Professor Pratchett joins Trinity staff

BESTSELLING author Terry Pratchett will join the staff at Trinity College Dublin next week as an adjunct professor in the School of English.

His close relationship with the university began in December 2008 when he was conferred with an honorary degree, and since then the relationship has deepened, with Colin Smythe, Pratchett’s literary agent, donating a back catalogue of his published translations to the college library in 2009.

University life features regularly in Pratchett’s best-selling Discworld novels, with his descriptions of ‘Unseen University’ and its eccentric staff, the ‘Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography’, and the simian librarian who refuses all efforts to undo his magical transformation into an orang-utan. On joining the staff of Trinity, Pratchett will now find out what academic life is really like.

Next Thursday he will deliver his public inaugural professorial lecture which, drawing on Trinity’s literary heritage, he has entitled ‘The importance of being absolutely amazed about everything’.

Commenting on his entry into academic life, Prof Pratchett said: “Until recently I couldn’t even spell academic and now I are one.”