This year the British Society for Literature and Science conference was at Keele, and I had a particularly good time because I had arranged a panel with my friend from Canada, and therefore had someone to discuss all the papers and panels with, as well as someone to team up with for dinners and drinks. Of course, we were both heavily jetlagged in opposite directions, so neither of us was exactly the life and soul of the party, but we had a nice time nonetheless.
The panel, Beauty/Aesthetics in Science and Literature, went really well, and people seemed to enjoy all of the papers. It was lucky that we presented when we did, as John Bryden came up to me in the lunch break and introduced himself. It turned out he was giving a paper about a dancing robot in a panel the following day. I’d never have known this if John hadn’t told me, because only the paper titles were available in the programme. Anyway, crisis averted, I went to the paper, and it sounded like an excellent robot
(Writing all of this so long after the date just reminds me that I really need to contact John again to ask him for more information about this robot!)
The conference also included excellent plenaries from Helen Small, Frank Close and Steven Connor.
