⚠️ 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?

World leaders can make as many statements as they like opposing Israel's actions in Gaza. Until they end the sale of weapons to Israel, they remain complicit in the mass murder of Palestinians. Stop arming genocide, now.

From a survey of 57 universities by Universities UK: - 50% have cut courses - 25% have made compulsory redundancies - 20% have cut spending on research - 18% have cut staff time on research - 15% have cut student bursaries or hardship funds Many more are considering these options

I have a fully-funded, 4 yr AHRC collaborative PhD studentship 'Soundscapes of domesticity: music and lived experiences in non-elite English homes, 1780–1870' supervised by myself and Matt Ingleby with colleagues at The Museum of the Home. Deadline 23 May See: www.qmul.ac.uk/geog/postgra...

Close to TWO THOUSAND academics and educators say TRANS RIGHTS NOW. (Sorry if you've seen this (and the historians' letter!) too many times. The lack of an algorithm means we have to keep reposting it to catch people, and this really matters.)

“I don’t believe in ordinary people. Everyone is extraordinary.” Kit de Waal reading to us and speaking about her work at Keele this evening! @kitdewaal.bsky.social @lisablowerwrite.bsky.social

So excited to read this!

Striking today to protest compulsory redundancies in my faculty. We ARE the University! ✊

Having a bookish weekend break! Here’s a picture of Haworth church, with the parsonage in the background, and one of St Mary’s Church, Arkengarthdale, also with its vicarage in the background. The latter is the setting for Sinclair’s novel The Three Sisters. We walked the moors as Gwenda would have.

Beyond the Burger: USA Food Stories in the British Library’s Oral History and Food Industry Literature Collections Keele University #skystorians 🗃️www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMT293/b...

Fantastic PhD opportunity on food and lit!

Beyond the Burger has made it onto jobs.ac.uk! Fully funded PhD, in an exciting topic, in collab with the British Library. Please share! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMT293/b...

Beyond the Burger has made it onto jobs.ac.uk! Fully funded PhD, in an exciting topic, in collab with the British Library. Please share! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMT293/b...

These posts feel like the best kind of hug! Sinclair was such a great discovery for so many of us last year, myself included.🥰 (Also a shoutout to @greenbowlerhat.bsky.social for all of her fabulous writing on Sinclair.)

The picture that went all wrong. Words by Virigina Woolf. A splodge in the background became standing stones. A horrible owl got painted over by a huge silver moon. Extra hare added to try and balance things. Everything went wrong with this picture but I loved how it came out.

Now listed on FindaPhD! The most exciting PhD opportunity you will see this week, if you like foods and history and libraries (and who doesn’t?) www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Exciting (fully funded) PhD 📢 ! Collaborative Doctoral Partnership with Keele (me!) and the British Library. Beyond the Burger: USA Food Stories in the British Library’s Oral History and Food Industry Literature Collections www.keele.ac.uk/study/postgr... (see “advert and details” for full info)

Now listed on FindaPhD! The most exciting PhD opportunity you will see this week, if you like foods and history and libraries (and who doesn’t?) www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Exciting (fully funded) PhD 📢 ! Collaborative Doctoral Partnership with Keele (me!) and the British Library. Beyond the Burger: USA Food Stories in the British Library’s Oral History and Food Industry Literature Collections www.keele.ac.uk/study/postgr... (see “advert and details” for full info)

A glimpse of the covers of our forthcoming US edition of Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage, each incorporating a portion of detailed map of London in 1895. It will be available only as a set and exclusively from @asterismbooks.bsky.social by the end of September 2025.

While I am here and while I’m pissed off, vice chancellors should be elected from our own for a fixed term. This isn’t a radical or controversial statement.

We watched this last night, on my partner’s birthday, and it is glorious x

How many times do we have to say it? *Austerity doesn’t work*. More cuts to public spending is economically illiterate and morally indefensible - people didn’t vote Labour to get more Tory austerity. FFS tax extreme wealth, don’t slash public services @patmillsuk.bsky.social

Fossil fuel companies should be forced to pay the public trillions in damages for the costs of their planetary arson. Instead they are trying to shut down one of the most important and storied environmental groups in the world. It's shameless - and it's not over. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Written beautifully and with a generous impulse towards the continuing importance of what we do, even as we do it with less and under great strain.