My new article has now been published in the 2025 volume of Traditio. I use a little examined episode on the lower Rhine in the late 350s with the aid of agricultural archaeology to reveal fiscal dependency relations between the Empire & Barbaricum, & the consequences of their rupture. #medievalsky

I'm very happy to see that my new article on the martyrs of Zaragoza is out in this year's Traditio. Many thanks to the Traditio team, who were wonderful to work with! doi.org/10.1017/tdo....

I'm very happy to see that my new article on the martyrs of Zaragoza is out in this year's Traditio. Many thanks to the Traditio team, who were wonderful to work with! doi.org/10.1017/tdo....

Wild stat in the FT: Coventry University spend 12% of *all* annual expenditure paying fees to middle-men who recruit international students 🤯

I genuinely don't understand who this kind of messaging from Kyle is for. Do red wall voters dream of Silicon valley in the fens? Are Economist subscribers a major voting bloc? Or does he just spend too much time talking fifteen or so guys from a handful of think tanks?

Hmmmmm. www.lbc.co.uk/article/brit...

Ditto

Would be easier to imagine journalism surviving the AI threat if certain journalists weren't equally, or rather more, prone to hallucination.

Relatedly, I think it's strange how little university AI conversations relate to the business context of all of this. (For good and for ill). You don't have to be an AI doomer to wonder whether the promises that these companies valuations can ever be made good.

AI question: Have any scholarly societies/journals/professional bodies put out policy statements on the use of LLMs in historical research? I'm aware of many on teaching and assessing, but not so many regarding research. There was a roundtable in the AHR in 2023, but this wasn't a policy piece.

Eye-opening stuff here from Clifford Ando on Chicago

Any #medievalsky members heading to the Leeds International Medieval Congress take care about emails from Global Travel Experts ([email protected]) asking you to 'confirm your booking.' Seems to be an elaborate scam & has targeted other international conferences: www.faops2024.org/gnuboard/bbs...

Really enjoyed writing this piece with @merleeisenberg.bsky.social on the use and abuse of "feudalism" in current political thinking. Thanks v much to @jacobinmag.bsky.social. Free to read here: jacobin.com/2025/05/capi...

Late to the party, I know. But here's my review of Peter Brown's autobiography, in which, among other things, I ask what the Brownian rethinking of the end of the Roman Empire tells us about thr intellectual history of Britain's own imperial twilight link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Late to the party, I know. But here's my review of Peter Brown's autobiography, in which, among other things, I ask what the Brownian rethinking of the end of the Roman Empire tells us about thr intellectual history of Britain's own imperial twilight link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The British media, especially newspapers, is also getting more detached from public opinion as it has an ever decreasing market, the draw of American clicks, and owners who are happy to treat them as loss-making vanity (and power) projects.

I met a Times journalist once and they spent the entire time quizzing me on why younger people are refusing to subscribe to the newspaper of record these days. They had this weird sense that they were entitled to people's attention, since the Times was the truly representative centre of Brit media.

What better way to celebrate Bradford's re-vamped Science & Media Museum (2025) than by closing the university's chemistry, film and television courses?

Apparently Clyde Pharr translated the Theodosian Code to own the libs (a healthier response than many today ...)

Good news for medievalists ... But on a serious note, is there any good work from pre-modern historians engaging with Varoufakis's "Technofeudalism" etc?

A reminder about the EME/BSR fellowship: a month's stay in Rome for someone doing/recently finished a PhD on early medieval European history. Deadline 31st January. bsr.ac.uk/second-bsr-e...

It's clear that there are particularly acute issues in funding for the humanities and arts, but I've also always found it eye-opening to speak to scientists about how bad things are getting in their disciplines. A general crisis.

Really interesting long essay on Netflix & the streamers. www.nplusonemag.com/issue-49/ess...

About a 10th of the number of Ukrainian refugee children state schools took in without any panicked coverage. Such nonsense.

I'm slightly surprised by the negative response from academics to Labour's axing of the Latin programme in certain states schools. What's a good reason to teach Lati to children, besides a hazy nostalgia for the bad old days of grammar schools and the cultural canon they cultivated?

Well this forthcoming book looks perfectly delightful from a great scholar: "Gardens in Northern Iberia in the Early Middle Ages: Practice, Product, and Sale" by Wendy Davies: academic.oup.com/book/58984

Very happy to see my new article on Paschasius of Dumium and the Iberian translation of the Apophthegmata patrum published (open access) in Al-Masaq. Features Atlantic-Mediterranean connectivity, Evagrius Ponticus, and a crocodile. doi.org/10.1080/0950...

Very happy to see my new article on Paschasius of Dumium and the Iberian translation of the Apophthegmata patrum published (open access) in Al-Masaq. Features Atlantic-Mediterranean connectivity, Evagrius Ponticus, and a crocodile. doi.org/10.1080/0950...

Re: being culpable, what's so unnerving about this line of argument is that it partakes in exactly the same demand for direct relevance that government and industry increasingly and (often) unreflectively make of universities.