Treasury Committee has published a summary of the results of its survey on student loans, where it received over 52,000 responses - 'one of the highest response rates to a select committee inquiry ever recorded.' committees.parliament.uk/committee/15...

This morning the Department for Culture, Media and Sport have published a refreshed and updated list of Areas of Research Interest. These are an important way for researchers to engage with policy, so please do read them! www.gov.uk/government/p...

At our Annual Conference, Andy Burnham proposed a shift away from Westminster’s top-down mandates toward a place-based model. In a new blog, @drbethkitson.bsky.social & @ojgarling.bsky.social look at whether "Manchesterism" could fix Westminster. Read: bit.ly/4uycnFJ

The Royal Society on the history of the public right to access - and fully engage with - the subjects, structures, methods and outcomes of science. royalsociety.org/-/media/poli...

vibes-based global heating

‘While the human participants often suffer bumps, bruises and worse, the cheeses generally fare well and are edible afterwards – even with this year’s very high temperatures.‘ www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Find someone who looks at you the way Dec looks at the Premier League trophy

"roughly one in six of Trump’s own 2024 voters has left the fold, and that gap has not closed since February"

It's been an interesting exercise for @drbethkitson.bsky.social on.bsky.social and I to look back at Andy Burnham's conversation at the @bennettschool.cam.ac.uk conference back at the end of March.

"A paradoxical effect of falling immigration may be that advocates for reducing the pace of change are shifting focus to call for deportations and ‘remigration’." A damning read.

New paper by me and Saite Lu in @regionalstudies.bsky.social - social trust and productivity www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... (open access)

Please help spread the news far and wide! We have a new, full-time, permanent Lecturer in Global History of Science job @stsucl.bsky.social Don't be fooled by the application of deadline of only 9 June 2026. This is an open search #histsci #skystorians www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

finally got around to watching Devil Wears Prada 2 and god I just found it relentlessly bleak??

"The National Conversation is a UK wide listening exercise, designed to hear directly from people in every nation and region about their experiences of community life." You can take part here: www.national-conversation.ox.ac.uk

‘Elbow grease and yellow soap’: Housework time in working-class households in late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain Fascinating (open access!) new paper from Sara Horrell and Jane Humphries: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

If you’re interested in how regional leadership can drive real economic growth, hear Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, share insights into his region’s economic success story. He discusses how place-based policy, governance, & devolution have shaped the region’s progress. bit.ly/48c0qfH

'Parties have long chosen leaders on vibes, ideology and electability but until recently they did not discount ability to govern.'

The local elections in one chart. Labour has been squeezed between the Greens in young wards and Reform in older working-class wards www.economist.com/britain/2026...

Really useful thread from @steveakehurst.bsky.social (further write-up here: persuasionuk.org/research/may... )

Registration is open for 'Thinking the City' at Cambridge and 'Justice in Local Space' at LSE, where I will be presenting on care-washing in the built environment and the affective dimensions of urban spatial encroachment (aka the 'putting lipstick on a pig'* and 'to hell with SUVs' papers)

This is a long shot because this isn't the old twitter, but I'm looking for history articles/books that look at cases of British/Irish settlers/squatters being prosecuted for crimes against Indigenous/colonized people. It can be anywhere in the world, but ideally the late C18/early C19.

Today’s Education Select Committee report on higher education is the best report on HE to come from Govt/Parliament in ages. It takes a rounded view of the whole system, moving away from the more atomistic or narrow accounts we’ve seen 🧵 committees.parliament.uk/committee/20...

'Reform’s success was a seismic change, with 14 new councils, but 23 authorities went No Overall Control. The story is one of fragmentation as much as Reform’s meteoric rise.'

“It’s staggering,” he said, adding: “You just have to breathe in, breathe out.” www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

‘England itself remains a profoundly centralised country, in which national politics always dominates. So why not send a national message?‘ www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Incredible stuff

A useful primer, for the day that's in it. @jenwilliamsft.bsky.social Feb 2026 piece on Reform-run councils. www.ft.com/content/dc40...

We are dismayed by news regarding UG History, and other subjects, at Hertfordshire. This follows recent job losses at Essex and elsewhere, and makes clear the crisis in UK HE. The Society is in touch and working with historians at UoH. As ever, we invite contact from others affected #Skystorians

Can the news just show this all day, every polling day

Congratulations to @dianecoyle1859.bsky.social for being awarded an honorary doctorate by @uocuniversitat.bsky.social in recognition of her academic & institutional career, as well as for her contribution to contemporary economic thought. Read more about Diane's honorary degree & work bit.ly/42hywvx

Vote today in the UK local elections. Don't forget your voter ID if you live in England. Here is the list of acceptable forms of photo ID for England. [No ID required in Wales or Scotland.] www.electoralcommission.org.uk/voting-and-e...

Incredibly cool work from @camunicampop.bsky.social

More fantastic work from @camunicampop.bsky.social. Have you seen this, @drbethkitson.bsky.social?

'MPs seek to hear from funny women'

'tacit ignorance and public silence enabled male queerness to flourish with only rare exposure, condemnation or regulation, with a “live and let live” ethos especially prevalent in the working class.'

"Bluey is the biggest show in the US - and Australia's greatest cultural export since Steve Irwin. But we handed the IP to the Brits, who now make $2 billion a year from it." Fascinating stuff on trials and tribulations of public service broadcasters. youtu.be/n5Pnkay8D5M?...

‘Let’s do lunch’ www.ft.com/content/1326...

Section 21 is no more! From today, in England, landlords will need a legal reason to evict you - making it easier for you to complain about unsafe conditions and challenge excessive rent increases. And no more fixed terms mean it's easier to move when your circumstances change.

'Even within a high-growth "super-hub" like Cambridge, intentional, coordinated intervention is required to prevent local youth from being bypassed by the very growth surrounding them.' Great work from @ojgarling.bsky.social and Burcu Sevde Selvi www.bennettschool.cam.ac.uk/blog/beyond-...

Appreciate this is not the point, but I'd love to see a story about higher education that doesn't use the Bodleian or King's College Chapel as its stock image.

Why do employers report skills shortages while young people can't find strong career paths? In East Anglia, mismatch is rising: fewer under-19 apprenticeships, 1/3 of grads in non-grad jobs after 5 yrs, & only ~50% in well-matched roles. We need a system that builds fulfilling lives, not just jobs.

'The most effective organisations are not the ones with the sparkliest stars; they are the ones that make it possible for ordinary people to do their jobs well. That requires clear processes, good management, psychological safety, and a reasonable relationship between effort and reward.'

'Protecting what matters: A joint statement by the Historical Association, History UK, Royal Historical Society and the IHR' www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

"GDP is what we define it to be, and fiscal policy should never be set mechanically on the basis of the tales we say about economic growth."

surely not Joni?

So, some reflections prompted by the combination of the launch tonight of the 1926 Irish Census exhibition at the British Academy and Suella Braverman's comments earlier in the Telegraph on the teaching of a 'patriotic curriculum' under a prospective Reform government. 1/6 #Skystorians

Future gobbet. www.economist.com/united-state...

Join us next Wednesday for Productivity Puzzles: Ask the Expert… w/ @dianecoyle1859.bsky.social from @bennettschool.cam.ac.uk. On Wed 29 April (8:30–9:00am), Diane will be discussing why productivity is so hard to measure - & why it matters for policy. Register: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1985568796...

Just having a lovely time scrolling through the 1926 Census. Turns out my Grandad could speak Irish - something I never knew. nationalarchives.ie

This Modern British Studies conference looks fantastic: