What Exeter’s example has shown is that Departments that are excellent at research and teaching (the much vaunted dual excellence) and recruiting very well can still be threatened. Hard to believe these are not motivated by factors beyond the financial ones.

More awful news from Exeter. Solidarity with all colleagues who got horrible news today.

I was well within time because I was terrified of Bella. A fantastic day of listening to my colleagues from @rhulpir.bsky.social and other Departments present their work.

Come and work with us! We are a very friendly Department and there is a regular campus cat war to boot. What more could you want? jobs.royalholloway.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

On this #InternationalArchivesWeek I'd like to repost this absolute gem by the @bucksarchives.bsky.social!

This is terrible terrible for Nottingham and HE. Solidarity with everyone in this situation. The lack of wider outrage about this is absolutely telling. Academics are paying the price for problems not of their own creation.

Out: The Europeanisation of British politics In: The Indianisation of British politics

A thread about new bks that I used in my teaching about the Indian Ocean World this past semester:

There is no Jai Hind without Joy Bangla. We are not a people to be conquered.

Life stages of a historian- thread. 1. Oooh I wonder what the archives say about X. 2. Wanders down multiple rabbit holes. 3. Discards several ideas because people have already written about them. Why. But do I like their take on it? 4. Collects more material.

The BBC Proms schedule is out! The first born is on stage on the 8th of August with the amazing teenagers of the NYO. Come listen! www.bbc.com/mediacentre/...

I went to see my son and his friends in the National Youth Orchestra perform this weekend. Many of the teenage boys (and girls) were in tears backstage- moved by Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. 160 teenagers playing their hearts out on stage. Felt a glimmer of hope after the relentlessness of 206.

Drops today: this week's ARB @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social podcast features Rian Thum, author of “Islamic China: An Asian History” @harvardpress.bsky.social asianreviewofbooks.com/podcast-with...

I put on my lawyer hat for this piece on time limits under Indian citizenship legislation, and ongoing constitutional challenges in the Indian Supreme Court for Statelessness and Citizenship Review: statelessnessandcitizenshipreview.com/index.php/jo...

Mike is a former colleague and will be an amazing councillor. This is very exciting!

🚨 Launching: A Roadmap to Votes at 16 🚨 Kaat Smets and @jamessloam.bsky.social contributed to A Roadmap to Votes at 16 🗳️ - a report co-created with organisations, teachers, youth workers and young people to make Votes at 16 a success. 👉 Read the full report: docsend.com/view/9nnhamt...

In recent years, Jinal Parekh and @antaradatta.bsky.social have published on aspects of the ‘virginity testing’ practice that had not been studied explored yet. For example, they wrote about the Indian response in this article for @globalhistjnl.bsky.social www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Shame on all those news channel that would quote the death tolls with the caveat: ‘according to the Hamas controlled Gaza Health Ministry’ to cast doubt.

The teenager who once asked me if I had ‘ever heard of a cricketer called Rahul Dravid’ has also just asked me if I’d heard of the Weimar Republic…?!

Very sad that I felt I had no choice but to resign from The Infinite Monkey Cage - a victory for the transphobes and other bigots - I did it because so much of the media has chosen to believe the kind and empathetic people are a fiction - they are real and so often unrepresented.

If handing someone their arse, was a video clip

Excited our department seminar tomorrow is @duncanbell.bsky.social on #Socialism and #Telepathy: Group Minds and Freedom in Interwar British Political Thought. The talk takes place 1-2pm in McCrea 2-01, all welcome.

Apparently my copy is on the way! Congratulations @kalathmika.bsky.social!

New on advance access: "Air Travel, Statelessness, and the Rights Claims of Ugandan Asians, c.1973" by @riakapoor.bsky.social (@qmul.bsky.social) #OpenAccess doi.org/10.1093/past...

UK universities claim to be reckoning with their imperial and colonial pasts, but refuse to see their implication in the genocidal settler colonialism of the present – so how serious are these exercises? wrote about this for @versobooks.bsky.social blog www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/...

🚨Hiring a fully funded (3.5 years) PhD for the @ldnsocmedobs.bsky.social to research social media and politics. Candidates should have quantitative/computational skills and/or be interested in content curation/moderation. UK home candidates only unfortunately. www.royalholloway.ac.uk/media/hquftp...

A superb special issue on caste and Indian diplomacy. Well done @kalathmika.bsky.social and the other editors! brill.com/view/journal...

Congratulations to my lovely colleague Andreu @andreucasas.bsky.social on his fellowship- keep an eye on all the stuff he’s going to be doing!

‘The conditions in the hotels are very bad: most residents share rooms with complete strangers, have no laundry or cooking facilities, no choice about when or what they eat, with any visits strictly policed by security.’ Helen Charman on ‘our girls’ vs asylum hotels: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/se...

Come to our lovely campus to hear about how @danielalai.bsky.social, Will Jones, Ibrahim Halawi and Mohammad Kalantari and I have been re-designing our ‘intro to IR’ class over the last five years.

‘Israel’s allies are still buying time for Israel to change course or come to a deal with Hamas over how many trucks to allow in, as though food were a legitimate bargaining chip. Gazans cannot afford to wait for either.’ Amjad Iraqi on the blog: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ju...

Re-stating the obvious for any one still in doubt.

I am working on 'The Asian Mother and Baby Campaign' which ran from 1984-1986. I would love to interview any linkworkers who were employed by the campaign or any women who were supported by linkworkers. Please spread the word or get in touch if this is you! My email is [email protected]

📣 If you’re in London on 7 July, join us at our mini workshop on Global South Politics! The programme is below. If interested, please email me!

Read @uttara.bsky.social’s excellent new paper on exit control!

[And since we're finally asking questions, why is Israel allowed to commit genocide?]

"diverted" is when the 75 bus goes through an alternative route due to roadworks, not when a boat is seized in international waters

Congratulations @sandipto.bsky.social and if you haven’t read his book, you absolutely should!

Our students on the final-year visual writing module will be exhibiting a selection of their work Thursday 29th May at 5pm in the Chris Rumford Library in the McCrea Building Come along to meet the markers and enjoy their excellent work 🖼️🎨

Please see this @radhistreview.bsky.social call for proposals on Mobility Regimes | Edited by Amy Chazkel, Jecca Namakkal, Evan Taparata, and myself | Deadline June 15, 2025.

Come and work with us for a year teaching political theory. We are an exceptionally friendly department and we have a pet cat on campus. What more could you want? jobs.royalholloway.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

Same. I had two small kids, teaching online was exhausting. I could only record lectures when they were in bed. Seminars with a bunch of letters on screen instead of actual people broke me. And the archives were shut and no international travel meant I couldn’t see my sick dad or do any research.

Today marks Nakba Day (Palestinian Catastrophe) commemorating the destruction of Palestinian society & homeland in 1948 when Zionist militias expelled 750k Palestinians & captured 78% of historic Palestine. A glimpse into Palestine before the Nakba, in 100 photos. www.aljazeera.com/news/longfor...

If you're a US student looking to do a masters in the UK from September, do join our department information event online, info below, link here: eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/ap/t-59584e8...

Medical Aid for Palestinians are asking people to e-mail their MPs to highlight the humanitarian disaster in Gaza. You can find their template letter here. Please do think about sending a copy to your MP.

My latest article with Jinal Parekh: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/.... In this we look at how the British state shifted its focus from worrying about young South Asian men as a source of immigration fraud to South Asian women, and the consequences of this.

Congratulations to Stella Maris, Rector of St Andrews, who has won her appeal against dismissal from the governing body: a vindication of her, and anyone's, right to condemn genocide and apartheid. www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/politics/...

My new open-access article in International Political Sociology is about “visual politics”, a growing subfield of International Relations. It considers how visual politics is structured to ignore race and racism and why it shouldn’t. academic.oup.com/ips/article/...

This. Protect trans kids. Protect trans rights. Gender is a spectrum. Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Non-binary people exist. Inter-sex & DSD people exist. Gender-non-conforming people exist. Transphobia is anti-feminist. Laws are often wrong and unjust. We must fight for a fairer future.