Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

What can petitions to magistrates from London apprentices tell us about gendered violence in #EarlyModern England? New addition from Hilary Taylor to the #PowerOfPetitioning annotated bibliography: petitioning.history.ac.uk/2019/05/13/p...

Quite a big deal this - there will be a few VCs and governing bodies across UK reading the fine print… @wonkhe.bsky.social wonkhe.com/blogs/the-fi...

Nigel Farage looks uncomfortable as Jamie Raskin uses his opening statement to absolutely demolish him

Autumn schedule for @ihr.bsky.social 's British History in the Long 18th Century fortnightly seminar is now live. @long18thsem.bsky.social. Join us in person at the IHR in London or on Zoom, for Mansfield on the Chevalier d'Eon, servants' travel, rhetorics of slavery, Bengal textile workers & more.

Instead of regurgitating the bromide that LLMs are just "autocomplete on steroids" (even by people who know better), maybe we can actually engage in some public education. The problem with genAI is better expressed through a classic computer science concept, known as SYMBOL GROUNDING. 🧵

I’ll be speaking about my book online with Simon Devereaux on 24 Sept (not the 25th as it says in some places - completely my fault for confusing the lovely @thenacbs.bsky.social organisers!). RSVP! #skystorians www.nacbs.org/event-detail...

'We’ve just got the institution level allocations for 2025-26, which have been constructed by Research England according to DSIT’s previously stated requirements.' With a handy link for checking your (English) university's allocation for the year.

If the marketing team is struggling to understand what universities do and are for, they can read this by a former Warwick professor, HoD, research centre founder/director and PVC. 3/3

If most of your problems can (theoretically) be resolved by shifting the base rate of income tax by a few pence then they're not really structural, they're political. And while that's a non-trivial hurdle to get over it does at least suggest that there remains daylight between the centre and right.

... and here's the complete list: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/... Three new seminars for 2025/26: African History, Migration & Mobility, and Planetary Histories. Programmes coming soon. Watch this space...

As someone actually trained in behavioural psychology—unlike most MPs—I can tell you: financial precarity doesn’t “incentivise” sick people to work. It breaks them. Stress worsens health. Fear doesn’t create productivity. It creates collapse. #TakingThePIP

IS's 8 foci: 'the areas where the government saw the greatest potential for growth – the “picking of winners” that has characterised industrial strategies over the years. The eight that were chosen were less STEM-heavy than previous iterations of the strategy.' 1/2

Reinforcements have arrived, our Civil War minifigures are back in stock! Get yours today... shop.cromwellmuseum.org/products/civ...

📣New blog! How can a map of medieval homicides help teach about law, violence and society? @stephemmabrown.bsky.social shows how mapping coroners’ rolls from London, York & Oxford can give new insights into the realities of medieval urban life 📜 Read more: socialhistory.org.uk/shs_exchange...

My latest, a response to the tedious ‘but people are wrong, crime is actually falling!’ brigade. Shout out to @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk who inspired the piece.

'Mobilising Imperial History: Crime, Policing and Control in the British Empire'. Call for papers: deadline extended to Friday 16 May 2025

We have had last minute change of schedule - instead join us next week to hear seminar co-convenor Tim Hitchcock discuss his latest research (conducted with Bob Shoemaker) on policing and criminal justice in the late 18th century, at the usual time of 17:30 at the IHR and online. @ihr.bsky.social

Call for convenors for a relaunched BSA Historical and Comparative Sociology Study Group. The group will provide a forum for sociologists and other social scientists using history and historical methods in their research and teaching tinyurl.com/4ryp4dvu #Sociology

Interesting piece on Barnes & Noble, Waterstones and what happens when you put someone who loves books in charge of a bookshop: www.honest-broker.com/p/what-can-w...

There will be a launch in the new year! I will also be discussing the book with @serenadyer.bsky.social at a free online meeting of the Northampton-Leicester HA @histassoc.bsky.social on 11 March: www.eventbrite.com/e/in-convers...

We're recruiting a Book Reviews Editor! This is a great role for ECRs working in Modern British History (broadly defined). Details at the link below. Any questions, don't hesitate to get in touch with Hannah! 🗃️ academic.oup.com/tcbh/pages/c...

We've created a Starter Pack of #History societies and groups working to support promote our disciple and historians, in higher education and related professions go.bsky.app/68FsvjY Mainly UK but also international, with selected societies from related humanities subjects. Please share #Skystorians

Well, hello Bluesky. This is quite remarkably like the other place