We've been busy.

Excited to be launching @edmond-smith.bsky.social’s wonderful RUTHLESS (@yalebooks.bsky.social) in @dauntbooks.bsky.social! 🥂 Get your copy here: yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300... #SkyStorians

I don't think yoga sessions & alpaca visits should substitute healthy working conditions & meaningful engagement to put an end to the alienation that is at the root of burn-out. But if my uni could invest in a bunch of those SAD lamps to deal with the absence of sun light for months I won't object.

I am ... so confused about what universities do right now?

And now it's even in the Warburg's newsletter this morning - handily available at mailchi.mp/sas/news-fro... even for whose who're not subscribers (through why ever wouldn't you be?). You don't have to scroll down far for "In the Media".

Some excellent Renaissance history and @warburginstitute.bsky.social chat in this interview!

This is the #YayArchives equivalent of throwing a golden apple into a wedding party with “to the fairest one”, isn’t it? 🍎 Admiring the commitment to violence.

A shoutout for @evelynwelch.bsky.social from Seth Meyers to brighten up a very wintery Wednesday in Manchester👋 Support Late Night television, support academic research! Evelyn's latest book Renaissance Skin is available now in a beautifully illustrated paperback: bit.ly/3JIfNn0 #ArtHistory

Turns out this news was in the public domain yesterday but no one has covered it as far as I can tell. Does no one care about our national library anymore? It was much the same with the cyberattack. If this was a bit of 'science' infrastructure can you imagine? www.pcs.org.uk/news-events/...

Dit goede nieuws uit het Amsterdamse stadsarchief had ik nog even gemist www.amsterdam.nl/stadsarchief...

What do pirates in Madagascar, a red knitted jumper, the sunken warship Vasa, captivity and colonialism, and the Prize Papers have in common? They're all part of our new online lecture series "Ships & Seafaring 1500–1800". Join us weekly on Mondays, 1pm CET, on Zoom #earlymodern #maritimehistory 🗃️

Honestly @manchesterup.bsky.social get in those YouTube comments, babes.

We loved hearing Florence Welch of Florence and the Machine talk about using the Warburg Library while researching for her new album on @latenightseth.bsky.social 💫 Congratulations to Florence on the release of Everybody Scream! Watch “Evelyn’s daughter” (from 2:40): youtu.be/M_mc_gErXX0?...

In addition to that, the seminar recording is now online (slowly processing on YT) www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwT7...

Talk titles: 📖Moving libraries: from the personal to the institutional 📖Islamic knowledge in an Elizabethan physician’s library: Lancelot Browne and his Arabic books And a virtual #BodyOfKnowledge tour from me.

Mega excited that @awickenden.bsky.social and @samuscript.bsky.social are speaking on 9 December for @rcpmuseum.bsky.social winter lectures. Online, 6pm GMT, £5, book now: history.rcp.ac.uk/event/body-k... #LibraryHistory #GLAM📚

If there's anything more exciting than seeing a book you work on in an exhibition, it's surely being invited to talk about it. Very excited for this event next month! 📷 Lancelot Browne's annotated copy of Avicenna in Arabic at the @rcpmuseum.bsky.social exhibition, 'A body of knowledge'.

Right, 'Evelyn's daughter' went on a big American late night show and talked about the Warburg and Renaissance research. So early modern studies are saved, right? RIGHT? We've got impact now and are cool again? (It *is* the most incredible place in the world.)

Comme nombre de ses contemporains, La Beaumelle recyclait des cartes à jouer et s'en servait de fiches de travail : en voici quelques-unes sur lesquelles il préparait ses attaques contre Voltaire…

Tom Hamilton reçoit le prix Natalie Zemon Davis pour son très très grand livre. Un chef d’œuvre d’anthropologie judiciaire qui éclaire la sortie des guerres de religion: palpitant et virtuose. On ne pouvait rêver mieux pour ce beau prix !

#LowCountries excitement! Congratulations @jeroenputtevils.bsky.social!! (and if you miss this prize celebration, you can join us on 13 February @ihr.bsky.social for a paper by Jeroen :))

I am *beyond* excited about this paper. Sari is so brilliant; wonderful to have her in London for a year!

TOOOOOOOOOOM!!! @tombhamilton.bsky.social! Oh this is brilliant, humongous congratulations. The Natalie Zemon Davis Prize from the @16csociety.bsky.social! 🤩 #NZD4Eva (don't forget her birthday on Saturday, our #EarlyModern feast day)

Is it logical? Oh, absolutely not. But it's that delightful interplay of obsession with 'the Chinese market' + hands tied by absurd income projections to get enormous loans + managers fixating on meeting their projected income targets regardless of what that does to the uni + never waste a crisis...

I realise that 500 students isn't *that* much in a uni of 32,000. But (1) Rationality? Among these senior managers? (2) 500 x £30,000 = 15 million. If they do a multi-year degree that adds up even more. (3) All managers have projected absurd income targets to the Office for Students & now panic.

Intrigued by those querying that the concerns with recruitment from China would weigh much on the university's decision making. We really need a broader awareness of senior managers' skewed decision making, right?

Ah, yes, the weaponised-ignorance management style. I'm very familiar. IT IS SO EXHAUSTING AND TRANSPARENT. (see also: declaring that topics aren't for that committee and thereby constantly kicking the can down the road; not being on top of your brief or else the higher-up yells at you)

The hate press is running headlines like “All-female college defies Supreme Court ruling”, even though Schedule 12 of the Equality Act enacts that admitting a “comparatively small” number of trans women, cis men, or both doesn’t affect a college’s status as a single-sex higher education institution.

Good news.

It says a lot about where the world is at that my brain in the first instance interpreted this as them *excluding* trans women as I've come to expect that hatred by now. But well done Newnham! Grateful. ♥️ The good example is now set and others cannot claim they have no choice but to exclude.

Love this. Love that these kids are getting *new* books. (My mum was a nursery school teacher, and the one time I saw her cry on the way back home was when a kid had asked why Sinterklaas (OG Santaclaus) brought new presents to all other kids but only scruffy second-hand ones to them 💔)

Very pleased to see the Giving Tree back in @waterstones.bsky.social #Norwich. All the tags represent a book choice from one of Norfolk's looked after children and ensures they get a book for Christmas. I didn't have time to browse today so got a voucher for staff to use picking books. #BookSky 📚💙

If you're attending the "Women and the Household in the Early Modern Book Trade" conference in Antwerp this week and are still looking for something to do on Saturday morning, my workshop has a few spots left: www.eventbrite.nl/e/show-and-t... (The workshop will not be in the Nottebohm Room)

Intrigued by those querying that the concerns with recruitment from China would weigh much on the university's decision making. We really need a broader awareness of senior managers' skewed decision making, right?

I hope it is now obvious why pillars of democracy like universities, the law, public broadcasting should be funded so that they are beyond the reach of financial coercion by hostile agents.

CFP: Tolerance and Dissent Deadline for abstracts 15 January 2026 Conference: 24-26 June 2026, University of Fribourg Travel grants available for graduate students #EarlyModern #SkyStorians all info: www.rensoc.org.uk/event/tolera...

Pretty extraordinary story here www-bbc-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.bbc....

Almost as if you shouldn’t allow your research infrastructure to be dependent on the manipulatable income stream of students from foreign powers? Put universities on stable funding so they’re not beholden to this kind of manipulation.

LOL. What? That's the AI slop feeding on AI slop then... The beast is eating itself. (At least I hope that the posts by my managers on there are AI, because it sure as hell doesn't sound human.)

Pulling this back into TLs to be sure that all who can will stand as witnesses for him (and for me and so many others too).

There is a weird Protestantism that hangs about contemporary academia. We have festschrifts for retirees but absolutely no customs to manage losing SO MANY from our communities before we reach that point. There is no churching when contracts are renewed, no Placebos when careers are lost.

I stole this idea from @earlymodernjohn.bsky.social a while ago: burnyourbeans.substack.com/p/jerusalem-...

When the gap becomes too great to ignore, the wealthy buy another news network to point cameras at the desperate masses and blame them for not tugging their bootstraps hard enough while they hop on their helicopter to take them to their emotional support yacht

“Selma van de Perre, a valiant Jewish secretary who during World War II covertly transported suitcases bulging with cash, seditious newsletters, identity cards and ration books to Dutch resistance agents, even penetrating Nazi headquarters in Paris, died on Oct. 20 in London. She was 103.”

oh. What a life. I went to a convo between her & her translator in February 2020. 98 years young and still reassured that we can have better if we act for it. She was still going to schools to educate, and tell children that the good & the bad aren't just happening but are humans' doing. Grateful.

Quite the juxtaposition on the homepage... Remind me, what happens again when the rich & powerful make the gap too massive and obvious?

bumping this to hoover up any recipes people have discovered over the past year. I'm all ears.

“The researchers aim to show that the ‘inevitability’ of AI is just a marketing frame perpetrated by the industry and that pushback is a lot more possible than we often see.” Yes!

Tests don't improve literacy. And being 'ready to take on unions' really translates as 'I'm trying to pander to some parts of the electorate by needlessly fighting with those who actually work in the sector'.

Note: while not unprecedented, it’s actually pretty rare for a sitting Catholic bishop to participate in a demonstration. It’s just not generally what Catholic bishops do. Thus: Getting the hierarchy involved in this protest outside an ICE facility is no small thing.