Fantastic line-up which includes @jenniferballads.bsky.social Congratulations Jennifer!

Like we always say, it is in the materiality of archival encounters that true wonder often lies. 🕷 🕸 🖊

Thanks to the good people of #ThirskRepairCafe my #Defiant set is once more serving as my Bluetooth speaker and I’m listening to ‘Christmas Across Europe’ on @bbcradio3bot.bsky.social

Happy St Katherine's Day to all scholars, librarians, and Katherines. May you win an argument against an annoying man today, in the true spirit of Katherine herself.

General Strike 100 National museums, libraries, archives, community groups, and individuals across the UK are marking the centenary of the 1926 General Strike. All the details here: generalstrike100.com #GeneralStrike100

Delighted to welcome this into the world. Paperback for £9.99 or kindle for £8.99. Hope you’ll treat yourself to an early Christmas present 📚🎄 Please repost this if you can. #Chartism #C19th #History www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0G3Q7PR7Y

Joshua Hobson, printer, publisher and editor of the Chartist Northern Star newspaper, was born #OnThisday 20 November 1810 www.chartistancestors.co.uk/joshua-hobso...

I haven't seen an adaptation studies #starterpack doing the rounds, so thought I'd create it myself! One for you if you're interested in #adaptation in a cultural context in all of its wonderfully various forms. Let me know in the replies if you'd like to be added.

📢 Solidarity in Action: Day One Strike Highlights Today was powerful! Our members showed incredible unity and resolve on the first day of strike action. We stood together, loud and proud, demonstrating our commitment to fighting in our dispute!!! #SaveSheffieldHallam

I’m teaching Oliver Goldsmith’s 1770 Deserted Village tomorrow. He says princes can be made and unmade and that the country is in trouble when the super rich accumulate wealth and farmers are put out of business. How on earth do I make any of that relevant to today’s students?

As part of the General Strike 1926 commemorations I'm doing a talk on the strike novels of Elizabeth Gaskell and Ellen Wilkinson for Elizabeth Gaskell House on 20th May 2026. Details here: elizabethgaskellhouse.co.uk/events/south...

Russell Hoban's masterpiece *Riddley Walker* is 45 years old today! “In fear and tremmering only not running a way. In emtyness and ready to be fult. Not to lern no body nothing I cant even lern my oan self all I can do is try not to get in front of whats coming.” @russellhoban.bsky.social

actionnetwork.org/fundraising/... If trade union education (including working-class history) matters to you - please consider becoming a Friend of the GFTUET.

"the classroom has political relevance in creating opportunity for experience not conditioned by what Jäger calls “hyperpolitics.” Hold open this one last precious space of focused attention of careful deliberation of understanding before criticizing." adamkotsko.substack.com/p/pedagogy-i...

Today, The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin opens at AA Gallery in London! Curated by Sarah Shin and Harriet Jennings, the exhibition presents a selection of Ursula's maps, including some that have never been exhibited before.

This edition of @BBCRadio4 #LastWord includes my tribute to the great poet Tony Harrison: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Teaching John Clare later today & these lines from ‘The Fallen Elm’ have just leapt off the page: “Thou’st heard the knave abusing those in power,/Bawl freedom loud and then oppress the free;” Hoping my students will be able to draw the parallels with their own times.

October is National Co-op Month AND 2025 is the UN "International Year of Cooperatives"! Since Wraith Games is a worker co-op, we figured the best way to celebrate would be to share some info about co-ops and why they're rad! Ya'll ready for a thread?

If you are in USA or Canada, please ask for This Slavery in your local independent bookstore or public library! And if you see it in the wild, please share photos with us! Publication date for North America is this Tuesday, and it’s gone down well in the month it’s been out in Britain & Ireland.

@leftypawprints.bsky.social just wondered how things are going with your cat? Is he venturing out from behind the sofa yet?

Very sad to hear of the passing of Tony Harrison, a truly great #working-class poet. Probably best known for ‘V’ but fwiw I think his ‘School of Eloquence’ & ‘Continuous’ collections are outstanding. youtu.be/FA3AL14d05k?...

CEO-to-worker pay ratio in 1965: 20-1 CEO-to-worker pay ratio in 1990: 75-1 CEO-to-worker pay ratio today: 280-to-1 Trickle-down economics was always a sham. Nothing has ever trickled down.

Here at Kamera at Lloyd and Platt to see John McKay’s Reactor. Got my pick of where to stand!

A bit behind with my podcast listening, so have only just heard this totally joyous episode of ‘Oh! Brother’ with the inimitable Pete Wylie. Many thanks to Pete Wylie & @ohbrothershow.bsky.social for 76.5 minutes of delight. I hope Pete returns for another episode. shows.acast.com/605f39df7759...

Book your place! 🔥 TROUBLE AT MILL 🔥 Saturday 8th November at Queen Street Mill textile museum - loudly celebrating Ethel Carnie Holdsworth’s This Slavery with riotous fun and steam engines and art and theatre and music and snacks RickardSisters.com/trouble

I am disgusted by Reform UK's threats to people who have built a life in this country. They are coming for our neighbours. They are coming for our colleagues. They are coming for our friends. We are at a dangerous moment. This hatred cannot be appeased. It must be defeated.

Just deleted my academia edu account. Does anybody have any suggestions for an alternative not for profit platform where academics retain control over their work?

Drawing the title page of This Slavery graphic novel It’s a story about wage slavery, marriage, working life, family life - all of it in the shadows of Lancashire cotton mills, yet uncomfortably relevant to our modern lives

Arrived in the post today, the ‘hard’ copy of the ‘Transnational Working-Class Literatures’ collection. Check out the wide range of contributions. Order a copy for/from your library! #WorkingClassLiterature #WorkingClassStudies

Fantastic time at the Erik Satie exhibition at the Eugene Boudin museum in Honfleur - well worth a visit! #museesdehonfleur

This rather splendid volume produced by the @rickardsisters.com arrived in my local bookstore today. Looking forward to reading this & what a great way to introduce people to Ethel Carrie Holdsworth

. THIS is one of the biggest problems of our time . . . ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ .

@dcjenkin-smith.bsky.social Hi Daniel a quick message to offer belated congratulations on the publication of ‘The Rise of Office Literature’! So pleased to see this project come to fruition - well done!

Great Yarmouth is set to host the biggest neo-nazi music festival in over a decade. The Home Office has the power to block entry of overseas bands, which will scupper the promoters plans. But they won’t act unless we demand it. Email the Home Office now: hopenothate.org.uk/2025/08/28/g...

The whole thread is worth reading.

Please forgive the shameless self-publicity, but a collection of essays on transnational working-class literature which I helped to co-edit (and also contributed to) has been published today! See the link below for details & ask your library to order a copy! link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

Same here Mike - having taught English Lit and History, I got students who could point things out but not tell me why they were important. It means that students grow confident in one thing at school and discover they are asked for something completely different at uni.

Thread worth reading. In my own discipline of Eng Lit, these reforms led to the subject being perceived as ‘difficult’ and ‘boring’. This has produced students adept at spotting ‘technical’ features of language use (front loaded adverbials) but far less comfortable discussing meaning.

Pls sign and share this open letter to the Bristol VC, against the School of Humanities's decision to withdraw the BA in English Literature and Community Engagement (ELCE): the only part-time, flexible undergraduate degree programme available at the University forms.gle/SbyhXPSJgQTc...

Conference Announcement: Tennyson 2026: Ecology, Landscape, Environment - cfp and details attached. Victorians scholars please circulate @lindakhughes.bsky.social @victorianreview.bsky.social @victorianpoetry.bsky.social @thevicsoc.bsky.social @victorianmasc.bsky.social @jofvictculture.bsky.social

Hey @angelarayner - hands off our allotments! No more sell-offs of these precious green spaces. Take 1 minute to sign our petition today. 👇#HandsOffOurAllotments

I just signed this Greenpeace petition to stop supermarkets flooding us with throwaway plastic. Supermarkets have broken their plastic promises — and without pressure, they won’t change. It’s time for the government to step in. Sick of all the plastic? Add your name: act.gp/4jARp3u

Please help me share the CFP for this Literature Compass Special Issue dedicated to the work of Simon J James and covering key Victorian and Edwardian writers like H. G. Wells, George Gissing, Dickens, Wilde, George Du Maurier, and Conan-Doyle on behalf of Hadas Elber-Aviram.

1/2 “I have listened to many ingenious persons, who say we are better off now than we ever were before. I do not know how well of we were before; but I know positively that many very deserving persons of my acquaintance have great difficulty in living under these improved circumstances:”

chng.it/d5T7yTNdnk Seeing my former colleagues undergo this type of stress & knowing that there are many people in other institutions suffering in similar ways is simultaneously distressing & infuriating. Please consider signing this petition protesting yet another case of academic vandalism.

No shit Sherlock. We knew this from the Gillette and B&H Cups in the 1960s and 70s. 🙄

Posting the obligatory #FFSSomerset so that @adamchapman.bsky.social doesn’t have to. One County Championship in 150 years that’s all we ask - c’mon Zummerzet!

At the risk of sounding like a character from the ‘Fast Show’ - isn’t this brilliant? A brilliant novel sure to be brilliantly illustrated by the brilliant @rickardsisters.com This is just, well, brilliant!