This week the Society was very pleased to announce the winners of its 2026 First Book and Early Career prizes: bit.ly/44HbAH2 Many congratulations to our winners: Kiran Mehta & John Latham-Sprinkle (First Book Prize) and Gianamar Giovanetti-Singh & Stephanie Wanga (Article Prize) #Skystorians

"[Jack Rakove], the Pulitzer Prize-winning authority on the drafting of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence blamed the problem on the fragmented media landscape and schools prioritizing STEM subjects over civics and history." WHOEVER COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING

For any guests or delegates who are nursing, you can find a private, comfortable space in Woodsley Room, University House, which will include a fridge, labels, paper towels, and wet wipes. The room will be open Monday 06 July to Wednesday 08 July 9.00-20.00, and Friday 09 July 9.00-17.00.

Thrilled to hear this afternoon that my article on medieval women interacting with English government in Ireland is now live at Speculum! It was all due to the resources @virtualtreasury.bsky.social 50 people can access it for free here: www.journals.uchicago.edu/eprint/VCYQU...

Never not trotting this one back out (aka my very favorite entry from the Anglo-Norman dictionary)

Another typical example of how I can no longer spell in modern French thanks to reading too much medieval French: whaddya mean, 'néanmoins' no longer has a T?!

Ooh, grabby hands! 👀

Time to share your strongly-held opinions about trivial academic details! If I'm publishing a roundtable discussion, how should I style the participants' names at the start of each of their replies? A. Full name B. Surname only C. Initials D. Other (??)

To be clear: this is DIFFERENT to ALCS! this is about public lending, ALCS is scanning/photocopying and other secondary use. Sign up for both! (tho I've yet to be borrowed enough to make anything from PLR)

Talking about how difficult it is to tell people about medieval history. I believe I portrayed @fakehistoryhunter.net very accurately

I do love a good bit of spam mail every now and then: "Dear Academician" just elevates my day! 😂

An official Europe-wide map utility would be really great—not only would it address all the usual worries with big tech (which I think are less visible when it comes to Internet meeting something as physical as the spaces we move in, but still very much real), it would also help fix the problems 1/3

[1/8] L’IGN rappelle que la cartographie numérique n’est plus un simple outil de confort. Elle guide les trajets, hiérarchise les lieux et façonne notre lecture du territoire. Selon Ipsos BVA, 87% des Français veulent des cartes publiques souveraines, hors dépendance aux GAFAM. #geography #mapping

"The variety of historical evidence is nearly infinite. Everything that man says or writes ... can and ought to teach us about him. It is curious to note how many people, unacquainted with our work, underestimate the true extent of its possibilities." 'The Historian's Craft' (1949, trans 1954).

US context, but worth reminding everyone that students, at least, overwhelmingly value their university education! (from www.luminafoundation.org/wp-content/u...)

US context, but worth reminding everyone that students, at least, overwhelmingly value their university education! (from www.luminafoundation.org/wp-content/u...)

But please, tell us again how arbitrary and joyless Net Zero is

Anti-Prime Day starts…NOW! 🥳 Today through 6/26, enjoy free standard shipping site-wide, all while supporting local, independent bookstores.

When I assign a research paper, it's not because I want an essay I can use to evaluate the student ex post. It's because I want the student to have the experience of going through the process of all of the above steps, perhaps iteratively, that is necessary to write a good research paper.

It's Anti-Prime Day on Bookshop.org, the best day to support your favorite independent bookstore, and give your money to working people not billionaries, when ordering one of my books! bookshop.org/beta-search?...

Demain, Simonne Vidal va entrer au Panthéon aux côtés de son mari Marc Bloch. Elle sera la 7e femme panthéonnisée et la 2e en tant que "femme de". Je comprends les familles ne voulant pas séparer, même symboliquement, les couples, ms quelle tristesse de voir qu'elle reste finalement ds l'ombre 1/11

It will never stop being funny to me that the street fighter subreddit has a much better, well reasoned ai policy vis a vis literally all universities.

Anthropeum.com · Jun 21 2026 🟦🟨🟦🟩🟩🟨🟦🟨🟩🟩 75,615 · top 8% of players today! Sharing today because I was in *good* form (partially through sheer luck, I frankly admit), but seriously, this threatens to be a very addictive game for historians 😂

Barcelona Cathedral: it's a beautiful day in the cloister, and you are a horrible goose

Third and final day! We're starting with Natasha Hodgson on women's influence on the Crusades—starting with the blurry boundaries of what even constituted a Crusader, a question with more than gendered implications.

Our 2026 Conference "Storytelling at Princely Courts, c.1200-1800: Narration, Performance, Social Discourse" will take place 27-29 August at University of Wrocław and online! Early bird prices available until 20 June! There are also SCS member rates! Visit 👇 courtstudies.org/events/confe...

Day 2 is kicking off with the second keynote by Patrik Pastrnak on queenly rites of marriage and death—and an unexpected cameo by Margot Robbie's Barbie! (A great way to juxtapose the emotional intertwining of celebration and grief.)

Now off to the session on 'legal agency and property', starting with Mona Hassan on the juridical thought of Fatima al-Samarqandi in the 12th century, who effectively inherited her father's intellectual legacy.

The Museum of Cultural History @uio.no is hiring a PhD candidate in Nordic #Archaeology, linked to the museum’s research on the #VikingAge. As icing on the cake, you’ll be working in the environment of the new Museum of the Viking Age, part of MCH, opening in 2027! www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

Beyond Exceptionalism III is off to an exciting start with Laura Gathagan's keynote! Just got to hear about a criminal being offered in effigy to a Norman abbess, to make up for stepping on her judicial prerogatives by executing him before she got to it 😂 Fascinating stuff!

Thank you delayed train to Castelló—my paper is now done! All set for the conference start tomorrow 😁

My knowledge of Occitan might have been more useful in my visit to Barcelona if people used more feudal vocabulary in their daily lives. (Obviously I did just fine once I got to the medieval exhibits at the Catalan art museum!)

Bold of the computer to think it can read my handwriting (though tbh it's done a better job than I expected): Femene re pent rien pé lamer, contre les frères ne contr leurs hoirs, par raison l'hertaze, prs sans plus ce fi luy fut lonné on ottogé à manie...

On my way to Spain for Beyond Exceptionalism III, and for the very first time I'm forced to join the "writing my paper on the plane" crowd. I guess that's an academic rite of passage of sorts? 😅 Really looking forward to the conference, though!

Oh no!

Incendie de la bibliothèque de Condom située dans le cloître de la cité épiscopale. Le fonds ancien et une partie des archives seraient malheureusement détruits... france3-regions.franceinfo.fr/occitanie/ge...

Tickled to learn that, in addition to "Bretagne bretonnante" (to refer to Breton-speaking Brittany), one can have "Flandre flamingante" (Flemish-speaking Flanders).

Or, for us hardcore sickos, doing it all in LaTeX 💪

OK so past Erika was a monkey and neglected to write down a full reference (the worst!) 🙈 Can anyone help me figure out where I might have been consulting Glanvill on succession practices? I seem to remember a lovely website, but can't find it now (and may be conflating it with Bracton Online).

I'd love some tips on delightful places to visit in central France for medievalists and their families. Especially grateful for less obvious places, small idyllic spots in the countryside, etc!

An excellent point—not to mention the fact that consolidation wasn't always necessarily the goal in historical politics! Deliberate fragmentation/decentralization was also a useful political tool. If you didn't have "the state" in mind as an endgame, your approach wasn't constrained by it.

This evening's unexpected discovery is that 'sultan' also got deployed as a title in... late medieval Gascony? O.o The more you know! (The 'Soudan de la Trau' was a title associated with a particular castle in the south-west of France, built in the early C14)

This evening's unexpected discovery is that 'sultan' also got deployed as a title in... late medieval Gascony? O.o The more you know! (The 'Soudan de la Trau' was a title associated with a particular castle in the south-west of France, built in the early C14)

An interesting instance of the dynamism of customary law: if a noblewoman loses her virginity and has a child while still a ward of her father's, she is not entitled to an inheritance: but (it continues) this is not commonly practiced, at least not without leaving her the means to support herself.

I'm now to the point where I can read academic Norwegian with reasonably speed (and even skim-read it, hey!), but the main thing that's slowing down my grading process is getting distracted by interesting words whose etymologies I have to investigate 😂

Feeling really satisfied with this particular assignment I set our MA students. No two students have gone about answering it the same way—different arguments, different theoretical frameworks, different methods... very refreshing!

There are a couple days left to register to attend the Beyond Exceptionalism III conference later this month—online if you don't happen to be in Spain! Check out this fantastic line-up of papers 👀

Job alert! Postdoc position in late medieval history and literature @uvahumanities.bsky.social in #Amsterdam. Come and work with us on chivalric literature and tournament culture in the project ‘Vivre le mythe'. #medievalsky #skystorians www.academictransfer.com/nl/jobs/3614...

There are a couple days left to register to attend the Beyond Exceptionalism III conference later this month—online if you don't happen to be in Spain! Check out this fantastic line-up of papers 👀