In my continuing effort to share my PhD experience, I bring you poppies.
I headed to Glasgow today to attend a guest lecture by Professor Bruce Wilson, the Director of the European Union Centre at RMIT University (Australia). He talked about "Implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals in Asia Pacific: A Role for the EU?" And dang, was it fascinating!
His perspectives on Brexit, the EU, and UN on handling world issues was illuminating, as he discussed organizations such as the EEAS, AZIAN, or ASEM. He discussed the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of his and other organizations which the EU and UN try to uphold as their driving reasons for being. It is so good to see countries coming together trying to make a difference on such a world-wide scale.
I was full of questions, and wonder how organizations I work with can be encouraged to adopt these same "SDG"s. It’s a good thing to be aware of, and a good thing to work towards in a myriad of endeavours, studies and practices.
After the lecture, I rushed to my supervisory meeting with Professors Maureen Farrell and Bob Davis. They are both absolutely
brilliant and we have these fantastic conversations about mythology, motifs, symbolism, Celtic history, Slavic folklore, Jungian archetypes and whether or not they bypass the gifts of human culture by trying to figure out underlying rules that homogenise us all. We talk about books and authors.
For example:
John Mann and Adrianne Mayer’s thoughts on Amazons; George Dumezil and his disciples on Slavic and Celtic traditions; Foucault’s Pendulum; Bob Davis’ critical paper on Jungian philosophy; The Dragon of Og; Andrew Lang’s fairy tale origins; Ronald Hutton’s approach to pagan studies
And we talked about academics - their viewpoints, both complementary and dissenting, in contexts such as 'at what point does Endo-European tradition underlie Scottish tradition?', and how 'talking about changes I want to make to my novel will give my thesis context.' In one hour, I took three pages of wonderful, inspired, inspiring notes.
I just adore these meetings. We sit together and go off the rails with our brainiac and geekified ideas, theories, and new paradigms. Truly, what could be more fun than that!?
I took the photos of these lovely poppies (as big as dinner plates) in front of the English/Scottish lit offices on the way to my meetings.
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