Don't make me tap the sign www.internazionale.it/notizie/2014...

Am about to lift the following from a thread I did once in the Olim Bird Place, but if I leave a legacy behind, please let it be the legacy of coining the term The Chortlemuffin effect. The Chortlemuffin Effect describes a citational chain leading to bullshit. /1

@labhd-ilc.bsky.social ⬇️☃️🎄

Bookings are open for Textual Criticism and the Transmission of Texts. Learn how to build a critical edition and a stemma codicum, step by step, with Dr Anna Somfai. Thursdays 2-4pm, 16 April-7 May 2026. Book: warburg.sas.ac.uk/news-events/... #TextualCriticism #MedievalStudies

To clear the air here, because I am getting a lot of questions and feedback on this, we are cooked. Here is why:

Stumbled upon this book about Andalusian architecture and what a trove.

From all of us at TeTra, happy holidays and a wonderful end to what has been an amazing 2025! Our little Christmas gift to you is the preliminary programme for 2026, now available on our website: tetra.univie.ac.at. See you next year!

The CfP for the 20th Graduate Conference on European History is open! Ruptures in European History: Individuals, Institutions, and Historical Practices in Times of Uncertainty, 15-17 April 2026 @ox.ac.uk @oxhistoryfaculty.bsky.social ⬇️⬇️⬇️ 2026graceh.wixsite.com/home/call-fo...

Give it two more years, and being able to exclude false references from your research will be about as important a skill as including real references is today.

If you have some time, please help PhD student Marta Guidotti with this survey on reading comfort. You'll be asked to adjust different parameters for texts in languages you can and cannot read to improve reading comfort of texts. The test takes about 10 minutes at most. comfortread.framer.ai

Reminder that we are hosting the first LatinCy Developers/Users Meeting this February (and it's also a third "birthday" for the pipelines!)...

Today!

Hi #medievalsky, can you please suggest websites with Latin documents/manuscripts which also provide transcripts in Latin? I began palaeography in my degree & want to refresh my knowledge. However, some sites I use just have digitised versions - beautiful but without the text to view afterwards.

New for 2026, we’re running an intensive short course on Arabic manuscripts! Ideal for those wanting to get to grips with Arabic sources. In person, in London. 📖👇 @ies-sas.bsky.social @soasuni.bsky.social @soaslibrary.bsky.social ies.sas.ac.uk/study-traini...

The main problem of generative AI for HTR (from a different article): "61% of its errors involve making changes to the transcription which are more statistically probable than what was on the original page, according to the patterns it learned from its training data."

The εἰρωνεία of calling it collusus

Three Christmases later and I stand by this.

How have books shaped the way we think? In January Anna Somfai will teach an online short course on books about science and philosophy in the Middle Ages. Book now 👇 #MedievalSky @ies-sas.bsky.social @warburginstitute.bsky.social @sas-news.bsky.social palaeography.uk/study/short-...

The whole OU thing reminds me of when I took (at @univmalaga.bsky.social) Intro to Metaphysics and the textbook, written by the Opus Dei professor in charge of the course, read: "With the irruption of the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity into human history..."

Dialectic of Anti-Enlightenment

This is grim: ‘Professor Deborah Prentice revealed that counterparts at Russell Group universities had been "meeting with key people from Reform" and that "we've had people" doing the same, according to leaked comments made last week.’ VCs are already trying to please the far-right.

Ank: The Obsession with Purity. Blood, Faith and Social Order in the Ibero-Atlantic World (15th–17th Centuries) https://www.hsozkult.de/event/id/event-158995 Mainz, 02.12.2025, Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte (IEG) Mainz

I met my first Phillipps ms., and visited for the first time what I think might be the nicest manuscript reading room I have ever been too (after a slight detour)

“No habrá paz para quienes nos asfixian: clase a clase, departamento a departamento, facultad a facultad, vamos a construir una huelga que haga temblar a quienes maltratan el derecho a la Universidad Pública”. La huelga universitaria en Madrid, explicada en cuatro gráficos social.elpais.com/_zrpo6

Coming soon -- early 2026: Critical Infrastructure Studies and Digital Humanities. I have a chapter in here called "Shadow Libraries and Pirate Infrastructures". www.upress.umn.edu/978151791608...

Three 2-year postdoctoral positions in COLIBRI, the ERC project based at Sapienza on the reconstruction and study of Hernando Colón's library! web.uniroma1.it/trasparenza/... web.uniroma1.it/trasparenza/... web.uniroma1.it/trasparenza/... Deadline 12 Dec

Three 2-year postdoctoral positions in COLIBRI, the ERC project based at Sapienza on the reconstruction and study of Hernando Colón's library! web.uniroma1.it/trasparenza/... web.uniroma1.it/trasparenza/... web.uniroma1.it/trasparenza/... Deadline 12 Dec

And the news is... We're recruiting! Applications are now open for our 2026 @leverhulme.ac.uk Doctoral Scholarships. So, if you want to study at PhD level pre-modern handwritten cultures and the organisation of knowledge and power within them, do investigate our refreshed website.

It's time to remove laptops from classrooms. 24 experiments: Students learn more and get better grades after taking notes by hand than typing. It's not just because they're less distracted—writing enables deeper processing and more images. The pen is mightier than the keyboard.

I'm giving a small presentation tomorrow about early modern gambling and magic in a very informal context and I am particularly happy with this slide

seeking pointers to texts (academic or otherwise; primary or secondary; early modern or not) that discuss/theorize 'failure'? bonus points if it specifically addresses _textual_ 'failure'. here's an impression of fallen type for your troubles👇

"Adversarial Poetry as a Universal Single-Turn Jailbreak Mechanism" is quite poetic in itself

After a short posting hiatus, I'm very excited to share this CFP... 📢 Migration and the Early Modern Spanish Empire 📆 Conference dates: June 10–12, 2026 📝 Application deadline: December 19, 2025 Submissions very welcome from all #earlymodern disciplines — please do consider applying and sharing!

I’ll be presenting my new postdoc project at UCL's Early Modern Exchanges seminar on December 10, join if you’re still around! The brilliant Carlos Cañete will also be discussing his recent article about early modern Jesuit evangelization in Iberia and Ethiopia. www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of...

✉️🌎On 20-21 Nov. we'll host the workshop Letters& emotions in early modern/modern empires. With Carlotta Sorba-Mónica Burguera-Judith Farré-Xavier Andreu-M'hamed Oualdi-Alexia Yates-Pablo Hdez.Sau-Amelia Almorza- Elisa Heinrich-Ângela Barrero Xavier and our fantastic researchers and MWP fellows.

Hoping for the day the UK gets its own ICCU and its own Manus Online

I suspect I'm not the only person who will be downloading/copying swathes of the BL MSS catalogue once it's back online (if that's an option in the new form, of course).

"Given that the UK needs more graduates with languages qualifications, the task of universities is not to accelerate the decline of language learning but to find ways to bolster their student intakes."

#bookhistory #classicalreception

Keen to explore maritime environments and histories without going to sea? The Royal Museums Greenwich Caird Fellowship deadline is 18 January 2026.

What role did manuscripts play in disseminating doctrine in 17th century Northwest Africa? Learn more in Caitlyn Olson's Gotha Manuscript Talk "The Circulation of a 17th-Century Theological Controversy in Northwest Africa". Wednesday, 12 November 2025, 6:15 CET (1/2) @csmc-hamburg.bsky.social

I use a VPN for work because, like many people, I work remotely. I also use a VPN because it's fundamental to managing online trust: it's none of my ISP's business what I connect to: their job is to provide me with the bandwidth I pay for. 1/2

Research funding opportunity! This is an excellent bursary for those working on any aspect of women's studies - it's designed for those who need it most (ECRs, indie scholars, PhDs). Do check out the details at @wsguk.bsky.social and apply!

Distilling The Alchemical Feminine 📅 19 Nov, 6–8pm Dr M.E. Warlick explores how changing ideas of gender and sexuality shaped alchemical imagery from late antiquity to the early modern period — marking the launch of The Alchemical Feminine (Fulgur Press, 2025).

Why is there such a pressure to publish early, and is it always the right thing to do? Leverhulme Early Career Fellow @fredpaxton.bsky.social and @ayeshaomardr.bsky.social discuss their different experiences with the publishing process as ECRs. 👉 Ep 5 #ConfessionsOfAnECR: tinyurl.com/yjkamh2a

A much more exciting week brought 76 #Manuscripts online at the #Vatican www.wiglaf.org/vatican/2025... Includes a glossed Priscian, a bunch of 17th C Barberini stuff, a pile more Ge'ez, many Cicero, Iñigo de Mendoça's Spanish _Vita Christiana_, and MORE #MedievalSky #Skystorians

Reading Auden mostly for the first time and call me affected, but he missed the opportunity to break the line after "narrow".

"Das Problem war doch nicht etwa, was unsere Feinde taten, sondern was unsere Freunde taten."

"Images of manuscripts...help document the provenance of items that are taken from their rightful owners during war or under other circumstances. The images are evidence of histories, invaluable in situations where legally uncontestable ownership records do not exist..." hmml.org/stories/reve...

Call for (post-PhD) historians and cultural scholars for the pod! We have a specific wishlist of scholarship we’re looking to add to the lineup: - ancient & medieval history and/or - histories of anywhere other than the US and UK, preferably outside Europe Pitches to: [email protected] 🤗🤗🤗