Had a wonderful and fascinating time listening to everyone talking about Journeys with Mai at the understanding British portraits annual seminar yesterday! Really cool to hear about the incredible work being done by local and Tahitian artists about Mai's story and portrait

In retrospect its obvious that a cutler is someone who produces cutlery, but I will admit I did stare at this will for a few seconds completely stumped thinking "cutler... a cut butler? a butler who cuttles? a cat butler??"

📢 NEW PROJECT BLOG POST 📢 Something a bit different from our 'Will of the Month' posts... 📜 Our Principal Investigator, Jane Whittle, explains the different ways we can approach and work with 30,000 will transcriptions 🧵1/3 #EarlyModern @uoearchhist.bsky.social sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult...

Evergreen headline.

It's Deaf Awareness Week rnid.org.uk/deaf-awarene... Deaf people appeared as defendants, victims, witnesses and interpreters in a number of OBO trials, providing evidence of the early evolution of modern sign language and the experiences and status of Deaf people in 18th- and 19th- c society.

Very happy to share that I will be your tour guide of Exeter's early modern history at the RAMM if you attend the Early Modern Conflict, War and violence conference in September. You have until May 22nd to submit your abstracts.

May! The month of all months, the maddest month, the month where the first weekend tries to convince me I could become a morning person and then is promptly proved wrong by every following weekend.

OOOh~ you want to come talk about premodern masculinities with us at @imc-leeds.bsky.social in July!

This led to an even more surprising output - following conversations over lunch & a collaboration with two fantastic nearby stalls, one of our ballad 'woodcut' images from our earlier linocut workshop was transformed into a sparkly badge! 🧵3/3 @uoearchhist.bsky.social @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social

Get involved in MOP DAY!! massobs.org.uk/12th-may/

Sipping my morning coffee feeling vaguely sacriligeous I didn't realise it was National Tea Day

📣Out now on #firstview Bernard Capp @uni-of-warwick.bsky.social on 'The Cultural, Social, and Ideological Role of the Hat in Early Modern England' #Hat #Identity #Social #Clothing #Religion #Family #History 17thc 🎩👒🗃️ 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

📣New SHS PGR Work-in-Progress sessions launched by our PGR reps @louisebell.bsky.social & @aayushigupta.bsky.social! Informal, supportive space to share research & test ideas. Open to all history PGRs & ECRs working in and around social history. More info here! socialhistory.org.uk/2026/04/09/s...

Jobs! Three jobs! I am hiring three full-time, three-year postdocs to research the long history of song at Newcastle, from any disciplinary background (within reason), starting 1 October 2026. Spread the news far and wide – all details in the link below... jobs.ncl.ac.uk/job/Newcastl...

Overly sincere social media posts give me hives but I couldn't let #tdov pass without thinking about how grateful I am to be surrounded by support and love (even if sometimes its the baffled but well meaning kind). At the moment the world and this government don't make it easy but still we thrive!

Really pleased to share my (open access!) article on immigration control in early modern England, feat. rights-bearing subjects, rightsless migrants, and experiments in immigration control

The Wills Project went to Bath!

Some gentle hillfort strolling from this weekend. I love it when the sky looks so flat and grey that the hills almost look like a cutout, it's otherwordly.

This #MosaicMonday we're celebrating the new season. Here's a close up of the figure of 'Spring' with a basket of flowers in one hand a small bird in the other at Chedworth Roman Villa, Gloucestershire. 📷Ian Shaw

Alice Culpeper sold Aurum Potabile after Nicholas died to support herself and daughter. Second hubby John Heydon, left her and spitefully published her recipe, the 🐍 Well, Alice got herself a midwifery license in 1665. Go Alice! #WomensHistoryMonth #earlymodern EEBO, H1670; LMA

LB Southwark installed a blue plaque to honour Una Marson at her former home in Brunswick Square, Camberwell in 2009 and a new library in Walworth was named after her in 2024

Caution - cute content... First Hazel dormouse found at Nymans, West Sussex. 📷 Kate Gould

Regret to announce that we’ve reached Wrong Coat season. Every coat you wear from now til mid April will be The Wrong Coat for the weather

It’s worth squinting to read the inscription on this one - a strong ending Monument to Ann Gaderen (d.1699) at Whitchurch, Bucks 👇

How does that song go? I like big books and I cannot lie

☞ ☞ ☞ the index finger is a pointing gesture to be found in manuscript and print traditions. It was used to draw the reader's attention to a certain part of a text or image. This slow-moving thread highlight a few of them:

Oh, the grand old duke of york He ██████████████████ He ██████████████████ And he ██████████████████

The Roman Pharos (lighthouse) at Dover, still standing after almost 2,000 years! 🤩 It is the tallest surviving Roman structure in Britain, and one of only three surviving lighthouses from the former Roman Empire! Dated 1st-2nd century AD. 📷 me #Archaeology

Pleased to report some swan-tastic action over in the #palaeography realm of Bluesky today 🦢

Interesting will of the day 💌 in 1606 Thomas Williams of Camarthan remembered four "reputed daughters" and two "reputed sons" in his will, with at least two of his daughters having different mothers (both spinsters!). Both boys received property and money and each daughter got £5 and 20 sheep 🐑🐑🐑🐑

You know its time to give up on working for the day when you find yourself distracted for over an hour playing a online game you found about listing as many animals from memory as possible

anyway the consultation shuts tomorrow, one minute to midnight UK time: www.gov.uk/government/c... Amnesty have some good guidance here. Go on: media.amnesty.org.uk/documents/Am...

We've just reached another milestone - the 100th article in our Historian's Watch series! The piece is fascinating, too: it's an unflinching look at colonial anxieties about 'aggressive Black men' and how these fears became embedded in British immigration debates.

📢NEW POST: a report on Chris Hoban's recent performance of music inspired by our wills at a sold gig for Topsham Folk Club 📢 📜🎶🎻🪗🪕 @leverhulme.ac.uk @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social @uoearchhist.bsky.social @cemsexeter.bsky.social

Couple of pictures to summarise the first week of my trip to London; lots of time spent at the national archives, many hands washed (and rewashed), several museums visited, plenty of cat hangouts, a couple of late nights out, and one very muddy cemetary walk.

🐍 #NationalSerpentDay is dedicated to snake appreciation, understanding their role in ecosystems, and helping to overcome fear or misconceptions about them, such as this one... This #myth was likely based on #oarfish sightings. Learn more: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2014/10/the-... #ILoveBHL 📖 🧪

📜Bequest of the day📜 Royalist Sir Nicholas Crispe asks for an autopsy in his 1666 will: 'I would have my body opened that the Phisitiones may see the cause of my soe long shortnes of breath to be helpfull to my Posterity that are troubled with the same Infirmity'. #EarlyModern 🗃️

📢 In Case You Missed It! 📢 January's 'Will of the Month' blog post is now live 📜 Read all about a Yorkshire widow's 'Living Will', as well as her ownership of 'global goods': tea, coffee, china, and a ladle for serving punch (made with sugar & spices) ☕🫖 sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult...

What a beautiful write up in The Guardian. It's been an honour to be involved in this exhibition and I'm so excited to see it in full when it opens this weekend - if you're in Plymouth it's a must-see!

I wrote a short blog on the Court of Orphans probate inventories held @thelondonarchives.bsky.social A fascinating source for anyone researching early modern social history or material culture 📜 Link below 👇 www.thelondonarchives.org/blog/the-pro...

Today is “Take a Walk Outdoors Day”! So: grab a good book (preferably from De Gruyter) for a sunny bench, wrap up warm, and head out into the fresh air! #brueghel #earlymodern

📣DEADLINE EXTENDED! We are delighted to announce that we're extending the deadline for applications to our 50th anniversary conference! At this busy time, we want as many people as possible to have the chance to apply. Now accepting applications until 23 Jan! socialhistory.org.uk/events/confe...

Its on days like this, wet and windy and wild, that I'm very glad for work that lets me work from a large mound of blankets

Someone’s not looked at a single early modern history book before opening their mouth, clearly. By 1600, over 4,000 immigrants lived in England’s second largest city, Norwich - one in three people in the city had not been born in England.

Everytime I think I've got a handle on the different ways family descriptors were used by people in the 17th century, I come across another funny one; "my neece grace browne daughter of my sonne John"

This year, as a Caird Research Fellow at Royal Museums Greenwich, I developed a new research project on occupational health, disability, and welfare in the British Royal Navy during the French Wars (1793–1815). Read some of my preliminary findings here: www.rmg.co.uk/stories/mari....

The British Library have a searchable interim Archives & Manuscripts Catalogues up & running: searcharchives.bl.uk (posting for all the folks who, like me, had somehow managed to miss this important development)

Started keeping a little folder of screenshots on my laptop called "places I've zoomed from". It's a lot of picnic benches and GWR trains. What can I say I'm an out and about kind of guy

Here from the same fabulous series by George Spratt is "The Connoisseur." (I like this art-lover's monocle and also the smaller picture that she's carrying as a reticule, the strap around her wrist.)

If your choice is between an existential risk to your organisation, vs being a fascist collaborator, and you make the difficult choice to be a collaborator... ...then you are still a collaborator.