A new research poster from the School of Emergent Priorities sorts what lecturers leave in lectern drawers into four kinds, and reports the four-tray insert and term-start turnout now adopted in every lecture theatre.
A School of Emergent Priorities poster catalogues 1,412 items from 61 lecture theatres, and the University fits each lectern with a tray for every kind
What a lecturer leaves behind is a kind of hospitality, offered to someone they will never meet, and it deserves to be arranged as such.
— Dr Iben Chikere, Lecturer, School of Emergent Priorities
A lectern drawer is opened by a different person every hour, and the School of Emergent Priorities has spent a teaching period asking what it offers them. The resulting poster, titled CLICK, sorts the contents of 61 lecture-theatre drawers into four kinds according to what each item would still do for the next lecturer. The School sees the work as a continuation of its agenda on what one occupant of a role hands to the next.
The method brings a settled coding scheme to a small and familiar space. Six successor proxies, none of whom had taught in the room, made a first attempt to use each of 1,412 items, while two coders assigned the kinds independently and agreed closely. The four kinds that emerged are named Ready, Lore-bound, Stranded and Relic, and the poster reports how their proportions shift with the size of the theatre.
The University has moved to act on the sort. Every lectern now carries a four-tray insert, a person new to the room re-sorts each drawer at the start of term, and replacement stock follows the Ready share rather than the request. Hedvig Anyanwu, Doctoral Candidate at the School, described the pilot as “a drawer that finally knows what it is holding.”
The University is glad to see a single shallow drawer carry so much of its thinking about succession, and it welcomes the attention the trays will receive from the lecturers who open them.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.lpg0r1.