Refugee Festival Scotland 2026 is here! This beautiful front cover was created by Nii Sackey Vanderpuye and Anupa Joshy, who also designed this year's Refugee Festival Scotland Poster. At times like this, standing in solidarity with refugees is more important than ever. This festival does just that

Alex Sobel @alexsobel sticking up for women here.

I have re-emailed Ian Murray as he didn't respond to my contact last week. Don't let them ignore this.

Teachinge young people how to deeplye engage wyth literature and poetrye and playes and novels ys teachinge them how to access an olde and goode and powerful system for sharinge messages yn tymes of emergencye. Readinge literature ys key to the ongoing struggle for a bettir and more just worlde.

A reminder that I do freelance work. #MedievalSky #EarlyModern joanneedge.co.uk/freelance-wo...

In case nobody has posted this btw. Jpg is cruddy but alt text has the text

UCU imposes ‘global academic boycott’ on Sheffield in pay row Union objects to withholding of pay after strike action, but university says few staff affected www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-u...

Meaningful consultation. Consideration of alternatives proposed. Interrogate the evidence of counterproposals. All this is as tumbleweed at Nottingham 😤 Keep going @uonucu.bsky.social

Our students are allowed to use it. When they do, acknowledged and above board, the work it produces for them is so poor their grades suffer anyway. Of course, no one will learn from this. How could they when GenAI has depleted their ability to learn?

LET WOMEN HAVE HOBBIES

✊🏽 SCOTLAND RESISTS BIG TECH POWER 📍13 June, Edinburgh The encroachment of big tech can seem unstoppable. But the future does not need to belong to unaccountable tech monopolies! Join us for a *free* day of talks, organising and workshops. www.tickettailor.com/events/globa...

This came across my IG feed and it's too good to not share here

I even emailed mine, despite the fact that he's a only lump of human-shaped mashed potato.

It's been a big fortnight! Congress and our new #UCU VPs @markpendleton.bsky.social and @suzitoole.bsky.social 🎉

I have end of year marking, copyedits, and a talk to write, so naturally, I am here, doing none of it. I'm hungry.

Please do this. It's febrile, MPs are worried about their jobs. It's time for them to pick a side.

A really interesting, reflective comparison of #UCU Congress and the Quakers' annual meeting.

Durham County Council, run by Reform, pulled £2,500 from Durham Pride. But the Durham Miners Association, mindful of the support from LGBT communities during the miners strike, stepped in and, along with other Unions made contributions to make this year’s Durham Pride bigger than ever before. 🏳️‍🌈💪❤️

Awesome. This process absolutely needed more dehumanisation and error. There was a danger of some lingering compassion. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Also, and this needs saying too, trans men are men.

“Trans women are women” - our members.

In Rip off Britain, education has been treated as yet another commodity. And those who work in education are treated badly over and over again. Awful for educators and awful for students. I'll be speaking tonight at the University and College Union 👇🏼

Relieved to see more coverage of the grip Nous is getting on #UKHE. Thanks @privateeyenews.bsky.social! A million pound @cardiffucu.bsky.social alone. That’s a lot of money for the very same PowerPoint…

Thanks to everyone who came! It was a great night!

We were delighted with how well-attended our social yesterday evening was - thank you to everyone who came along and chatted to us! #UCU26

So sorry we ran out of pizza almost immediately! We had a deluge.

“For Women Scotland and the gender critical movement use rhetorically loaded lingo with a sprinkling of statistics to cover what is fundamentally a whiny moral-panic argument.” 👉 archive.ph/G4Irv

Leeds emergency trans rights demo on Thursday, 6pm Dortmund Square www.instagram.com/p/DYuzjtUsRq...

Lack of accountability is at the root. In post, they are not accountable, and they all make sure to move on (to another uni, to do the same) before the disfunction becomes undeniable. They will not listen to reason or experience. They have no solutions or imagination: just cuts.

The assault on trans rights should, in and of itself, be reason to stand up and oppose it. But if you think they'll stop there, you're a fool. They'll go after the LGB next. Then the neurodivergent and disabled. Then women. Ultimately, everyone who's not a conservative, 'Christian' white man.

Equality is not conditional. Dignity at work is not negotiable. The EHRC Code of Practice has been published. UCU is examining it urgently. This is a significant and unsettling moment and we will not leave branches to navigate it alone. www.ucu.org.uk/article/1451...

For all attending #UCU Congress 2026! On Tuesday 26th May, 7–10pm, we are hosting an informal social event upstairs at North Bar, 2d Cheltenham Parade, Harrogate, HG1 1DA. The first few arrivals can enjoy a drink (alcoholic or otherwise) on us, and there will be pizza available (also on us). 1/2

The very same vice-chancellors will be congratulating each other and telling themselves that taking ‘difficult decisions’ like this is what makes them worth their £350k salaries.

#CfP: 'Crossing Boundaries, Fostering Dialogue: Humanities, Academia and the City of Rome', Notre Dame Rome Via Ostilia 15, 00184 Roma (RM), Italy. 19 October 2026 – 20 October 2026, Proposals by 30 June 2026 rensoc.org.uk/announcement... #Skystorians #EarlyModernEvents

Come along! #UCU

Today’s the anniversary of the passing into law of Section 28 in 1988, the first homophobic legislation in a century. Politicians and media said it was our own fault, told us to shut up and give up. We didn’t. Dont you dare give up now on trans people.

This. Also: if you’re cis? Prefer not to say.

Here’s a video from the same podcast as linked in my previous post where you can hear the audio too. I love this because it really lays bare how LLMs fool us - but really they’re just slotting words into linguistic patterns that we’re familiar with. Genres like a podcast or LinkedIn post.

I think cis people need to be prepared to challenge bigots who harass trans people for being in the 'wrong' toilets.

My new paper is out in @thegj.bsky.social: and asks how to build affirmative, (non)reproductive futures. What would it mean to affirm climate-related reproductive anxieties? What does climate adaptation mean for family & caring relationships? 1/3 rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Please sign and share this petition - c.org/Wh2NJg5dpc. Prevent mass course closures at yet another apparently financially stable university. Solidarity and strength to @uhertfordshireucu.bsky.social! @ucu.org.uk

Sir Tom, not known for pulling his punches, is not pulling his punches in the Herald.

Universities have a legal and moral duty to protect trans staff.

There's been a lot going on in the last fortnight! Update from #UCU Commons on all manner of sector issues and activity.

“We have made a technology that creates nothing but will ensure you have no future while we get richer and richer wait why are you boooing?”

if i was going to give a college commencement speech i would make sure to start with something the students could rally behind. something like "we will mechanically suck the youth from your bones to feed a mechanical eschaton, which my generation will use to climb heaven and become new gods"

The earliest known altarpiece from a Beguine Church depicting St. Begga as founder of the Beguines. From the Leuven Grand Beguinage Church, early 17th c. Want to know more? Check out my new book, out in August: www.routledge.com/Unconventual... #EarlyModern #nuntastic #ArtHistory

Ma'am I'm not even a yank and I know that Chappel Roan, Bad Bunny, Jesse Welles, Maren Moris, Billie Eilish, The Strokes, Kesha, Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter, SZA and others have been doing things. But thanks for letting us know you just have surburban mall in a sundown town music tastes.

To put this in perspective, back in April 2025, after the atrocious Supreme Court For Women Scotland decision, *in less than four days* trans people and allies knocked down the barricades, stormed Parliament Square and filled it to capacity