Campus and Community

One of the exciting things about being here and that I really want to be a part of, is the building of a scholarly community. We started that today with our first staff seminar from a visiting academic, Dr Sue Onslow, from the Africa Institute at the LSE. She gave a great paper on what she does at the Institute. She's also an historian - and it is always lovely to meet people who understand the importance of history ("Monarch [to avoid sexist language] of the Social Sciences"!).
Anyway, it brought home to me how important it is to have a community of scholars. And how that is built person by person, talking to each, having lunch and a beer together. Plus we have a new coffee shop on campus that has a liquor licence after 5pm. It's not as flash as the Mausoleum or, indeed, as Cinque Lire or Mama Dukes, but it has cheap beer and cider and pretends to know there is more to coffee than instant and that there are more breads than white, brown, rye and panini! All kinds of good.
I'm going to update this rather rambling post with some pictures of campus later - probably tomorrow - but I thought it important to say hi and let you know that things are still keeping on. If you're too impatient to wait for then - here is a photo tour the uni does.
I also started my classes this week. My honours students are great. I am yet to talk to the second and thirdies outside of a lecture, but once I've had some tutes with them (which everyone here calls tuts - like 'tut, tut'!) , I think I'll have a better idea of how things sit and what the standards and expectations are like!
Tonight, however, I'm off to some some of the highlights of Jo'burg with two of my wonderful colleagues! Huzzah!