CONFIDENTIAL
Staff Review and Development (Academic)
This form has been developed in consultation with academic representatives.
For more information on the Annual Review Scheme, including downloadable forms, please
visit the Learning and Development Centre website at:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/ldc/annualreview
Departments may wish to add material to this form in order to incorporate relevant additional
local review requirements.
Name: Felicia Gottmann
Position: Research Fellow
Reviewer’s name: Giorgio Riello
Date of previous review: 6 March 2012
Date of review: 6 March 2013
Once your reviewer (who will be a senior member of your department) has contacted you to
arrange a meeting, you should complete Part 1 of this form. If your reviewer has highlighted
any issues that they wish to discuss then you may find it helpful to bear these in mind when
completing the form.
You should pass a copy of the completed form to your reviewer at least a week before your
meeting, along with an up-to-date CV, highlight changes/additions from your previous CV
(ideally use the University’s standard format, see the document ‘CV Guidelines’ at:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/humanresources/newpolicies/academic_promotions).
You may wish to include an additional summary of various activities that would not normally
feature on your CV, e.g. research impact, teaching achievements, innovations in teaching
practice, widening participation and outreach activities, personal tutoring, academic visits,
grants applied for (even if not awarded – you can access this information from RSS)
administrative duties, new collaborations that have not yet resulted in publications, particular
examples of successful teamwork etc. This is your opportunity to inform your head of
department (via your reviewer) about all aspects of your work over the past year.
The factual information provided by your CV and the more subjective comments you can give
on this form will provide the basis for your subsequent discussion.
Just as you have the opportunity to highlight any issues that you would particularly like to
discuss, you should expect to hear briefly from your reviewer at least three working days in
advance of the meeting about any issues that they would like to raise.
At the end of your meeting you and your reviewer should write and agree a short summary of
your discussion and list any matters that may need further attention. These might include
preferences and requests for the coming year and should be recorded on Part 2.
Include any identified development needs in Part 2. It will be your personal record and can be
retained to inform the following year’s review.
The form will be passed to your head of department and retained in your confidential file.
Page 1 of 7
PART 1
You should complete this section and pass the whole form to your reviewer at least
seven days before your meeting, along with an up-to-date CV. This information,
along with your responses to the questions that follow, will allow for an informed and
wide-ranging review discussion.
TAKING STOCK
Summarise your plans and aspirations as expressed in your previous review.
If this is your first review, please summarise your main areas of activity over the year.
Teaching
 We were to continue to offer our module (HI 272, The World of Consumption
1600-1800), but needed to restructure and reformat it to fit with the weekly
one-hour seminar module.
 I was to continue teaching one seminar for the Masters module on
consumption (HI 916 Consumption and Culture in the Eighteenth-Century).
 I was to give one lecture for the new module on the Enlightenment (HI 174)
Research
 I was planning and preparing a research trip to Paris and Aix in the spring of
2012.
Publications
 My main focus was to be the preparation of the monograph, to focus and
sharpen my research for it and to write a book proposal.
 I was also planning to finish off my survey article on the French East India
Companies and to get it published.
How did what you accomplished last year compare to these plans and
aspirations?
What went well, and what went less well?
It was a really good year and everything went very well, in fact even better than I had
hoped for in my last annual review
Teaching
 We restructured the module, which meant that I ended up with an even larger
part of the teaching load, but we balanced that out by Chris taking over from
me as module leader and by including a trip to the V&A on which Chris
accompanied me and the students.
We had a brilliant group of students and I hugely enjoyed the teaching. I tried
out some new formats for the seminars – panel discussions, mini
presentations, students’ own research presentations as well as a museum
exploration with a seminar assignment – and I thought it worked very well.
The feedback was very positive, too, though if we ran the module for a third
year I might have to adjust my module reading more to those formats.
 The Masters module did not actually take place this year, but I gave a lecture
on the Enlightenment module. It was on a topic I had very little experience
with (I tend to stay well clear of religion usually), so it involved quite a lot of
preparation and reading, but I really enjoyed it.
 Mark Knights observed both this lecture and one of the seminars for the HI
272 module and gave me very useful feedback.
Research
 The trip to Paris and Aix in the spring of 2012 was very useful; I found lots of
material which I will be using in my monograph.
 I also went again to Paris and then to Lyon in the summer, where again I
found lots of very good material. I stopped over in Mulhouse to meet with the
curators of the printed textiles museum there, which was absolutely brilliant.
 I’ve been back to the National Archives in Paris in January and February and
I’m still classing all the material that I found then.
Publications
 My survey article has been accepted for publication in The Historical Journal.
 The essay, ‘Intellectual History as Global History: Voltaire’s Fragments sur
l’Inde and the problem of Enlightened commerce’, which I submitted for the
collection New Global Connections: India and Europe in the Long Eighteenth
Century edited by Gabriel Sanchez Espinosa, Daniel Roberts and Simon
Davies for SVEC has been accepted for publication.
 I’ve written and revised a book proposal for my monograph and written a first
draft of the envisaged second part of the book and begun work on part one. I
received some very useful feedback on the draft both from Olivier Raveux
and Maxine and I will be revising it accordingly.
 I’m also working on an article for the edited volume based on our Venice
conference which I will be co-editing together with Chris, Hanna, and Maxine.
Conferences and Presentations
 I gave a presentation at the Leiden-Warwick symposium in Leiden, which
went quite well.
 As I was taken quite ill, my paper for the Venice conference was kindly read
out by Helen.
I perhaps should have tried to give more papers at different conferences, but I felt
that I first needed to get more on top of my research and the new fields that it
engages with.
Were there any factors that inhibited you achieving your goals?
These could be structural problems (at the University or departmental level), lack of
resources, or inter-personal problems.
Generally all went really well. I sometimes struggle to balance travel to Warwick with
writing and researching, but this is something I might be able to be more flexible
about in the coming year.
I should hopefully start to feel more confident to give papers on my new research as I
get to know both my sources and the wider fields better.
Did you undertake any training over the last year? If so, in what ways did it
prove useful?
I went to some of the post-doc workshops, and the session on funding applications
with Liz last year was particularly useful.
PLANNING AHEAD
What are your plans and aspirations for the future?
Consider research income, publications and research impact, teaching, personal
tutoring and administration. If you have particular requests for next year’s teaching or
administrative duties, please note them here. If you are planning to take study leave,
please mention this here.
I would like to publish a few more articles and get a draft of the monograph ready by
the end of the next academic year. I also would like to give papers at a few more
international conferences and establish links with academics and projects in the north
east of England where we currently have very few contacts as a project.
My concrete plans are:
Conferences
 To attend a conference and workshop in Yale in May;
 To give a paper on political economy and French textile legislation in the
eighteenth century at the French Economic History Society in Roubaix in
October; and
 To put in proposals for papers at a few of the upcoming international
conferences in the US.
 I am also thinking about co-organising a panel on knowledge gathering in
India in the early modern period for the next ISECS conference in Rotterdam
in 2015.
Publications
 The paper for the Economic History Society Conference is supposed to be
published as part of the conference proceedings. It is to be submitted in May.
 Our Venice conference edited volume will include a section I will edit as well
as a paper I am yet to write.
 I hope that by writing drafts of the other chapters of my monograph I will also
be able to use synergies to write and give papers on the new areas that I will
be covering.
Whilst I really enjoy working on the monograph, it is also my main concern: I am
addressing very broad issues and fields spanning economic history, intellectual
history, and history of science and I do sometimes worry that I might be overreaching
myself.
Working environment
Do you have any comments about your working environment, including working
relationships that concern you? Is there any way in which the department or
University could better support you?
It’s a huge privilege to be able to work here and I really enjoy it.
The only little thing I feel is a shame is that postdocs and doctoral students,
especially those who also teach, are now much less included in the department and
its running than they were when I first arrived.
Staff development
Is there any training that you think would be useful for you in any aspect of your job?
In order that you and your reviewer are clear on what happens next, it may help you
to specify how the training will be supplied, who will be responsible for organising
this, by when, and what you wish to achieve by taking part.
Over the next year I will have to start applying for jobs and I would enormously
appreciate any advice and in particular some mock interview sessions. The faculty
have been very generously providing those to postdocs in the past and they would be
invaluable to me.
Career development
What are your longer term plans in terms of promotion and career development?
(You may find it helpful to prepare for a discussion on career development by
considering where you are in terms of your career now, what your short, medium and
longer term aspirations are, what you see as the next step in that journey, how clear
you are on what you will need to do to reach your next goal and what
information/support you believe you need from your reviewer in order to have a
productive conversation on career aspirations and to reach your next goal).
My job prospects are something that worries me a lot. The project will finish in August
2014 and I’m not sure if so shortly after the REF there will be any openings. I will no
longer be eligible for BA postdocs, but I am planning to apply for a Leverhulme and
am also considering applying for Marie Curie fellowships abroad and a postdoc at the
European University Institute, even though I would, for personal reasons, prefer to
stay in Britain.
PARTICULAR ISSUES TO DISCUSS AT THE REVIEW MEETING
If you wish to highlight any issues that you would particularly like to discuss during
your review (even if already mentioned above), please do so here.
I would very much appreciate any feedback and advice on publication and
conference strategy; on my monograph project; and on career development and job
prospects.
Once they have received this form, your reviewer should let you know at least three
working days before the meeting if there are any issues that they would particularly
like to discuss. A brief email may be the most appropriate way to do this, but they
should also make a note of them here.
PART 2
At the end of your discussion you should complete this section of the form and then
pass the whole form to your reviewer for him/her to agree the outcomes of the
meeting. The whole form should then be passed to your Head of Department (if he or
she is not your reviewer).
This section should be an agreed summary of your discussion and will provide you
and your reviewer with a useful record of your conversation. You may find it useful to
couch this in the context of previous reviews. Include any discussions about future
plans including, if appropriate, teaching preferences, request for study leave etc.
If you are unable to agree on a summary of the discussion, this should be noted by
both parties on the form with the areas of disagreement recorded.
Name:
Department:
Reviewer:
Date:
Agreed summary of discussion
………………………………………………………… Reviewee
………………………………………………………… Reviewer
Comment from Head of Department (or nominated person)
………………………………………………………… Head of Department
/Nominated person