ABSTRACT
I returned from Stanford to a department that was undergoing some rather rapid changes. Martin Conway had initially proved to be a very effective department head, and had substantially increased its reputation for research. This particularly applied in the area of memory for which it was probably the strongest department outside North America, with an expertise not only in working memory but also in Martin’s area of autobiographical memory, on social aspects of memory, on ageing and latterly on semantic memory and semantic dementia. However, by the time I returned it had lost no fewer than five of its more experienced memory staff to appointments elsewhere, notably including both Martin Conway and Sue Gathercole who moved to chairs at the University of Durham. There was no obvious successor to Martin as department head and attempts to agree on suitable candidates proved unsuccessful.
