📢 @durham.ac.uk has announced the competition for eight PhD Studentships in Transformative Humanities, supported by our AHRC Doctoral Landscape Award and the Faculties of Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences, for candidates starting October 2026. Find out more 👇 www.durham.ac.uk/research/ins...

Happy Halloween! Here is a picture from when I took my book of spooky smells, The Doom Town Dummies, to the house of spooky smells. ☂️

You can SMELL the point-and-click game Foolish Mortals by @inklingwood.bsky.social! It was a delightful opportunity to develop smells, through @aromaprime.bsky.social, for players to sniff as they explore.

why is it that it's always when you've got an important deadline or event that your body decides it's the right time to get covid

📅 Join us on Monday 24 November for an online interdisciplinary symposium on Tourette Syndrome, imagining a future of Tourettic Studies that is looking beyond the syndrome, featuring Bridging Fellow @danielpjones.bsky.social. Find out more & register here 👇 medhumsplatform.org/event/toward...

Speaking at the University of Manchester's History Department in early December about my work on prisons and racism if you're in town and interested.

Why did it have to be snakes? The greatest fear of antiquity-hunting adventurers is the focus of this temporary display case for Halloween half term's "Fears and Phobias" theme. (Which means spending my last afternoon before the school holidays putting a bunch of cheap plastic snakes on display).

I'm planning an interactive workshop on the senses and medical humanities, to be held in Leeds in July 2026. It will involve creative practitioners, academics, and clinicians. If this is something you'd be interested in attending, please drop me a message or reply to this post and we can chat more!

I'm planning an interactive workshop on the senses and medical humanities, to be held in Leeds in July 2026. It will involve creative practitioners, academics, and clinicians. If this is something you'd be interested in attending, please drop me a message or reply to this post and we can chat more!

New publication! Our v. own @beccajackson.bsky.social discusses the racial history of the Apgar Score – a score assigned to infants one minute after birth. Find out more: medhumsplatform.org/the-apgar-sc...

Running a test, and now the parlour smells like the Alton Manor graveyard 🪦

Interesting to see how entertainment industries are tackling sensory-based sensitivities including intense smells and sounds. @aromaprime.bsky.social doing a great job as always with the various themed smellscapes! Examples from Alton Towers this weekend.

We're putting on an exciting range of research events this year at @manchester.ac.uk on 'Queer Bodies' in 18 & 19C Britain. Colleagues in English, Art History (@emmamerkling.bsky.social), & History are exploring queer approaches to bodies and embodiment and their cultures. See poster for more!

The deadline is still over a month away, but reminder about this @themhra.bsky.social funded conference @fairbanc.bsky.social and I are organising on the exciting subject of **early modern practical texts**! 📅 Abstracts due 24/11. Full details can be found here: sites.google.com/sheffield.ac...

Tomorrow marks the start of my #Dance Residency with Dance City. I'll be exploring #urban #affect and its impact on the Tourettic body, and considering the value of tics in performance spaces for translating experiences of #TouretteSyndrome! 🕺 Here's to making art! 🌟 (Photos from previous work!)

Welcome to @claireturner.bsky.social, who joins us as a Bridging Fellow in the Affective Experience Lab 🎉 Claire is a historian of medicine and the senses. We're excited to work with her! Find out about Claire's research in this written interview 👇 medhumsplatform.org/introducing-...

📙 Bluesky is the only platform where I haven’t circulated my book, as I’d recently joined and was waiting for the physical copy. So here it is (last book post, I promise) 📙 ☀️ Sunbed in Britain: Tanning Culture from Fad to Fear is free to download via: dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781...

An amazing opportunity for a PhD and a 4-year postdoc on this important project with the brilliant and lovely @smschober.bsky.social - hair, race, trade and multispecies history! #EarlyModern 🗃️

Sent this q to VICTORIA, but also figure I should ask here — does anyone know of scholarship on strategies that advertisers (e.g. of fraudulent or illegal goods or services) used to evade surveillence, esp in Victorian Britain? Or strategies that advertisers used to track responses to ads in +

Now open access: BJRL back archive, including special issue on ‘Medical History in Manchester: Health and Healing in an Industrial City, 1750–2005’. Check it out.

The museum's lecture series, Insights, is back from this Saturday. To tie in with our POO! exhibition, the first lectures come from Dr Piers Mitchell from Cambridge's Ancient Parasites Laboratory and gut microbiome scientist Dr Jane Freeman. Tickets here: thackraymuseum.co.uk/event/thackr...

Are there any Leverhulme Early Career scholars (past or present) on here who might be willing to share their application with me? 🙏

Today is day 1 of my @srsrensoc.bsky.social Postdoc Fellowship. Excited to get started on my new project 'Animals, the environment & the 'Protestant' worldview in c.17th Scotland' 🐄🌷⛪ Now to make an elaborate to do list for the next few months of research, monograph writing & a whole load more ...

Updated my bio to reflect some upcoming changes - this week marks my last week working with @srsrensoc.bsky.social and @hematopolitics.bsky.social. Next week, I'll be starting at @durhamimh.bsky.social, where I'll be continuing my research on the sensecapes of cancer.

There are not 10, not 20, but 39 AromaPrime smells at Alton Towers Resort's Scarefest this year! 🤯 Carefully concocted to immerse, 3 of the smells are bespoke blends exclusively designed for Scarefest's attractions.

We are very pleased to welcome @harrietbarratt.bsky.social 🎉 Harriet joins us as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Visual & Material Lab. Read about Harriet and her work in this interview: 👇 medhumsplatform.org/introducing-...

At the heart of the event is a one-hour live storytelling performance by Matthew Bellwood. Please spread the words to anyone who may be interested! festivalofsocialscience.com/events/amazi...

Our sessions will run twice in person: first at the Thackray Museum of Medicine on 28 October 2025 (10:30–15:30), and again at Moor Allerton Library on 1 November 2025 (10:30–15:30). Children can enjoy hands-on activities throughout the day, including crafting, colouring, quizzes, and games.

Hematopolitics are taking part in the ESRC Festival of Social Science! This event runs from 18th October to 8th November 2025. We will be introducing 'Amazing Blood Ties!', a children's book on blood donation that she co-created with textile artist Leigh Bowser.

And our FIVE YEAR teaching and research position in Early Modern Europe and the World is now live..... Please do circulate and/or think about applying. I truly love our department! @kingshistory.bsky.social

First post of the new academic year and it's a good one: JOBS! There are THREE fixed-term research jobs in @kingshistory.bsky.social attached to my colleague Francisco Bethencourt's new ERC project on the Visual and Material Culture of New Christians. Please circulate! #EarlyModern 🗃️

Short-term post-doc for arts/humanities researchers! Do you love rare books, manuscripts, archives, art and/or objects? Would you like to explore one of our amazing Cultural Collections @universityofleeds.bsky.social for c. 6 weeks (longer part-time)? Find out more lahri.leeds.ac.uk/brotherton-f...

Starting a postdoc at Durham Uni in a couple of weeks so went to check out the terrain today and why is it SO wet, hilly, and slippy

Back home after a brilliant day at York as part of their Public History Conference where I hosted a workshop on the ethics of using sensory technology in heritage, museums, and historical research. Many a smell was sniffed!

Had a brilliant day yesterday at the ESHS Early Careers Network meeting in Manchester! Really enjoyed presenting my work on breast cancer and breastfeeding in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Manchester people!! are your emails down? I've tried to email three separate ppl and they're all bouncing back to me!

Absolutely chuffed to have also been awarded a research grant by Thackray Museum's Research Trust to undertake my research on cancer and the senses using their fantastic archives and collections! I'll also be hosting some related events, so watch this space!

Very excited to be giving a Thackray Insights lecture on February 7 with the wonderful @victoriabates.bsky.social! Our event is titled 'The Sick Sense', and will centre on the significance of the senses and colour in experiences of illness and recovery. thackraymuseum.co.uk/event/thackr...

This is a momentous Friday - it's up and running! 😄 The fruits of my 2024-5 Nottingham postdoc, transforming an underused space at Shakespeare's Schoolroom & Guildhall. (The only permanent exhibition on early modern drama beyond Shakespeare, within an authentic early modern performance space.)

My profile is now viewable on the Rylands Institute website: www.library.manchester.ac.uk/rylands/abou... I'll be based at the Rylands from December (2025) to May (2026) undertaking research on sensory experiences and perceptions of cancer. If you're in Manchester during that time, let me know!

Lots of nice sensory stuff here!

This was the first time I've done a review essay ft multiple books and I found it very challenging but very rewarding!

This week we are paying tribute to our friend and colleague Bob Gann. Bob was a tireless campaigner for health literacy and digital inclusion. He had a hugely successful career but was always willing to share his knowledge and expertise. He will be greatly missed. pifonline.org.uk/news/bob-gan...

Does anybody have a successful FHEA application they'd be willing to share with me? Thanks!

POSTDOCTORAL SHOWCASE! Come and hear all about the exciting work our post-doctoral fellows have done this past year! Starring @claireturner.bsky.social & Jean David Eynard. 25 September, 5-6pm, Crowdcast. Register here: www.crowdcast.io/c/postdoctor... #EarlyModern #SkyStorians

This Friday!

Loudly tooting this CFP, please retweet: sites.google.com/sheffield.ac...

Check out this super cool learning toolkit out in October. www.nai010.com/en/product/c.... It's been put together by the leaders of the Dutch 'Senses-Based-Learning' network (sensesbasedlearning.org) to try and get more sensory learning into education inside and outside academia #sensorystudies

Publishing today - Feeling blue by @victoriabates.bsky.social 💙 The first book-length history of colour in modern hospitals, thinking expansively about the role of colour in shaping how hospitals felt. Now #OpenAccess on manchesterhive.com 🔓 - from our @sshmedicine.bsky.social series. #histmed

'Feeling blue: Colour and the modern British hospital' is out! And it's free online (or a relatively affordable £25 hardback if you prefer print)! Thanks so much to everyone who helped with the research for this, from supporting site visits to reading drafts. www.manchesterhive.com/display/9781...