This week wraps up another year of teaching at the University of Oxford. Summer is here, and my work with the Digital Capabilities team takes a break over the summer, before Michaelmas Term starts again in autumn. For the first time since I started this year had more in person components, including two days of fully in person sessions with cohorts from across the university. Getting to work with such a diverse range of people…
Maren Deepwell Posts
I recently took part in a leadership development programme, Leadership in Higher Education and Artificial Intelligence: A New Paradigm. The programme was designed with an international cohort in mind, and it was great fun to work with leaders from across different countries and from a whole range of Higher Education institutions. My session was inspired by Global Trends Towards Flexible, Hybrid Working and its Impact for Digital Leadership in Higher Education, a report commissioned by…
In sweltering heat the sun shone through the longest day of the year, and I used the mid year point of the year to reflect on the past six months. Here on my blog the posts and podcasts have been stacking up, whilst over on my work domain coaching, consultancy and courses have been in full swing. This post brings it all together, gathering all the gold dust ready for summer and the next six…
I often talk about blogging, but this post is different. This is a thank you to two writers whom I have been following for a long while, and whose work continues to inspire me. Julia Harrison First up, is Julia Harrison, a North Carolina-based artist, anthropologist, and educator, whom I met when I was studying Anthropology at UCL. Julia’s work is all round awesome, and I am a regular reader of her blog, and a…
This year, sadly, is the first time in a long time that I’ll be missing out on the OER Conference. I have blogged (a lot) about this very special event before, including a literal love letter to the conference in 2023, and a postcard from OER24 in Cork last year. The line up for OER25 looks fabulous, headed up by two wonderful Co-Chairs, Louise Drumm and Sheila MacNeill, and tantalising keynotes Helen Beetham and Joe…
Keynote invitations don’t come much more fun that the one I was excited to accept for this week: the Open University’s annual conference for its community of associate lecturers and other staff. When I first got the email, I knew I made to make it happen because these are the people I love to work with most! This conference, which attracts close to 500 participants and covers two days (in May and June respectively), is…
After a week away I have returned to my desk to write (freshly inspired thanks to the museums of Amsterdam). Progress on the book this month has been better, and I have found a new rhythm: read, run, write. Repeat. It helps me to read more to feed my creativity and find inspiration, and I am lucky that my recent haul of books from the library has been plentiful in both. The running gives me…
Inspired by Kin Lane’s post Having a Career I recently posted my own career story, and this blog post exchange inspired me so much that I reached out to Kin to record a conversation for the podcast. And so, two humans and two dogs assembled online to do just that. We chatted for an hour, and the conversation was so thought provoking! In addition, meeting the one and only Poppy R Lane (follow her on…
On a recent podcast episode I shared an update on my next book, which I have been working on for the past year or so, mainly conducting interviews and research. Now that writing has begun in earnest however, I am thinking more about why I am writing the book. Especially since it’s never been easier to simply provide a lot of data and have your book generated for you by AI. Cue this “mission statement”…
At the start of this year, alongside planning for work and life, I set out some small changes for myself, intentions to do things a little differently in 2025. I wanted to try to make more ethical choices and also to support local businesses more, as well as finding more joy in small things. It was a bit of an experiment of how much I could change things for myself, and also how to build…