'It is hard to overstate the role that higher education needs to play. Three-quarters of people working in the creative industries have degrees, and the jobs the audits suggest will be in greatest demand – software developers, designers, advertising executives, architects – are highly skilled.'

The Cheese and the Worms is triumphant as a pioneering book in microhistory and narrative history, but I have also especially loved it for Ginsburg’s willingness to remind us that history is _weird._

Today, I came across this work on #ChineseArchitecture. Dating to the Republican period, the 中國建築學講義 contains beautiful illustrations of traditional temples, bridges & palaces. For #MarginaliaMonday check especially all the little sketches and notes! #ChinaBooks #Sinology

this is one of the slogans on the square I think often: "let's see who lives longer" even when all other hopes are exhausted, this is the last hope. individuals are fragile and temporary. the demand for justice and freedom will outlive us all. #June4th

#Tiananmen #June4 #China #photography #monochrome Photography Mr Chen, © custodian @gblee.bsky.social "Tsinghua University hunger-strikers" Tiananmen Square, Beijing, May 1989

A shortage of translators and interpreters, cull of modern languages at UK universities, cuts to East Asian studies and Chinese specifically at Sheffield Uni ...

I've been studying the Qing for 40 years and it just never occurred to me to place a bet at Polymarket on a rise in anti-Qing sentiment.

NEW: Xinjiang has the highest detention capacity in the world, according to FT analysis - enough space for almost 1 in 40 people in the region - more than five years after the Chinese govt announced the camps had closed.

‘The region currently has capacity to detain around 627,000 people without overcrowding — almost one in 40 of the local population — making it the world’s largest detention system relative to population’ Shocking piece on the treatment of the Uyghurs in China www.ft.com/content/119d...

and a very happy Glorious Twenty-Fifth of May to you all

New by Jarmila Ptáčková & Uddhab Pyakurel: the #China–Nepal frontier has become an increasingly asymmetrical space of control: pandemic-era closures enabled Beijing to tighten border mobility rules, w/ consequences for Himalayan frontier communities journals.openedition.org/ebhr/3675 #surveillance

Reader, it didn’t

the FT has two pieces on the slow-motion collapse of UK higher ed. 4/5ths of unis are doing voluntary layoffs; 38% are doing compulsory. Meanwhile Britain and its flatlined productivity growth sleepwalks through its unprecedented loss of advanced capabilities www.ft.com/content/8097...

Timid librarian in plea to save my workplace from making a huge mistake. A whole floor of Cardiff University's main library is under threat of being repurposed to teaching facilities with the removal of 7km of shelving holding valuable books. Pls share x you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/sa...

I suspect that within a year or two MPs will increasingly hear from A level students and parents finding that degree courses they want to take have vanished. Those who banked on being able to stay home for cost reasons, especially those living in areas with only one local uni, will be badly hit.

This was translated by a friend of mine, and I can confirm, you want this book.

Absolutely not surprising but a limited leak of a Chinese local surveillance platform drawing off an apparently large national one has a special drop down for tracking for tracking foreign journalists in China… including me. @netaskari.bsky.social found the data open.substack.com/pub/netaskar...

I don’t know what to tell you, man. I’m a medieval historian, and, in my field, if you don’t check your sources (and your sources’ sources) you are just asking to be taken for a ride by some bored 19th C. aristocratic English antiquarian with a penchant for inventing history.

Not that this should be a prerequisite for survival, but I DON’T KNOW GUYS SEEMS LIKE CHINA MIGHT BE IMPORTANT MAYBE WE SHOULD KNOW STUFF ABOUT IT

It’s also worth noting while redundancies at Russell Group unis often make headlines, redundancies outside Russell Group often pass without much fanfare. This is not a plight unique to Sheffield and all of our colleagues facing their departments being eliminated or their jobs cut deserve solidarity!

My colleagues in East Asian Studies at Sheffield produce world class research and so many of the UK’s leading experts in Asian Studies have gotten MAs or PhDs there. This is an incredibly shortsighted choice that will diminish this country’s knowledge exchange with a vital region of the globe.

This is a shocking example of one of the big reasons why, right now, there is no way I’d use AI for any of my historical work. If you don’t look at the documents yourself, and if you don’t know how the AI you’re using was coded, you have no idea what it may be leaving out – or adding in.

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?!?

Recently, FamilySearch digitized and uploaded tons of microfilmed records, including many from 18th-century Massachsuetts. They're using some sort of AI to transcribe/summarize the handwritten documents. I've noticed that the AI strips out references to race and enslavement in 18thc documents.

Essay marking gripes: "some may argue". No, I don't want know what "some" may hypothetically argue. Either this is you, the author, in which case say so. Or you are calling someone out, in which case name them and stop doing the academic version of subtweeting. Embrace the academic bitchery.

When Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social shared his article about why universities were in trouble and why they need investment, a Labour MP jumped in to say they weren’t a priority for her. She may be surprised at how many people are employed in universities and how important they are to the economy.

Endymion Wilkinson, the sinologist and former diplomat, walks us through his teak-wood bookshelves on the coast of the Gulf of Thailand, and recommends five books out of 4,500. Read our latest bookshelf column: chinabooksreview.com/2026/05/12/e...

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?

Plymouth-post: my colleague Dr. David Brockington just won our Student Union's award for Academic Staff Member of the Year. Teaching can feel like such hard work at times, so it really brought a smile to see Dave recognised by our students. Plus, he's an excellent colleague.

If this is true - and certainly it would be a welcome recognition of the politial, moral and economic damage these proposals would do - then the Prime Minister/government should simply come out and say that they are being withdrawn. archive.ph/NaJvy

"Ultimately, the UK needs to review how higher education is funded and regulated. We cannot leave the future of essential teaching and research to a scramble for students and a race to recruit." #Skystorians

Hooray they recognise the key role of universities as local economic anchors! Somehow this has been hugely absent from policy discussions (eg the post 16 white paper)

"A Department for Education (DfE) spokesperson said the government was committed to creating a secure future for universities so they can deliver for students, taxpayers and the economy." I will believe this when I see it 🙄

oh is Starmer banging on about steel again

Well, the Hugo Voter Packet is working on me. Starting reading Jared Pechacek's The West Passage (which is weird in the best way), and I have immediately decided I must purchase a physical copy so I can appreciate the beauty of the illustrations properly.

There’s definite plausibility to the idea that the critical thinking which can come from the humanities is in higher demand as AI gets better www.ft.com/content/c0ae...

Crucial point by John Curtis on BBC - Councils flipping from Labour to Reform are because Labour are losing **to the left**, & Cons to Reform Chasing Reform failed Labour; they lost the base & didn’t convince many on the right (Failed Tories too) Watch everyone learn the wrong lesson anyway

Teaching in one science department is “now bare-bones, with our pro vice-chancellor using the term ‘minimum viable product’ as the goal”. A politics academic keeps “trying to be positive, but it is exhausting. I moved my whole family here for this job; the guilt is horrendous." 1/3

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

The Hugo Packet alone is worth more than the cost of a @laworldcon.bsky.social membership As a member of their staff, I encourage you to register for the con: scifiinc99.regfox.com/membership

Why would we want to learn from our pasts, or ponder the power of the written and spoken word, or explore the deep questions of humanity? According to the University of Hertfordshire, we wouldn't. They've just cut all of our undergrad Humanities programmes

INCCS have a really great panel coming up next week (May 13th) on China and academic freedom: online, free, all welcome. Sign up via Eventbrite: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/academic-f...

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

#UN experts sound the alarm on the Ethnic Unity Law, citing risks to #FreedomOfExpression, minority language education, cultural rights, and freedom of religion or belief. 👉 spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMResultsBas...

I'm looking for a part-time research assistant to support an externally funded, international project on the instrumentalization of anticolonial discourse in Asia and beyond. remote work OK but needs to be UK based. durham.taleo.net/careersectio...

genuinely tragic that the sort of locally rooted and locally distinctive education that smaller unis are so incredibly well positioned to provide is being decimated for… what? the most generic modules which could be delivered by anyone anywhere

I would always say do NOT go back to university with the aim of having an academic career. It was always tough to get a permanent job. It’s now perishingly difficult to impossible. Do it because it will enhance your life or career in another way. Don’t do it expecting a lectureship at the other end

Researching China isn’t easy. With many foreign sites blocked, journalists depend on domestic platforms. Even under tight controls, Chinese apps are the main window into the country. Chu Yang’s latest guide explains how to research Xiaohongshu (Rednote). www.bellingcat.com/resources/20...

"Once the prophecies of the strategic initiative have been brought to fulfillment, budget deficits will shrink, prestige and reputation will grow, that weird smell on the first floor of the student center will dissipate, and you’ll never be frazzled or beleaguered again."