Hard no to this: French publisher Harlequin has told translators that their work will now be done by AI. They can ‘revise’ AI translations at much lower rate. It’s a subsidiary of Harper Collins so treat this as a test for rollout elsewhere

👏👏👏

Oxford University Press @academic.oup.com is pleased to announce that the First Book Prize will open for submissions in Jan 2026. The prize offers up to 10 early-career researchers the opportunity to publish their first academic book fully open access on Oxford Academic, with the full OA fee waived.

Delighted to see this article in publication!

"The publisher or distributor cannot force an account to carry the book...The truth of the matter is that **most** books don’t get shelf placement." This is SUCH a great primer on book distribution for authors.

‘Low-Carbon Histories for Zero-Carbon Futures’ is out today @jofhistgeog.bsky.social - a collective case for thinking historically about energy. doi.org/10.1016/j.jh...

🎉🎉🎉 Congratulations to the 2025 Lambda Literary Award Winner for LGBTQ+ Studies: When Monsters Speak: A Susan Stryker Reader by Susan Stryker, edited by McKenzie Wark! @susanstryker.bsky.social @mckenziewark.bsky.social @dukepress.bsky.social 🎉🎉🎉 #Lammys2025 #LammyAwards

"Oh, maybe I'll go to this UKHE 'festival' as that seems the only way the minister will say anything about the sector she's in charge of (even if it's in conversation with the regulator that has been proven to be unfit for purpose and not with staff)" Fucking hell.

Please consider submitting an abstract to the wonderful Gender Justice project, led by Madelyn Detloff! We're open to proposals for interdisciplinary research articles on the concept of gender justice, however you choose to define it, authored by scholars in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

So much fun working with the @kingsartshums.bsky.social marketing team and the Globe on this ‘Top 5 Shakespearean Film Adaptations’ (and got to live out my inner TikTok star!) If you’re on Instagram - give the original a like too! — www.instagram.com/reel/DL4nTOC... #Shakespeare #skystorians

Academic lead for the Hub, Venus Bivar, was recently interviewed about what the Humanities can teach us about climate change: www.ox.ac.uk/climate-and-...

Please reach out to Gabriella if you're interested in writing a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary research article on food and drink for Oxford Intersections @oxfordacademic.bsky.social The cultural history of food and drink is a particular passion of mine so it's a joy to be publishing in that area.

Here’s to other forms of bilingualism instead

Our PGR Network are hosting a conference 'Disability within Environments: disability studies perspectives' on 17th September 2025. The call for papers is live with a deadline of 12th June. Please share with your networks

Academia in 2025: For weeks I’ve been working through botched copy-edits of my monograph, outsourced by the publisher to a company I’d never heard of, until it finally dawned on me the terrible job might be AI. A quick search confirmed the company recently launched new AI software, which now means..

Good morning to everyone, but especially to all the turtles, for today is their special day! To celebrate World Turtle Day, here are two turtle-y amazing illustrations from 'Our Reptiles and Batrachians' by M.C. Cooke, published in 1893. 📷 Reserve 579.9 COO #WorldTurtleDay #TurtleDay #RareBooks

Are you an Early Career Researcher looking to publish your first academic book? Join our digital workshop for personalised feedback on your book proposal from experienced OUP Editors and ECR peers. 📖 Spaces are limited. Share this opportunity with a friend! oxford.ly/ECR-Proposal...

What a miserable day to be trans in the UK. Not a single trans person was allowed to make a representation to the Supreme Court. Not one. And we are the group who will pay the price.

Last month saw the launch of a big project I've been working on for almost 2 years, 'Oxford Intersections: Racism by Context' academic.oup.com/oxford-inter... Led by Prof. Meena Dhanda, this interdisciplinary scholarly resource on racism will build up over the next 3 years to 300 research articles.

Best thing about Burke's drumming on "Dreaming" -- that was take 1. The warm-up. He was just trying mad stuff to see what worked before going for a proper one, but Mike Chapman just said "that's it, we've got the track now"

Without a doubt the best drummer I’ve ever seen perform live. What a privilege that was! RIP Clem Burke.

Please share with your students! The School of Modern Languages and Cultures @languagesdurham.bsky.social and the Centre for Foreign Language Study at @durham-university.bsky.social are delighted to launch their third creative writing contest in French on the theme of “La justice”.

Today UK authors are protesting against Meta for stealing our work to train their AI model. Authors earn an average of £7000 per year, we are not rich, and yet a trillion dollar company decided it didn’t want to license our work fairly as it was “too expensive” Theft is not a valid alternative.

This is what the redundancy wave in British Higher Education currently looks like on the map: ‘British University Redundancy Map’ maps.app.goo.gl/yUteDm2MCXUi...

'Vice-chancellor's rent-free house' says everything here.

I received a heartbreaking email today: A paper in a special issue I’m editing is being retracted because one of its authors is afraid of losing their job and their legal status in the U.S. if they publish a scientific study on evolution. Yes, on evolution, nature's engine of diversity.

Excited to run the annual @cemskcl.bsky.social colloquium on early modern war narratives in June! Check out the CFP below, please share widely, and submit an abstract!

We are now recruiting to three Career Development Fellowships (in French, History, and Italian) and PhD studentships made possible by the generous support of Joanna and Graham Barker. Please spread the news. Interested candidates can read more here www.durham.ac.uk/IMEMS/InventingFutures

📚✨Two more weeks to submit a proposal for the OUP First Book Prize! Submissions close on March 3rd. Details in the link below. Entries are made by completing a short application form and submitting a proposal and two sample chapters from the manuscript.✨📚

If we live long enough, most if not all of us will become disabled. By age, pandemics, illness, climate catastrophes, organized abandonment, interpersonal or state violence, and working ourselves to injury/death. Disability injustice & defunding social support & healthcare are bad for you too.

Humanities and sciences are all in the same boat. We need to act like it or we all drown.

📚✨OUP's Early Career Researcher hub has been updated! ✨📚 Check out the revamped page here: academic.oup.com/pages/publis... We now have three more videos: 'Publishing your first book' www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEfw...

I woke up to a shout out for my book for #BlackHistoryMonth from @herberthistory.bsky.social!! Thanks for the love! I’ll never get tired of looking at this cover (which I had nothing to do with but pretend I do)!

Some motivating & informative Monday morning listening from the Early Career Researcher Podcast. Please give them a follow for discussion of challenges facing ECRs, including how to write a monograph, how to respond to peer reviews, & the latest episode below on challenges in the publishing industry

It’s coming! 🌊 💦 🐋🚰 #transecologies #transgenderstudies

Eeee! Available for pre-order! Tell your library pals! Our volume, Critical Neurodiversity Studies: Divergent Textualities in Literature and Culture' asks 'what would a neurodivergent critical framework look like in literary studies'? @annastenning.bsky.social www.bloomsbury.com/uk/critical-...

All early modern historians should use microfilm readers regularly, just to understand the very early modern sensation that there is a higher power and it is actively trying to punish you.

We are four scholars whose work in some form deals with corporeality and being in the premodern period (early #medieval to #earlymodern). We are unhinged about our work. Check us out and feel free to email us details about your events and CFPs for our events page. #AcademicSky bodiesandbeing.com

The OUP First Book Prize is now open for submissions! Details in the link below. Entries are made by completing a short application form and submitting a proposal and two sample chapters from the manuscript. Book proposals should be prepared according to OUP’s guidelines.

Friends! Please join us for the third (!) Early Modern Trans Studies conference, held at Boston University from March 23-25.

Remember those pictures of “Saudi conference on women’s rights” full of only men? Did you react with amused horror? What about “LGBT” sponsored “debates” on trans people where the only panelists are cis transphobes? Same shit.

Francosphères 13.2 includes work by @besskearney.bsky.social, @dcarliniversini.bsky.social & @drjoeford.bsky.social on ambivalence, agency & selfhood in contemporary francophone narratives. Read it #OpenAccess: bit.ly/FRANC13-2#OpenAccess:@openlibhums.bsky.social @sfps.bsky.social‬ @ilcs.bsky.social

Congratulations to Alex Barber who's been awarded AHRC @ukri.org funding to embed Gypsy Roma Traveller History Month in the public history calendar, working with Becky Taylor at UEA! www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...

This morning we learned of the sudden passing of Professor Anita Ghai: the brilliant, groundbreaking and critically acclaimed disability studies scholar. Anita was a dear friend of Disability Matters www.sheffield.ac.uk/ihuman/news/...

Author copies of HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY #HAMH from @ucpress.bsky.social! I’m in awe of Art Director Lia Tjandra’s work. 💙📚 🧪🗃 #earlymodern #histsci #histmed #18thcentury 🧵 1/6

The last thing I want to go on about is being trans. I just want to serve God (& be me!), but … Things are just awful for trans people right now. And they will get worse. We are such a minority. Though we will keep going, non-trans friends: please find ways to stand up with us and for us.

Saddened to learn of the passing of Professor Anita Ghai, a true powerhouse of disability scholarship and activism, and a champion of research into disability in the Global South. Immensely lucky to have briefly met her in July to speak about memoir and her new research into disability and Buddhism.

Are there any recommendations of historians or literary scholars working on waste & overconsumption? I'm aware of Anna Reynolds on wastepaper & Hanna Rose Shell on shoddy. Thinking along the lines of industrial history, textile history, fashion, & food. Also more abstract: wasted time/energy/life.

What a lovely OA collection introduced by my friends & former colleagues Gillian Pink & Tom Wynn (@tomofwynnland.bsky.social). My 1st publishing job was for @voltaire.ox.ac.uk in 2017 so I will always be grateful to them for giving me a chance to prove myself in what can be a very punishing industry

As part of #DisabilityHistoryMonth, read the 2024 free issue of the Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies which publishes textual analyses informed by disability theory and experiences of disability. Read it here: bit.ly/JLCDS-FTR24 @drerinpritchard.bsky.social @franzerva.bsky.social