Professor John Theobald
Died September 2006
The news reached University staff, shocking and totally unexpected, that Professor John Theobald had died on 23 September. It seemed hard to believe. Colleagues who were with him at a staff meeting the previous day found him as relaxed, jovial, and keen to discuss collective future research plans as ever. We know it will take time for us to come to terms with our loss, but our thoughts and sympathies are above all with his wife Françoise and three children; John was devoted to his family.
It seems a bitter irony that John will not reap the full benefit of the impact made by his recent publications, most strikingly the book on radical mass media criticism that he co-edited with David Berry, or that he had so little time to relish the achievement of his recent full professorship, a fitting accolade given the wealth of scholarly outputs he produced since joining the institution in 1995 as Associate Professor.
John will be remembered at the University for his commitment to his research, which was constant and uncompromising throughout his career. He remained astonishingly productive given the significant teaching programme he maintained; his success in gaining funding for two periods of research leave from the Arts and Humanities Research Board was testimony to the quality of his work, the esteem it commanded among his peers, and his sheer tenacity in the cause of academic endeavour.
At the same time John had no time for ivory towers. He may have appeared an unassuming man, but his research, his teaching, and his life showed he was passionate about the big issues - questions of justice, sustainability, decency, honesty. John was an ardent critic of the way that the mass media and society’s power elites are keen to pull the wool over our eyes; he was courageous in speaking up for the truth as he saw it, and in demythologising the comfortable fictions we are all inclined to accommodate.
He was equally true to his principles in his dealings with colleagues, whether within the University or in networks across the sector. He was liked and respected as an unfailingly courteous and loyal man with a quiet sense of fun and mischief, and a love of conviviality.
One particular achievement is his track record in interdisciplinary collaboration, in which he was an example to us all, because he proved that our faculties do not need to be hermetically independent from one another. He had similar success externally, in removing artificial barriers between the study of German and Germany, Europe, language use, the media, politics and the exercise of power.
We will miss him and mourn him; as colleagues, students, those who have studied at doctoral level under his guidance, or as personal friends, we will cherish the values he promoted. John quoted Gandhi’s famous remark, when asked what he thought of European civilisation, that he thought it would be a very good thing; John actually played a significant part in promoting the idea that establishing a civilised way of life in Europe was not such a far-fetched notion.
Obituary written by Colin Beaven, Principal Lecturer in Languages