Fuji right now

Proofs - preparing for a discussion piece with Martha Nussbaum on her new book. Mozart, Verdi, and republicanism are centre stage!

My book is Online! 🥳🥳🥳 Race, Culture, and Politics in German Historical Thought, 1785–1815 represents the culmination of ten years' work. In it, I try to peel back our assumptions about how historiography worked in the German Enlightenment, situating it between the... academic.oup.com/book/62547

Happy Easter from Shibuya

Walk in Meguro

Proofs - preparing for a discussion piece with Martha Nussbaum on her new book. Mozart, Verdi, and republicanism are centre stage!

Sakura by night

I love how appropriately jet-lagged they all look, for this day when Palm Sunday coincides with the changing of the clocks.

Springtime at my local temple

If your library doesn't subscribe to Milton Studies, you can access my article for free for 90 days via this link: scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/milton-...

The systematic inability of Trades Unions to be good employers is truly something to marvel at. Or possibly despair.

📣Out now on #firstview Michael Edwards @jesuscollegecam.bsky.social on 'Samuel Pepys, the African Companies, and the Archives of Slavery, 1660–1689' #Archives #Letters #Diary #History 17thc 🗃️ 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Imagine being a PhD or Post-Doc Researcher & openly celebrating that you don't do your own reading & writing (that's before you get into plagiarism, loss of skills, environmental devastation, the tech oligarchy & widening social disparity, escalation of global conflict.) Honestly what is the point.

I am delighted to have accepted an invitation to join the Advisory Council of the Global Intellectual History Unit (GIHU) at Sungkyunkwan University (성균관대학교) in Seoul, Korea. I look forward to speaking and spending some days at Seongdae next year! gihu.page

It was good to be back at Keio this week

Now out in OA: "Can Democracy be Rehabilitated?" by John Dunn (@thecambridgeschool.bsky.social): "[It] will be a heroic challenge... The stakes in meeting it are the possibility of democracy itself, a citizenry that has recovered the capacity to keep itself free" www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10....

"It is too late to ask who will educate the educators. At this point we must educate ourselves together and heed the lessons of that education or we must and will die - not just each of us one by one, as we were always fated to do, but soon enough all of us and for ever"

Tomorrow I will give an invited talk entitled "Liberty, Land, and Commerce in English Republican Thought, 1649-1700" at the Institute of Economic Studies, Keio University - Minchul Kim will also present a paper on Étienne-Géry Lenglet (1757-1834)! ies.keio.ac.jp/en/

Akira Kurosawa on writing

Now out: Seven hitherto unpublished papers by István Hont, "Political Economy from Pufendorf to Marx: Culture, Needs and Property Rights" (@universitypress.cambridge.org), edited by Lasse S. Andersen, with Béla Kapossy and Richard Whatmore @standrewsiih.bsky.social www.cambridge.org/core/books/p...

RIP Jürgen Habermas (1929-2026)

Newly restored online: Leonardo da Vinci's Notebook, also known as the Codex Arundel (Arundel MS 263), written in his characteristic mirror-writing with diagrams, drawings, brief texts, and personal notes. You can consult the entire manuscript online now: searcharchives.bl.uk/catalog/040-...

This is so lovely. 🤓 Thanks to the @hist-isanet.bsky.social for showcasing historical work and to the committee for recognising Erased with this prize. 🥂 Congratulations to Yan Long for their honourable mention.

"Comincionsi le guerre quando altri vuole, ma non quando altri vuole si finiscono". // "Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please". – Niccolò Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, Bk.III

Kawazu-zakura blossoms – less than two weeks until the full, vivacious force of sakura season

Somewhere in Tokyo

'But what most showed the vanity of life Was to behold the nations all on fire'

Now is a moment to reshare this video

Forthcoming! global.oup.com/academic/pro...

I enjoyed presenting details of my first book project today to Tōdai colleagues – on the theopolitical thought of Algernon Sidney (1623-1683), developing from my "De republica saeculari", my doctoral thesis @eui-history.bsky.social. I was delighted to receive encouraging comments!

Actual physical paperback now sighted! Here it is, just as lovely as the hardback but with some lovely quotes from reviews added (all but one in alt text) - thanks to everyone who has read and commented. Head to @reaktionbooks.bsky.social or your local bookshop to preorder!

The Labour Party in March

"If you don't like that, if you don't like the changes that we've made, I say the door is open, and you can leave" - Keir Starmer, 15 February 2023 Huge win for @greenpartyhan.bsky.social

Soon in print! www.cambridge.org/core/books/s...

From my morning walk to a local cafe, where I am now adding comments to some papers that I am editing

Found in the wild – unlocked forgotten Lore. If you know, you know.

"Footman, what´s that irritating, nervous, buzzing sound that I´m suddenly hearing?" "It´s the historians, Your Majesty. They´re frantically searching their papers for precedents and analogies"

The last time the son of a British sovereign was taken into custody was...? Never, technically. The last time -- 1685, I believe -- predates the Act(s) of Union.

Constructing a single, text-searchable PDF of all six volumes of "Barbarism and Religion" like I am forging the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom

Osaka this afternoon

amoris

At a Kyoto jazz joint, buon valentino

I spent the afternoon beside the Katsura – *hums Moon River*

Update: It is now closer to c.300,000 words of new Pocock

'Young people are quickly becoming so dependent on A.I. that they are losing the ability to think for themselves. And rather than rallying resistance, academic administrators are aiding and abetting a hostile takeover of higher education.' Cheery news from Columbia University's Dean of AI. 1/3

Is there a preferred translation of Dante these days? I’m about to quote the Paradiso in print, briefly but prominently, and wouldn’t mind getting it right.

Sitting in train and observing through seats student in front of me copy pasting an essay into a “revised first class version” with chat gpt, incl tips on how to make it sound less “AI” with different “tone” options (eg “more academic” sic) Also checks IG reels every few minutes. Feeling despair.

Today in Kyoto I consulted not one, not two, but *three* first editions of Hobbes's "Leviathan"

Marvellous to be back in Kyoto