I feel so conflicted about promoting an academic monograph - it's not going to stop a genocide or get a trans person healthcare - but I did spend a decade of my life on it and I think some of the things it has to say are a bit interesting, perhaps even to non-experts.

You can read a bit more about it on my website, and follow links to an academic book review and a couple podcasts that were kind enough to interview me about it: samuelrutherford.com/book/

So clever of US, UK and European universities, with ample encouragement from their governments, to have been closing down Area Studies, History, Languages and Politics & International Relations programmes, so clearly irrelevant to the world in the second half of the 21st century.

It's a big day for those fluent in the good grammar of civility looking to deploy decorum to mask agendas of cruelty

Five RTs. Six Likes. It would be more cost effective for Defra comms officials to dial random phone numbers and launch into a spiel about otters or whatever.

Lost amid the discussion of why the Government should get off X is its utter uselessness as an engagement tool and the fact departments are wasting vast sums making content for it. Take this:

Manuscript cultures in West Africa's frontier regions. www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/texts-from...

I’m looking for a reader - a 7 to 10 year old who is interested in Greek mythology or history (and that child’s grown up). Any takers? #ClassicsBluesky

This is genuinely horrifying. Fact-free far-right agitprop given accolades by credible media across the political spectrum.

What a shitshow 2025 was on every scale. From the smallest thoughts inside my mind and bits of my everyday life to global politics and the whole uni sector. Lucky go back to Ireland for Christmas today and do very little. The only good things of 2025 were my sidequest and strength training 💕

Santa told us that people that don’t add alt text are getting coal in their stocking this year.

1. This is terrible. 2. This is such a BS claim from a university: “We are committed to teaching students how to think, not what to think.” No! We do, in fact, commit to teaching you what to think. You sign up for a psych course, you have to learn psychology. You can ignore it later if you choose.

Rather than a blog, I ended up writing a short essay! It’s about who gets epistemic authority, who bears the harm of delay, and why trans people are asked to justify their existence at all. transiness.com?p=260

Not just a national asset but an international asset. Trashed, ignored, diminished.

Guidance about how you can support the hunger strikers is here: docs.google.com/document/d/e... And Scotland-specific messaging for MPs and MSPs here: docs.proton.me/doc?mode=ope...

Delighted to have come across this album of ‘Neglected works for piano’ by Bengt Forsberg. Late C19 & C20 European pieces by Vitezlava Kapralova, Amy Beach, Doreen Carwithen, Valborg Aulin, Ruth Sofia Almen, Grazyna Bacewicz, Germaine Tailleferre & Ruth Crawford Seeger What a rich collection

Archivists/librarians please share the coolest thing in your collections that will never be digitized.

also I work on the histories of marginalized disabled people, and on critical histories, and the least I owe to the historical subjects whose stories Im trying to reconstruct is a meticulous care and attempt to avoid mistakes as much as possible. AND the archives are not all digitized either.

Many of the women doctors I studied for my forthcoming book didn't even have archives, in the sense that they had no dedicated manuscript collections at any archive whatsoever. Piecing together their lives and political work took some very creative thinking!

Hi #skystorians, might anyone with access be willing to share a pdf of Nicole Breault's "Contests of Authority: Policing, Jurisdiction, and Violence in Occupied Boston, 1768–1770," New England Quarterly 98.3 (2025): 381-406? My campus subscribes but has an embargo on new articles. Thanks so much! 🗃️

Trans rights are human rights. Health care is a human right. Children deserve health care backed by science—whether that’s lifesaving vaccines or lifesaving gender affirming care. How is any of this controversial?

This. Faking a citation is as bad as faking your data, it should be a single strike and you're out thing. like faking data is. Oh, wait.

Delighted to be continuing as a research assistant on the London on the Eve of the Great Fire project. To support the creation of this Atlas and Gazetteer of 1665-6 London then consider a donation to the project. @historictownstrust.bsky.social 🗃️ shop.historictownstrust.uk/product/donate

OK look at this beautiful assistant at a Cowley Road shop!

Oh my god. It’s actually finally happened. Merry Christmas, everyone!

If you've read any books this year that you've really enjoyed, the best Christmas present for those authors is to review their work on Amazon, Goodreads etc. The algorithms live off reviews and a 1 star for 'bad postage' drags the whole thing down. Review the books you loved and balance it out.

At long last, some much needed good news today that swearing is good for us 🤬. For those of us (especially me) who are very sweary excellent to learn that swearing is a ‘calorie-neutral, drug free, low-cost’ way to boost performance. Thank **** for that then 🥳.

Lola's work on this seriously under-examined aspect of HIV/AIDS and sex work history in the UK is so important, and I'm so happy to see it in print!

Month’s mind for Alice Wong 💕

it's taken me a while to put this together. but I hope, if you've never heard of her, or even if you have, this tribute to Alice Wong buoys your heart and gives you a good sense of who this incredible person was. www.coyotemedia.org/remembering-...

What does your local university do for you? If your local university is the University of Suffolk or the University of Essex, here's (just) one answer to that question. 1/3

Yes it is curious. It’s because they lie. Someone on here mocked me a little when I (gently) explained that edtech’s entire use case in higherEd is to build a higher quality training dataset than the ones AI can scrape from the internet. And to labor bust. I don’t know how else to say it!

British trains RUIN travelling. I’d a lovely week at Gladstone Library. Set off Friday midday. Got home FURIOUS at 7pm, 3 hours late, 4 / 5 trains delayed. The last was NW Avanti - piss-smelling, crowded, 2 trains together so no food our end, disgusting toilets, I had cramps. The INDIGNITY of it!

I had the opportunity to read this already and I can tell you it is *excellent*. A very careful reading, fair and thorough.

‘This is an environment where trans academics are not able to produce anything like their best work in research and teaching’ (@krheyam.bsky.social)

Vital piece on how the OfS Sussex fine and the Supreme Court ruling have created an even more hostile environment for trans people in UK universities. As Chris Parkes says: if the expected EHRC guidance is adopted, "people are going to get hurt". 1/2

11% of Britons say they feel 'very negatively' about trans people which just highlights how much this is a top-down hate project with around 95% of the media hating trans people and a high percentage of MPs.

More evidence that calls for free speech often only mean free speech for bigots, transphobes and racists.

There isn't a single problem "solved" by edtech that couldn't be fixed with smaller classes led by well-paid teachers given real academic freedom

Striking BL staff, struggling to pay their rent, advised to consider not giving presents this year, and interim CEO, Jeremy Silver, has the nerve to tell them they ‘don’t live in a real world’. Only 17% of staff guaranteed the Living Wage (£14.80 ph) suggests acute familiarity with the ‘real world’.

For all your meme needs - the Victorian Journal of Gas Lighting (pretty sure they intended it to be one word)

HESA put the academic staff numbers in 23-24 in Essex at 1560, and given voluntary severence schemes it's likely to be lower now, so this is at least 2/3rds of all academic staff in Essex receiving risk of redundancy letters.

When will this crisis get any attention whatsoever!? A THOUSAND ACADEMIC STAFF AT ONE INSTITUTION SERVED REDUNDANCY RISK NOTICES! And that's not counting what's surely being visited on professional services staff too. This is an economic catastrophe, to say nothing of the intellectual catastrophe!

The ad for the second postdoctoral position on our @leverhulme.ac.uk Britain’s Early Medieval Letters project is now live. We’re looking for an Old English specialist (who also works with Latin). 32-month FT post. Deadline for apps is 16 Jan 🙂 jobs.kent.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

Pictures to send to the former friend or ex of your choice! #GladstoneLibrary

A new report by @runnymedetrust.bsky.social has found that 13% of British citizens — including me — are at risk of having their citizenship stripped from them by the UK government. It rises to 60% of British citizens of colour. This is absolutely shocking. www.runnymedetrust.org/publications...

Also, next to the problematic part of storing public and private data from handwritten sources with a US-based company without transparency about what they are gonna do with the data we are providing by asking for "transcribing" help, there are relevant issues for the craft of history itself:

Just discovered an insane new form of co-intelligence where you briefly share the mind of a great thinker in history and then a portion of their mind travels in yours for the rest of your life. Calling it a "book."

Period on holiday is accidentally bleeding in lots of new places. Getting to closely examine a lot of chairs/ sofas/ bedding I’ve not seen before. Always exciting to have these jump scares added to my travels!