Every university should renovate the disciplinary framework of its courses and ask whether it is responding to its global responsibilities. But no university should recognise any merit in withdrawing from the study of other languages, cultures & societies www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/late...

very many congrats, looking forward to reading 💙

Think Like a Linguist: It’s time for a national conversation about the value of languages www.hepi.ac.uk/2025/10/14/t...

“We’re at real risk of language education being accessible only to young people in the most affluent schools in England. This would be a disaster, shutting many young people out of essential education” : @cforsdick.bsky.social

Congratulations to Annie Ring & Lucy Bollington on the publication of Citational Media: Counter-Archives and Technology in Contemporary Visual Culture! Chapters on screen works by Farocki & Hito Steyerl may be of particular interest. Available open access: www.mhra.org.uk/pdf/vc-7-com...

huge congratulations to Durs Grünbein and @karen-leeder.bsky.social on their award of the Griffin Poetry Prize for the wonderful Psyche Running 🖤

My Finalists are working through their exams like bosses. So proud of them. Nearly there now.

sometimes, instead of reading more news, I come here for the trees and the hope and the blackbird-trained humans 🖤

Dear colleagues, just to say the deadline for submissions to this year’s Germanistik in Ireland has been extended to June 30. Below is the original call for contributions.

Well, you're not off to a great start

There you are, already having a bad day, and then those rampaging raccoons get you.

Sharing the below petition to protest against the proposed changes to Modern Languages at Bangor University

Right, I’m doing it, just have to choose one. Which could take up the full hour.

So I’m teaching all morning and reading graduate work all afternoon but do I sneak in an hour of my own reading at lunchtime…? If none of you tells me no, I’m doing it 😈

♥️

Granta mourns Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. In memory of his life and work, we have lifted the paywall on his writing for the magazine.

In 2000-2023, Central Europe, including Switzerland, lost 39% of its glacial ice (Nature 639, 382–388 (2025) doi.org/10.1038/s415...) apnews.com/article/swit...  Alpine village is largely destroyed when a Swiss glacier collapses

R.I.P. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o ICYMI here's Ngũgĩ's appearance on the show where we explored the many ways he has fought against the "normalized abnormality" of the colonial world, in language & writing, and in the world at large tinhouse.com/podcast/ngug...

Sort of good but mostly not. They still want to close 3 languages completely. And teaching-only contracts at basic starting salary grade 6, no research-led teaching, no culture/hist/lit modules on lang degrees. No confirmation on how many T&R in MLANG to be saved. www.bbc.com/news/article...

If you want to find out about the first German translation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the subject of translating disability, my chapter on this has just been published in the book Narrative Universes of Disability. It includes a great image of Frankenstein's creature reading Werther.

Huge congratulations, very much looking forward to reading this

The Christmas present of my dreaming

Make a little fort inside your mind. Give no one the secret passcode. Read by flashlight. Pack a brown bag lunch. Maybe bring a piece of hard candy, for later.

Lightsome is such a good word.

I'm going to highlight some of the Best Small Fictions 2025 work, starting with this piece by Nicola Koh in @okaydonkey.bsky.social which I absolutely love okaydonkeymag.com/2024/07/26/i...

‘This was the book the judges really loved, right from our first reading’ We're delighted to announce that the winner of the #InternationalBooker2025 is Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated by Deepa Bhasthi. Here's everything you need to know about the book: thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-l...

In anticipation of tomorrow's announcement of official winner, the #internationalBooker Shadow Panel have selected their winner shadowingtheibp.substack.com/p/we-have-a-...

Stream the #InternationalBooker2025 winner announcement as it happens – watch live from our ceremony in London on Tuesday 20 May, from 10pm BST: youtube.com/watch?v=_OFR...

My new article 'Polysemy and Philosophy' is out in Philosophy Compass. It explores the signicance of polysemy in four strands of discussion in philosophy dx.doi.org/10.1111/phc3...

Sometimes I make service-y lists just for kicks. bookshop.org/lists/novels...

Looking forward to having an excuse to talk about Wedekind and Spring Awakening at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland - and to seeing their productions of the play and musical soon 🎭 www.rcs.ac.uk/whats-on/unm... @rcsofficial.bsky.social

Maybe breakfast with a side order of emotional support floof will help 🩶

Today’s teaching is just one long string of trigger warnings. Welcome to modern German literature.

Turns out this also sums up TFW you have maybe two essays left in you but five left to mark

This ❤️

so looking forward to reading this and claiming it’s for work

Read this last night and it’s still whispering in my mind this morning 💙

Not giving up. Just temporarily choosing inactive resistance.

Departmental Lecturer in German @ Exeter, Merton &Pembroke Colleges, £38,674 to £46,913. Fixed term, 01 September 2025-31 August 2026. Closing Date: 30 May Further particulars: my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru... www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMZ880/d...

🧡

OK, this is wild. In September 2023, geophysicists across the world started monitoring a very odd signal coming from the ground under them. It was picked up in the Arctic. And Antarctica. It was detected everywhere, every 90 seconds, as regular as a metronome, for *nine days*. What the HELL? 1/

looking forward to this talk by @benschofield.bsky.social ilcs.sas.ac.uk/news-events/... @ilcs.bsky.social

this newsletter 💚 the illustrations 💚🩵 and a reminder to self to get onto reading Gliff already. If I move it up the TBR pile will the other books be sad?

“Wer heute im Namen historischer Verantwortung zu den Kriegsverbrechen in Gaza schweigt […], macht aus Erinnerung ein Instrument des Wegsehens. Die Berufung auf die Shoah wird zur hohlen Geste, wenn sie vor dem Grauen der Gegenwart versagt.”

Per @washingtonpost.com: 'President Donald Trump on Thursday fired Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress — the first woman and first African American to hold the position. She was informed of the decision in a terse, two-sentence email'. #DrCarlaHayden #LibraryofCongress.

Come and join my TBR, little book, you’ll find plenty of friends there and a somewhat neglectful parent

Just saw the same black cat walk from right to left across the garden wall and jump the same cluster of ivy in the same way for the third time this morning. If this is the Matrix, I shudder to think what the real world looks like.

“suggesting that the President can unilaterally cut courts out of the loop solely because they’re disagreeing with him is suggesting that judicial review—indeed, that the Constitution itself—is just a convenience.”

Sonntag gibt's an über 50 Orten in Deutschland Demos für ein Verbot der gesichert rechtsextremen AfD. Wer ist mit dabei? (Bitte teilt das und leitets weiter, je mehr wir sind, umso besser stehen die Chancen, dass was passiert)

Very much this. Also, Hayden is a brilliant Black woman who disagrees with an administration that prefers the opposite on all counts.