I remember last time I became a reader…
I had a phone call from work this morning. They had a meeting of what they call their Conferment of Academic Titles Panel, and they have awarded me a Readership.
This is something that will make very little sense outside the context of a university, but it’s a promotion and a title, which is cool.
It’s something you apply for – and my submission was 28 pages long, so I knew I was at least in for consideration, and I knew there was at least a chance (otherwise why write 28 pages?) – but universities are glacial in pace when it comes to this sort of stuff (or any stuff, really) – so to be honest, I’d kind of forgotten about it.
And it was a nice surprise to get.
Better do some reading then…
My award is a ‘Readership in Music Industries Innovation’.
I was quite pleased to get that last word in there, because that’s the bit I’m most interested in – and it sort of makes sense of all the stuff I’ve been doing for the past couple of years with things like the Aftershock Project, Music As Culture, the UB40: Live, Loud and Local project, and a whole bunch of others – but in particular, Un-Convention.
I wasn’t exactly sure how to explain it to people, so I looked it up on Wikipedia:
The title of Reader in the United Kingdom and some universities in the Commonwealth nations like Australia and New Zealand, denotes an appointment for a senior academic with a distinguished international reputation in research or scholarship.
It is an academic rank above senior lecturer (or principal lecturer in the New Universities) and below Professor. However, an incompatibility of ranking systems between different (English speaking) countries, make the position of reader difficult to place outside the context of the United Kingdom. As a Professor normally holds a Chair in a particular field, a Reader could be seen as professor without chair, similar to the distinction between Professor ordinarius and Professor extraordinarius at some European Universities.
In the United Kingdom, the promotion criteria applied to a Readership are similar to those applied to a Professorship.
Celebrating – in a lecture theatre
I’ve just found out part of the deal is that you have to do an inaugural lecture. I thought that was just professors, but apparently not.
An inaugural lecture is kind of like a party, but more boring.
The idea is that you invite your friends, family and colleagues along to a talk in which you explain your field of scholarship in layman’s terms, and discuss some “interesting” points about it – both to demonstrate your expertise and to kind of justify your existence to the outside world.
There’s usually drinks and nibbles afterwards and everyone congratulates you. At least, that’s what happens at the Professorial inaugural lectures I’ve been to. We’ll see if that principle holds for mere Readers.
My friend and colleague Paul Long was also awarded a Readership – and rightly so. He’s way cleverer than me.
Hmm… wonder if there’s a pay-rise in it…
Right now:
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