Offre d’emploi – 3-year postdoc position in medieval studies: Unlocking the Medieval Book: Texts, Crafts, & Networks of Northern Europe rmblf.be/2025/12/30/o...

Just a couple more days to enjoy ‘2025: The Immersive Experience’, tickets selling fast…

University of Southern Denmark, 3-year postdoc in Medieval Studies memorients.com/news/univers...

Just a couple more days to enjoy ‘2025: The Immersive Experience’, tickets selling fast…

On ‘World’s Worst Jobs’ tonight we talk to Gino Capelletti, the man charged each year with taking down the Christmas decorations at the Vatican.

‘Brace, Death Star ahead!’ ‘I’m pretty sure it’s just a réification of our engagement with material historical conditions, Han…’ (Lost footage of Georg Lukács’s failed Star Wars pilot found in Budapest attic.)

Visitors left ´confused’ by new Marxist Santa’s grotto.´They told our Sandra that whether she’d been good or bad just disguises the false consciousness behind an essentially feudal system of gift allocation’, said one angry mum who reached out on X to complain of long delays & arguments with elves.

"In an era where the authentic written word is under threat....English isn't just about reading the past--it's about understanding the power of words and narratives in the present and future and giving our students the skills to successfully navigate the world". True of all UK English programmes.

A cross-party review of the financial sustainability of Scotland’s universities will go ahead after months of initial talks between university leaders and politicians, reports @helenpacker.bsky.social www.timeshighereducation.com/news/scottis...

Some really (and qualifiedly) good news from Cardiff UCU @cardiffucu.bsky.social : No redundancies next year, no downgrading of professional services staff. And all without the need for disruptive industrial action, which nobody at all wants. nation.cymru/news/cardiff...

A nice collection of @timeshighered.bsky.social essays all in one place about the value of the arts and the humanities www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/makin...

;Eliminating funding for 3* research in the next Research Excellence Framework (REF) would benefit Russell Group institutions by about £50 million a year, suggests modelling into how potential changes to funding formulas may play out.' 1/3

Best news of the day.

Now that antifreeze has been applied to REF2029, we know that research environments (now called SPRE) will be assessed 60% at institutional level (by an Institutional Level Statement) and 40% at Unit of Assessment level (by a Unit Level Statement). Will we see a STEM SPRE triumph? 1/5 #Skystorians

'There in the shadows [of the White Paper] lies the call for HE institutions to specialise, with the lurking threat that many will lose their research funding in some, but perhaps many, areas, in order to better fund those with more intensive research.'

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! YES, it’s PGR Essay Prize Competition time again! We are delighted to open this year’s competition, and invite PGRs from across the diverse fields of English to submit their essays. Details can be found here: academic.oup.com/english/page...

Great culture can save lives. Literally. Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

And this helps how? Good grief...

Applications Now Open for the University of Glasgow Library Visiting Research Fellowship scheme - supporting scholars from across academic disciplines to come to Glasgow to work on our unique research collections. Please RT or pass on: www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/li...

Kinnock voice - "I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions....and you end up in the grotesque chaos of a Labour government, a *Labour* government, rejecting visas for homeless 8 yr olds trying to joing their parents"

"Today’s Budget was an opportunity for the government to offer further detail and clarity on the state and finances of the higher education sector, building on the recent White Paper." Read our response to the Autumn Budget in full: https://bit.ly/4rs7bCc

Is Haldane dead? The short answer is “yes”. Richard Burdon Haldane died in 1928. For researchers, however, the question relates to the nuance of the Haldane principle. My feature for @resprofnews.bsky.social: www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-p...

'Universities are communities of people and those within Scotland’s universities play a critical role in shaping our regions, our nation and our international reach and impact.' Devolution dividend: staff matter too. A huge contrast to DfE/Jacqui Smith approach in Tuesday's testimony. 3/3

'The Scottish Greens have lodged an amendment to the Scottish Government's Tertiary Education and Training Bill – set to be debated this week – which they believe will help to "boost the wages of ordinary workers".' 1/2

Not reposting in agreement with the 10 principles (I disagree strongly on several), but because it's the 1st open, comprehensive agenda responding to post-16 White Paper (and the obvious direction of travel in DSIT/UKRI) I've seen from a sitting VC. Principle 2, subject provision, merits more. 1/6

'Michael Lynas, the UK country director for the Duolingo language app, who argues there is no good substitute for the hard graft of learning a language as a way of seeing another country’s culture from the inside.' 1/3

The extreme polarization of arts and sciences is a huge mistake and explains some of the rigidity and extremism we see all around us: in education, in recruitment, in our politics. But one mindset alone cannot fix the mess we are in. We need creativity now more than ever

Is spoken English really examined at A-Level? (Asking for an immigration system…)

Is spoken English really examined at A-Level? (Asking for an immigration system…)

Applications are now invited for the Society's 2026-27 Centenary PhD Fellowships for early career historians completing a doctorate bit.ly/48pWB72 Fellowships provide support of £8500 per award for 6 months and are held jointly with @ihr.bsky.social. Closing date: 31 January 2026 #Skystorians

🎉 All stipendiary IHR Fellowships, Bursaries, & Prizes are now LIVE! 🎉 universityoflondon.smapply.io/prog/lst/ (All of our open competitions start with "IHR" in the title.) Got a question? Please check the application page & our website for more information. www.history.ac.uk/fellowships-...

Here’s another fully funded 4-year PhD position at Leiden within the ERC project LangPro led by Dr Alisa van de Haar, and co-supervised by yours truly, on guilds and associations supporting early modern language professionals bit.ly/49rsLA3 Apply by 15 Feb. 2026; starting date 1 Aug. 2026

Not to mention the effects of 2 local universities making staff redundant, closing taught programmes and reducing their research and civic engagement capacities (in response to government policies).

'people who are multilingual are half as likely to show signs of accelerated biological ageing than are those who speak just one language.' Good thing that schools, universities and governments are so actively promoting modern languages then, isn't it? 1/2

What's lost when we lose staff, departments, programmes and faculties in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, and what's that got to do with organ donation? Amid the looming losses faced by Cardiff, Edinburgh, Lancaster, Leicester and Nottingham (among many others), here's a worked example. 1/8

Excellent article here. Our students are our greatest advocates. Counter proposals will be put forward, and we are supporting colleagues in Music, Modern Languages, Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies at Nottingham with their campaigns www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Webinar: IASH Fellowship applicants for 2026-27, on Monday 15 December at 13:00 GMT. Find out about our programmes, and ask any questions you may have. Register free: events.teams.microsoft.com/event/0fdfeb... Please sign up even if you can't attend, as a recording will be circulated afterwards.

A reminder that there are still a few days left to apply for this funded PhD, working on literary and cultural reception of the Vikings. University fees and a budget for conference attendance included in addition to the stipend: it's a great opportunity for someone! www.ucc.ie/en/hr/vacanc...

“Four years ago, we suffered an earlier redundancy programme that we were told would secure the future of the university. That clearly was not true." #UKHE www.leicester.news/university-o...

The Edinburgh University-based Scottish Universities' International Summer School is open for registration for 2026. Come study Theatre during the Festival; or immerse yourself in our literature programmes, or hone those writing skills on our Creative Writing course: www.suiss.ed.ac.uk/programme/

Exceptionally sad news for scholars of early English Drama. The great Jean-Paul Debax, a towering figure in Tudor theatre Studies in France, and a kind, generous scholar, has passed away at the age of 90: the last of the founders of the delightful Tours Tables-Rondes.

'In February, Sheffield Hallam University, home to the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice (HKC), a leading research institution focused on human rights, ordered one of its best-known professors, Laura Murphy, to cease research on supply chains and forced labour in China.' 1/3

I was deeply sorry to learn, very belatedly, of the passing earlier this year of Prof Marie-Helene Besnault, a stalwart of the long-running Table-Ronde on Tudor drama at the University of Tours. The kindest of souls and most generous of hosts to we travelling Brits. God speed M-H.

‘Will he have cakes… and tea? Perhaps camomile? He’d surely like that best. No? (OTD in 1957 John Betjeman auditioned for the role of Sauron in Leni Riefenstahl’s doomed Lord of The Rings project. His ‘lack of chemistry’ with co-star Conrad Veidt (Frodo) allegedly blighted the project from the start

And the British Academy @britishacademy.bsky.social has done an amazing piece of mapping for SHAPE subjects here. 7/ www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/policy-and-r...

Job Opportunity! Assistant Professor in History of Knowledge Pre-1400 University of Cambridge - History and Philosophy of Science www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPG062/a...

Side-lining learned societies & subject associations from these discussions is a missed opportunity. They have & will provide many of the REF expert assessors: they have a wealth of knowledge & work at the coalface. See also Main Panel and SP reports. Attention to data would be a fine thing. 3/3

'The twin or multi-track approach is seen as an increasingly likely prospect after the government’s post-16 education and skills white paper promised to reduce bureaucracy in the exercise. The approach is aimed at cutting bureaucracy for less research-active institutions'. Hmm. Is that the goal? 1/3

Interesting piece “From my experience of universities, one of the most important elements of that is the culture around the senior management table, which is not the governing body,” he said. “You cannot have…an overbearing culture where essentially the executive is run in a hierarchical system.”

After submitting a FOIA request UKRI, I obtained success rates by three grant call scheme and I can only say that I am disheartened by the results: - AHRC Responsive Mode 2025: 2% - ESRC New Investigator Grant 2025: 1% - ESRC Research Grant Round 2025: 1%