The students on my gothic module got me a card (it’s my birthday tomorrow)! ON POINT.

Excited for Robin Ince in our little campus cafe tomorrow!

Who remembers the European Computer Driving License? Just apropos of nothing….

I think a lot of us get hope wrong. Hope, I do not believe, is an emotion. In fact, hope makes space for lots of emotions to exist alongside it. You can DO hope scared, angry, sad etc... Hope doesn't find us. We make hope through action and struggle. It's a practice of living and is re-made daily.

This is the best thing I have ever seen! In case anyone else of my generation needs a little cheer this morning …

This is the best thing I have ever seen! In case anyone else of my generation needs a little cheer this morning …

“The epitaphs of good intentions” 💀

Justice department ‘not investigating’ Renee Good killing in contrast to 2020 inquiry on George Floyd death

10 years. My brain hurts a lot. I think on some level I really do believe that he was the cosmic glue holding the world together. lareviewofbooks.org/article/i-do...

Our University inflicts a monstrous amount of routine business on one, faculty meetings and committees of every sort, so that during term-time one can do no continuous reading at all—reading of books, I mean. When vacation comes, my brain is so tired that I can read nothing serious for a month…

Well here’s something: the BBC has included LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK in a round-up of the must-reads of 2026. I’m sandwiched between Liza Minnelli and Cher - a big camp old Merry Christmas to me! ✨

"This promise of an AI future, is really just a collective anxiety that wealthy people have about how well they're gonna be able to control us in the future." - @tressiemcphd.bsky.social with an absolute mic drop moment about AI bullshit. Incredible words. Listen to all of it!

"We envision a resistance that is...a repudiation of the efficiencies that automated algorithmic education falsely promises: a resistance comprising the collective force of small acts of friction." "How to Resist AI in Education" by me & @cnygren.bsky.social www.publicbooks.org/four-frictio...

Hooray for Jonathan Coe name checking Dorothy Richardson again! “Random dips and scoops” is how Richardson read Proust, at least on the second reading - the word she used was “piecemeal”

Oh now, this is wonderful www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Hooray for Jonathan Coe name checking Dorothy Richardson again! “Random dips and scoops” is how Richardson read Proust, at least on the second reading - the word she used was “piecemeal”

Some wonderful humans in this video (including my PhD supervisor on piano, a man of many talents 😂)

‘consider not giving presents this holiday season’ 💀

Almost exactly a month ago I fell and broke my ankle, really badly, and I have been in pain and immobile since. I have never been one of those people who gets upset that occasionally disabled people get some form of help from the state, but sudden disability … 1/ www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Almost exactly a month ago I fell and broke my ankle, really badly, and I have been in pain and immobile since. I have never been one of those people who gets upset that occasionally disabled people get some form of help from the state, but sudden disability … 1/ www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

please sign this petition and do not give jk rowling another penny. ever.

If you're in Sheffield, we can deliver by hand, on foot, to any address in the city encircled by the blue line (and we're happy to gift-wrap books, if you like, at no extra cost). This might be useful for any last-minute Christmas orders (last day to order via this method is Tuesday 23 Dec).

St Andrew’s Day weekend at EUP: our May Sinclair book is only £12.50 in paperback! A bargain, I’m sure you’ll agree - edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-may-sin...

St Andrew’s Day weekend at EUP: our May Sinclair book is only £12.50 in paperback! A bargain, I’m sure you’ll agree - edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-may-sin...

⚠️ Time is running out! ⚠️ 🗓️ The deadline for applications for The WFA PhD Grant Scheme is 1 December. 📣 No topics are off limits, ANY First World War research considered! #FWWHist #PhDchat

Just got back from the doctor's. The bad news is that tests have revealed I have Onomatopoeia. Naturally concerned, I asked, 'What's that?' 'I'm afraid,' he replied, looking up from his notes with a serious expression. 'It's exactly what it sounds like.'

The Louvre robbers got their best ideas from Diane Morgan’s Mandy youtube.com/shorts/pIVNy...

The Louvre robbers got their best ideas from Diane Morgan’s Mandy youtube.com/shorts/pIVNy...

My kid made my sign.

As more of my valued colleagues face the threat of redundancy, here’s a quick reminder that it takes years and years of public investment to train an academic. Cutting someone with this wealth of experience loose isn’t “saving” anything. It is a massive waste of our collective resources.

Just upping this again as undergraduate dissertation topics are being picked.

Buxi Duan @buxiduan.bsky.social has organised a wonderful symposium on Modernist Editing at the University of Reading. Do come! There are a few bursaries for PGR and precarious ECRs … research.reading.ac.uk/centre-for-b... @modernistudies.bsky.social

Also, if you are Reading-adjacent on 23rd September, I'll be talking about the edition at @buxiduan.bsky.social & @lawrentian.bsky.social's symposium on modernist editing alongside @greenbowlerhat.bsky.social, @wvmierlo.bsky.social and many more bsky.app/profile/gree...

My wonderful colleague Lawrence Jones and I organised a symposium on Modernist Editing at Reading @cbcp-unirdg.bsky.social! We’ve got a DREAM lineup of leading scholars in textual scholarship, especially @greenbowlerhat.bsky.social! And we have a few travel bursaries. Details👇 Gonna be a fab day!

Buxi Duan @buxiduan.bsky.social has organised a wonderful symposium on Modernist Editing at the University of Reading. Do come! There are a few bursaries for PGR and precarious ECRs … research.reading.ac.uk/centre-for-b... @modernistudies.bsky.social

act.38degrees.org.uk/act/stop-isr... Sign sign sign!

I saw a job posting for a heritage project focused on Romany history. I wasn't sure how visible it would be so wanted to share so that the job gets seen by the people whose history it is focusing on. Give it a share, perhaps? museum-services-jobs.le.ac.uk/job/learning...

Academia may not give you job security, flexibility, or wealth, but it will let you unexpectedly connect to eduroam in foreign cities

We are delighted to share the exciting news that the CFP for the @moderniststudies.bsky.social 2026 conference - next year called Weird Modernisms - jointly held with @modernistudies.bsky.social at @lborouniversity.bsky.social is now live! More info here: moderniststudies.org/conference/MSA2026/CFP/

'Put simply, we have a really strange system in higher education, where nobody admits how much things actually cost, nobody admits who’s paying for what, research is kept alive on the toil and goodwill of underpaid academics....'

When I first saw this I thought oh, ICE again, the US really is going full fash. Then I saw it was the UK *Labour* government. For fucks’ sake!* *For the sake of all the plural fucks, which I need to clarify because I’m about to say … by WHOM! Surely!

This is great on Gertrude Trevelyan. Dorothy Richardson and May Sinclair mentioned twice: once as examples of modernist women writers NOT forgotten. I doubt if a decade ago a critic would feel confident saying that, as they would still have felt obscure. www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/7047...

I don’t quite agree with all of this but this part killed me: ‘My friends who pursued academic careers in English – no more apocalyptically disillusioned class of person exists – feel they are heirs to a ruined inheritance.’

I am baffled by some of the unevidenced leaps higher ed institutions are making toward AI. CalState and Ohio St. are acting nuts, IMO. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

Join us on Wednesday, 11 June, as we launch our newest Recovered Book from Boiler House Press, Gertrude Trevelyan's utterly unknown Trance by Appointment, with novelist Louisa Treger and Dr. Rebecca Bowler of Keele University. Register now on Eventbrite. It's free. www.eventbrite.co.uk...

The latest ‘Recovered Book’ from Boiler House Press, and it’s a beautifully written, affect-driven, spooky and witty tale! Come hear all about it next week!

The latest ‘Recovered Book’ from Boiler House Press, and it’s a beautifully written, affect-driven, spooky and witty tale! Come hear all about it next week!

A stately pleasure dome?