Just a quick note to say – I’m shortly heading off on research sabbatical! returning on May 8th 2017! I have a couple of writing projects to finish up, and a major one to start scoping out. I’ll mostly be in my shed, writing, thinking, typing, and avoiding normal day to day teaching and enabling academic duties.

I get a lot of email, and I’m consciously deciding that I will not be able to reply to all emails sent to me during my absence. We only get one term (approximately 4 month) sabbaticals in my faculty at UCL, and those only come around once every three or four years, so I’m going quiet on responding to what other people want me to do. In addition, my schedule is now fully booked until September 2017 for plenary lectures, guest talks, refereeing, and peer reviewing grant proposals, research papers, and conference abstracts. I am also not available to write references, unless previously agreed. If you have emailed me, or are thinking of emailing me, to ask me to do any of these tasks for you, I thank you for your kind invitation, but I am not accepting any further external enabling duties until September 2017 at the earliest.

I should imagine I’ll be on the Twitter from time to time a lot, but this sabbatical will be a much-needed respite from email and managerial duties (and a hefty and increasingly unpleasant commute), and a space to think, to hatch plans, and to write. Please forgive me if you ask something of me before May 2017, and I am unable to respond. My job, during the next few months, is to concentrate solely on my own research, and I wish you well in yours, too.