Credit where credit's due. If the Catholic Church can understand and articulate these basic things, then why can't some other organisations (including governments) we could mention?

I'm very pleased to announce that the call for proposed Special Issues of the Historical Journal is now live, with a deadline of 12th December. Please do spread widely among your networks — @saracaputo.bsky.social and I look forward to reading your submissions! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Hello #academicsky! I'm sharing a cfp for an edited collection on "Naming & Classifying," pulled together by me, Kristin Girten, & @aaronrhanlon.com . We'd love to see your work! Please also circulate to anyone you think might be interested. Deadline 10/31. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.” Ursula K. Le Guin

Victorianists - a little bit of silly joy in all the gloom: take a moment today to vote for this gorgeous Lego set idea of the Great Exhibition so we can all get it for Christmas! beta.ideas.lego.com/product-idea...

I don't suppose there is a Guinness world record for longest continuous broadcast of lies but if you're going to have to broadcast this man then framing it as a record-breaking performance of lies seems like a good way to do it.

Pretty self-evident, really, but will Starmer do it?

The more I hear about ICE the more I'm reminded of the descriptions of the people who became low-level authority figures under the Nazis in Hans Fallada's Alone in Berlin.

Historians must 'tell...an uncomfortable story & explain why the discomfort is part of the truth we need to live well and live properly. A well-organised society is one in which we know the truth about ourselves collectively, not one in which we tell pleasant lies about ourselves.'Tony Judt

Retreating from the awfulness of current affairs to a nice book... in this case Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year since that's what I'm teaching in a few weeks. Actually strangely comforting. David Roberts describes it as celebrating "the endurance to watch the world fall apart" which...seems apt.

I will use this opportunity on #digitalfriday to promote the new ad-free website featuring my list of radical online collections and archives. Nearly 1000 open access collections of radical historical documents from around the world are now listed! hatfulofhistory.com/radical-onli...

Bit more coverage of our report today on the loss of provision of arts, humanities and social science courses www.researchprofessional.com/0/rr/news/uk...

We've got a chunky @britishacademy.bsky.social report out looking at the emergence of 'cold spots' where you can't study arts, humanities or social science subjects close to home. We call for an urgent review of HE funding & monitoring of at risk subjects www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/news/univers...

The last REF found that 98% of UK research was either "internationally recognised", "internationally excellent", or "world-leading". If you think low-quality research is the noteworthy challenge in UK higher ed right now, you are wilfully looking in the wrong direction

We want robust, enormous research that is SUCH good research, you already know how important and right and insightful it is before you even start it. We want research so predeterminedly world-changing that there is hardly any point actually doing the research at all.

Haven't got my hands on a copy yet but this looks great - The Edinburgh History of the Transnational British Press in Non-Anglophone Countries, 1800–1914, edited by Diana Cooper-Richet, Isabelle Richet, Jennifer Hayward, Michelle Prain-Brice edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-edi...

An interesting summary here of recent research on Chartism.

Just discovered Proquest's Ebook Central has an AI assistant that will tell you "key takeaways" of the chapter you're reading. Presumably to save you from reading it. Anyway, I clicked it for the chapter I just read and it's such a vacuous vomit of words. Takes your time but tells you nothing.

From Princeton Professor of Politics and International Affairs, @jshapiro.bsky.social.

"The academic career is framed as a privileged but high-risk venture that ppl knowingly choose to embark on so they must endure the consequences or find a way to cope, thus obscuring deliberate adoption of biz models that [deprioritize] investment in staff + render large sections of the workforce 🗑️"

This is a lovely article on photo booths. Is the appeal of observable privacy in a public place timeless or a phenomenon of modernity? The coupling of analogue physicality and spatial dynamics is also fascinating. And who doesn't have a box with a few old photo booth strips from some trip or other?

Pretty sure the Four True Historical Eras are: Taylor Swift's 1989 era, Picasso's Blue period, Napoleon's melancholic second exile, and John Dee's itinerant spiritual quest across Europe. Ask anyone.

Heading out to Sweden tomorrow for the big global history conference, where 'Nordic Colonialism' will be one of the main themes. It's a pretty big field these days! But sometimes still a bit inward-looking in its ambitions. Here's my case for broader global relevance, in @jich.bsky.social in 2023:

New article today from @victoriancommons.bsky.social. Dr Kathryn Rix explores the creation of a dedicated reporters' gallery in the House of Commons after the fire of 1834, showing the growing importance of the press in reporting proceedings in the Commons in the 19th century: buff.ly/Y1uTIXt

Some (no doubt annoyingly) glass-half-full reflections on REF2029 pause, for academic and PS staff involved in HEI submission(s). If, like me, you're having to deal with the hiatus in the known unknowns, what's a viable approach to take? Some very preliminary thoughts. 1/7

Very much hope the show survives a change in presenter. Truly one of the highlights of British media. He isn't perfect but I'll forever be grateful to Melvyn Bragg for making it work for so long. www.bbc.com/mediacentre/...

One of the multiple reasons why academic journals should ditch big business. I really don't see what academics gain from it in the digital age. There are some great examples out there showing it can be done but would be amazing to see some of of the older prestige titles adopt a more diy OA model.

“Wikipedia’s first and best line of defense is to explain how Wikipedia works.” Boring neutrality, process process process, and the best of the human web www.theverge.com/cs/features/...

Just a reminder to check for your name in this list of books that OpenAI trained from. If your name is there, they probably owe you several thousand dollars. OpenAI cried that if everyone eligible author files, the company will go bankrupt, so I'm alerting every author I have ever spoken to.

My wife just informed me that no matter what I do I cannot "bury the lead" since the correct term is "bury the lede" and I am, to use the parlance of the youth, shook, bro.

We are hiring 4 lecturers in our dept! 🟦 Lecturer (Teaching) Publishing, Knowledge Production, Platforms and Society 🟦 Associate Lecturer (Teaching) Digital Humanities Methods 🟦 Lecturer Humanities Data Science 🟦 Lecturer/Associate Professor in Publishing Practice www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

Absolutely delighted that Dan Briggs, son of the BBC's first official historian Asa Briggs, has written to The Observer supporting the need for on-request vetting to re-instated at the BBC Written Archives Centre (p.29; not I think online). Letter's wording is in the .alt element. #waccampaign

Me: this is great, glad to see authors ripped off by AI getting their due. Me after using the search tool: I am one of these ripped off authors. Academics, it only takes a minute. Seven of my papers are in this and I had no idea.

Reform UK, which has a grand total of four MPs, was just given an uninterrupted platform for an hour and a half on the BBC and Sky News channels, in order to talk about its plans for mass deportations When was the last time the Greens (with four MPs) or the Lib Dems (with 72) were given the same?

Our conference is approaching soon! There is still time to book to explore & celebrate the challenges of uncovering the presence of women within archives, libraries, museums & personal collections. Info here: womenshistorynetwork.org/the-womens-h... #WomensHistory #GenderHist #Archives #Museums

I’ve documented protests for decades. The asylum hotel protests I’ve photographed have all been very small. When I first turned up at the Newcastle protest, and asked the police where the protesters were, they pointed to one man and said he’s over there.

Are you, might you become, or do you know a transnational scholar from the Global South? Or do you work with one or more? If so, this insightful, creatively written book will be of interest. It's part of the series I co-edit with @patthomson.bsky.social www.routledge.com/Insider-Guid...

Imagine it's 1850 and you've just been flattened by an elite cavalry officer who just yells "SOWWY" as he thunders away.

Looking forward to this…

#OtD 16 Aug 1819 the Peterloo massacre took place when British cavalry charge into a crowd of 60,000-80,000 working-class people demanding the right to vote. 15 were murdered and up to 700 injured, including many women. Learn more in our podcast: workingclasshistory.com/2018/11/07/e...

“Theory’s” material basis: the inventor of modern liberty was a committed agent of corporate colonialism, in this case “operating behind the scenes…to reorganize commercial relations between Ireland & England” by artificially suppressing Irish wool trade to further English imperial interests

"It's just fields and fields of gray ash." www.instagram.com/reel/DM8H5L2...

I’m always absolutely captivated by the way Baldwin expressed himself - much less the words his brain thought up. There’s not another societal critic more appropriate for our current moment.

The difficulty with writing anything about anything is that any given thing, on closer inspection, appears to be connected to every thing, and now you’ve gone from writing about anything to writing about everything 😅

In Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), Dr Seward’s journals are famously ‘Kept in Phonograph’. Join me for a nerdy deep dive in which I, brandishing back-of-an-envelope math, calculate the cost of Seward's phonograph habit, & encounter a creature more uncanny than Dracula himself! 1/14 #Gothic

Hello! If you have a position at a UK university please sign this thanks

A fabulous resource! Chosen at random, among cases that used electricity as a treatment (among many others), is this 1778 case of James Thomson, who had impaired vision www.rcpe.ac.uk/peoplesdispe..., and Betty Smart in 1783 with 'hysteria' www.rcpe.ac.uk/peoplesdispe... #histSTM #histmed

If, like me, you missed out on being at #RSVP2025, check out @marielsj.bsky.social’s timeline for stellar live posting from the end of last week! Wonderful to have these insights into what was clearly, as ever, a fascinating set of papers on the diversity of C19 periodicals 📚

New member @1hannahharvey.bsky.social who has supported members as a @ucu.org.uk buddy addresses our lunchtime lobby of the @mybcu.bsky.social governors today, bringing attention to the importance academic skills members bring for students - disbanding these teams will hit students hard