One of the things I love about ambient music is that anyone can do it. You don't need a deep knowledge of music theory, or years of experience, or loads of expensive equipment. All you need is to be able to slow down and enjoy music as you make it

I always feel more relaxed after even a few minutes making music. Somehow it clears out all the things that have been bumping around in the back of your mind, and leaves you feeling refreshed. At least, that's what I find

Tune into episode 1 of Edges of Extinction, a new eight-episode podcast by @extinctionleeds.bsky.social, where scholars from different disciplines talk to each other about different kinds of extinction. @sicilyfiennes.bsky.social @katatrepsis.bsky.social @jdroberts.bsky.social

We made a podcast! Please check it out for discussions of every aspect of extinction from languages, to insects, to religion!

Next episode is up of our podcast ‘Edges of Extinction’! Aptly titled ‘Killer Language’… @katatrepsis.bsky.social and @sicilyfiennes.bsky.social speak to Diane Nelson about language extinction, what it means for a language to die, and how this happens. bit.ly/4roa1XL

Alderley Edge. Moss and lichen glow green against red rocks and brown bark; goldcrests dart between bare branches, while ravens and buzzards wheel high above. Fallen leaves languish underfoot: a carpet of copper, bright as the burnished metal once raised and wrought from the scarlet sandstone below

I hate those 'reason for leaving job' bits on application forms. Telling them that I am not currently employed as a Bat Surveyor because bats hibernate in the winter feels so sarcastic, but it's the truth and also I don't think HR people know anything about bats?

Still time to sign up for our first seminar of the year tomorrow!

Myself and @jdroberts.bsky.social made a podcast!!!! Introducing a short series ‘Edges of Extinction’. Recorded at the Helix Suite at the University of Leeds!

We are thrilled to present our new podcast, 'Edges of Extinction'! In our first episode Diane Nelson and @sicilyfiennes.bsky.social talk to @katatrepsis.bsky.social about insect extinctions, what these mean for the world, and how they can be averted extinctionstudiesleeds.podbean.com/e/edges-of-e...

Looking forward to hearing about snakes, language and Estonian nationalism in 'The Man Who Spoke Snakish' next week! It's an online event, come and join us! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/snake-word...

Lots of people have intestinal parasitic worm infections. But if you're someone reasonably well-off living in a rich country and following online health trends, you are almost certainly not one of them www.theguardian.com/wellness/202...

We also have a new seminar series starting next week. The first speaker will be Alfie Howard (@alfiehoward66.bsky.social) on "Snake Words in Estonia: Nature and Nationalism in Andrus Kivirähk's 'The Man Who Spoke Snakish'". 27/01/26, 1400 GMT, signup here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/snake-word... 4/4

Firstly, we have a really exciting workshop comming up in April in York, with a deadline for the #CfP on the 31/01! The theme is 'Yuck: Historical Approaches to Unwanted Non-Human Life', considering unwanted life as historically produced, its sources, and the future of more-than-human-histories 2/4

Looking forward to this online seminar next week, please join us! Snake Words in Estonia: Nature and Nationalism in Andrus Kivirähk's 'The Man Who Spoke Snakish' www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/snake-word...

Martin Mere. The reedbeds are quiet, golden reeds rustling in the wind but locked still in winter's embrace. The meres are noisy with waterfowl, wigeon whistling and teal piping in counterpoint to the brash voices of the geese and swans

Jamming with the Korg Monotron Duo at Woodhouse Hill, a bronze- or iron-age hillfort in Cheshire. A spot which offers the two things I find most inspiring: nature, and the forgotten traces of the past...

What worries me is that there are now so few ways for small musicians to earn a little money to support themselves while they hone their craft. No dole, no meaningful royalties, maybe a tenner off Bandcamp every now and again. And we wonder why everything is dominated by older artists!

Taking a moment at the end of the day to get lost in the soundscape

CFP 📢 Join us for a panel on conservation histories for the European Congress of Conservation Biology in Leiden @eccb26leiden.bsky.social If you're interested, email @georgeholmes.bsky.social or me with an abstract by Feb 9. #envhist #histsci #animalhist #conservationhumanities

Felt like a day for a gentle, major-key wandering. I tend to think of this style as 'ambient pastoral', because it sounds to me like a sunny afternoon in a small wood surrounded by green hills...

Formby: stormblown waves crash onto the beach while gulls wheel on the wind. It is quieter behind the sheltering dunes, but January still bites cold, sharp wind cutting through your coat. Over the whale-road, the winter sun shines bright in a cloud-collage sky

Kicking off the new year with a new AEMC album! This was a very fun group project where each of us sent in two improvisations and were randomly assigned two others in turn to make a track out of - give it a listen! aemc2.bandcamp.com/album/a-perf...

It's quite striking how many of the most aggressive, lawless states in today's world are oligarchic petrostates. If we want to advance the cause of peace, we should be dismantling the fossil fuel industry. Which is exactly what we already needed to be doing anyway

Amazed and honoured to see Clarinets of the Moon in this list of best Ukrainian albums of 2025! "A unique work of two cultures, Ukrainian and British, it absorbs the essential and sublime from both artists and manages to showcase their harmonious coexistence" www.neformat.com.ua/articles/nay...

Alderley Edge is one of those places where you can feel the edges of the past in the old mines, and hear the shimmer of life in the rustle of the trees and the calls of the birds. That sense of timelessness, or perhaps timefulness, is something I always want to capture in my music

My 2025 roundup: there was a lot of 2025

"The mission was practically impossible: to immerse high-brow experimentalists in the most commercial, most hackneyed of all musical genres!" A lovely reflection on our Christmas album from one of its architects substack.com/inbox/post/1...

The trees are bare, save for gentle holly and stubborn ivy, but the robins, thrushes and King Wren are singing, giving voice to the new spring they can feel stirring beneath the leaf litter. As the light fades and the fog gathers, you can feel a tingle in the air as the year comes to a close

Proud to have my photo essay out in the publication Current Conservation. I got really into photography during my PhD including using a film camera. I hope it conveys some of the visual experience of being in a bird market and the sense of place. Enjoy 🐦 www.currentconservation.org/visual-stori...

The question I would love to ask LLM-enthusiast higher-up types is this: once you've fired half your staff and made your organisation dependent on AI, what's there to stop the tech companies jacking up your subscription price to more than you used to spend on wages?

Dmitry reminded me yesterday that our Christmas album is five years old. Struggling to get my head around that one! makersofaemc.bandcamp.com/album/from-t...

Sorting through the year's photos, and this is definitely one of my favourites - a woodland grasshopper, Omocestes rufipes

Question for #academicsky - when a job ad says they're after 'a strong commitment to your own continuous professional development', what does that actually mean in practice? What are they wanting you to tell them about?

One of my PhD chapters: 'Designing user-centered technologies to address the illegal wildlife trade' is OUT NOW in the @society4conbio.bsky.social journal Conservation Science and Practice! Please check out the graphical abstract and give it a read: conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Me: I have so many great quotes from the archives that prove exactly my point! I'm gonna put them all in the paper! Reviewer: this paper is far too descriptive Me: but...but...my quotes :(

We're already looking foward to our next speaker, Richard Warren at the University of Bern, who will be speaking about 'Volcanos and Climatic Instability in Early Nineteenth-Century India' on the 2nd at 1500 GMT. Sign up to join us online here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/volcanoes-...

Life is already very complicated, so why make complicated music?

PhD: you need to do something completely new and different and novel which no-one's done before! Postdoc job ads: we're looking for someone with experience of these standard and established methods within this longstanding subfield, preferably also in this previously-studied geographic area

There are three guards. One always lies, one always tells the truth, and one generates a mathematically probable answer to your question which is often just publically-available information but is sometimes complete bullshit

I have a new single out! This track was inspired by ancient hillforts and medieval mottes. Dramatic earthworks now eroded, overgrown and forgotten, home only to birds and beasts. Settle down, close your eyes, and climb the ramparts of ancient earth… jdrobertsmusic.bandcamp.com/track/rampar...

Castle Naze, an Iron Age hillfort. Cliffs on two sides and a very impressive rampart on the third. Climbing up, my thought was you'd have to be mad to attack it, but possibly not as mad as you'd have to be to live there

Historians - could anyone recommend me a good introduction to Iron Age & pre-Roman Britain, ideally with a decent amount on Northern England? I've been over a few hill forts lately, and I'm curious to learn more about what is known about the people who built them

The path over Whaley Moor

Live life one note at a time, that's what I say

I'm always a bit surprised this isn't happening faster - all a journal really needs is a website (pretty cheap nowadays), a couple of editors (free), reviewers (free), and a pipeline into the scholarly search engines. What work are the big publishers actually doing for all the money they charge?

Come along next Tuesday to hear all about Californian health myths and their impact on perceptions of TB and the 1918-19 Flu. I'm excited to share my findings and delve into all the details that didn't fit into my recently submitted PhD thesis, reincarnating zephrys and mammoth oranges included!

There's something about autumn which always makes me want to go for deep, warm sounds

Today, @danielmacfarlane.bsky.social on "Finding Environmental History in 'The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.'" The Edmund Fitzgerald sank on November 10, 1975 in Lake Superior. niche-canada.org/2025/11/07/f... #envhist #musichistory #greatlakes #envhum

Looking forward to this online @northernenvhistory.bsky.social talk next week! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/california...