Graduate of the American Studies programme that the University of Nottingham wishes to close wins 2025 Wolfson History Prize for Survivors: The Lost Stories of the Last Captives of the Atlantic Slave Trade. History, it's a long game. Divest in haste, repent for the longue durée.

Flying visit yesterday to University College Dublin, to examine Giulia Osti’s PhD thesis on data ethics and collections as data. A pass with minor corrections! And passed this handsome Colombian printing press in the corridor 😻

A post which details my approach to some of my more recent career decisions! 👀👇

Fascinating discussion of historic Hardship grant applications to the Royal Literary Fund, with copyright clearance given, but nary a mention of ethics... Should we really know details of an "unpublished note from Sylvia Plath’s doctor" ...? www.theguardian.com/books/2025/n...

View from a hotel room, #Dublin. #academicglamour 😍🎄

This is a very interesting interview with @melissaterras.bsky.social on @transkribus.bsky.social 's co-operative model, and how to balance financial imperatives with academic imperatives. #DigitalHistory

Can AI be ethical and transparent? At READ-COOP, the unique European cooperative behind Transkribus, we prioritise democratic control and purpose over profit. Read Melissa Terras' (@melissaterras.bsky.social) thoughts on why this model is a global blueprint:  blog.transkribus.org/en/melissa-t...

This is an exciting project, led by @nebulousflynn.bsky.social, to safeguard access to the UK’s digital 3D heritage at risk through over-reliance on commercial and free-to-use platforms for storage and dissemination. I'm happy to be serving on the advisory board and looking forward to discussions.

Job Alert! DH postdoc at Edinburgh - Post-Doctoral Research Fellow to work on the AHRC-funded project "Voices in Slavery’s Archive: Law, Place and Testimony in British Guiana", which will build a digital archive out of the recorded words of enslaved people. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPN147/p...

Remember when Aaron Swartz downloaded JSTOR archives that he had full legal rights to download and the FBI hounded him literally to death for it? Anyway,

Over to Glasgow tonight to hang out at the launch of the Glasgow Library of Synthesised Sound. A fab community run space in an old converted school, supporting access to electronic instruments. It was quite the party! www.gloss.scot

All welcome! I'm so excited about this talk!

Frosty walk this morning #edinburgh

Disappointed, yet again, by a UK wide UKRI initiative who say things like “Representation matters to us” and pledge “A 50-50 gender balance within the gender binary” for activities, then give out PhD studentships to a cohort of 6 men, and 1 woman. #everydaySexism

This. My kids are “Crappy-Digital Natives”.

Great work from Rachel & the team at Edinburgh University Archives.

Cold but happy on the ucu picket today, dancing to an impromptu band. C- to Edinburgh Uni management with their lack of leadership, plans, or care.

Am proud of this stat… although let’s not pile our fragile historical texts that high! 😉

Heading home on the train to 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 and there is snow on those hills!

In about three years the entire university pivot to AI curricula and schools and programs is going to be so deeply embarrassing. We will all pretend it never happened and I will be standing there, looking at people with a mirror in my eyes. This is all so embarrassing.

Am looking for PhD students to supervise under this particular call! And v interested in Home student applicants - please share with any ambitious DH/LIS students you know who are on the technical side…

I’ve written a piece on the curious lack of media and political interest in the issues faced by our national @britishlibrary.bsky.social. This is strange given we live in a world where ideas, knowledge and research are a long-term source of innovation and insight www.cityam.com/the-british-...

View from a hotel room, #Leicester #academicglamour. Did a PhD viva today. Home tomorrow… a lot of travel just now, but that’s my own fault! Always interesting to see what happens elsewhere…

The transcription of Edinburgh University Library’s Receipt Book for the Book Borrowing Surgeons project is well underway. Kit Baston gives an update on her project, funded by an OEC Jean Guild Grant. #edinburghsurgeons #edinburghuniversitylibrary #RCSEd oldedinburghclub.org.uk/kit-baston-t...

If you care about the future of University of Edinburgh, call or email your local MSP on Monday: Monday, 17 November: Call your MSP. UCU has prepared a briefing here, but you can also simply call and tell your story. These cuts will affect the whole city. www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk/lobby-your-m...

Time to go to the airport, after a fab few days in Turkey. Will miss seeing cats everywhere…

A day off, exploring Istanbul. Sun shone. Am most taken by these dog prints in a tile from c. 1650 in the Topkapi palace. And the tiles! And the mother of pearl inlays!

Just to say, I am a supervisor here: UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Responsible and Trustworthy in-the-world Natural Language Processing www.responsiblenlp.org/2026-student... If you are reading things like this and planning PhD project, do reach out: www.ft.com/content/e5b7...

Good to see coverage of this common but not well known condition in pregnancy. I spent 6 months in a wheelchair with my 1st... and it took a private osteopath to put me back together again, as best they could. Support for this is lacking at the moment, and we must do more to support women with PGP.

Just me hanging out with the President of @coopseurope.bsky.social, Giuseppe Guerini, who I had the pleasure of explaining to that @transkribus.bsky.social is Europe's first AI cooperative, and is doing well! On the right, Tobias Schweitzer, who is setting up an AI supported carbon-capture coop.

Absolutely delighted to keynote Cooperative AI in Istanbul today: telling everyone how we built @transkribus.bsky.social, and how it has flourished under READ-COOP. I usually speak about this to DH, Library & Archive audiences - great to show our wares to researchers of coops, & fab discussions.

Me: it’s nice out so let’s dial into a work call from a park bench, given its mild in Istanbul Conference Venue Cat: I spies lap!

Every time someone’s like “put that in the louvre,” my head now goes “and then steal it from the louvre, the security password is louvre”

Does Britain value culture any more? Ask the striking workers at the British Library - great speech by @zadiesmith.bsky.social #lovelibraries www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

If you use digital newspaper collections this new OA paper is for you - it’s full of great insights into how to understand what’s in them and the many hidden perils of digital search (like the systemically poorer OCR for cheaper and more left-leaning newspapers - who knew?). Please share

In Istanbul for the Cooperative AI conference. First conference I’ve been to where cats and chickens freely roam - and attend! 😍

We are featured in over 50 news outlets today: PhD student David Mahoney's research using web archives, @archive.org, to measure historic website emissions, offering a new method and open-source code for analysing & highlighting online environmental impact. www.energylivenews.com/2025/11/11/c...

View from a hotel room, Istanbul. Here to keynote the cooperative AI conference. It would be #academicglamour but all the computers are down so no wifi… and no doors opening or locking. I may raid the minibar given that sensor is offline too. While I pile furniture against the door… #postdigital

Currently doing some marking. A reminder to everyone involved in archives and collections: digitisation is not preservation. If I digitise a box of records and put the files on a USB stick I haven't preserved a thing. It's all about what you do with the files post-digitisation. #archives #digipres

The Pope out here guest lecturing in the iSchools.

Well this is fab - Itiner-e – The Digital Atlas of Ancient Roads: the most detailed open digital dataset of roads in the entire Roman Empire. Hasn't quite reached Scotland yet (plenty of Roman roads up here yet to be added), but fun to explore! itiner-e.org

How do we navigate gaps and challenges in quantifying and understanding innovation and R&D in the creative sector? Excellent roundup from @suzannerblack.bsky.social on how difficult it is to count and map innovation, and "return on funder investment", in the creative industries.

The FBI is trying to unmask the owner of infamous archiving site Archive.is, according to a subpoena the site posted. No other information given, the site quietly posted the document a few days ago. FBI telling domain registrar to hand over all sorts of ID'ing info www.404media.co/fbi-tries-to...

We’re thrilled to launch our new Humans of AI podcast! Prof. @melissaterras.bsky.social of @transkribus.bsky.social — a cooperative AI platform transforming how libraries, archives, and museums bring history to life. 🎧 share.transistor.fm/s/ce0399b5 📺 youtu.be/qK5x4j7jiuQ #AI #CulturalHeritage

I really do try to respond to every PhD application enquiry I get, but I've had 10 already today and its only 3pm... At some point, I'm going to have to make my peace with not being able to keep up...

Did you miss our beginners' webinar last week? The complete recording of our step-by-step introduction to Transkribus is now available on YouTube 👇

Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching

Cat Burns singing in the library... lovely accoustics, showing libraries are not just for shushing! I wonder what those old white men in the portraits think... www.youtube.com/shorts/4a0Ih...

Happy Halloween, all! New guisers this year include people wearing green hooded cloaks…

Fascinating - Unesco has launched a Virtual Museum of Stolen Cultural Objects, presented in a futuristic, dreamlike virtual exhibition. Worth exploring (although they don't tell much about how/where things were stolen, and its a very curious juxtaposition of items): museum.unesco.org