Thanks mighty @learncardiff.bsky.social, so proud of this truly co-created podcast, critically exploring 14 years of university/community partnership working. Lots more about it on my LinkedIn account - find me there! @flintdibble.bsky.social @webstermedieval.bsky.social @ltotelin.bsky.social

As expected, and as history predicted. Sex and gender tests are fundamentally about keeping women *out* of sport.

That’s not good statistic ☹️ 20 years ago I wrote 5or 6 PGCE references a year for language UGs going into teaching. The numbers of both students and those wanting to go into teaching have declined steadily since then. I can’t remember the last time I did a PGCE reference…

Anyone interested in medieval fakes should plan a trip to Paris. The Musée Cluny has a show from 7 Oct. to 11 Jan., www.musee-moyenage.fr/activites/pr... and the Archives nationales has one from 15 Oct. to 2 Feb.:

Why is this horrible for Universities? Just about everyone who isn't a citizen or green card holder already who's hired for a tenure track faculty position is hired through an H1B and then, after 3-5 years, applies for a green card. This is literally "No more foreign professors can be hired"

Sounds very familiar. The sign of HE consultancy firms. The thing is, I'm not against a common first year a priori (in many ways, that is what I had as year 1 of 4), but the devil is in the various diktats re what, why and how things should be taught

1/At Macquarie Uni we are losing 50% of our units in my faculty. This is on top of cuts in 2020. We estimate by next year my faculty will be teaching 80% fewer subjects than pre Covid. Disciplines being cut do not have declining enrolments. @jennaprice.bsky.social @michaelwestbiz.bsky.social

I'm not longer in the archive front-line since retiring, but I'd be interested to know if this is also becoming an issue with archives: hallucinated archival citations, possibly to whole collections? ascribing them to wrong repository? I can envisage nightmarish possibilities.

Displacement of local populations in the name of safeguarding World Heritage is a practice that should be discouraged. I’m surprised it is still being done anywhere. We have come a long way since this was common practice, but I guess we still have a way to go. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

"Anyone who works in manuscript studies or philology knows that these are thoroughly digital disciplines. ... Accusations of technophobia ... would therefore be completely inappropriate. It is precisely our technical literacy ... that must make us critical." @dehypotheses.bsky.social

I wonder what Phil Baty makes of this? 🤔 www.sorbonne-universite.fr/en/news/sorb...

Rare books people! Following some lively & productive discussion at the @livesandletters.bsky.social conference last week, I have a question: how would you describe inscriptions like these?

A history / science Q: Isaac Newton is said to have believed that all his discoveries had been known to the 'ancients' (Pythagoras, Euclid etc.). I'd like to find that quote. It is NOT the 'standing on the shoulders of giants' that I'm thinking of, nor the boy playing on the seashore. Anyone plz?

Very much enjoying the culture of trust and respect implicit in the installation of room usage monitoring devices on academics' office doors today. Imagine my shock on discovering that managers' doors remain unsullied…

In addition to this, my university and some others don’t employ new staff any more. They’re hired via a subsidiary company so new staff don’t get the USS or TPS pension - a massive pay cut imposed on already badly-paid, precarious people. I hate it.

Eurovision has never been about politics? Lol. My dad used to watch the Eurovisoon (before they changed the voting system) mostly for the political aspect. I learnt a lot from his comments.

Returning from a week away with a #MosaicMonday from Somerset Museum. The East Coker mosaic. Showing two successful hunters carrying home a deer with their hunting dog. The hunters' clothing is typical of the second half of the 4th century AD. #ClassicsBlueSky #AncientBlueSky #Archaeology #Roman

I'm looking forward to my twelfth time meeting new History students at Derby tomorrow and seeing where their interests and talents take them. It really is a privilege and one I hope we can share for years to come. History matters.

I’m going to suggest a more efficient business model for @crosscountryuk.bsky.social. If my train arrives at the destination (at all, or on time), THEN I’ll pay you. Save us both the deliberately tortuous system of me paying upfront then claiming a delay refund every single time.

Well, Aelian I.9 tells me that when a lion is ill, the only way it is cured is to eat a monkey. So it's not certain how reliable he is, but so far he's entertaining!

##TinyJoy crossing the Severn Bridge as the clouds (sort of) lift and at low tide (always even more beautiful as you get a better view of the mud flats).

It makes me really sad that the UK has dropped off the list of places I consider "safe" for LGBTQ+ college students to pursue a study abroad semester program, and is getting close to being a place I'd worry about for students of color.

Helen Adelaide Wood (1860-1927) was a botanical artist and scientific illustrator known for her illustrations held at the Natural History Museum of Jamaica. Her artwork collection has been inscribed on the UNESCO Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Memory of the World Register.

If now is not a good moment for all UK government channels and all democratic parties and organisations to close their Twitter/X accounts, then when is?

Reminded me of this lovely book I used to read to the boys Stanley's Stick by Neal Layton.

News from Finland. A 9-year-old lost an especially good stick he’d had since he was 2. He hung up 20 posters. A few days later it was returned. It had been found by a 2-year-old, who wanted to keep it for herself, but her mother made her return it. She got toys, flowers and candy as a reward.

Welcome week is in a week's time. I don't have my timetable. I can't confirm with colleagues whether I can give a paper on a specific day. I can't confirm PhD vivas. Central timetabling is a nightmare.

This is brilliant by @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social I too remember when it was perfectly normal to be hit on by adult men when I was 13 and barely had breasts. Nobody did a thing, not even the police. I was very lucky to have an incredibly fierce dad who did care. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Problematic (to put it kindly) on so many levels. 1) there isn't really 'unfunded' research. The REF is there to allocate resources so that research is possible without a grant.

The talented Louis Ginnett painted this mural for Brighton + Hove Grammar School Sussex in 1937 Entitled *Hollingbury Camp: Full Circle* it depicts the excavation of a Bronze Age burial The motorcyclist is TE Lawrence, who died in 1935 Did he really visit a dig in Brighton? 🤔 #HillfortsWednesday

This hurts my soul - my heart axtuslly ached reading this, thinking of the future generations of knowledge that will never be, of students unable to specialise in languages, pursue music, read Latin, take up English literature, become an Art critic, write history. This is how cultures wither & die.

Historian of science here: it’s worth pointing out that getting paid for doing research is a fairly recent thing. William Harvey did his research as a hobby, as it were. So did Charles Darwin.

'Analysis of almost 45,000 courses in Times Higher Education’s Courses 360 databases found that roughly 3,900 had shut down between 2024-25 and the upcoming academic year.' 1/2

Exciting to hear that QMUL will then again be a very humanities university, as our humanities departments are the ones scoring high in REF, well above our science departments... [Sarcastic. This kind of language is coverage for cuts and misunderstands the cumulative role of small-scale research.]

Our book in honour of Liba Taub is (finally) out. I'm so pleased we could celebrate Liba in this way!

#OnThisDay - 11 September - in one of the most famous Vindolanda Letters, Claudia Severa invites Sulpicia Lepidina to a birthday party. While a secretary wrote the main text, she herself added the postscript. 🏺 Image: British Museum (1986,1001.64). Link - britishmuseum.org/collection/o...

#TinyJoy spending some time in the Wellcome Library, just in passing for an hour and a bit, but enough to boost my mood.

My periodic reminder that the British Dylexia Association has a great styleguide. Basically, don't interfere with the formatting suggested by your word processor, unless you want to increase the spacing between lines.

For #MosaicMonday, a mosaic emblema of Hylas and the nymphs, set into a huge floor of standard sized white tesserae, with a nested set of black borders and a guilloche strand. The emblema is done in micro-mosaic, to appear painterly. Zoom in. #ancientbluesky 🏺 1/ 📸 me

We're #hiring a part-time Events and Comms Assistant! Love nature? Good with social media? Want hands-on experience in events and science communication? Come help us run talks, walks, and workshops that connect people with the natural world 🌿 Find out more and apply now: buff.ly/xPyXgvM

#TinyJoy: writing a book review that was very delayed. It actually only took 1.5 hour to write - I just needed that time and the right frame of mind - not always an easy combination when there are so many demands on my time.

Sigh... a UCU ballot on pay forthcoming.

1 like = 1 interesting I read in Greek inscriptions (or read about in SEG or BE)

Out yesterday to Thornham Parva, a tiny church in the centre of Suffolk which houses an amazing medieval retable behind the altar. St Edmund, patron of Suffolk, shows us one of the arrows he was martyred by, whilst St Margaret of Antioch bursts out of the dragon that swallowed her.

This whole test should have been far better organised to ensure that those people who need to have secret phones, such as domestic abuse victims, have been far better informed about how to prevent the alerts. It's been primarily left to charities to raise that awareness. www.bbc.com/news/article...

On HE consultants. Has your course been subjected to red-amber-green ratings? Are you being told to 'consolidate your offering'? Are you told that certain forms of teaching are inefficient (small group teaching)? A consultancy firm such as Nous might well be at play here.

What's Nigel Farage's problem with solar panels?

A good piece about the situation in Australia HE (several years ahead of the rest of the Anglosphere in destroying its sector). Consultants must go - but before that happens, knowledge of what they do must increase among uni communities. Many don't even know consultants are involved in the debacle.

Timeless humour! A 2,000 year-old Roman souvenir pen with a joke inscription roughly equivalent to: “I went to Rome and all I got you was this cheap pen!" 😂 Dated circa 70 AD, this iron stylus pen was recovered in London during excavations by MOLA. 📷 Juan Jose Fuldain/MOLA #Archaeology