✋ This 1845 daguerreotype captured the branded hand of Jonathan Walker - marked ‘SS’ for ‘slave stealer’ after he tried to help enslaved people escape Florida. Intended as punishment, it became an abolitionist symbol, though his story often overshadowed those of the enslaved people he sought to aid.

⚔️ Götz von Berlichingen lost his hand to a cannonball in 1504 and commissioned an iron prosthesis with hinged, lockable fingers for use in battle. He later adopted a more advanced model - one of the earliest functioning mechanical prosthetic hands - which he used across his military career.

🌎 What happens when a travel writer navigates the world through touch? This month’s blog explores the journeys of James Holman, the self-described ‘Blind Traveller’, and how his haptic encounters challenged the visual conventions of travel writing. www.thevictorianhand.uk/gallery/the-...

In 1895 Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered mysterious ‘X-rays’. His image of his wife’s hand - bones and wedding ring visible - captivated Europe. X-rays transformed medicine, revealing the body’s interior without surgery. Early radiologists paid a price, as missing hands became a mark of the work.

🧵 We are delighted to be partnering with The Quilters’ Guild! The Guild aims to give quilt-making the status it deserves as a craft and an art and its Quilt Collection preserves our patchwork and quilting heritage. Stay tuned for more information about our collaboration and how to get involved!

We were thrilled to welcome Professor Alison Bashford to @globalaffairslu.bsky.social yesterday to discuss her new @uchicagopress.bsky.social book, Decoding the Hand. Thank you to everyone who came along to hear insights into the entangled histories of science, medicine and magic!

Lovely to be at Alison Bashford’s talk @lancasteruni.bsky.social as a part of the @victorianhand.bsky.social project.

#Lancaster! Join Alison Bashford tonight, Nov 12 at 5pm, @globalaffairslu.bsky.social (with @victorianhand.bsky.social) as she discusses her new book, Decoding the Hand: A History of Science, Medicine, and Magic. #HistSTM #HSTM #HistSci #BookTour #Palmistry buff.ly/jsJZ7Kp

✊ From the late 19th century, socialist movements adopted the raised fist as a symbol of unity and strength. One of the first depictions was by Hungarian artist Mihály Biró in 1912. His image of a fist emerging from factories toward parliament in Budapest visualised the power of collective action.

General registration is now open for our upcoming conference The Hand: Emotions, Embodiment and Identity at London College of Fashion, 8-9 January! Visit our website to register: www.thevictorianhand.uk/conference

This month’s suitably spooky blog post is from our Research Associate, who has been speaking with the dead in the archives of the Society for Psychical Research! Read here: www.thevictorianhand.uk/gallery/spir...

We are delighted to announce that the plenary speakers for our upcoming conference are Dr Sarah Jackson, Professor Peter J. Capuano and Caroline Seymour! Visit our website for more information: www.thevictorianhand.uk/conference

In colonial India, William Herschel introduced fingerprinting in the 1850s to authenticate identity on legal documents. Influenced by colonial ideologies, his experiments laid the foundations for modern forensic identification, codifying the hand as a scientific marker of identity. #handoftheweek

We’re launching our #handoftheweek series! This week is Dr Hippolyte Baraduc, who tried to photograph the human soul via 'the most perfect organ after the brain', the hand. Baraduc’s photos blend science and occult, showing how hands were seen as windows onto the inner self in the 19th century.

How might hands reveal an inner self – a soul, a character, an identity? Join us on 12 November at Lancaster University to explore this question with Professor Alison Bashford (University of New South Wales) as she presents her book, Decoding the Hand. Tickets: thevictorianhand.uk/alison-bashf...

We are pleased to annouce that Dr Ross Cameron @rosscmrn.bsky.social has joined The Victorian Hand team as a Public Engagement Fellow at @lcflondon.bsky.social! Watch this space for upcoming annoucements about public engagement activities and ways to get involved with The Victorian Hand.

Time feels tangible in these casts... Over on the Victorian Hand project blog, our Research Associate @helenvmurray.bsky.social reflects on her trip to Watts Gallery to research their extensive collection of plaster cast hands.. www.thevictorianhand.uk/blog-touchin...

🙋Don't forget! The call for abstracts for our conference on The Hand closes at midnight tonight! All abstracts should be sent to [email protected] We can't wait to go through all the incredible submissions we've received, so we can hand-craft a fantastic programme. Watch this space!

Touch transcends time... Last week, @helenvmurray.bsky.social was getting some haptic shivers whilst exploring spiritual hands in the archives of the Society for Psychical Research. Meanwhile, we're levitating with excitement to receive your abstracts for The Hand: Emotions, Embodiment, Identity.

3 weeks to go until the deadline for abstracts for our conference The Hand: Emotions, Embodiment, Identity (8-9 Jan 2026). Are you getting yours ready?✍ Send abstracts and bios to [email protected] by 22 September 2025. We can't wait to hear from you!

🙌Call for Papers🙌 We are excited to invite abstracts for an interdisciplinary conference on The Hand: Emotions, Embodiment, Identity, at @unioftheartslondon.bsky.social on 8-9 Jan 2026 Send abstracts of 300 words to [email protected] by 22 Sep - please circulate among your networks!

New publication (not on hands, but on emotions and senses) from project leads @jbhist.bsky.social and @medhistoryman.bsky.social. It's completely Open Access and free for anyone to read.

We argue that the emotional sensorium of the RME cultivated positive 'prosthetic feelings' about the army & encouraged imaginative investiment in the figure of Tommy Atkins. We put embodied experiences at the heart of discussions about the rise of popular militarism in the age of New Imperialism.

@jbhist.bsky.social & I are excited to see that our new article on the Royal Military Exhibition of 1890 has been published Open Access by @ihr.bsky.social. This takes a sensory & emotions history approach to the topic of late Victorian popular militarism. academic.oup.com/histres/adva...

The reviews for Emotions & Surgery have taken a while to come but are now beginning to appear. It's so gratifying in difficult professional times to read someone as eminent as Prof. Mick Worboys describe it as a 'landmark work ... that compellingly revises the history and historiography of surgery'😇

I'm most grateful to Amber Vella, an AHRC-funded PhD student at Leicester, for her most generous review of Emotions & Surgery in Medical History. It's deeply satisfying to have it described as a 'fantastic intervention in the history of surgery'. Thank you 🙏 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Please get those applications in if you are interested in becoming part of our project team!

This amazing opportunity closes today so please get your applications in before the deadline! #history #publicengagement #GLAM #UKRI #AHRC #culturalheritage

Currently transcribing some letters written by Richard Owen held at LU library. One of the gems contained therein is Owen's reference to his relationship with East Sheen neighbour Edwin Chadwick in the 1880s: 'Neighbour Chadwick I see & listen to, weekly; but he never gets out of the sewers!’

Turning away from the REF-apocalypse for a second, may I remind you all that we are looking for a 3-year F/T Public Engagement Fellow to join our Victoiran Hand project. Please do spread the word to all those lovely folks in Humanities and GLAM looking for work. Deadline is 24 June, so get applying!

It's a three-year full-time post based at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London. If you have expertise in public and community engagement, the creative arts, events organization, or cultural programming, do take a look. Application deadline 24 June 2025. 2/2

We are advertising for a Public Engagement Fellow for our AHRC funded project: 'The Victorian hand: Emotion, Embodiment, and identity, past and present'. 1/2 ual.tal.net/vx/appcentre...

Quick reminder that we're looking for a 3-year F/T Public Engagement Fellow to lead on some really amazing events. The call closes on 24 June, so please get your applications in if you fit the bill. We're really excited about this opportunity and think you will be too! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNI861/p...

JOB working with my amazing colleague @medhistoryman.bsky.social on this important AHRC project @victorianhand.bsky.social 👇

If you want to ask any questions about this post, get in touch with me!

Check out how we came to be interested in the history of hands!

If you've been alerted to our project by the recent job advert for a Public Engagement Fellow, why not find out a little bit about the background to the project by reading the first blog post on our new website? www.thevictorianhand.uk/gallery/proj...

If you've been alerted to our project by the recent job advert for a Public Engagement Fellow, why not find out a little bit about the background to the project by reading the first blog post on our new website? www.thevictorianhand.uk/gallery/proj...

Please share this great opportunity 😃

Superb job! Get your applications in historians.

Medicine AND quilting in GLAM?? if it wasn't in London this would be my dream job 😭

Three-year job.

What an exciting opportunity 🤩

Job Alert! We're hiring a 3-year F/T Public Engagment Fellow based @lcflondon.bsky.social to lead our exciting programme of activities. We're looking for collegial & creative people with expertise in History, Galleries, Archives, Libraries, or Museums. Spread the word! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNI861/p...

"The #humanities ... won’t give us all the answers, but they keep us asking the right questions—and without that, no future worth having can be built." Peter Sutoris @wonkhe.bsky.social

Exciting developments with the Victorian Hand project. We can't wait to share more of our work with you through our new website and social media channels. Make sure to bookmark to keep up to date with what we are up to and to get involved!

Do read about our project and check out the first blog post.

📢Project update 📢 We now have a website! www.thevictorianhand.uk We'll be updating things as the project develops, but for the moment you can take a look around and read our first blog post in which Joanne and I talk about the origins of the project. More content to follow very soon!

📢Project update 📢 We now have a website! www.thevictorianhand.uk We'll be updating things as the project develops, but for the moment you can take a look around and read our first blog post in which Joanne and I talk about the origins of the project. More content to follow very soon!

My Emotions & Surgery book is published in paperback this month & you can buy it at a discounted price of £23.99 using the attached flyer. Given that it is Open Acccess I don't know how many of you will want to take advantage, but there is pleasure to be had in physical books! tinyurl.com/4umkzw48