Les gens au café qui hurlent leurs dernières performances en en demi-marathon/ marathon/ entrainement, c'est nouveau et pas indispensable.

Genius

For further context: almost everyone in the Faculty of Arts is at risk of redundancy. Music, Modern Languages & American & Canadian Studies courses to close completely. History will not close but staff numbers will be significantly reduced. This is what 'right-sizing' looks like, apparently.

Starmer starting to give Eric Ciotti vibes.

Students at risk, staff at risk, and local communities benefitting greatly from the presence of these institutions at risk too. What a failure of governance this is, enabled by a populist discourse of individualism and anti-intellectualism.

One good thing you can say about the UK is that we're spoilt for metaphors

In today's 'didn't quite expect this' research bingo, I spoke to Greatest Hits Radio about our project with Dorking Museum to make the minutes of the Dorking Refugee Committee fully available online, and the significance of this archive. www.hellorayo.co.uk/greatest-hit...

Suddenly, in leafy Notting Hill…

Il faut écouter Répliques ce matin, et non, je n’ai pas été kidnappée.

I cannot quite believe I am writing this but apparently Nigel Farage has been invited to speak at the big Jewish communal rally against antisemitism on Sunday (as well as Starmer, Badenoch, Davey but seemingly not Polanski). What next, invite Oswald Mosley to address the people of the East End?

As the far-right surges again, I am so proud to have the opportunity to work on this wonderful project about Surrey's proud history of asylum and solidarity. On a personal note, and at the risk of sounding really pompous, like French historian Ivan Jablonka (1/2) www.surrey.ac.uk/news/wartime...

Les Britanniques, qui paient déjà au prix fort les conséquences économiques du Brexit après 15 ans d’austérité, décident donc que la solution est de voter en masse pour Reform et Nigel Farage, le principal champion dudit Brexit aux élections locales.

Au secours

15 nouvelles femmes mettent en cause le comportement de Patrick Bruel en marge de concerts, tournages, rencontres professionnelles ou massages, entre 1991 et 2019. Une femme l’accuse de l’avoir violée alors qu’elle était mineure. Il conteste toute « contrainte » ou « violence ». @mediapart.fr

On Friday afternoon before the Bank Holiday, colleagues in the Humanities department were called to a meeting on Tuesday. They were informed that the University Portfolio Review had decided that English Language, English Literature, Philosophy, History & Creative Writing UG degrees would close

Sharing, without comment, British newspapers’ depictions of the only Jewish person currently leading a UK political party . Times. Mail. Telegraph. Sun.

Not quite sure how I ended up enrolled in that particular cult. 😱

Mayor Mamdani Is Not Going To The Met,Instead He's Spotlighting Those Who Sustain New Yorks Fashion! Mamdani Says "The REAL Glamour,Are Garment Workers, Laborers,Union Organizers And The Delivery Drivers" end quote!

Nice to see a bunch of millionnaires who could take a stand by not attending Bezos's Met Gala prance around in fancy dress. And the band played on... www.theguardian.com/fashion/gall...

Après la dissolution, Jordan Bardella a proposé à Cyril Hanouna la tête de l’Arcom en cas de victoire AH ! pas ministre de l'enseignement supérieur et de la recherche ? www.mediapart.fr/journal/fran...

I am of course more partial to histories of left-wing internationalism, but this looks great (and timely).

Où l’on voit que Johnny pratiquait l’IA avant l’IA.

It was lovely to chat with Danny and Jim of the Anarchist Book Club about left memory, tragedy and the paragraph on Jamie’s Italian I edited out of my book open.spotify.com/episode/1CIB...

Feeling quite amused by this one as the neighbourhood in question is likely to feel rather sketchy for the typical Guardian reader.

Belle pochette vintage…

En bonne compagnie au CIRA de Marseille (avec aussi des humains sympa et plein de bons livres).

The Worker’s May-Pole, Walter Crane, 1894.

A perk of working in an English department: reading Becky Wills's beautiful poetic novel 'Stun', about a family facing opioid addiction in the US - adapted from the Creative Writing PhD which she recently completed with us at Surrey.

Ami.es marseillais.es, ce samedi au CIRA, Deaglán Ó Donghaile parlera d'Oscar Wilde et de l'anarchisme... et je tenterai de traduire son intervention en français en direct. Evidemment gratuit et sans inscription; venez! www.cira-marseille.info/wp-content/u...

Pour gagner en popularité, François Hollande officialise sa relation avec la mère de la princesse Maria-Carolina de Bourbon https://www.legorafi.fr/2026/04/28/pour-gagner-en-popularite-francois-hollande-officialise-sa-relation-avec-la-mere-de-la-princesse-maria-carolina-de-bourbon/

'To this day Michel remains the only woman to have a Parisian metro station named after her [...] Two years ago, in the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics, a golden statue of Michel emerged from the Seine.' Clara Vlessing on the cultural legacies of anarchist women.

Happy to announce the publication of my article on international volunteers in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War @euroreviewhistory.bsky.social. Thanks to @sdanisimova.bsky.social & Robert Gerwarth for their support and to the reviewers for their advice. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Cinglant comme toujours; lecture recommandée pour bien cerner l'ampleur de l'entourloupe médiatique en cours (et rire un peu).

Absolute dereliction of duty by an MP: a major employer and driving force of local and national economy is not their ‘industrial focus’. Apparently the educating and training of doctors, nurses, teachers, lawyers, scientists, engineers, researchers…IS. NOT. THEIR. INUDSTRIAL. FOCUS.

Today I (finally) paid off my student debt. Took me 13 years to pay them off. Meanwhile, AI data centers are getting a $3+ billion handout to take our land, water, and eventually many jobs.

Why has Laura Kuenssberg repeatedly invited Palantir’s UK CEO, Louis Mosley, onto her programme? Not to ask him hard qs but as a political pundit? Well here’s a clue. Palantir UK’s head of comms was previously Theresa May’s chief spin doctor & then Sunak’s. 2/

My two pennies as a historian of political violence (and just common sense): violence begets violence.

Annonce d’intérêt général: le ‘g’ du quotidien britannique ´The Guardian’ se prononce /g/ et non /gw/. Comme s’il n’y avait pas de ‘u’ donc; ne pas confondre avec l’espagnol…

University management spent £80 million on new building that wasn't needed (presently for sale at £14 million) and now decide 600 staff should go to 'save' £50 million. This is the math currently shaping future of UK HE. Staff paying the price for mismanagement. Govt looking the other way

Juste une suggestion pour soutenir la presse et la pensée indépendantes.

Meet “ASU Atomic,” a subscription platform that claims to offer customized learning modules for fee-paying users. None of the ASU faculty whose course materials were harvested for the module I generated were aware that their image, lectures, lessons, or other teaching materials are being used.

Weird AI result of the day - telling us that 'The Torch', a quintessential late-Victorian British anarchist periodical, was less connected with Kropotkin than with 'early proto-punk' or '"riot grrl" energy'. (That's not from Libcom btw, rather from a not bad but clearly undigested web source).

La mort d’Aous Hamdi Al-Nassan, adolescent de 14 ans abattu devant son école à Al-Moughaïr, s’inscrit dans une spirale de violence sans précédent en Cisjordanie. Assassinats ciblés, destructions agricoles et expansion coloniale se multiplient dans l’indifférence politique et diplomatique.

The simple joy of having a child studying Macbeth for GCSEs and asking ‘When shall we meet again?’ and then be told ‘In thunder, lightning or in rain’.

Ce serait sympa si la tournée médiatique de M. Pigasse (qui par ailleurs me laisse sceptique) pouvait susciter une dynamique plus progressive (ou moins agressivement réactionnaire) parmi les grands patrons.

My article on 1970s feminists, spycops, and if feminist historians can use materials extracted by undercover police officers is out in History Workshop Journal doi.org/10.1093/hwj/...

My best example of this remains an interview for a big role in France (teaching 20thC British political and social history) where the interviewer asked ‘Did Thatcher like anarchists?’, as if this was an absurd question, and I was too stunned to even mention the Sex Pistols…

Excellent morning spent discussing two stimulating research projects on the history of anarchism with ECRs. Great to see the next generation come up with exciting ideas; the field is definitely a far cry from where it was when I started my PhD and would often get laughed or sneered at.

We’re currently recruiting for a Project Cataloguer on a 1 year fixed-term contract to catalogue parts of our archives relating to our transfer from Hamburg to London in 1933. 35 hours per week £30,842 per annum Apply by 12 May 2026 Apply now ➡️ warburg.sas.ac.uk/news-events/... #jobopportunity #UoL