For those who know me from my “real” life as a professor of Writing at Drew University, please rest assured that I have not left or retired—I’ll be back (and I’ll still be working with dissertators and thesis writers this Spring). I’m just taking some time out for research, writing, and family care.
I will be in France in Spring 2026 on a research leave, then back to Drew in Fall 2026, and back to France again in Spring 2027 on a Sabbatical. After that I’ll be back at Drew until I retire. The research project I will be working on is pretty exciting and I imagine I’ll post a bit about it here. It is part of the Partnership for University Plagiarism Prevention (PUPP), an international team conducting a seven-year study of the ways college students use digital sources in their writing, supported by a grant from the Canadian government through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
I’ll be sharing my data and analysis in Coventry (UK) at an ENEII conference in May 2026 (in Symposium #4). Once I complete my preliminary analysis of the most recent data (from across Canada, the US, England, and Europe) I hope to compare my findings with data gathered in the US by the Citation Project, a smaller research project for which I am a co-Primary Investigator (PI). I am eager to look at the differences between the 2023 PUPP data and the 2010 and 2017 Citation Project data.
The picture to the right is of one of my favorite places to write, sitting in the window in the house across the road from my Mom-in-Law’s house (“spying on her” she says). I especially love it with the window open so I can see the world go by. This is where I spent most of my last sabbatical (in 2017-18), before we owned our own house close by. During my sabbatical sitting in that room I actually wrote about the space as part of a series of author reflections on our contributions to the collection (Writing Program Architecture, edited by Bryna Siegel Finer and Jamie White-Farnham) in which I published a chapter. I am fascinated by the repurposing of building materials, especially beams and blocks, and will undoubtedly write about that at some point this year because many of the stones that built our house are repurposed from the castle.
Although I have my own study at our house now, this space offers a good change of scene, and a backup workspace in case we have internet or power outages — or I want to do a bit of spying! I’m always secretly happy when our power or internet go out and I have to move back to that space. Walter put a lovely German tiled stove in the huge old fireplace this year, so the room is wam in winter and with the door open it heats that whole side of the house.
I do have a few spots at our house too (Walter observes that I write anywhere, which is true). The first is the guest room/second office (note the beautiful floor tiles), and the others are my four favorite outside work spaces, although only the last one is practical when it rains. The second spot is under the Linden trees so almost overwhelmingly lemon-scented in the summer and vibrating to the song of the bees and the fourth is the studio courtyard, so nice to use if nobody is staying — or if I am writing with them These outside spaces are public and I am easily interrupted if someone stops by or delivers a package. But the third place is my hiding place if I don’t want to be easily found (IYKYK and now you do!)
My plan for this Spring is to work at our house — inside or outside depending on the weather. Most days I will do the work of the house and garden, go to the market, and spend time with my mum-in-law in the mornings, and then after lunch/siesta start working on the research and also on a related book project on US time (2pm CET is 8 am EST when my US colleagues will be starting work).
One of my personal projects is to develop a better work-life balance while I am in France, so hopefully I’ll make some progress (and will write about it if I do).
This is Sylvie, who guarded my window and wouldn’t let anyone bother me when I was here in 2017. Cats seem to be good window guards in Mouzieys!