...since I last blogged. Back in November 2009 I was full of angst about losing my lovely office in the university and moving into a big open plan building. I was mourning the potential loss of much of my personal library of books and journals - I simply don't have room for them in my house. The more I thought about why I wanted to keep my books near me, the more I thought about my work and what it meant. I realized that I had questions about what I was doing and where I was going. Now, a blog isn't a sleeve to wear a heart on, but the more I thought about those questions the more I thought it might be time to move. And the more I thought that it might be time to move, the more positive my reasons became. I began to rethink my scholarly ambitions as well as my private aspirations.
Rethinking where I was going and what I was doing meant that what needed to come next was clear. So, I'm moving. In the fall I'm heading down to the University of Southampton, where I'm going to be Professor of Healthcare Innovation and Dean of Research in the new Faculty of Health Sciences. I'm excited about this because it will give me an opportunity to develop my work in two areas: cancer and palliative care; and robotics and rehabilitation. At the centre of this work will be my interest in developing Normalization Process Theory, and promoting its policy offspring, Minimally Disruptive Healthcare. I won't just be a researcher, of course, and as Research Dean I'll have an opportunity to contribute not just to policy and direction, but also to invest time in developing younger researchers. I can't wait.
I spent last week in Southampton, talking with my new colleagues and discovering more about their work. I gave a talk - I've included the powerpoint - that I called 'Translational Research in Troubled Times'. This introduced my work and placed it in the context of the big changes that are coming to health research in Britain, not just as a result of the hard hitting pubic spending cuts that are slowly becoming apparent, but because of the reorganization of the NHS that has been announced in last week's Health White Paper. But what really struck me about Health Sciences at Southampton was the depth of the science, and the commitment of the teachers. I'm going to love it there.
