I am so sorry to hear about the passing of Michael Slater, the grandfather of modern Dickens Studies but also a wickedly funny friend. He was a generous scholar, knew more about Dickens than anyone I’ve ever met, and was a talented actor and reader of Dickens. It was a privilege to know him.

The thing I love about teaching close reading via the strike scene in North and South is 1) how easy students find it to identify language they think is important; 2) how that can build out to a bigger claim about humanisation or dehumanisation; and 3) how you can then get them to see the other side

Our next #RSVPDigiEv is about a month away! Join us Oct. 17 to hear about recent updates to the Curran Index from editors @emilyjlm.bsky.social+Lars Atkin in a talk, "From Periodicals to Dailies: Attribution Scholarship and the Joys and Challenges of Archival Plenitude." rs4vp.org/oct-digital-...

Newly discovered Virginia Woolf proofs of "Orlando," "The Waves" and "Common Reader: Second Series" are now available online, thanks to Edward Mendelson and @columbiauniversity.bsky.social bloggingwoolf.org/2025/09/07/n... #VirginiaWoolf

Workhouses in England and Wales linked to transatlantic slave trade, study suggests

John Atkinson Grimshaw was born in Leeds OTD, 6 September in 1836. The Victorian painter is celebrated for his luminous nocturnal scenes of city streets and docks. Self-taught and once employed by the railway, he turned to painting full-time in the 1870s. Influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites and

This is a brilliant opportunity. Happy to answer any questions if anyone is interested in applying!

So @lydiacraig.bsky.social and myself were guests on @dominicgerrard.bsky.social’s wonderful podcast, Charles Dickens: A Brain on Fire recently. Here we are talking about his poetry, including some readings of the best (and worst) bits:

If you're teaching global history (or, frankly, just history) in the coming year, this 10-min talk will be a fab resource, and can be supplemented by Rebecca's articles on the history of food & her book on the history of the potato, Feeding the People: The Politics of the Potato (Cambridge, 2020).

I didn't notice this either, but if you're on Academia you can opt out of their AI nonsense by going to 'Account Settings' under your profile pic then 'AI Settings' on the left-hand side.

This post tries to explain why I find language models exciting. But it doesn't try to persuade skeptics that they should agree. It's aimed more at people already working with AI, and its goal is to sharpen our collective sense of what the upside potential might be. #MLSky 🤖 🧪

For 30 years I've been experimenting with ways to see & use the online collections of libraries, archives & museums. I've made useful things, playful things, & weird things. Here's a big list of them for you to explore! https://wraggelabs.com #glam #histodons #digitalhumanities

Tickets free for #GlobalJaneAusten attendees!

Job: Managing Editor for the World Historical Gazetteer (whgazetteer.org), author and support the development of publications and datasets in digital spatial history, and communicate a vision for spatial history research initiatives. cfopitt.taleo.net/careersectio...

Today we launched a small service on JSTOR to help expert researchers get bulk access to bibliographic data and full text content. A fun part: you can go download 12M+ metadata records bulk in one file, right now: www.jstor.org/ta-support

Happy Father’s Day from this William/May Morris father-daughter collaboration!

Are people out there using doccano? I'm new to it, but it seems like a lightweight easy (free) way to do sequence annotation tasks for ML projects. #MLSky doccano.github.io/doccano/

Job Alert! We're hiring a 3-year F/T Public Engagment Fellow based @lcflondon.bsky.social to lead our exciting programme of activities. We're looking for collegial & creative people with expertise in History, Galleries, Archives, Libraries, or Museums. Spread the word! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNI861/p...

Today at 2pm I'll be at the Dickens Museum in conversation with @emilyjlm.bsky.social @lydiacraig.bsky.social and Jo Hofer-Robinson about the verse and plays of Charles Dickens. The event is fully booked for in-person attendance BUT you can still join online: dickensmuseum.com/blogs/all-ev...

The University of Glasgow & the British Library have announced a fully funded PhD Studentship on "Fanfiction and Online Fan Communities: Collecting Practice and Inclusion in a National Collection" www.gla.ac.uk/scholarships...

The brilliant Dominic Gerrard has published an audiobook of Dickens's under-appreciated short story 'George Silverman's Explanation', and you can listen to it here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXwT.... It's probably my favourite underrated Dickens, and it's well worth a listen.

Next Wednesday, we're putting on a free event at the Dickens Museum to introduce Dickens's plays and poetry dickensmuseum.com/blogs/all-ev.... Join us, in person or online!

A fascinating article on using AI to write or review science papers. I wonder how different people's responses would be in the humanities. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The ESTC is back (mostly) 😭😭😭 datb.cerl.org/estc

🤟🤟🤟💙💙💙🙏🙏🙏 [i guess the press is shipping it now, omg!]

Would you want to date Charles Dickens? How about Lord Byron? Coming soon: watch me try to convince the History Gossip, with mixed success, one way or the other…

Some sad confirmation from @bcgl.bsky.social while I was at UW last week—the National Digital Newspaper Program—which builds Chronicling America—has been shut down Historical newspapers are probably the archival material most used by the general public—for genealogy, local history—it’s such a loss

Today my Liberal Arts students are hosting an exhibition on Leeds Special Collections’ commonplace books. On now from 12-2! library.leeds.ac.uk/events/event...

Really looking forward to going to see this!

New Disability in Library & Information Studies (DisLIS) Journal Seeking Submissions! cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/dislis/ We are actively recruiting media reviews (books, movies, etc.) of works that have disability as a major component, from people who have experience with that disability. #criplib 📚

Want to see the scope of what the NEH grant terminations is? The ACH ( @ach.bsky.social ) has compiled a database: impact.ach.org

I'm going to post some of my fav humanities scholarship, in appreciation for the work that smart people do. The @ccp-org.bsky.social is one of my fav projects. It focuses on Black organizing in 19th century U.S. The websites and #DigBlk scholars are worth looking into. coloredconventions.org

This is really cool! Transforming Middlemarch: A Genetic Edition of Andrew Davies' 1994 BBC Adaptation of George Eliot's Novel middlemarch.dmu.ac.uk/index.html

For #WomensHistoryMonth here is our short article on the facilities provided for women to view debates in the temporary House of Commons chamber used after the 1834 fire. Visitors included Charlotte Brontë: victoriancommons.wordpress.com/2024/03/08/t...

Absolutely delighted to have been awarded a Curran Fellowship for 2025 by @rs4vp.bsky.social for an exploration of the contributors to Chambers's Journal during the editorship of James Payn, 1858-74. Many thanks RSVP!

The voting for DH Awards 2024 is open and will close on 2025-04-04! Anyone, absolutely anyone, is allowed to vote once. Please repost. Vote early, vote only once! dhawards.org/dhawards2024...

Join Leeds Digital Humanities Research Group this Tuesday March 11 for a seminar on #AI and #EarlyModernPoetry by @erinannmcc.bsky.social from @stemma.bsky.social. #Free. #Hybrid. Info and registration: dcch.leeds.ac.uk/events/ai-an... #DigitalHumanities

Celebrate Pancake Day with Christina #Rossetti's nursery rhyme, 'Mix a pancake'. Illustration by Arthur Hughes. #ShroveTuesday #PancakeDay

And ICYMI last week I dropped a post on how to help students decode DH job ads and prepare for them.

ICYMI, our latest #RSVPDigEv with Stephan Pigeon is now available on YouTube! Stephan's talk gave us all much to think about not only the #19thcpress but also our own ideas of periodical studies and journalism history. Thank you, Stephan, and to all who attended! youtu.be/964UeHfuzqM

Who’s better, Shakespeare or Dickens? www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m... I’m glad someone responded by drawing attention to how silly and Western-centric the entire question is…

Perhaps the strongest argument for Great Expectations as evidence of Dickens’ potential as a videogame writer are its multiple endings.

We had Giles Bergel come to Leeds today to talk about using computer vision to study books, and it was brilliant. This sounds excellent:

Materials from Friday's first session in the snack-sized digital pedagogy series are now online. Check out writups from @emmcg.bsky.social on "Asking Questions of Data: How to Think Like a Computer" and @mebrett.bsky.social on "Thinking about historic structured data." walshbr.com/snack-sized-...

Not 1, but 2, major new catalogue datasets for eighteenth-century/Enlightenment studies! @voltaire.ox.ac.uk - is there an API or can users request either dataset for research use?

From your friends at #ReviewsInDH: "We firmly believe that the integrity of knowledge production depends on a commitment to championing a broad range of perspectives, voices, and stories, and we will continue to honor our commitment."

Glorious episode of You're Dead To Me with @moudhy.bsky.social schooling Phil Wang and @gregjenner.bsky.social on cuneiform. Perfect guests and I'm so excited to read Moudhy's new book, Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History.

#OnThisDay in the House of Commons in 1852, Lord John Russell announced the resignation of his ministry. He was replaced as PM by the Conservative Lord Derby, in the first of Derby’s three terms as prime minister. For more on Derby’s governments, see victoriancommons.wordpress.com/2018/12/07/l...

📣Applications to our Public History Prize are open! The Pamela Cox Public History Prize (open to PGRs and ECRs) recognises activities that enhance public understanding of social and cultural history✨ 👉More info & apply here: socialhistory.org.uk/prizes/publi... ⏰Deadline 24 March 2025 🗃️

Join @palaeofuturist.bsky.social & me for the Digital Classicist Wiki Editing & Tutorial on 27 February 2025, 2-3 PM (GMT)! Learn how to contribute to this collaborative resource on digital humanities for ancient world studies. Register now: ics.sas.ac.uk/events/digit...