In my Department’s recent meeting about the last batch of BA (or, as we call them, TFG) dissertations we have assessed, we already considered the possibility of suppressing them in the near future. This is not for us to decide, but we work on the assumption that, sooner or later, our school or UAB, if […]
I’ve had the honour of being a guest speaker at the seventh doctoral seminar that AEDEAN (Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-norteamericanos) has organized at the Universidad de Cantabria, in Santander. This has been held less than one month after the conference organized by ASYRAS (Association of Young Researchers on Anglophone Studies), at the University of […]
An article by Tyler Jagt, published on 1 June 2026, in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “My Students Can’t Read” has been creating a bit of a stir this past week and I’d like to comment on its gist. Jagt claims that his BA students’ inability to read a 20-page article (he teaches Rhetoric) […]
Somewhat rashly, I told my last-year BA students that if any was interested in an academic career they were welcome to discuss their future plans with me. The first email message I have received indicates that they are not necessarily familiar with the concept ‘academic career’, so this post is intended as a beginners’ introduction […]
My post refers today to L’absentisme a les aules universitàries de la UAB: per què val la pena anar a classe [Absenteeism in UAB’s university classrooms: why attending classes is worthwhile], a report coordinated by José Luis Muñoz Moreno and Edelmira Badillo Jiménez, and authored by Patricia Olmos Rueda and Dolors Márquez Cebrián. You can […]
So that you know, according to the current regulations of my university, and following Catalan legislation, a full-time teacher (24 ECTS) is supposed to devote 640 yearly hours to teaching, out of the 1640 we’re supposed to work annually. Actually, if I multiply the 215 working days of the current academic year 2025-26 by 7,5 […]
I wrote a while ago a post titled “Students’ Ratings of Faculty: How It Works and Some Ideas to Improve It (sic),” criticizing how the survey to rate our task as teachers is organized. Since then I’ve been pestering the Dean of my school to do something about this matter. Other teachers must have been […]
I’m writing today out of stubbornness, because if I let a third blank week go by I fear that I might give up entirely this blog. I’m procrastinating my proper academic writing (an article and a book chapter have been waiting for too long), and I worry that if I also delay writing yet another […]
Witch Market Barcelona is an annual event that takes place on a weekend in late November or early December in the historic building of the University of Barcelona, in downtown Plaça Universitat. This singular building, the work of Elies Rogent i Amat, has been in use since 1871, having been designed in 1861 applying the […]
I’m teaching this semester the core subject ‘Contemporary Anglophone Literature: 1990 to the Present’, which we introduced last year in the fourth year of our English Studies BA. I was presenting the introduction to the first unit, 1990-1997, with a survey of the main political, social, and technoscientific events, when I noticed that most persons […]