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When I moved to London 5 years ago, I did not think that I would ever wonder if it was safe to move through the city just because of the color of my skin. Today, this is the case. Yet again. Far-right agitators and thugs are roaming the streets. Empowered and emboldened by the rhetoric and politics

Good week for books! 📚 In chronological order: 1) Mon: exciting haul from Afrori Books 😎 2) Tues: @sharondoduaotoo.bsky.social’s latest 🫶🏽 3) Weds: Stasi monograph co-written with @profsarajones.bsky.social& Betiel Wasihun 🤓 4) Fri: my first trip to The Bookish Type in Leeds 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

absolutely wild to see people out here saying that it is responsibility of peer reviewers to check for hallucinated references. it is hard enough to persuade people to read articles and provide reviews. expecting them to spend hours cross reffing literature is unreal.

Do you know someone interested in the history of health and/or activism who might want to do a cool funded PhD in an even cooler city (Glasgow)? Tell them about this #studentship on the history of unorthodox health activism in Britain! #HistMed www.strath.ac.uk/studywithus/...

New post on RefugeeHistory.org by Emma Dal Mas on international Catholic action for children in the early Cold War: refugeehistory.org/blog/2026/5/...

How a kindergarten teacher became the accidental guardian of 200 king penguins

The next Black Feminist Reading Group meeting, organised by Glory Oluwaseun, is on Tuesday 26 May. Do not miss it!

No Future: Anniversary Edition: Punk, Politics, and British Youth Culture, 1976-1984 by Matthew Worley – Book Review @johnrobbofficial.bsky.social #punkbook “...for anyone trying to make sense of what happens when a generation decides it has nothing left to lose. louderthanwar.com/no-future-an...

Yesterday Kier Starmer announced Labour will nationalise British Steel, and save 2700 jobs. Today, the Uni of Nottingham put 2700 staff at risk of redundancy. This is just one university. Across the UK 15,000 higher education jobs need saving. Where is the rescue package for our universities?

Please do read my recently published article in Past and Present on caste, and indentured Indian sanitary workers on ships and in colonial South Africa.

'Birmingham City University has blamed low demand after deciding to close its master’s course in black studies just a year after it launched.' Yet another example of commitment (sic) to racial equality in higher education. Shocking after a 1-year trial. 1/3

Also published today in Transactions: Peter Gatrell's article 'The "RefugeeWorld": A Twentieth-Century Retrospective' bit.ly/49nWmtg This is an article version of Peter's 2025 Prothero Lecture given in July last year. Now available free Open Access 1/2 #Skystorians

Annual Hobsbawm Memorial Lecture, 18 June 2026, 18:00-21:00 at Birkbeck: Toby Green, 'History at the 'End of History': Inequality and Discourse in the Age of Reimperialism'. #Skystorians

What happens when we lose a language?

Historical research does not need to be done faster or in greater volume for any social or intellectual purpose whatever; if anything, it needs to be done more slowly and deliberately than at present, by people allowed the training, time, space, and resources to do it that way.

now thats an anecdote with a punch, from Gillian Tett www.ft.com/content/c0ae...

It’s nearly time for our national diary day! Every 12th May we ask people to write down what they got up to. This year we’re also really interested in experiences of nature and wellbeing, as well as what else you get up to on the day! #diary #journal #nature #skystorians #write #Archive

Registration is now open!!!!!

My friend (<- they don't get to deny this) @sexhistorian.bsky.social is advertising for a PhD stipend. It's an amazing project at an amazing department with amazing supervisors, and if you know anyone suitable, let them know. www.strath.ac.uk/studywithus/...

Knowledge & understanding grow in university settings when experts disagree with each other, testing each others' claims, adducing different evidence & positing alternative scenarios. That's how change happens. In this thread, I suggest that we take a different approach to that featured here. 1/x

University of Hertfordshire closes a swathe of Humanities courses, accelerating the sweeping tide against Human-centred disciples in the UK. Because understanding humans is so yesterday today. With such happy consequences, as we see when we look around us.

MBS2026 is next month! Please note that registration closes on May 12. The conference and registration link is available here: www.birmingham.ac.uk/events/moder...

Like a gut punch, this quietly spoken sentence from Lubaina Himid who is representing the UK at the Venice Biennale www.ft.com/content/2a58...

On 11th May we're taking the 'Women Strikes Back' exhibition to Wellspring Settlement in Barton Hill. We're also excited for our 'Chai & Chat' session with the wonderful women at Dhek Bhal!

We have an *extremely* important announcement to make. From Wednesday, we will be launching our puffin live cam, coming to you from the Farne Islands. So you can watch puffins all day long. In celebration, please enjoy this clip of puffins being really busy for 39 seconds straight.

“Belfastmen: An Intimate History of Life before Gay Liberation” @cornellupress.bsky.social featured in the Guardian! 🥹 www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

✨ THE RAYMOND WILLIAMS FOUNDATION TARGETED GRANTS SCHEME 2026 The RWF invites applications for up to five grants of up to £1,500 to support self-organised adult learning activities or events. Apply by Sunday 9th Aug 2026. Details: www.raymondwilliamsfoundation.org.uk/grants

I'm really looking forward to chairing this launch for Matthew Hilton's excellent new book, Charity After Empire, for the @ihrbritainseminar.bsky.social, on 14 May. Come one come all! Details and sign up are included in the link below.

Hurray! My first academic monograph exploring the controversial hit musical Kiss Me, Kate is now available on @academic.oup.com for purchase by university libraries. Full citation below. More on UK and international preorders as well as events next week and so on.

Looking forward to this tomorrow! More info below.

On protecting what matters. @ihr.bsky.social @royalhistsoc.org @histassoc.bsky.social History UK www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

Restorative Justice - Seeing the practical impact on certain communities and being a teeny tiny part of this truly makes me proud. The whole team works INCREDIBLY hard. Words can heal and actions can build. www.theguardian.com/news/2026/ap...

📢 Term 3 of @ihr.bsky.social @cont-brit-hist.bsky.social seminar begins next Weds 29 April @5.30pm & you can see what's coming up in programme curated by co-convener @benmechen.bsky.social between now & June. Come join us in-person or online to hear great papers & to 'talk history'. Full details 👇.📢

Thrilled to come back from hols to see this is out! The issue of welfare fraud is something I care deeply about and article on NI/ Nth Brit shows the application of anti-fraud policies varied regionally, impacting the most vulnerable women. Thanks to AHRC funding and to @jbritishstudies.bsky.social

This conference we are supporting in Birmingham in June has an amazing mix of 40 panels - a veritable Choose your Own Adventure through modern British studies. It’s also the inaugural event of the Association of Modern British Studies! Great stuff here www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/briti...

Registration for MBS2026 is now open! Registration link and the conference programme can be found here: www.birmingham.ac.uk/events/moder...

Nice to see that my my forthcoming book, Enemies of the Red Flag: Anti-Socialism in Britain, 1900-40 is now on the Manchester University Press website. Out in December of this year manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526159465/

🇪🇺🇬🇧EU and UK cooperation moves forward. Today the legal texts bringing the UK formally into Erasmus+in 2027 were signed. The 🇬🇧 association to Erasmus in 2027 will open thousands of opportunities for students, staff and youth to learn, travel and thrive across the EU and the UK.

'The most enduring legacy of Plague, which devastated Britain between 1348 and 1665, was that it set the conditions for how we deal with outbreaks.' Dr Evan Jones (@uobrishistory.bsky.social) on new research in Local Population Studies by BA History graduate Matthew Kilner Read 👉 brnw.ch/21x1ub2

Midlands historians have a hard time sometimes convincing people that slavery ran just as deeply through our economy as through Colston's Bristol, say. But here we are: inherited wealth from enslavement in the family history leading to urban change.

Pleased to report that my chapter (with Jon Lawrence and Jane Elliot) on Social Science, New Society and the Politics of Social Change is now open access alongside the rest of @garylove.bsky.social and @richardtoye.bsky.social 's Writing Politics in Modern Britain www.cambridge.org/core/books/w...

I have a new article in @historyworkshop.org.uk that explores the resourcing of feminist activism in the 1970s. Come for the rants about typing, stay for the study of jumble sales as feminist praxis! 🗃️ academic.oup.com/hwj/advance-...

How We Write Black Feminism Now featuring Tina Campt, Edwidge Danticat, Saidiya Hartman, and Jacqueline Woodson Moderated by Alexis Pauline Gumbs - www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MPp...

How did radical women navigate Bengal's 'age of fire'? Oyeshi Ganguly explores what oral history can tell us about the female revolutionaries who took up arms against British rule.

I co-authored this super fun article on the National Survey of Health and Development a few years ago with Daisy Payling. It's history of emotions meets history of health with loads of lovely pictures and worked with what was a brand new archive! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

schoolsweek.co.uk/high-achievi... Ladders and ceilings .

Bodhana is now the top-rated female chess player in the U.K. She also just broke into the Top 100 for women globally, at #72. She's 11 years old. I wouldn't be surprised to see her at the next women's candidates tournament, and very possibly at the open before long en.chessbase.com/post/britain...

'The head of a Nigerian academic union has spoken out against British universities opening campuses...while Nigerians are being denied visas to study in the UK. This comes after Coventry University confirmed...it is in talks to establish a presence in Lagos.' Who could have predicted that? 1/3

💥 Women Strike Back! – A new exhibition by Dr @saimanasar.bsky.social (@uobrishistory.bsky.social) is on display at St Paul's Learning Centre until end of June Celebrating the stories of Black & South Asian women who campaigned for & brought about change in postwar Britain More 👉 bit.ly/412N1Tj