The Almost Nearly Perfect Relationship(s)

Abstract

I have known about the SCCL since 2018, when a dear friend and colleague, Cyril Holm, approached me to speak to his coming to Oxford for a year as the SCCL postdoctoral researcher in the IECL. I only came to Oxford in 2016, having been previously in Cambridge for 15 years, from student to academic. In Oxford, I have been Director of the IECL since January 2023, and had the privilege to work with the dynamic and talented Swedish scholars linked to the IECL and in Stockholm itself. I have technically “line managed” some of them, and I’ve certainly chatted about a lot of their work, and shared committees with them. I’m an undisguised fan; not even all those committee meeting hours together have deprived me of that. My experience of the SCCL is of a group of such lustre that even with Oxford’s many flaws, the result is almost nearly perfect relationship(s).