10th January 2010

'I plan to use your Walkley site in my introductory lecture on Ruskin to a group of second year students [...]. The students are meant to have three lectures from me on Ruskin and then spend the rest of the term writing an independent research paper on an aspect of Ruskin which interests them. I plan to do the initial lecture/workshop by pulling up your website'

24th October 2012

'As part of a recent seminar for my third-year undergraduate model 'Victorians Abroad' (King's College London, English Literature BA, 2011), I asked my students to explore the Ruskin at Walkley website in preparation for a class on British travellers in Italy. We then used this exercise as a springboard into a discussion of the ways in which the majority of Victorian Britons (who never travelled internationally) might have experienced 'abroad' through art objects and commodities in museums, shops and public institutions. The students responded enthusiastically to this exercise and expressed a desire to further explore the relationship between space, place and object in relation to Victorian travel, public museums, and commodity culture. In my experience, your resource offers students an easily accessible way to engage with the material culture of nineteenth century in a conceptually and intellectually stimulating manner.'

5th July 2013

'I'll be teaching a new second year option module at the University of Sheffield next academic year entitled: 'Secrets and Lies: Victorian Life-Writing'. One of the set texts on this module is Ruskin's Praeterita, although we will be concentrating on a number of selected chapters.

One of the key themes that will arise across this module will be the relationship between lives, places and 'remains'. I intend to use your 'Ruskin at Walkley' site (and hopefully a visit to the Ruskin Collection at Museums Sheffield) to help students reflect on these issues.

I'll be asking students to consider how a visit to the virtual museum and then the Ruskin Collection might relate to their reading of Praterita. For example, what is the relationship between the material and the textual traces of a life, e.g. seeing geological samples and artwork (as they were presented in Walkley and as they are presented now) alongside their reading of Ruskin's account of geology and art/architecture.

It'll also be a useful opportunity to ask students to think about the relationship between life narratives and (literary) tourism. For example, how do they feel as students based in Sheffield, reading about the life of a man with a connection to Sheffield, and then re-tracing these footsteps in person, in the city?'