'Elisabeth Bik, a microbiologist and scientific integrity consultant, points out that an increase in the use of metrics to measure performance and the pressure to publish have given rise to an explosion in the amount of scientific literature being released.' 1/2

'A lecturer whose job is at risk has said a fully costed proposal has been put forward to the University of Essex in a bid to save 400 full-time roles.' These include 'Changes to the career-break policy, enhancing the voluntary redundancy offer and allowing staff to move to fractional contracts'.

Calls to reform England’s student loan system should include the “scandalous” state of funding for postgraduate degrees, critics say, with a third of courses now costing more than the value of the master’s loan and repayment thresholds frozen. Juliette Rowsell reports https://ow.ly/uAg250Y9nlI

Epstein managed different networks. The UK media has rightly centred the powerful pedophile ring. It has maintained an uncanny silence about the global, anti-democratic, far right political network. Farage is up to his neck in it. If it weren’t for unprecedented double standards it’d be career over.

Very much a legacy of empire. The Pattles' wealth, influence and complex family formation were rooted in and sustained by the East India Company and its extractions.

US government to fund Maga-aligned think-tanks and charities in Europe - www.ft.com/content/f869... via @FT

Quite amusing to read a think-piece on ‘What Trump should actually learn from Thucydides’ that was clearly set up to do the pivot from “the strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must” to “of all manifestations of power, restraint impresses men most”… 1/2

'It is expected that the change to UKRI’s new bucket model, and the subsequent reopening of grant funds, will be in April 2027. Of course, this means that between now and then academics who would have bid for funding cannot'.

'The new coalition government has presented its governing agreement that includes plans to reverse previous cuts to funding by investing €1.5 billion (£1.3 billion) into education and science and allowing non-Dutch-language programmes to continue.'

'The University of York and Swansea University have became the seventh and eighth universities to confirm they will not take up a three-year deal with the world’s biggest academic publisher'. Sheffield, Lancaster, Surrey, Kent, Essex and Sussex have already opted out.

'Arctic Fever, which draws together lithographs, books, maps and ephemera, offers some uncanny parallels to today’s scramble for the north, showcasing the ambition, hubris and hunger for territory and resources that still drive much interest in the region.'

The chalkboard that hangs behind the bar at Squat 17b does not list the drink specials — it keeps a countdown of how many more days Ukrainians must endure the harsh winter that has gripped the war-weary country. On Thursday, it read: “Days until spring: 24.” w/ @fabricedeprez.bsky.social

Just a reminder about the new grant we (@universitypress.cambridge.org) are offering. Deadline is mid-April. Please spread the word.

Next Monday (February 9th), Hielke van Nieuwenhuize talks about the role Dutch Seamen played in Sweden's expansion beyond the Baltic Sea during the Swedish "Stormaktstiden". Sign up here www.eventbrite.com/e/ships-seaf... #skystorians #earlymodern #maritimehistory

'The argument for a component that has been used for construction in places as meteorologically distinct as Spain and Japan is that traditional building techniques can be deployed to create a circular construction process and address contemporary problems.' Not all futureproofing needs innovation.

Sound on, hats off.

Teaching esp. US History or Historiography & have a student looking for an essay topic/research project? Great material here. Don't know whether to be more shocked by the absences (C.L.R James died as late as 1989) or by how few 'Long Overdue' obituaries have been completed to date. #Skystorians

Emma Sandon (Birkbeck), 'Spaces of Empire: Histories and Afterlives of Film Collections in British Colonial Archives', 10 February 5:30 pm GMT, at the IHR, London and on Zoom. Free, friendly and open to the public. Please register by the link below. #Skystorians.

📣 Manchester (& nearby folks)! The brilliant @profkfh.bsky.social will be speaking about how her new book, The Sweet Taste of Empire, came to be in conversation with Dr. Fred Schurink at our next @uomenglish.bsky.social research seminar. Join us next THURSDAY, 12 Feb from 4-5 pm in Sam Alex SG.16.

Legal history people: the ASLH conference will be in the Canadian Rockies in Nov.2026! Panel proposals are due March 24, 2026. The Call links to google sheets where you can find co-panelists & chair-commentators 👇 You can @ me if you're looking for fellow panelists, too.

Because I'm updating them today, I'd like to remind #AncientBluesky that we have *FREELY ACCESSIBLE* Ancient Greek resources at the Open University! 🏺 First, we have a 16 hour free OpenLearn course, which takes you from learning the alphabet to reading simple sentences: www.open.edu/openlearn/hi...

Discoverability, discoverability, discoverability. Not a word about discoverability. If you can't/won't find it, it's not really open access.

'The report, by Katharine Hubbard, director of learning enhancement and academic practice at Buckinghamshire New University, calls for “systemic change” in the Teaching Excellence Framework “to provide clear focus on racial equity and representation”.' 1/2

'Chinese citizens were granted 25 per cent fewer visas for higher education study in the second half of 2025 compared with the equivalent period of 2024, according to the latest available statistics from Australia’s Department of Home Affairs.' When Oz HE sneezes, UK HE....

'Spanning five centuries, the deceased in the anatomical prints currently on show in the exhibition Beneath the Sheets: Anatomy, Art and Power, at Thackray Museum of Medicine...none of them consented to images of their unclothed, mutilated bodies being bound up in a book or displayed on a wall.'

'movement from the individual to the collective places Streets of Minneapolis within a wider lineage of protest song, creating narratives out of real events so they can be...acted upon. In this sense, the song does not simply respond to politics, but actively participates in political thought'.

'A new report by the British Council has found that Scotland has an “excellent foundation” for language learning compared to the rest of the UK, but raises concerns about a number of "structural barriers" to further progress.' 1/3

'This year, the education platform Higherin reports interest in apprenticeships is “going through the roof”. Searches doubled over the past 12 months and are up a further 78 per cent in 2026 already.' This is meaningless without actual numbers and a comparison (with numbers) to UCAS searches. 1/2

#OnThisDay in 1826, the first paper to be written by a woman was read at a Royal Society meeting. The paper, by noted polymath Mary Somerville, was read at the meeting by her husband, as she wasn't permitted to attend. https://bit.ly/2A3Cj2N

The International Fellowships 2026 scheme, run with the @royalsociety.org, supports international early career researchers to undertake a two-year research career with UK partner organisations. Find out more and apply ahead of 11 March deadline: https://bit.ly/3LaMIBC

We’re live from Pretoria for the Second Equitable Partnerships Conference: https://bit.ly/4rmYoAk Over the next two mornings, we’ll be sharing insights from across workshops exploring what equitable international research collaboration looks like in practice. #EquitablePartnerships #ISPF

This is great. And it's free to read too. So, read it.

This is good, as far as it goes - but sometimes the only way to avoid burnout and stress is for there to be more staff to do the work. That does not seem something that is of interest to university SMTs at the moment.

William Nordhaus received the Nobel Memorial Prize for these flawed economic models, and Bjorn Lomborg built a highly lucrative career on them. They told rich and powerful people what they wanted to hear. While helping to consign us all to catastrophe. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

"We find that AI use impairs conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging abilities, without delivering significant efficiency gains on average" arxiv.org/abs/2601.20245

Epstein/Thiel: a natural combination. Palantir/UK data: a winning combination?

'Researchers have published the recipe for an artificial-intelligence model that reviews the scientific literature better than some major large language models (LLMs) are able to, and gets the citations correct as often as human experts do.' 1/2

'Seagrass is one of the most powerful natural tools for tackling climate change and can protect coastlines from storms and erosion, according to Wilder Humber – a partnership of the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire wildlife trusts.'

The university funding crisis finally starting to make it into newspaper editorials www.ft.com/content/82f5...

There was a lot in Ian Chapman's appearance at the Commons science committee yesterday Easy to miss that he said the UK "may wish to explore" only joining one part of FP10 (the next Horizon Europe) and that "we don’t know the detail yet to be able to say that [association] is good value for money"

'What we are attempting matters beyond data stewardship. It’s a model for how universities can respond to urgent societal needs by creating new professional pathways, not just new degree programmes.'

'Several universities in England which have scored a top rating in a national teaching assessment have large gaps in degree outcomes for black students and low representation of black academics, according to a report that says equity goals should form a larger part of quality metrics.' 1/2

Bigger things going on today i know but watching Bezos buy, wreck, and now basically gut a media institution at a time when America really needs a free press is just such a grotesque waste. If you don’t know how to run it, sell it to someone who can www.theguardian.com/media/2026/f...

New article! "Changing the Landscape of Archaeological Publishing" in Current Anthropology, by a giant collaborative group of coauthors fearlessly led by Jess Beck and including @bridgetalex.bsky.social @benmarwick.bsky.social @christinawarinner.bsky.social www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10....

For anyone interested in our 18-month post in British Studies please follow the link below. @ihr.bsky.social www.jobs.london.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

Matthew Parris, capturing the moment.

How much ill grace and stupidity do we have to keep rejecting the hands held out to us?

"Trump’s War on Higher Ed Is an Attack on Women: The administration’s assault on colleges and universities is meant to undermine the economic and social progress women have made in the last half-century."

Do you hear that, coming from Nigel Farage? An unfamiliar sound: silence. open.substack.com/pub/theleadu... @theleaduk.bsky.social