Our CFP for our May 2026 conference is live! Please see the attachment or the thread for details about our upcoming conference on VICTORIAN TRADE

Delighted to be launching the Feminist Miscarriage Project! Please see our new website and we'll be updating on news and events soon: feministmiscarriageproject.org

Disappointment at Starmer’s ID cards on ice… BUT… - concern about illegal immigration exploded because the far right wanted it to. - immigrants are not to blame for creaking public services. Govts are. - the hostile environment encourages exploitation. - don’t wave the flag in our faces. Be honest.

I honestly don't think everyone talks enough about how amazing it was when the world came together to fix the hole in the ozone layer, so I wrote this: everythingisamazing.substack.com/p/lets-all-r... It's a good reminder of what we're capable of.

Reform's highest-profile politician in Wales spread a false cancer claim and recruited people into a multi-level marketing scheme. Before her current stint as an MS, Laura Anne Jones made wildly misleading and pseudoscientific claims to promote a business model in which...

“Sharia courts” are not legally binding in the UK. They only carry weight if both disputed parties *choose* to follow their judgement. It’s like a friend informally mediating a dispute. This needs to be stated in such debates because this inflammatory rhetoric needs to be brought back to reality.

Eighteenth-century precedents and 21st-century threats.

Goffman, "Casting one’s endeavor in the more respectable forms of the mature sciences is often just a rhetoric. In the main I believe we’re just not there yet. And I like to think that accepting these limits and working like a one-armed botanist is what a social naturalist unashamedly has to do."

Historians, entirely unsurprised by genetic ancestry research since 1949

These ID cards, if introduced, will also absolutely be used to further that awful, bigoted new guidance about trans people not being allowed into public toilets in the UK. There are so many reasons to be against them. I've signed, & if you're a UK citizen, you can, too.

Over 620k signatures already. Gotta hand it to Labour - just when you think they’ve peaked, they always find a bigger rake.

The second best way to support me is to get engaged with my Resistance Studies Series! I am going to teach my popular Race, Media and International Affairs 101 again! Weekly online lectures + discussion sections. Sign up here: www.resistancesummerschool.com/fall-2025-re...

I so enjoyed reading this in @nplusonemag.com: @lilyscherlis.bsky.social thinking about groups, group relations, Bion, the left as she moves between experiences in a Palestine encampment and in the annual Tavistock Institute of Human Relations group conference www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/ess...

Ok. They’ve pissed me off. I’m back to tell you 3 things about ID cards: 1. Migrants ALREADY HAVE biometric ID cards & govts have been trying to digitise them for years w repeated fuckups & failures causing complete chaos - they don’t work, you do not want that system for you.

2. Countries that have ID cards - like the whole of Europe - still have the same irregular migration problem (you may have heard!!!) & in fact the UK has the lowest share of its economy estimated as irregular economy in Europe so if it fixes the issue WHY DIDNT IT FIX IT THERE?

3. ⁠this is not the moment for an incredibly expensive increase in state surveillance infrastructure to be run for profit by private tech firms just before Labour ushers in an (even more) authoritarian right wing government. FIX THE GODDAMN COST OF LIVING INSTEAD YOU FREAKS.

Important counter-point to the idea that trans people have to die young: we don't.

Rachel Ayers highlights six of the many fine retellings of the fairy ballad Tam Lin. I was honoured to publish @pameladean.bsky.social's extraordinary Tam Lin in the Fairy Tale Series (Tor Books), and I'm delighted to see it listed as one of the greats. It truly is. reactormag.com/a-knight-to-...

1. What makes you think immigration isn't tightly controlled? It has been since at least 1905

Discover India's rich humanist heritage from ancient Charvaka philosophy to modern secular ideals. Join our expert panel discussion on 16 October online. humanists.uk/events/explo...

We are hiring 5 new postdocs (for 5 years) to work on our Wellcome project in Edinburgh. Deadline next week. For more info on the jobs & the project, head to our website www.medicinewithoutdoctors.org/blog-posts/j... Please share widely!

And you make the problem worse when you don't immediately point out that the "illegal" number is actually UNDER ONE PERCENT.

We need an associate lecturer in history of modern science @stsucl.bsky.social www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

With Pumpkin Spice Satan causing problems at the UN this week it was easy to miss the UN General Assembly's Fourth High-level Meeting on the prevention and control of NCDs and the promotion of mental health and wellbeing. Details here for those of us needing to catch up www.who.int/teams/noncom...

One of the unexpected things I've learned from my advocacy for trans people is how malignant parts of the State can be, how it can misuse data for positively evil purposes. It's taught me people can't be safe with a digital ID card and so I've signed this. petition.parliament.uk/petitions/73...

The success of the far right is not only measured in votes and seats but in its impact on rhetoric, policy and ideology. The fact that a (nominally) social democratic head of government with a huge majority choses to say and do this is maybe the biggest success of the far right in Europe yet.

24) I really like SFF in conversation with older work, but that inspired by recently popular stuff - i.e. chasing the zeitgeist - is far less often compelling. Much more interesting to chart your own course than to chase a trend that if it's visible will be past its peak when you public.

9) Good 'crap' is awesome. Pulpy pew pew lasers. Taut urban fantasy. McGuffin-motivated, heavily worldbuilt epic fantasy. Love it. Crap crap is terrible. Cardboard characters, prose that actively gets in the way (& not on purpose), incoherent plotting. The latter's increasingly dwarfing the former

Activists and advocates can draw parallels between historical struggles and ongoing fights for equality. These #GermanGayRightsMovement texts are reminders of the progress made and the work that remains. #lgbtqHistory #MagnusHirschfeld Magnus Hirschfeld www.amazon.com/dp/B0CW1CCLYZ

Translations of texts from the Early #GermanGayRightsMovement hold the echoes of defiance, resilience, and love—elements that resonate across time and awaken empathy. 🌈#MagnusHirschfeld (Magnus Hirschfeld) Karl Ulrichs #lgbtqHistory #Transgender #Intersex www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9S9CGXD

We're back! 🎉 And we're thrilled to announce our term card for Autumn 2025! Our first event is on Thursday 16 October at 5.30 pm. Lyndal Roper will be discussing 'Turbulence and the German Peasants' War of 1524-6'. You can register to attend the event at: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

The Herbert G. Gutman Prize for Outstanding Dissertation in U.S. Labor and Working-Class History is now open for submissions! Full details here: go.illinois.edu/UIPGutmanPrize cc: @laborlawchajournal.bsky.social

I firmly oppose the government’s plans for compulsory digital ID cards. This is an affront to our civil liberties, and will make the lives of minorities even more difficult and dangerous. It is excessive state interference — and must be resisted.

This seems like a good time to repost this thread…. 💉

I cannot stress how important it is that the issue of police records is dealt with and not brushed under the carpet as it has been for decades. The fact that they aren't Public Records is an accident of history, but the impact of this lack of regulatory control is immense.

People have a right to privacy. The people pushing this scheme such as Tony Blair Institute and Palantir along with Starmer's authoritarian government cannot be trusted.

We have published a new Policy Paper by @jmoss88.bsky.social & @emilyrobinson.bsky.social. They argue that Mass Observation @massobsarchive.bsky.social should be revived with state funding to help us understand the reasons behind contemporary voter apathy. historyandpolicy.org/policy-paper...

This year’s programme for our IHR seminar in Contemporary British History is coming together This side of Xmas we’re excited to welcome @katrinanavickas.bsky.social @garylove.bsky.social @evansmithhist.bsky.social @dohertyta.bsky.social If you’d like to present next spring/summer, drop me a line!

In the 1980s, your Gran bought her Council House, at a huge discount. Over 2 million were sold in the UK. Councils paid-off debts with this money and didn't build new ones. That's why ALL people stay in crap, failed 'Hotels'. I was in 'Emergency Housing' for 4 years. Don't blame immigrants.

my team in zurich is holding a 2-day conference (at uni zurich!) on the history of science of 20th century agriculture, focusing on third-world connections between Africa and Asia. come one come all -- private papers circulated on day 2, email/msg me or anyone on the team 🗃️ #HistSci

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin ✨ figured out what stars are made of ✨ when she was just 25. 🔭🧪 Her PhD thesis basically established the Harvard astro department — at a time when Harvard didn't officially allow woman students. I wrote this little profile to mark the 100th anniversary of her thesis:

One of the cruellest and most devastating diseases known to humanity, Huntington's disease, has been successfully treated for the first time in our history. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Our Graduate Open House on Zoom is in just a couple of weeks, 10/06, 4pm Eastern, to learn more about our program / meet current faculty and students. wayne-edu.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Are you interested in working with me or one of my great colleagues here at Wayne State Anthropology? We have strong guaranteed PhD funding, lots of MA opportunities (some funded) and a really collegial and inclusive program! clas.wayne.edu/anthropology...

I think we need to ressurect political nihilism as an analysis category to explain what is happening in the United States.

This is a structural problem, and it’s not any artist’s fault that they don’t have this. It’s an enormous luxury for most people these days! But your work suffers if you don’t go out and live outside your craft for a bit. You find you have fewer and fewer things to say. You become self-referential.

Quite. So many Labour people on this website visibly have no idea of just how bad things have got for ethnic minorities since they came on, and how their visible indifference lands.

From the original Swedish researchers.

The construction of masculinity in far-right attacker manifestos in the west: the reification of hegemonic masculinity and the use of ‘the child’ to mobilise others www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

📣Reminder that the deadline is coming soon!