Prof. William Stellson

Prof. Stellson is my head of Faculty.  He's a Marxist scholar who has recanted and now plays with the liminal.

He's going to get found out. I'm not sure what for because my creator hasn't told me yet.  However, I had an experience with him a long time ago when I was an undergraduate and it wasn't pleasant. I'm sure we'll all find out what's in store for him in due course.

Vegetable metaphor: parsnip.  Join the dots.

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Prof. Trevor Cronstone

The one thing I am certain about Prof. Cronstone is that he has a hard name and he is a hard bastard. The VC brought him in from the Atomic Energy Sector where he invented a theory called Cryogenic Inflection Theory as well as developing the methods and techniques for nuclear cooling at the human scale.  Sounds scary to me.  He's been promoted to PVC Research - that means Pro Vice Chancellor for Research  - so the No.2  Hard Knot at Raeminster University.  I'm sure he'll go far as he's one of the top Hard Knots of Tradition.  A difficult guy to breach.

If Prof. Cronstone were a biscuit he'd probably be a Mint Viscount.  Not everyone's cup of tea and a bit flash.

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Dr. Manette Ritstuldur

Manette is a colleague of mine. 

She came from Santa Fe on a fast-track promotion scheme.  I went to a seminar of hers a few years ago and, to be perfectly honest, I didn't really understand much about what she was talking about.  Apparently the paper was recently published in the Journal of Scent and Dissent.  At the seminar I attended she read from a prepared script, which I always find rather patronising - if I wanted a story read to me I'd go elsewhere. 

If Dr. Ritstuldur were a font she'd probably be Courier 12 pt Copy.  You'll eventually get it.

Here's a flavour:

IDS Autumn Seminar 

Whipple Building, Wednesday 4pm

Dr. Manette Ritstuldur:

Materiality and Olfactory Performance: Affect and Scent in Post-Industrial Societies. 

Our potential is denuded by the materiality of the past and its evocation of decay and lost possibilities.  The signifiers and representational artefacts of the past present a barrier to re-creating a nuanced form of reassembly of the body.  As we make sense of the materiality of culture through arousal of our stored memory of associations and signifiers these associations can delimit and reinforce the limited performance that external stimuli arouses in the brain.  The associations we make between our lived experience of materiality and the potential for recreating materiality that has been authenticated by others needs to be aroused. The physical world of material objects outside the body is a falsehood.  The representational signification of the materiality of existence outside the body is built on other performances and entangled falsehoods.  All normative interventions to solve the past and tackle the crises that face human civilisation will therefore ultimately fail.  Only by arousing our unique embodiment of affect can we be free.

....to be continued