Today we've launched our digitised Probate Registers and Bishops' Transcripts collections onto Ancestry. Together that's 16 million records covering 1389-1858 - these can be accessed via a subscription to Ancestry or for free here at the Borthwick! www.ancestry.co.uk/search/colle...

🥁🎉BOOK LAUNCH AT KALAMAZOO🎉🥁

Oh did you want 3300 words from me on today's IOC sex testing rules? An essay on the nature of evidence and why we can't seem to stop getting stuck in the same traps around sex and gender in sports? Wow lucky you!! www.coyotemedia.org/the-olympics...

This travelogue post shares some of my new playhouse research, on the back of a very insightful trip to see some 400-year-old Spanish playhouses. It’s helped me understand the Shakespearen theatre scene more keenly. open.substack.com/pub/shakespe...

Very excited to be going to @britishlibrary.bsky.social next week to check out some Wenceslas Hollar engravings, which are just stunning. Like this one of St. Paul's Nave which gives you some sense of the grandness of the promenading taking place in the Cathedral during the 16/17th centuries.

I don't know what you are talking about, this is completely legible...

None of these even hold a candle to the indecipherability of modern Cyrillic cursive.

The British Academy ECR Network supports Early Career Researchers to connect, learn and grow. Charlotte says: “As a result of being part of this network, I’ve had opportunities and experiences that otherwise I would not have had.” Join an Opportunity Session to learn more. https://bit.ly/4dHUX3I

So, um... this is bad. Really bad. I looked at the letters that were translated by the AI, and the very first one I found was almost entirely hallucination. Thread:

A Frenchman in London gets brought into Bridewell having been "taken in women’s apparel", but they let him go after his mistress and neighbours swear "that he did it upon a merriment to fetch oysters and without any other cause".

This place lives in my head rent free, so a pleasure & privilege to visit Almagro’s 1628 corral de comedias. One of world’s oldest surviving theatres, an uncanny analogue to the Curtain playhouse #CurtainBook. Grateful to the city & Councillor Genaro Galàn Garcia for their generous hospitality.

I see the King’s College London & Shakespeare's Globe Postgraduate Conference 2026 is now open for CfPs, sharing here for any interested postgrads. Topic is "networks" and submission form can be found below; any questions to [email protected]

Blockbuster action w/ loud SFX or kitchen sink realism? Take your pick. Today’s post is a celebration of Thomas Heywood. We don’t hear much about him today, but he wrote hundreds of plays, was a veteran of the theatre scene, & had a parallel career to Shakespeare… open.substack.com/pub/shakespe...

'Teaching-only staff at Sheffield Hallam University are set to be moved into a subsidiary firm, leaving research intensive scholars the only academics still being employed directly by the institution.' Utterly inequitable & betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the teaching/research nexus. 1/3

Money for UK-based historians engaged in research and/or public history. #Skystorians

Dear Shabana, Let's clear some things up around migration and remember we're talking about people's lives.

It’s #worldbookday and so here’s a book I wrote! It introduces a dozen radical 17th women who have been ignored by history books for far too long ✍️📚#voicesofthunder #newbook

Years ago I found a note in the parish register of Glenfield in Leicestershire which instantly became one of my favourite Civil War commentaries: 'Churchwardens, not any; because distractions many; & distructions mightie'. I've returned to that document, explored other pages nearby, and found...

Interior with a woman spinning. And also a man, perhaps reading. Another quiet scene by Esaias Boursse of Amsterdam, born OTD 1631.

👀 Over the last few months, I’ve been working with the terrific triumvirate @spparkle.bsky.social, @emiliekmmurphy.bsky.social & Hannah Yip to set up “Sonance: A Journal of Early Modern Sound Studies”, a diamond open access journal dedicated to historic sounds in all their wondrous & eclectic forms.

Enjoying this archly dismissive legal response from a theatre manager accused of stealing "certain tinsel stuffs" in the 1610s: "[The] bill of complaint is so uncertain, and otherwise insufficient in law, as it is unpossible to make any direct answer thereto, for many respects..."

In person early modern metals event in London next month with me, @laurenworking.bsky.social, and Lubaaba Al-Azami. Please repost and share widely! And register here -- forms.office.com/Pages/Respon...

Just putting it out there, while I still have the privilege of a Fellowship for next 6 months, that if early modern ECRs need me to read cover letters, funding apps, article drafts, book proposals, etc, I am happy to take some of these on (with the proviso that I will reach capacity at some point!)

When will the UK government wake up to the wholesale destruction of HE that's happening? This affects towns and cites across the UK, our businesses, the NHS, schools, young people, our global standing, everything! Higher Education, Universities, contribute over £265 BILLION to the economy.

The Spectator published this attack on me & colleagues just as the High Court is considering Sussex’s request for review of the Office for Students fine. It accuses us of ‘repressing’ our students. The magazine ignored my request for to reply. Please disseminate. alanlester.co.uk/blog/smearin...

“And what would you like to do when you’re older?” New post asks how people became playwrights in Tudor England before the word even existed. Can you write a play a month? (Feat. cautionary tales on overcommitment and misdirected theatricality…) open.substack.com/pub/shakespe...

Wonderful to see that we have already started receiving abstracts for our upcoming conference this summer. If you are an early modernist studying violence from any discipline, do consider this opportunity to share your research with our network, and please help us spread the news! ⬇️

“AI; DR.” Next up: “AI slop” as this year’s playground insult? futurism.com/artificial-i...

Here's a graph showing the primary script used in early modern English letters plotted over time. This graph is based on 3,489 letters, 22% by women, with decent social coverage although lower ranks are underrepresented.

Proofs just in for A Golden World, featuring our glorious cover artwork ✨ A glittering new history of how the Americas transformed early modern England from award-winning historian @laurenworking.bsky.social, A Golden World is out 18 June and available to pre-order now. linktr.ee/agoldenworld

Excellent article: shows small-mindedness of punishing universities here on narrow, insular metrics out of their control. Seeing benefits of a degree in global terms changes conversation (+ it won’t be 2026 forever). (And in any case UK grad salaries still 45% premium on non grad: not nothing)

And in other news, the Pope is still Catholic. Universities have been judged on the employment prospects of graduates for years now, and it's never made any sense. Permanent austerity has led to a low skill labour market, where wealth is not associated with capability. Universities can't fix that.

As some of us having been saying for years…

The students 'win' £14 million because the law firm is pocketing 35%. There were 6500 students in this case, so that's about £2,000 each. Worth it for kicking #UKHE even further in crisis? Abominable law firm. Frustrating UCL didn't resist as WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN THE ALTERNATIVE COVID TEACHING?

Exactly. As a litigator, writing a pleading (a complaint, a motion, whatever) is how I end up making connections between disparate facts and case law, and arrive at the most cogent and persuasive argument I can make for my client. That process can never be farmed out.

Superb piece. “Writing means many different things to me but one thing it is not: writing is not the transcription of thoughts already consciously present in my mind. Writing is a magical and mysterious process that makes it possible to think differently.”

Meet Thomas the carter… New post follows Tudors moving around London, on the back of some recent research.  What did Shakespeare’s commute look like and who invented the one-way street? open.substack.com/pub/shakespe...

Stuck in traffic on your way to work? Here’s an excellent read from Callan Davies. A Shakespearean History of Traffic open.substack.com/pub/shakespe...

Those campuses could be £ funnelled into UK towns. Alas.

They took my desk, now they want my pension, well NO: (On strike today and tomorrow, off to join @ucunorthumbria.bsky.social picket line outside the law school, itll be cold and wet but sometimes you have to stand up and be counted.)

The study points to using libraries and visiting museums as bringing these enormous brain health benefits ... who would have thought? Well, librarians and museum folk for a start ... www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

closes TONIGHT

Would be good if the Prime Minister and/or Home Secretary would for once come out and describe this as the unadulterated racism and xenophobia it so clearly is.

🎟️Another couple of tickets sold for The Book of Sir Thomas More - it's a small room, and there aren't many spaces, so book now to avoid disappointment! More (ahem) on the event and other exciting developments in this thread.👉 #drama #theatre #live #DeepDive #unique #events

Apply to join the lovely community here at Soton for doctoral study! And we’re all ears for any pre-modern, early modern/theatre studies interests… ⤵️

Re-upping this splendid Arts & Humanities PhD opportunity, because we really need some good news!

AHRC Doctoral Landscape Awards @ Southampton Klaxon! Arts and humanities! Deadline March! Medieval studies proposals welcome! Deets on the webpage: www.southampton.ac.uk/doctoral-col...

Incandescent. One of the best pieces I've read about what university means to people and their communities - and what will happen to a city and people after one closes. The *Labour* government and Jaqui Smith in particular should be ashamed of themselves and shamed into doing something. Deplorable.

Essex University, Southend campus closure: 800 students and staff afected. "but it will also have a huge impact on a city that has come to depend on the university in many ways." #HigherEd #AcademicSky www.theguardian.com/environment/...

“The student becomes a suite of data points that the teacher or chatbot can nudge, track, and optimize. The university, meanwhile, is less the site of critical engagement than yet another platform for productivity enhancement.” read.dukeupress.edu/critical-ai/...