The murder rate in London is now the lowest in decades, perhaps centuries. (The Times)

Doctoral Researcher, Liam Young, is co-organising the first @bacls.bsky.social graduate conference, held at the Uni of Leeds on 20 May 2026. Participants will be invited to contribute to a special issue of the journal Alluvium. Deadline for abstracts: 4 January 2026. CFP here: bacls.org/news/188/

This open letter to COP30 calling for the arts and humanities to be central to responses to the climate crisis chimes with the current research project of our Vice Chancellor’s Independent Research Fellow @hrmilligan.bsky.social www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2025/op...

Early today, we were treated to an excellent paper by Dr Frankie Dytor from the University of Exeter. It was hosted by our Cultural Currents: Nineteenth to Twentieth Century research group, and the title of Frankie's paper was 'Edith Lees Ellis and Queer Disability Studies at the Fin de Siècle'.

Thousands of university workers around the country losing jobs and careers, whole degree programs lost, areas of expertise lost, student opportunities lost. Yes, it's life-changing, and the consequences will be with us for a long time.

Last chance to register for the #LboroUCU online CPD workshop, "Allyship and Solidarity", open to all LU staff & Masters & PhD students. Taking place online on Tues 11th November from 12 noon. For more information and to register for the course: ucu.lboro.ac.uk/cpd-course-a...

It’s been ages, but last week I baked #sourdough 146 - an absolute disaster as I’d run out of wholemeal and had a v wet dough with not enough salt and completely flat, and week 147, which was a triumph! 😀

We took our first-year Intro to Drama students to the Birmingham Rep theatre last night to see Deafinitely Theatre's production of Eloise Pennycott's play, 'Barrier(s)' - a queer/deaf love story with a rich interweaving of English and BSL. We were also treated to an excellent post-show discussion.

On #Reading - free online event! englishassociation.ac.uk/reading-and-...

Professors *never* supply information. Students aren’t paying premium prices for ‘information’ at all. How can people who presumably have attended universities misunderstand their role so badly?

"Do we want to live in a world where books and culture flourish? Or in a purely functional world where the value of education is solely measured in expected earnings? Perhaps Kemi would be a better leader if she’d dropped engineering for religious studies or psychology."

British.

A really interesting piece about the indebtedness of the University of Chicago and how it is destroying its academic reputation - killing the humanities subjects - so it can finance prestigious buildings by top architects. www.thenation.com/article/cult...

Our own Nick Freeman has contributed a chapter, ‘The Ghost Story 1870-1900’, to The Victorian Ghost Story: An Edinburgh Companion (Edinburgh UP). There’s spooky fun for all the family with Dickens, Kipling, Stoker, and various other practitioners of the ghostly tale ...

The Brontë Society's Annual Lecture was delivered this weekend by @drclaireocall.bsky.social 'A happy Heathcliff and Cathy': The influence of Emily Brontë on Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes. Claire is also Editor of Brontë Studies, the journal of the Brontë Society. www.bronte.org.uk/events/bront...

These cases of extreme, far-right racist violence targeting Muslims and people seeking asylum are being blithely ignored by most media and politicians because they see no political capital in addressing them. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Men in balaclavas set fire to a mosque in East Sussex last night. It's only appearing on the BBC's local coverage, rather than its main national headlines, despite coming just a week after the (also under-reported) firebombing of an asylum hotel in London last week www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Pleased to announce @univeng.bsky.social small funding scheme now open to members. UE will fund up to 20 projects up to £250 each to support research/pedagogy/continuing professional development activities in Lit, Lang, Creative Writing. See details here: universityenglish.ac.uk/englishcreat...

CFP 📣 Join us in Loughborough 📍 for a day of Sensation fiction and health humanities organised by our very own @braddonite.bsky.social. ✨ See post below for details 👇

I am genuinely baffled and distressed as to why the UK government is intent on destroying UK's genuinely world-leading universities, who bring £265 billion into the economy and support more than 250,000 jobs. This tax will kill us. www.standard.co.uk/news/politic...

It was a real pleasure welcoming English and Liberal Arts students to our department today. After a welcome from @justin-waring.bsky.social, @sadiseshiah.bsky.social, Barbara Cooke, Rachael Grew, and our English Committee, some of our academics shared their favourite text to teach! #EscapedAlone

Helpful summary in @timeshighered.bsky.social about why portability matters to humanities and social science scholars at every stage of career with a quotation from me at the end about exceptions expected for "long form and/or longer-process outputs”. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/use-ref...

Fantastic to meet prospective students and their families and friends at our Open Day today. There was a real buzz and the sun was shining! ☀️

"the cumulative impact of this silence is a deepening sense that Palestinian suffering is institutionally unrecognisable: too controversial to name, too politically fraught to mourn, too inconvenient to address." wonkhe.com/blogs/gaza-h...

A polite reminder that some of the most fundamental and field-shaping research is UNfunded—or rather core-funded through institutional research leave—precisely because it doesn’t have to abide by the fickle trends and tickboxes that govern UKRI & Co. Frankly, this is an insult to the profession.

This is a jaw-dropping statement from anyone in a uni leadership role — but also — what exactly is ‘low-quality’ and ‘hobbyist’ research? Nearly every academic I know is burning the candle at both ends and STILL producing important work in their fields. This feels like an anti-humanities dog whistle

The last REF found that 98% of UK research was either "internationally recognised", "internationally excellent", or "world-leading". If you think low-quality research is the noteworthy challenge in UK higher ed right now, you are wilfully looking in the wrong direction

I disagree profoundly with the view that all research in universities should be externally funded. I'm also curious about why such a view needs to be expounded in the most provocative and insulting terms, rather than presented e.g. as dry financial pragmatism -what is the point of the obnoxiousness?

Teaching a lit class for the first time in ages and the students so far seem positively shimmering to simply read a book, then talk about it.

Two of our academics - @wvmierlo.bsky.social and Dr Barbara Cooke - will be speaking at the Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing (CBCP) Modernist Editing Symposium on 23 September. More details here: research.reading.ac.uk/centre-for-b...

This has cheered me up :) www.independent.co.uk/tv/culture/g...

Our own Head of Department @sadiseshiah.bsky.social has been appointed as a member of the REF 2029 sub-panel for UoA 27: English Language and Literature 2029.ref.ac.uk/panels/main-...

Life’s getting a bit more crap here if you are a person from an ethnic minority 🧵

Our BA programme lead, Barbara Cooke, has been finishing her book ('Love and Landscape: Iconic Meeting Places in Classic and Contemporary Literature' with Bodleian Library Publishing), and was able to draw on it for the Jane Austen 250 series for The Conversation theconversation.com/in-jane-aust...

Our own Andrew Dix, Senior Lecturer in American Literature and Film, recently wrote for @theconversation.com on the new adaptation of Stephen King's The Life of Chuck: theconversation.com/the-life-of-...

✏️New piece in @theconversation.com. We spoke with 50 policymakers and youth practitioners about the issues facing young people growing up in English coastal communities. theconversation.com/young-people...

This is good on the extraordinary alienation that has now grown up in academia. The gap between the values of lecturers and the universities that employ them are now a huge unbridgeable chasm. One stands for education, the other institutional self-interest. blog.matthewbarnard.phd/a-world-with...

Reform UK, which has a grand total of four MPs, was just given an uninterrupted platform for an hour and a half on the BBC and Sky News channels, in order to talk about its plans for mass deportations When was the last time the Greens (with four MPs) or the Lib Dems (with 72) were given the same?

Good step that Chevening scholars from Gaza will be supported in getting to the UK, and hopefully this can be extended to others with university offers and scholarships www.thetimes.com/article/bf52...

Every little helps the reading habit. ‘Denmark to abolish VAT on books in effort to get more people reading’ www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

‘Three cheers…for Channel 5’s bold move to bring back Play for Today, more than 40 years after it left our screens in 1984. The channel has announced it will revive the brand from early next year, with an emphasis on the social realism that was an important feature of the original series.’

Please help. Our department runs a groundbreaking part-time degree programme in English Literature and Community Engagement, known as ELCE, designed for mature students who didn't or couldn't do a degree at 18. The University of Bristol has decided to close it. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

We are delighted to share the exciting news that the CFP for the @moderniststudies.bsky.social 2026 conference - next year called Weird Modernisms - jointly held with @modernistudies.bsky.social at @lborouniversity.bsky.social is now live! More info here: moderniststudies.org/conference/MSA2026/CFP/

Last month, Anas al-Sharif sounded the alarm on starvation in Gaza. Israel accused him of terrorism. "We warned this felt like a precursor to justify assassination," said Jodie Ginsberg of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Today he was killed in a targeted strike on a tent housing reporters.

Media blackout on the eve of an invasion the whole world has condemned, by a state that’s been willing to do a genocide on livestream. What do you think comes next? Hearing reports of intensive bombardment. They’re leveling whatever is left.

Actually remembered to post this one: #sourdough week 145

A proposed 6% levy on international fees could take over £600 million a year from English universities, undermining their global standing and impacting London’s economy. To keep our city a world-class centre for education, we should be attracting talent, not putting up barriers.

The University of Warwick has paid a lot of money, I'm guessing, for their internet banner ads on the Guardian and elsewhere. But they can't spell "curiosity". This isn't a US-UK variant. They just, genuinely, have a massive spelling error in their banner ads.

Learn more about the opportunities for a place on our English courses through Clearing. Our phone line will be open from 8am BST on Thursday 14 August. Register your interest in receiving clearing notifications here: www.lboro.ac.uk/clearing/sub...