It is with great sadness that I have to report that Dr Mike Presdee has died after a brave battle with cancer. Mike was a neighbour and a friend. He was also an esteemed academic around the world for his work in Cultural Criminology. Even though his work was not essentially in my own field, it became a great influence on my research, particularly my Doctoral work into children's literature and poetry. His work around the concept of Carnival provided a brilliant way to analyse children's relationship with certain forms of literature and to begin to understand their responses.
Of course, Mike was once a very good school teacher himself and he always had plenty of lively and stimulating things to say about education in its present form. He was from the working class and, for me, this had greatly influenced his approach to his research and to academe. He leaves a huge legacy of exciting and original scholarship behind which will continue to inform others work in his field and beyond for decades to come.
Mike was good to talk to and his and his wife Gill's dinner parties were always filled with great food (that he had cooked to perfection), conversation and laughter. Mike will be missed by many, both locally and world-wide
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