up there with this classic:

For those working on next semester's syllabi: www.aaup.org/about/progra...

Northeastern is hiring in Ethics and Health! The job is tenure track with great colleagues in a great city. Philosophers of science, bioethicists, research ethicists, and STS scholars, please apply! Soft deadline is December 15th. philjobs.org/job/show/30469

This is basically EVERY university in the Anglophone world.

When @profgabriele.com & @lollardfish.bsky.social drop a new piece referencing @monicamedhist.bsky.social’s work you’ve GOT to send it to the Medieval group chat. Love how interdisciplinary work with history is finding so many contributing factors for events. buttondown.com/ModernMediev...

An interesting interview. While Prof Larner was getting sympathy from her neighbour's child who wanted to share their toys with her, I was explaining to mine the potential impact of the University's decision. I know that other colleagues were doing the same.

So we've gone from "he never said anything Nazi" to "well he might have said something Nazi but not in a hurtful way" to "well okay he probably did say something Nazi in a hurtful way, but didn't we all?"

Just out! My essay for @thesowhat.bsky.social on plague, doctors, and the parallels between two pandemics: “Shouting at the Air: Plague Medievalisms for the Covid Era in Netflix’s The Decameron”.

My new article in a special issue on Commentaries and Authority responding to Francesca Schironi's "The Untouchable and the Violable". If interested, please email me at my Exeter email for an offprint. #histmed #sts aevumantiquum.vitaepensiero.it/scheda-artic...

Badenoch says the Conservatives would want fewer “low value degrees” and many more apprenticeships. As ever with such announcements I will perhaps take it more seriously when the kids of government ministers and MPs are routinely doing apprenticeships and not degrees.

Why are Labours attacks misfiring? Because Labour support genocide. Labour protect the power & wealth of the super rich. And all they do is attack the Green Party. Help us take the actual fight to Reform: join.greenparty.org.uk

This woman is a fascinating follow on the history of disease.

If you're not already up on the latest "Black Death and the Volcano" story, this newsletter/blogpost is an excellent entry point. W/ bonus observations on how the scicomm industry works. And how it can work differently in the hands of skilled analysts like @killgrove.bsky.social. #MedievalSky

Great write up on the new study. Particularly love this: "As is often the case with SCIENCE™ meets BLACK DEATH, the science-media infrastructure explodes with reporting that overstates what’s actually being found here in the academic research ... at once modest but NEW! And new is good." #histmed

“If you encounter ICE, these are the things every New Yorker should know” This man and his team are, in addition to their manifold other talents, such good *educators*

Citing skeptical category-nitpicking w/ respect to the history of smallpox but not acknowledging that there is also pushback against such blinkered nominalism means that readers cannot see why a project such as this one at Exeter is so groundbreaking: news.exeter.ac.uk/faculty-of-h... #histmed

This review of the current state of knowledge about the origins or intermediate hosts of pathogens that have historically affected humans is valuable. A couple of comments below. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #histmed #aDNA

I think this is my best essay on this topic (maybe my best essay). I'd like you to read it, if you haven't.

Most read/shared piece on The Important Work is by a high school student who shares this view: theimportantwork.substack.com/p/at-my-high...

The Farhad Daftary Doctoral Scholarship Program. A great program for Ismaili students interested in pursuing a fully funded PhD. www.iis.ac.uk/study/fellow... Check out further requirements on the website. Deadline March 31, 2026.

A new report on dietary findings in a select area of Pompeii likely inhabited by enslaved people came out in Scavi di Pompei. Many newspapers are now running w/a headline about Roman slaves “eating better” than free Romans. pompeiisites.org/e-journal-de... Let’s discuss why this is problematic

This technology that people in school administrations and higher education are demanding everyone get behind because it's "the future" and "we just have to accept it," which is, nfn, the language of abuse.

Congratulations to @gi-anna97.bsky.social on her first book having just submitted her wonderful PhD thesis too. A truly brilliant young scholar of #histmed #medievalmedicine whose work all interested in history of medicine and medieval studies should follow.

When it rains, it pours! More medieval disease history today. @gi-anna97.bsky.social has just brought out her FIRST BOOK! Leprosy in the Mediterranean Medical Literature: The Kitāb al-Malakī and Related Texts. www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi... De Gruyter/Brill are having a sale. #MedievalSky

NEW: An AI image generator startup left its database exposed online, unsecured and accessible to anyone. The "overwhelming majority" of the files inside contained nudity, with images appearing to contain children and explicit face-swaps

I find it calming to read about Plague during other centuries. It’s amazing how what probably felt apocalyptic while it was happening can be explained because of new technologies is reassuring. Like humanity will make sense of ALL OF THIS at some point in the future. It helps give me perspective.

Addendum: here's @npr.org, in 2017, confessing to their sins (and including other misused images that Jones & Nevell had collected): www.npr.org/sections/goa...

I talked about plague & the 1257 Samalas eruption in 2020: doi.org/10.1093/ahr/.... (Link to #OpenAccess copy: works.hcommons.org/records/ba3b...)

Since plague historians have the attention of vulcanologists & climate historians/scientists for a hot minute, let me throw out some notes on a #YersiniaPestis study that came out several months ago, but whose historical implications weren't immediately obvious. W/ this graph in mind, here's mini-🧵.

The omission is esp. odd b/c the potential volcano-plague connection has been sitting there in plain view for 5 years. Not the 1345 volcano, which is the new & valuable element of today's study. But an earlier & waaaay bigger one: Samalas in 1257. Here's fig S2 from today's study, which I've marked.

The #OmneBonum leprosy image strikes again. Over the course of three years, me, @richardnevell.bsky.social, @medievalbadger.bsky.social & other colleagues waged a campaign to correct a visual "misdiagnosis": an image meant to depict sufferers from leprosy was being misinterpreted as plague.

Thanks for this shoutout to the 2020 study @karlgalle.bsky.social! Even more pertinent is this one @fancynahyan.bsky.social & I did last year (not cited in the study, oddly, even though it was announced over a year ago): doi.org/10.1017/mdh.....

If you have students interested in an extremely trans- and interdisciplinary PhD in humanities, check out our new PhD in Magic: www.exeter.ac.uk/study/pg-res...

Nice write-up on the new article on a volcanic eruption in 1345 and Black Death. But as @monicamedhist.bsky.social states in this piece: the study helps explain why the BD happened when it did, but that it could happen is because of an existing "plague infrastructure" ... 1/2 #histmed

Forgot to update this 🧵 on what seems to be evidence for 13thC plague in Europe w/ my latest piece. This appeared in @science.org in Sept, but was submitted in July: "Discordant Dates in Disease History: Comment on Sidhu et al. 2025," www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... (eLetter at bottom). #histmed

This work builds on genetic & historical studies by @monicamedhist.bsky.social @fancynahyan.bsky.social & others that have transformed our understanding of timing & mechanisms of plague's spread in Central Asia over the preceding century before reaching Europe: www.smithsonianmag.com/history/did-...

Obama's former speechwriter blamed Holocaust education for making young Jews too sympathetic to Palestinians. She thinks teaching kids "Nazis bad" is backfiring because now they see Israel killing people and get confused about who the good guys are. mondoweiss.net/2025/11/sara...

I was asked by the Democracy Now producer if I still wanted to be introduced as the Renberg chair. I said yes. I am still being paid until Sept 1, 2026. Just bc Northwestern won’t let me teach & wants to pay Trump $75 mil, I still hold this LGBTQ chair for 10 more months & will do so w dignity

Some more information about the new #BibliaArabica project from @goetheuni.bsky.social, which will partner with @lmumuenchen.bsky.social, the project will be based @badw.de and @adwmainz.bsky.social.

We are not a serious country, at all.

I heard the most amazing presentation this morning. The folks at the @intbocced.bsky.social explained their ambition to create a new, open-access critical edition of all of Boccaccio's writings based on a single principle: altruism. B/c it will make us good people to do good & generous things. ♥️♥️♥️

paging @wthrockmorton.bsky.social

I worked for an architecture firm in NY in the early 2000s that was an early adopter of the “cloud.” Then, on August 29, 2005, our entire website disappeared. Gone. Bu-bye. Turned out our “cloud” was a server in New Orleans, which was swept away when Hurricane Katrina broke the levees…

Great news for Lancaster members. Well done!

#medievalsky

Fabulous news: a major project has been funded by the @wellcometrust.bsky.social on the history of smallpox & measles in the ancient & early medieval work. At last! A proper edition & translation of Rhazes' 10thC text on these diseases. A transitional moment in infectious disease history. #EpiSky

Christian Henderson (Leiden) will be speaking at our next CGS Seminar Series (25 November, 17:00-18:30 London time) on Monarchies of Extraction: The Gulf states in the global food system. To see more details and register, please go to www.exeter.ac.uk/events/detai...

This has been quite a long route from marginal text missing from a photograph to connections to the "slow pandemic" that was leprosy in the Middle Ages (constantinusafricanus.com/2025/01/26/l...). But that's how #histmed works in an interdisciplinary mode. Thanks to all who have contributed!

My thanks to all who have been engaging w/ this 🧵 about retrieving the work of the ♀️ healer Trota out of this (itself digitally retrieved) medical manuscript from the 12th century. Here's a mini-🧵 w/ some follow-up info, the kind of connections that come from shared expertise. #WomensHealth #histmed