Yesterday my 14yo told us she wants to rewrite her English coursework because the school’s AI checker gave it an 80% score (ie 4 in 5 chance it was written using GenAI). It definitely wasn’t. Another way AI is fucking over the kids. I hate it so much.

Recent Victorianist posts — a thread 🧵

I genuinely feel sick. A company reached out to me on IG, linking me to an AI version of myself. You can even ask "me" questions. They are also advertising it using an AI photo of me. They told me if I like it, they will give me free access... to my own fucking content that they stole. /1

As an academic at the sharp end of this, I think there’s a good paedagogic logic for exams! It used to be why memorise stuff when the internet knows everything. Now the internet is full of slop you’d better have an internalised body of knowledge against which to benchmark it to know what’s true.

Every summer I repost this article on how to spot drowning. Please read it and pass on. In the last few years I’ve had SIX messages from people who saved a kid’s life after clicking on the link from my feed. slate.com/technology/2...

John Stuart Mill, influential philosopher and Liberal MP for Westminster, 1865-1868 was born 220 years ago today. In 1866, Mill presented the first mass petition to the Commons in favour of women's suffrage, as @kathrynrix.bsky.social explores below.

Nigel Farage’s claim that he paid for a £1.4mn house with his fee from a reality TV show has been challenged by corporate accounts that appear to show that the income remained on his company’s balance sheet after the property purchase. www.ft.com/content/88ce...

I'm sorry, what? In writing my first monograph, I spent six weeks trying to track down a citation in TWO languages I didn't know. And good thing too, because the citation was wrong. That's scholarship. That's research. You know, the thing we're trained to do?!?

And yet the hype continues.

A rare piece of very good news. “Landmark ME study will map patients’ DNA in mission to find cure” www.thetimes.com/article/5067...

Must-have new compilation from Hackett, edited and introduced by Greg Conti

*laughs in archivist* It always amuses me at how little historical material is actually not only digitized but also made available online compared to what lay people think.

Is the UK's science base being eroded by policy, or by sleepwalking? As Britons head to the polls, it's timely to recall the hustings at the Royal Society before the last GE. All 3 parties there pledged to support science, & confirmed that included SHAPE disciplines. 1/9

Reform UK Treasurer and Donors Share London Address with Sanctioned Russian Oligarchs Reform UK’s Treasurer and three other donors have handed £1.55 million to Nigel Farage from Britain’s most expensive apartment block which is home to sanctioned Russian oligarchs and massive post-Soviet wealth

Here's Nigel Farage's "Tiktok guru" and adviser, Jack Anderton, telling GB News that he would be "worried" if the Jewish population was growing in the UK. When do we start seeing all the coverage about the antisemitism crisis in Reform UK?

Higher education in the UK just got much lower. How much lower will it sink before your MP notices and speaks out?

How @camunicampop.bsky.social researchers are turning static snapshots of Victorian Britain into dynamic life histories. The team are linking over 200 million census records, revealing how people moved, worked and lived in ways never before possible. 🔎 Read on 👉 www.hist.cam.ac.uk/news/tracing...

2014 REF: 2026: closing UG History

My Dad has carers who come in three times a day - all overseas workers. They do amazing work; work I know I could never do. With tens of thousands of vacancies across social care, we fundamentally need people to come here and take these jobs. I wrote more here: open.substack.com/pub/nicolake...

📢Online book event! Join us next week to hear more about Deserted Wives and Economic Divorce in 19th Century England and Wales. @drjenniferaston.bsky.social in conversation with @afroide.bsky.social 📅April 30 ⏰12pm noon ET Free and open to the public Info and RSVP: www.nacbs.org/event-detail...

🥳 _Advertising Pornography, 1822-1870_ is now available on Nineteenth Century Data Collective! This is a package of two complementary datasets derived from advertising material issued by major figures in the early Victorian pornography trade. One draws on sales catalogues, one on periodical ads +

Farage thugs manhandle man with pacemaker after he objects to the Reform leader's chauffeur parking in disabled bay that he needs to use. Lovely People. www.mirror.co.uk/news/politic...

I'm pleased to announce I'm a founding co-editor of the new @manchesterup.bsky.social book series, Radical Histories. Do let me know if you have a proposal for a book that fits our inclusive remit on radical histories. manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/series/radic...

On 3 April 1721, Robert Walpole became First Lord of the Treasury. Read Dr Robin Eagles' article for #HistParl to find out more about Walpole's rise to power.

🔔Hear ye, hear ye🔔 New blog post by me & Len Smith: 'Women in the Private Asylum Business in Nineteenth-Century England'. Hosted by the Economic History Society's The Long Run, we argue that these women open up mental health histories in a whole new way. #HistPsych #HistSTM #HistGender #HistMed 🗃️

The world has moved on and there seems to be a collective determination to forget. But to ignore the findings of the Inquiry disrespects the sacrifices of those who held key services together and those who died. It would leave us as unprepared for the next pandemic as we were for this one. 18/19

🧵The Covid Inquiry’s latest reports have made one thing brutally clear: the first year of the pandemic - and especially the second Covid wave in winter 2020/21 - was devastating. Much of that devastation was avoidable. This 🧵: impact on NHS, impact on bereaved, and avoidable harm. 1/19

This happened to me yesterday when this company secretly recorded a scholarly seminar I hosted on Zoom and posted it. I was able to get it removed, but WTF.

Controversial but - students *perceive* they have been failed when what has happened is they have failed to understand information retrieval is a skill requiring effort. I don't believe a zero friction experience is realistic or desirable in learning, actually.

Ooh, I've been waiting for someone to publish an article on this! @henryjmiller.bsky.social on 'Petitions and the Material Culture of Political Organisation', including petitioning as a 'technology' and the physicality of gathering subscriptions. #OpenAccess: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

I’m delighted to discover that the second-hand set of books I ordered once belonged to the late Malcolm Chase. I have always valued the sense of connection with scholars I admire that comes with the circulation of books, and it’s nice to know that I can give a good home to these volumes.

JOB Assistant Professor of Political Theory University of Cambridge @thecambridgeschool.bsky.social www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/univers...

On the assault on scholarship and the defence of the humanities for democratic values. www.gov.ie/en/departmen...

Taoiseach Micheál Martin speaking at Trinity College, Cambridge, to mark the announcement of Professor Alvin Jackson as the first holder of the Childers Professorship in Modern Irish History, a new university chair endowed by a donation from the government of Ireland.

Frank Prochaska (1941-2026) - always amusing, often shrewd, articulate and perceptive historian of philanthropy in modern Britain. www.some.ox.ac.uk/news/dr-fran...

"large language models such as ChatGPT were consistently advising women to ask for lower salaries than men in recruitment processes,... AI tools already in use by more than half of England’s councils were downplaying women’s medical conditions, potentially resulting in unequal care"

🚨Job klaxon 🚨 Come and be my colleague at York! We're looking for an Associate Lecturer in Modern British History and Public History. Two year post - apply by 19 March. 🗃️ More details here www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQO971/a...

I suspect this polling outcome has something to do with the Russian disinformation campaign debated in parliament on Monday. Urging media to portray Starmer as just like his atrocious Tory predecessors is a key goal. ‘They’re all the same’ works to undermine democracy.

Next in our #1832AtoZ is W for Women. Our Victorian Commons website has several articles exploring women’s involvement in 19th century politics, from local government electors to political wives, and from petitioners to electoral patrons. For links, see victoriancommons.wordpress.com/2018/02/02/b...

This is what we're up against. Bangor University, that fine and noble institution where I've spoken twice, nearly 150 years young and still going strong. The sheer hatred they reserve for us shows what could happen after 2029, but also that they're frightened of knowledge and learning.

The Ministry of Justice has ordered the deletion of the UK’s largest court reporting archive. This risks undermining open justice, and I believe, undermines the public accountability role of the press by making it harder to see what is going on in the courts. www.thetimes.com/article/77b0...

The British Women's Suffrage Movement in 100 Objects: a material history - FORTHCOMING IN JULY womanandhersphere.com/2026/02/09/t...

18 month postdoc at the lovely IHR in London, $41,740. Deadline 7 March. 'The Fellow will play a key role within the IHR team responsible for hosting the 2027 North American Conference in British Studies (NACBS)' in London 2027. Repost to spread the word. #Skystorians

Attention Firefox users! Starting with the next rollout, Firefox is adding a "disable all generative AI features" button. www.findarticles.com/firefox-will...

The National Archives are hiring a Poor Law Research Assistant (39k for 2 years) working on Paul Carter's AHRC project on poverty/welfare in Wales, 1834-1930. Deadline 16 Dec. www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi...

This thread very helpfully explains the conspiracy theory to which a taxi driver recently treated me.

Interested in writing as a way of 'doing' politics? Then read this new collection of essays, Writing Politics in Modern Britain, edited by @richardtoye.bsky.social & @garylove.bsky.social www.cambridge.org/core/books/w...