Looking forward to the last History Department book club @unibirmingham.bsky.social of 2025! We'll be discussing @sethrockman.bsky.social 's Plantation Goods ahead of his visit in January. This book was a brilliant tour de force!

As someone who has developed asthma in middle age (after moving to a dense and intensely car city), the evidence is clear: cars are bad for your health. Reducing the amount of cars on your city's road, improves everyone's health. Why would someone oppose this?

Useful reminder: 1) Migrant scientists already contribute to the NHS with their taxes like everyone. Abolish NHS supercharge! 2) why are only rich scientists welcome in the UK? What has wealth to do with science? Colonial mentality is strong & alive www.bbc.com/news/article...

'tis the book-flogging season, so would be remiss of me not to highlight 40 percent off my books with @umasspress.bsky.social (code HOLIDAY) and @illinoispress.bsky.social (code HOLIDAY40) - plenty of other great books also available!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... It’s good to see the rise and dangers of so many oversized SUV’s being discussed.

Job – Tenure Track – Environmental History – BOKU University - Vienna Apply by January 6th. niche-canada.org/2025/12/02/j... #envhist

As I argued at the time, HEC should not have called a formal ballot when it did. Our @ucucommons.org statement on this predictable (and predicted) failure is out now. It is well past time for UCU’s elected reps to get serious about confronting the crises in UKHE: ucucommons.org/industrial-b...

Graduate of the American Studies programme that the University of Nottingham wishes to close wins 2025 Wolfson History Prize for Survivors: The Lost Stories of the Last Captives of the Atlantic Slave Trade. History, it's a long game. Divest in haste, repent for the longue durée.

We’re looking for recent PhDs from outside the UK / not UK citizens who are interested in working with @icshc.bsky.social for a #sporthistory postdoc application through the British Academy International Fellowship #skystorians 🗃️ networks.h-net.org/group/discus...

Unfortunately the HE 2025 ballot failed at 39% turnout. I have written about why and about what desperately needs to change in UCU's national structures off the back of this result. Some HEC members need to chi up and understand their role in all this, and how disconnected they are from members.

“Scholarly effort is in decline everywhere as never before. Indeed, cleverness is shunned at home and abroad. What does reading offer to pupils except tears?” this guy has his finger on the pulse amirite www.history-uk.ac.uk/history-in-p... 🗃️

Black Friday reminder: You can support independent bookstores and get great deals without lining the pockets of billionaires 😌

The MHR is looking for a new Editor-in-Chief. Would you like to gain valuable experience in #publishing by managing an established open-access journal? Would you like to help more postgrad students and early career researchers take their first steps into publishing? Interested? Drop us an email ⬇️

Over to you @richardparkerwm.bsky.social

This is the 2nd time a major government report from Deloitte has been found to contain errors likely generated by AI. First in Australia and now, as The Independent has confirmed, in a major healthcare policy paper for the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador #nlpoli #AI #deloitte

Imagine a government who believed education mattered more than vanity tanks.

These are HEPI estimates of the 20 institutions affected: I think this illustrates the impact if the tariff is absorbed in full by institutions. What share of the 6% tariff different universities may try to pass on to fees - or the impact might be on demand if they did - is not publicly known.

To be clear, this is a tariff on our own exports. Yes, it will raise money - tariffs do. The question is whether it will also cut exports from one of our core economic strengths- HE.

Will this improve Selly Oak and Birmingham? Or will it further degrade your constituency and city's economy? @alcarns.bsky.social

Moved to the UK also 15 years ago, also attracted by the awesomeness of its university sector. The speed with which something built over generations has been trashed by one MBA-brained cohort is absolutely mindboggling.

The problem is too many cars. www.cbc.ca/news/climate...

Had a very good time talking about stomach aches, pain, and conservatism at #nacbs in Montreal while also representing @mbsbirmingham.bsky.social

The fact that in the UK, our government is content that roads are for car owners and sidewalks are also for car owners is actually a pretty good window into the politics of this country as a whole.

Indeed, that's initially what Birmingham cyclists thought they were for as well!

Happy to have written about plastic for @thepolycrisis.bsky.social. Thanks to @70sbachchan.bsky.social for sourcing the excellent graphics. And thanks to @rebecca-altman.bsky.social and @anjakrieger.bsky.social for being my go-to's on all-things plastic. www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/pla...

125th Anniversary Chair University of Birmingham #skystorians 🗃️www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPK018/1...

125th Anniversary Fellow University of Birmingham #skystorians 🗃️www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPK020/1...

With the world heating up [and more pedestrians being killed], why are more SUVs being sold? “It’s the industry that has driven the demand through huge marketing & advertising campaigns in recent years. SUVs offered the industry a simple way of charging more for a vehicle that does the same thing.”

If your city isn't taking substantive steps to bring this about where you live, it's because planners and politicians believe it's acceptable for pedestrians and cyclists to die so that car owners can enjoy convenience.

I am heartbroken and horrified that the department where I received my PhD is under threat of closure. This is a dynamic and welcoming community that is at the forefront of American Studies in the UK. I encourage everyone to sign the below petition and rally behind our colleagues in Nottingham.

Interested in the MA in Gender & Sexuality? Come talk to me this Saturday at our postgrad open day. (Or just email me, that's cool too.) www.birmingham.ac.uk/study/postgr...

The BBC has also always been aligned with the establishment in the UK, and as that establishment becomes ever more illiberal its journalists find themselves lurching rightward in search of an ever more conservative definition of ‘balance’

A few weeks ago, I met up with @dannycarrier.bsky.social from the Camden New Journal to talk about histories of London, the 1920s & 1930s, and my new book Songs of Seven Dials. You can read more about the book and our conversation at edition.pagesuite.com/html5/reader...

My first lot of marking has arrived but so has the cover of the book!

We've joined with 15 local and national organisations, setting out 10 practical steps to address the city's road safety emergency and prevent needless deaths on our city's roads. Will you join us by co-signing the asks in 2 minutes?: betterstreetsforbirmingham....

Really looking forward to reading this and assigning it in my History of Tech class.

One analytical model shows that, as of November 5th, the dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. has already caused the deaths of 600,000 people, two-thirds of them children. https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/jUzNSc

A really great opportunity to receive funding to study for a PhD at one of the UK's leading Arts & Humanities colleges @unibirmingham.bsky.social! Applications due 27 February 2026. www.birmingham.ac.uk/study/schola...

Compulsory team teaching on every module is perhaps the biggest ever threat to the quality of teaching in UK universities. It causes chaos on the ground for timetabling, ruins course coherence and turns lecturers into permanent supply teachers. It is pedagogically incoherent… 1/

ATTN: SHAFR grad students and early career scholars Applications for the Ernest May Fellowship in History and Policy at the @belfercenter.bsky.social are due 12/1. tinyurl.com/mvj3hckx

Pax Economica is now out in paperback! Now with a shiny new back cover. Big thanks to @princetonupress.bsky.social for making this happen.

Based on current fatality rates, 106 people will be killed in crashes on Birmingham’s roads during the 2026 to 2030 council term. We are partnering as an unprecedented coalition of 16 national and local organisations to ask the politicians of tomorrow: Will you make Birmingham’s roads safer?

Event later today - chairing Martha Patterson's BMRC talk about her work on influential Black journalist Era Bell Thompson. Join us! (bit late for the UK crowd though, sorry). bit.ly/47aB0xO

A really great opportunity to receive funding to study for a PhD at one of the UK's leading Arts & Humanities colleges @unibirmingham.bsky.social! Applications due 27 February 2026. www.birmingham.ac.uk/study/schola...

This will be a huge benefit to the suburbs of Bournville, Weoley, and Northfield, creating a safe alternative for many of the @unibirmingham.bsky.social (south Brum's largest employer) staff who live along this corridor.

If anyone in Glasgow wants to hear me talk about the American bicycle and U.S. global power at the end of the 19th century, then stop by the Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies @uofglasgow.bsky.social from 4:30pm-6:00pm on November 12th!

Nathan Cardon, Matthew Brown & Martin Hurcombe @fhmjh.bsky.social trace the flow of people/products/ideas concerning the bicycle's sports culture in a transatlantic triangle in the Journal of Sport History muse.jhu.edu/pub/34/artic...

Cannot be said often enough that the political figure who inaugurated our age of lawlessness, arbitrary power and authoritarianism was not Donald Trump but Dick Cheney