#shs2026 was brilliant (as usual). Wonderful conversations, people, dancing, research, ideas, snacks, talks, and connections. All the important things!

As always the @socialhistsoc.bsky.social conference has been the most welcoming and engaging discussion of a wonderful variety of topics. If you do social history do think about joining and getting involved!

How is it, then, with the whale?

If you’re a PGR at this year’s @socialhistsoc.bsky.social please do consider coming to our lunch-time meet-up today! #SHS2026

I am very glad to see how widely covered the insanity at Exeter is, but please I beg everyone, understand this is happening EVERYWHERE in UK universities. If people care about anything valuable that this sector does or contributes too, they need to get loud, now.

We are dismayed to learn about further proposed HE cuts, this time at the University of Hertfordshire and the University of Exeter. In solidarity, please join us by signing and sharing the two urgent petitions below. 🚨🖊️ 1/3

📣We're so excited to welcome you to our 50th anniversary conference today!✨ Check out our fabulous programme here: socialhistory.org.uk/wp-content/u...

📢ALBUM ANNOUNCEMENT: A TIME OF MINDING📢 Chris Hoban has been recording all the music he composed as a fellow on the @leverhulme.ac.uk project The Material Culture of Wills! Sign up here to be notified when the album is released: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... Photo: Tom Hurley #EarlyModern 🗃️

As we close out Pride Month, we recommend "Medieval Futurity: Essays for the Future of a Queer Medieval Studies" edited by Will Rogers and Christopher Michael Roman. While Pride Month may be ending, queer medieval studies continues all year, and this title is an excellent foundation for that work.

Putting the finishing touches to my paper for @socialhistsoc.bsky.social conference later this week, excited to be talking as part of this great panel on women's networks and communities! Thursday Panel 3 11:15-12:45 if you're around and about and keen to talk bedding

Huge congratulations to The Box Plymouth, which has been named Museum of the Year 2026 🎉🏆 And congratulations to the other wonderful finalists: Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery, National Gallery, Fitzwilliam Museum and V&A East Storehouse. Read our coverage in Museums Journal Online 🔗

Started my two week trip today with 3 books brought with me from home, and have already collected a 4th (loan from the friend I'm staying with this weekend). I already know I'm dropping into the incredible oxfam bookshop in farnham so lets see how ridiculous this gets

Can you spot a very tiny seafarer in this 16th century map of Gloucestershire from our Saxton Atlas? The #DayOfTheSeafarer highlights the essential role of seafarers, as well as the many risks of a life at sea - though hopefully with fewer sea monsters around these days! 📷 Rare books B 1590/SAX/XX

A petition has now been created by Exeter UCU against these measures. Sign it here: c.org/LF57sK7YfR This careless obliteration of HASS subjects is needless and so cruel to the fantastic staff at Exeter, and the wider devaluing of humanities & arts subjects within UKHE must be stopped.

Union fears this places 500 staff (14% of academic staff) at risk of redundancy: "These proposals represent both a stunning failure of leadership on the part of the university's senior management and governance...and a reckless attack on an institution... critical to the...regional economy." 3/4

A statement from Exeter UCU branch @ucu.org.uk - please share far and wide.

In a fantastically symmetrical turn of events, this years #shsconf2026 falls in the week after the Rose and Castle dance weekend, and so I'll be going from morris -> conference again, bells muffled in my bag to cause the minimum amount of disturbance possible

Someone posted a pic of this Tudor pottery lady on Tumblr – she's a salt dish, now in the collection of St Fagans National Museum of History in Wales – and I loved her, so I drew her. I'm delighted by the idea of Tudor folk having cute little guys and gals adorning their dinner tables!

Maritime history can tell endless types of stories. If you are working on a maritime topic, consider submitting to #RoyalMuseumsGreenwich conference on Maritime Histories from the Margins. #skystorians #cfp 🌊🗃️

doing a bit of a dive into horses and dogs in the wills sample, so it's only right that I'm accompanied by the most horse-like dog

Just come back from an absolutely mad weekend at Thaxted. Every year I sit down on Monday morning (gingerly, with complaining calves) and think back to the various 'dancing plagues' of the 15th and 16th centuries... yeah I think perhaps they were just having a Very Good Time

Once again I repeat my motto: "Don't comply in advance, but also, don't cry in advance."

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 ██████████████████