Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World

So long and thanks for all the tweets

Today is my last day editing the OUPblog. Back in January 2012, I took over as blog editor without so much as a handover (an early maternity leave prevented one). I promptly screwed up multiple things in the first few weeks, causing great annoyance to my colleagues. Then I gradually began steering the blog on a different course. By 2015, I could no longer read every blog post before it published, its success had outgrown the number of hours in my day. I’d like recount some of my highlights of my time here in the form of a gif essay:

We began drawing more heavily on authors and editors from journals, reference, monographs, professional titles, higher education, sheet music, and distribution clients — not just our trade titles.

We began editorial meetings to plan ahead, marking anniversaries or awareness days, or to discuss what’s in the news.

We wrote a lot about Word of the Year.

We lost one developer and gained a new one.

We oversaw a major redesign.

We faced down Chinese botnet attacks.

We welcomed six new columnists.

We celebrated our 10th anniversary.

We grew our traffic by 1000% (I know that sounds like a lie but I triple-checked).

My work at Oxford University Press has been wide-ranging, but the OUPblog has always been at the heart of it. Our tagline is “Academic Insights for the Thinking World”. I hope in my time here I have upheld that promise, whether with incisive essays on the Middle East, interviews with prominent cardiologists, or quizzes on “Which mythological character are you?”

Thank you to my predecessors Becca Ford and Lauren Appelwick who had such a fantastic vision for its future so many years ago and built the foundations that allowed me to grow it to what it is today.

Thank you to Kirsty Doole and Nicola Burton, the UK blog editors who helped guide and support me.

Thank you to all my deputy editors Julia Callaway, Dan Parker, Sonia Tsuruoka, Yasmin Coonjah, Elizabeth Furey, and Priscilla Yu.

Thank you to all our authors and contributors without whom we could not provide such phenomenal insight. Ed Zelinsky, Gordon Thompson, Mike Alvarez, Troy Reeves, Caitlin Tyler-Richards, Andrew Shaffer, Mark Peters, Melissa Mohr: it’s been a pleasure to work with you. Anatoly Liberman: I’m at a loss for words for my favorite etymologist.

And most of all, thank you to all the readers who have discovered us and returned throughout the years. I’ll be one in future.

Image Credits: (1) Longmont. by Jeremy Thomas. CC0 via Pixabay. (2) GIFs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, embedded via Giphy.

Recent Comments

  1. Russell Cross

    The OUP blog is “a thing of beauty and a joy forever” and I appreciate your time in keeping it so. Best wishes and happy trails!

  2. Becca

    Alice! You’ve done a wonderful job with the blog during your time at OUP and I’m so impressed by your traffic stats! Go you and good luck in your future adventures.

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