Name: Tim Lockley

Job title: Professor

Department: History

Number of years at Warwick: 21

There’s no such thing as a typical day, but, in brief, my job involves...

staring a computer screen! Email is the standard form of academic communication, so the day starts for me answering emails that might have come in overnight from the US, and throughout the day I would correspond with colleagues and students. During term I might have a lecture to give, a seminar to run, or a meeting to attend. Outside of term I might be in an archive, or writing an article.

My most memorable moment at Warwick has been...

the visit of US President Bill Clinton to campus in 2000. He was here just after the disputed election between George W.Bush and Al Gore, and the US Supreme Court handed the election to Bush on the very day that Clinton was at Warwick.

In my time at Warwick, the biggest change I’ve seen is...

the new buildings. Every year there is a new building, it seems to me usually for WBS! It’s great that the Faculty of Arts is finally getting a new building.

Warwick’s kept me here because...

my colleagues are great, the students are fun to teach, and pretty much every time I talk to colleagues from other universities about the difficulties they have, I think “I’m glad Warwick doesn’t do that!”

At the moment I’m really enjoying working on...

Faculty of Arts links with China. It’s nothing to do with my own research but something that grew out of my role as Director of the Humanities Research Centre. I hope that we will be able to forge some enduring links with Chinese academics.

It would be really useful to work more closely with...

the Faculty of Arts departments that are currently in Milburn House. There’s something about physical separation that really hinders fruitful inter-departmental links. That’s why the new Faculty of Arts building will be so fantastic.

If I could change one thing at the University it would be...

more parking!

I recently went to see...

Birth of a Nation at the Arts Centre with a group of final year students studying slavery. We followed it up with a lively discussion about how slavery is depicted on film.

I usually travel to campus by...

car. I live in a village and public transport is not an option for me.

My favourite place on campus is...

the enclosed garden in the current Humanities building. It’s a haven of wildlife and a peaceful place at all times of year, but a sun-trap if the weather is nice.

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