Reflections from colleagues and former students in higher education, secondary education, primary education, award body management, private business, and advocacy groups
The contributors to the Autumn edition of the EA Newsletter were invited to reflect on the following question: How do we best express the value of English Studies? The question takes for granted several assumptions, among them the ideas that there is a distinctive thing called ‘English Studies’ to defend; that ‘value’ can be distilled from the activities of a given discipline or subject area; and that expressing the value of English Studies in a world of rapidly evolving technological change is something we can and should be doing. Such considerations necessarily exist in larger conversations about the value of the Humanities more broadly, and even in debates about the value of education as such. With unpredictably shifting demands not only to express the value of English Studies but also to justify to society its disciplinary existence and necessity, it has come to seem that, and it certainly often feels like, the stakes have never been higher.
So opens the Autumn issue of the EA Newsletter. We’re delighted to host a panel discussion with the contributors, to explore in greater detail the perspectives they have offered in their articles.
Our speakers
Robert Eaglestone is Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Cynthia Johnston is a Senior Lecturer in the History of the Book at the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London where she directs the MA/MRes programme in the History of the Book. She is an editor for CUP’s Cambridge Elements series on Publishing and Book Culture. She has published widely on the history of book collecting and is currently the Research Lead for the Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery’s National Portfolio Organisation project. This work will culminate in an exhibition in Blackburn in 2025 in collaboration with the British Library and the John Rylands Library in Manchester.
Neil Jones is an English teacher at Impington Village and International College, a mixed 11-18 state comprehensive school near Cambridge that is also a leading International Baccalaureate World School. His wider leadership responsibilities are for developing interdisciplinary learning at the school, and for co-ordinating the development of academic writing in all disciplines across the schools of the Eastern Learning Alliance trust. Neil is an Associate Member of the National Association for Able Children in Education (NACE), a charity that works to support schools to increase challenge, engagement, and high expectations for all learners.
Jo Tregenza is President Elect of the UKLA, a Founding Fellow of the Chartered College of Teachers and a Senior Fellow of the HEA. She stepped down as Director of ITE in 2021. She is a Reader in Primary Education and has received several teaching awards. She has been an English consultant for over 20 years, presenting at regional and international conferences. Previously, she worked as a Primary teacher in the South East region. Jo wrote the teaching guidance materials for OUP’s Project X. She is currently studying for her PHD on what the most effective approaches to teaching reading for disadvantaged pupils are.
Nathan Waddell teaches and researches early twentieth-century literature, with a core emphasis on the life, work, and controversies of the painter and writer Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957). He is a member of the Higher Education Committee.
Harvey Wiltshire is Teaching Fellow in Early Modern Literature, Shakespeare, and Inclusive Pedagogy, in the Department of English at Royal Holloway, University of London. His research focuses on the significance of blood in Shakespeare’s poetry and drama, and explores the discovery of cardiovascular circulation by William Harvey. He’s published on trauma theory and Shakespeare’s narrative poems, Kingship in ‘Richard III’, tear imagery in the poetry of John Donne, and has recently co-edited a collection of essays exploring the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on the humanities, ‘Lockdown Cultures: The Arts and Humanities in the Year of the Pandemic, 2020-21’ (UCL Press, 2022).
