Back in Maidstone to dot my Ts and cross my Is by looking at the court records from some of the most rural parts of 15thC Kent

We're sending HUGE congratulations to Mark Bailey for winning the Joan Thirsk Memorial Prize. His work 'Serfdom in medieval England: Theory and practice 1200-1500' explores how serfdom operated in practice and why it has shaped historical debate. manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526172976/

Due to a couple of withdrawals, I am accepting paper proposals for my Constructing Masculinities and Ideas of Manhood in the Premodern World sessions at the upcoming @imc-leeds.bsky.social. Please see the attached poster for details! Thanks in advance 😊 #imc #medieval #history #conference

Do you have lots of wonderful things to say about masculinities in the premodern world? Come be on a panel with me at @imc-leeds.bsky.social 🫡 Constructing Masculinities and Ideas of Manhood in the Premodern World, I @ International Medieval Congress 2026 imc-leeds.confex.com/imc/2026/pre...

Genuinely obsessed with clerk-ly doodling ✒️

Day 2: John Blanke 🧶 John Blanke was a Black trumpeter at the Tudor court, best known from the Westminster Tournament Roll of 1511, commissioned during the reign of Henry VIII. Blanke appears twice in the ms & is shown wearing the same livery 1/ #BHM #yarnsky #yarnmarket #blackhistorymonth

If anyone needs reminding of how migration is always been part of human history, here, have just one nice example. The English government started to tax immigrants in the 1330s as a significant source of revenue and the records are freely available online at www.englandsimmigrants.com

Very excited. Will report back.

[monster truck announcer voice] Early. Modern. Bodies. In November 2025 get your grubby hands on the freshest and coolest scholarship from yours truly ("Vagrant Bodies") and a frankly much more impressive range of other scholars. Straight out in very affordable Paperback! Years in the making.

Call for Papers! Fissures: Gender and Political Crisis #medievalsky #Fissures2026

my mac doing its best to telephone a seventeenth century ecclesiastical record 🗃️

The Courtauld is offering a a new fully funded Peter Fergusson PhD Scholarship in English Medieval Architecture for eligible projects focusing on England from the eleventh to the early sixteenth centuries. Statement of intents are due by 17 November 2025.

Published today: 'Forging Fraternity in Late Medieval Society. The Palmers' Guild of Ludlow', by Rachael Harkes bit.ly/49CIDzC Rachael's new book is the latest title in the Society's New Historical Perspectives series. It's now available free Open Access & paperback print @uolpress.bsky.social 1/2

CCASNC will return on 21 February 2026! We hope to see you there!

“More than half of the work done by women in the period between the 16th and 18th centuries took place outside of the home, and around half of all housework and three-quarters of care work was conducted professionally for other households” [England] phys.org/news/2025-10...

"You'll know the value of a good reputation," Moss said drily, "when you've lost it. 'Tisn't everything. But it's hard to fill the place of." Tehanu, my beloved.

Publication day is October 2nd tomorrow. Launch tonight for the first day of the London Month of the Dead at Highgate Cemetery!

Pinch, punch, it's the first of the month. And here's your medieval Labour of the Month, courtesy of a 13th century psalter:

nah

Fantastic piece on a fascinating aspect of early Irish law, by my former PhD student and @ceilteachomn.bsky.social graduate, Dr Viktoriia Krivoshchekova, who is now a postdoc at @scs-dias.bsky.social #MedievalSky www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2...

Absolute all-timer sentence in today's @nytimes.com

Oh hiya! Looking forward to spending the year writing about church courts, litigation and debt 🫡🎉

@ihr.bsky.social and @ies-sas.bsky.social are partnering with @thelondonarchives.bsky.social to run a new series of public lectures, featuring the chance to see the original records first hand. First lecture by @patrickwallis.bsky.social on "Apprenticeship and the Rise of London", Weds 15th October!

The quickest way to finish an article is to start it. It also helps if you can stay away from social media, tv and the internet. And your cell phone. And other people. You should also fight urges to clean and organise spaces, and to cook big meals. In other words, it’s difficult to finish articles.

“AI” isn’t a tool or technology or even a cluster of technologies with a misleading name. It’s the infrastructure at the foundation of a form of capitalism dependent on data brokering. We should be teaching our students about this and not teaching them about “responsible” use.

This is a problem.

If this intends to make it legally compulsory for every adult in Derry to carry something called a "Brit Card", then I'm willing to offer some high-paid consultancy on why this plan might be flawed.

The white supremacist conceit that everyone in antiquity was living under some kind of global jim crow segregation is just complete bullshit news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...

I really enjoyed speaking about my new book with Dr Miranda Melcher for the @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social podcast 📖 Now available online! 👇📻 newbooksnetwork.com/birth-death-... @universitypress.cambridge.org @uoearchhist.bsky.social @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social @uniofexeternews.bsky.social

Re last repost about teaching women's history in UK schools, it's extra frustrating because there are resources out there to tell much more interesting stories within the curriculum. Full disclosure, I wrote this one: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/re...

Also, my monograph 'The Making of Urban Customary Law in Medieval and Reformation England' is about 50% off now, for algorithmically mysterious reasons. www.amazon.com/Making-Custo...

Delighted to share that my first book The Experience of Work in Early Modern England (co-written with the fantastic @jwhittle.bsky.social, @markhailwood.bsky.social, and Hannah Robb) has been published and is available free and Open Access! doi.org/10.1017/9781... #earlymodern #economic #history

A highlight of this summer 🫡

Hug your parents, y'all, if they are still in your lives. Time goes quickly, health is fragile, and every scare is a real scare.

Does anyone know of any (UK-based) ECRs in geography, history & archaeology working on the Little Ice Age? I'm looking for collaborators for a potential workshop! @eseh.bsky.social @northernenvhistory.bsky.social @esehnextgate.bsky.social @carsoncenter.bsky.social @greenhouseuis.net

You still have time #medievalsky to submit to the coolest sessions at Leeds ! 👇

Finally caught up with the BBC's King and Conqueror series 👑🗡️. If you were interested in why shows and films set in the Middle Ages are so often filmed in Iceland, you might consider reading my chapter which touches on this in International Medievalisms (2023): www.cambridge.org/core/books/a...

I found a Shakespeare record. I'm trying to be cool about it (but it is pretty exciting). www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/news/s...

Me @ me: Sarah you simply cannot spend all of your annual leave attending academic conferences. Also me, the second I see a CFP:

DEADLINE EXTENDED TO 15 SEPTEMBER! Please consider submitting an abstract to Daniel Reeve and I's proposed session(s) "Beyond Touch: New Queer and Trans Temporalities" for @imc-leeds.bsky.social (6-9 July 2026). Full CFP below and accessibly HERE: tinyurl.com/BT-IMC.

Delighted to share that I have joined @bbkhistorical.bsky.social for the autumn term as Lecturer in Renaissance Art History. It is an absolute joy to be joining such a vibrant community! Looking forward to exploring all things Netherlandish with students. ✨

As I waste away in my bed, I thought it would be a good reminder to everyone who can afford to- get your COVID vaccines and your flu shots 🤒

The PhD may be over but it never really ends

Female Spy Network Uncovered in Medieval Ypres, Study Finds www.medievalists.net/2025/06/fema... #Spy

A note from my latest trip to Cambridge University Library for a look at some records or the Bishop of Ely. I am inclined to disagree with the opinion of the anonymous Peck on Sunday Feb 24, 1740 when they wrote that there is "nothing worth searching for in this book"

New Medieval Books: The Unruly Tongue: Speech and Violence in Medieval Italy, published by @pennpress.bsky.social www.medievalists.net/2025/08/new-... #books

From traders to magicians and allies, the Saami appear across medieval Nordic sagas. Solveig Marie Wang explores how these stories reveal an Indigenous presence at the centre of the Middle Ages — and why remembering it matters today.