say that the countryside can’t be just as radical?

Click through to read the rest of my own radical, rural plan.

Image credit: National Trust – Buckstones Edge by Ashley Kingston on flickr

But we weren’t really there for the weather.

We were taking part in a consortium meeting for the ROBUST project, which we’re a part of. The meeting brought together researchers and practice partners from across Europe: Wales to Slovenia, Finland to the Netherlands. The project focusses on rural-urban synergies, and from sustainable food to infrastructures, there was a whole lot to talk about. (We even learnt how to talk about talking about ideas in a facilitators’ workshop.)

It’s early days yet for ROBUST, with much of the research still to be done. But with a framework (thanks, Mike!) that gets us thinking about what localities mean, why development should be ‘smart’, and how places relate to each other, ideas are certainly simmering.

Special thanks to Maria Partidário and the team at Instituto Superior Técnico for giving us all the space to think with, plentiful supplies of seafood, and even a bus trip!

Image: Rural geographers on a bus trip in Mafra municipality, Portugal. 

In my new research role, I’ll be working on the EU Horizon 2020 funded projects IMAJINE and ROBUST. Both projects take up an interest in rural geographies, in the hows and whys of regional inequalities and inter-relationships, and in policy possibilities.

I’m looking forward to getting out in the field!

Image credit: Crossville Cymru by ndl642m on flickr

Bringing together ethnographic perspectives from around the world, the special issue explores how people navigate and understand the ends of their lives. In our editorial, we argue that, because anthropological work on death has often been concerned with what happens after people die, there hasn’t been as much engagement with what happens before death. What, we ask, can an ethnographic perspective on life’s end – rather than death’s beginning – offer?

Besides our good selves, the special issue features:

• Ellen Block on AIDS, grandmothering, and care in Lesotho;
• Gaynor Macdonald on dementia and biomedicine;
• Kathleen Venema on writing a mother’s death;
• Lone Grøn and Cheryl Mattingly on terminal illness in Denmark;
• Devin Flaherty on diagnosis and care in the US Virgin Islands;
• Natashe Lemos Dekker on dementia in Dutch care homes;
• Ari Gandsman on right to die activism.

Image credit: Park benches in Central Park by David Joyce on flickr 

This is a qualification I have been working towards this year, and becoming a student again (albeit a part-time one) has itself brought a whole lot of lessons. I’ll never think the same way about readings, group assignments, awkward classroom silences and boring lectures again!

One of the most rewarding experiences of doing the qualification was meeting other colleagues from across the university who are also keen to learn more and to innovate in their classrooms. I’ve met fabulous folk from business to linguistics, and even had the chance to see a dentristy class in action (model heads and plastic teeth, but the drills are not for the faint-hearted).

My final ‘mini-project’ was a research proposal on sound and silence in the classroom. I’m looking forward to keeping this going with the Curriculum Design Lab.

Image credit: Lecture hall / university by Marcus Spiske on flickr