This week marks the end of British Summer Time. The After the End team want to understand how clock shifts affect wellbeing and time perception. Our survey launched in The Guardian on 21st October with a feature ‘Does mood lighten or darken as clocks go back? Britons urged to join study’.

The study is launched by Prof Ruth Ogden from the After the End team as part of research exploring how external disruptions can affect people’s sense of time.

“I’m interested in trying to understand how it feels when your day-to-day sense of time is disrupted by an external force: do you feel like you’ve got more or less time, and higher or lower levels of wellbeing?” asks Ruth.

The survey is connected to the wider question of the relationship between time and power, and how when other people are in control of time, it can create various types of injustice for certain groups.

Exeter University will be marking Black History Month with a workshop and talk from award-winning poet Jenny Mitchell. 

Sponsored by the Wellcome-funded After the End project, a workshop on ‘Poetry, Time and the Question of Endings’ will take place on Wednesday 23 October from 1:00-3:30pm in the Boardroom. 

This supportive, non-judgemental workshop is open to all – both new and experienced poets are welcome. Participants will be offered creative prompts and work by established poets to help them write and share their work with confidence. Light refreshments will be served.

An event sponsored by the Department of English and Creative Writing  will follow the workshop: at 4pm in Newman Collaborative LT C/D. Jenny will perform poetry from her three collections and latest manuscript and take part in a Q&A; there will also be an open mic.  

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You can listen to an interview with Ruth Ogden about how we perceive time as the clocks change, recorded on BBC Radio 4 PM programme on Monday 21st October. The interview starts at 51 minutes into the programme.

We celebrated National Poetry Day on 3rd October 2024 with a poem written by award-winning poet and one of our poetry competition judges, Jenny Mitchell.

‘“I was inspired to write this poem by the themes examined in the After the End project, namely who has the right to say when a crisis has ended. This resonated with me in particular because of my long-term creative determination to examine the legacies of British transatlantic enslavement.

The impact of that long-term abuse, both in the Caribbean and Britain, has undoubtedly had repercussions in terms of the financial (in)stability of the mass of Black people in the UK. Its impact can also be seen in terms of health, well-being, family dynamics, the criminal justice system and countless other ways.”’

Professor Ruth Ogden, School of Psychology, Liverpool John Moore’s University, is giving a talk as part of an event at the Royal Society of Medicine ‘Pain management outside the box’.

This event features expert clinicians and researchers who will share their insights through compelling lectures on diverse topics in pain management.

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