early modern proof of aliens right here 👽

New Netflix show just dropped

📢 Just two days left to submit to SHoW 2026! We welcome proposals on all aspects of the history of war and violence, including irregular warfare, military identities, gender, memory and commemoration, civil wars, cultures of violence, and experiences of war. 🗓️ Deadline: 3 July www.show.org.uk

An open letter, to readers, about Charity and Sylvia. I am very pained to feel the need to write this. #queerhistory #pride

Found poem

Go listen! pod.fo/e/439687

Being at Chalke History Festival reminds me yet again how interconnected university-based history and other forms of history-making are. The thing we do in one place explicitly supports the thing we do in another. University cuts, closures and job losses harm the entire history eco-system.

Update: thanks to Deutsche Bahn I will now have rather less time to spare in Hamburg, if I ever get there

Which candidate for GM mayor is bringing back our ULEZ plan then?

I have several hours spare in Hamburg later on today and my plan of ‘a nice wander round the city’ is looking impractical. Where should I go that is cold?

hundreds of new flats going up in Manchester and you’d struggle to find one that’s dual aspect outside the penthouses

TODAY ON @thisguysucked.com: The excellent @catherinefletcher.info on Renaissance arms dealers and the centuries-old question of gun control.

I'd be interested in legal views about when reasonable steps to protect residents' health might trump planning law

Okay, I take back all previous complaints about Avanti West Coast who've got me to London EARLY today with functioning aircon

a tad worrying to read this when I have a Eurostar to Brussels to catch

📣 People are understandably up in the arms about this (it is horrible). But just want to wave a hand out there 👋 as we're going through the same thing in Humanities at Northumbria (1 out of 5 staff need to go by end of July). 1/?

Petition against redundancies at Exeter. Humanities and Social Sciences staff are hardest hit, with 25% of posts in subjects including History, English, Modern Languages and Politics slated to be cut.

@catherinefletcher.info’s The Firearm Revolution is “a wide-ranging and sophisticated treatment of the effect of firearms on early modern Italy and beyond,” writes Stephen Brumwell for @wsj.com. Read the full review here:

This year's @sochistorywar.bsky.social conference is in Limerick, 26-27 November. Check out the call for papers on our website. Closing date 3 July.

I am once again begging universities to realise that staff - academic, professional services, estates, all of them - are the product they are trying to sell. Without staff there is nothing to sell. No amount of flashy buildings will replace staff in universities. UKHE is in freefall.

“Worker productivity drops by two to three per cent for every degree above 20C, [the WHO] said.” And I’m looking forward to today’s departmental awayday.

A statement from Exeter UCU branch @ucu.org.uk - please share far and wide.

I would watch this musical

Opened up Spotify and rather spookily it was playing me Too Hot, in case you need a suitable song today

Lovely to see this review of The Firearm Revolution in the WSJ

THURSDAY ON @thisguysucked.com: A very specific type of guy that I can almost guarantee only @catherinefletcher.info has ever considered in this level of depth before. Extremely cool.

Indicative of the state of things that my response to the PM resigning is 'meh'

I just shrieked with glee. We struggle to get to our amazing library because we are busy on Saturdays. We are often in town on Sunday! I am so excited that I nearly burst into tears! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Back from the shops to find the Greens hitting the ground running for the Mayoral by-election

It could be worse, some of us have Reviewer 2’s report to deal with

Top stuff - and scroll down for a link to us chatting about these on the podcast

Pride event at Trevi Fountain sparks row in Rome

La couronne du Saint Empire, sur la tête d’un des soldats US entrés à Nuremberg en 1945 Sic transit gloria mundi

The mid-point of my academic career from PhD completion to state retirement age was 2025, 17 years after completion, and two years too late to qualify for the BA “mid-career” scheme. And I was a mature PhD student. For those who go straight through the scheme is wildly out of sync.

It! Is! Here! Open Access (and already hoovered up by the scrapers no doubt such is our world) UK/EU paper copies will be available eventually but until then, EVERYONE now has free access! press.library.concordia.ca/projects/ill...

Some nice comparisons in the thread confirming that UK infrastructure projects are disproportionately exoensive

This is a ridiculous saga, but the UK certainly isn’t the only place with a historic parliamentary building. How does everywhere else manage? Is it that they just do the maintenance on a regular lowkey basis?

Just found this again. I've had it for like 12 years

AI turns world upside down part 94: Ryanair has an AI assistant in its app without charging an extra fee for it.

fwiw Northern Ireland has the most liberal gun laws in the UK. It's the one place you can still legally own a handgun. And it has much higher gun ownership overall (almost 3% compared to almost 1% in rest of UK)

Got to the airport three hours before my flight because I don't trust the EES system so of course it was working and there was no queue and I now have to sit in the departure lounge for hours

On my way from Bologna airport to Florence, a journey that I first did in 1999 when it was a slow but extraordinarily scenic trip across the Apennines. Now it takes an hour and it’s a super fast monorail plus half an hour of tunnels: efficient but not nearly so lovely.

My 500 year history of disabled people's political activism is out now! Thanks to The Independent for making it their non-fiction book of the month! www.penguin.co.uk/books/455782... #disabilityhistory

The government is advertising for academics to work on policy advice across 27 different areas but reckon historical research is only relevant to one of them.

The danger here is less that only 22 universities are allowed in the REF and more that we end up with a 'sensible compromise' of 50.

For those looking for some longer historical context about white supremacist politics in Northern Ireland, I heartily recommend Daniel Geary’s chapter in this fantastic edited collection: manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526147073/

Nice-looking job in the other great history dept of our city

Having just spent a lot of time reading about how rulers tried and largely failed to regulate guns when they were a new technology, this rang very true

You lovely people have got me up to 190 responses, so I'm going to keep going to 200! If you're an academic in UK HE who's had pastoral responsibility for students in the last 5 years under any title, please take 10 mins to share your thoughts about that work. Please do share to widen the pool.