CALL FOR PAPERS - Modern British History and the 'Environmental Turn'. A two-day workshop organised by @maxlong.bsky.social and myself at Lincoln College, Oxford, 16-17 September. Deadline for abstracts is 15 May. Details in poster below, please share.

In their new book "Sex Isn't Real," Beans Velocci traces the history of current high stakes attempts to define sex and to create a world devoid of trans life. Read a Q&A about their bold argument on the blog today. buff.ly/hB1k4Cw

The 1921 census required every household to identify a 'head' - assumed to be a husband - but it offered no way to record same-sex relationships. So how did women and gender non- conforming people record their lives? Often subversively, as some examples show 🧵 (1/6) #LGBTplusHM #lgbthm26

Piers always gives such beautiful talks, and this sounds like an amazing source: gay diaries from WWII-era Norwich!!

I'm excited to present some findings from my placement at the Norfolk Record Office. You can join remotely, so consider hearing about some sexy gay diaries over lunch!

Queer history types! Can anyone recommend scholarship that looks at asylum / psychiatric hospital records through a queer or trans lens?

RIP Rosa von Praunheim www.bluewin.ch/en/entertain...

In case you were wondering if there was a time when people across the political spectrum used the past to think creatively and constructively about present-day problems, may I present the incontrovertible proof(s)!

📢Call For Papers📢 Sociability & Political life Marc Jaffré & I are organising a conference! We're asking: can there be politics without sociability? How have friendship, intimacy, socialising & informal attachments been central to political projects & movements? Get your abstracts in by Feb 14th!

Attention Cambridge people who like this sort of thing!! G. David currently have a big stack of 20s and 30s psychoanalysis journals in the basement

#CfP for next year’s SHS conference! Drop me a line if you have any Q about the ‘Lifecycles, Families, and Communities’ strand 📣

Pleased to see that our book Writing Politics in Modern Britain: Genre and Cultures of Publishing since 1900 now has a cover and will be out with Cambridge University Press in January! @richardtoye.bsky.social @universitypress.cambridge.org www.cambridge.org/no/universit...

University of Glasgow Library has a remarkably generous visiting research fellowship scheme - come hang out with me in Glasgow! Get funded! www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/li...

It's a lifeline, not a comprehensive solution to the crisis, but if you're a UK-based PhD (or equivalent) in a SHAPE subject within 10 years of your viva, do join the British Academy's ECRN. It's free, has resources & you don't need to be employed in research or academia to be a member. 3/3

We're in court today and tomorrow, taking on the EHRC's (now withdrawn) interim guidance, issued in haste following the For (Some) Women Scotland decision. In accordance with our general practice, we are publishing the Skeleton Arguments of the Parties. goodlaw.social/h3nw

Over the 🌙 that Life Writing & The End of Empire is joint winner of the 2025 @bacls.bsky.social Monograph Prize 🎉 Congrats to co-awardee @drdominicdean.bsky.social & brilliant shortlistees @olihaslam.bsky.social @gabriele-lazzari.bsky.social. I can’t wait to read your books! bacls.org/news/187/

Not enough attention is being paid to the effective closure of the bulk of one of the 2 or 3 most important public archives for modern British history. A terrible own goal for the BBC as a public-service agency.

A moving little article - it captures the personal feelings that emerge when connecting with the trans past, while also paving the way for a productive reappraisal of Ed Wood's life and work. lwlies.com/in-praise-of...

I listened to this Gender Reveal episode excerpt with @cassiusa.bsky.social the other day: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b... and was struck by his point about grad students doing trans studies work in depts where they might be the only one/not adequately supported with field expertise!

Professor Lucy Delap will give the first Women’s History Seminar at Murray Edwards College, one of the two women-only colleges of @cam.ac.uk. 🔎 Title: Disabled women, the labour state and enterprise in 20th-century Britain ⏲️ Tues 28 Oct, 5–6.30pm 🏢 Vivien Stewart Room Register for free tickets ⬇️

"I hope your rabbits die" Well, thank you Ethel!

If you're in Cambridge next Wednesday, do join me for the History and Politics seminar, where I'll be talking about the politicisation of disability in early to mid twentieth-century Britain through print culture, marches, charters and defiant visual culture. www.polis.cam.ac.uk/events/histo...

Immediately found some amazing stuff. Go and explore this incredible collection for LGBT+ histories!

This has been a journey! @christopherewing.bsky.social and I are proud to announce the forthcoming publication (with Palgrave) of "Reading Queer Media in the German Speaking World" bringing together the work of brilliant historians and German studies scholars working on queer 🇦🇹🇩🇪🇨🇭 printed media

My next book Deviants and Trailblazers: A History of Trans Activism in Britain is in the @plutopress.bsky.social Spring/Summer 2026 catalogue (for a May '26 release)! This book is the first joined-up history of trans activism in the UK all the ways from the 40s to the present.

All of us who teach Raewyn Connell's work will be interested to read this new interview with her! In which she also reveals that she's currently working on a trans book! www.smh.com.au/national/rae...

Some big news: the University of Birmingham is launching a new MA in Gender & Sexuality. It's interdisciplinary, with a focus on combining theory & practice. It's going to be amazing. I'm convening it: message or email with questions. www.birmingham.ac.uk/study/postgr... @unibirmingham.bsky.social

I'm surely late to the party, but @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social podcasts are so good! I'm getting so many bite-size intros to books I've been meaning to read

Museum of Cambridge are looking for a #Disability Heritage Research Volunteer, to work remotely, creating histories of people with disabilities in Cambridgeshire. www.museumofcambridge.org.uk/wp-content/u...

It is twenty years today since my first book Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-57 was published by @uchicagopress.bsky.social and I am feeling contemplative. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

This is going to seem very random but I miss how the old bird app would have worked brilliantly for this: I’m looking for someone who can help me find information about how, and in what - if any - capacity, the Salvation Army might have been involved in adoption processes in London in the 1910s.

Had a spare five minutes, so taking the chance to boost mine and @medhistoryman.bsky.social's open access article on a sexual scandal from the 1820s! If you are teaching 19c sexuality, politics, masculinity, or religion why not add it to your reading list! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Hello modest number of followers: there is movement toward translating Feminism Against Cisness into Spanish and ppl have expressed enthusiasm abt translating The New Woman. If anyone knows of any presses or translators who might be into it please dm.

Can anyone recommend readings on *premodern* disability and sexuality, and/or disability and queerness? #disabilitystudies #history #queerhistory #lgbthistory #earlymodern

If you love women's history, sign up for the Women's History Network ‪@womenshistnet.bsky.social‬ annual conference. Running over 4-5 Sept, it's free, online, & packed with great panels on activism, archives, the arts and fashion, economic life, sexualities womenshistorynetwork.org/the-womens-h...

a fun book to review and delighted to (probably) be the first to get the phrase "demon twink" into an academic journal www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

If your research centrally involves the 19th-c. British press, you should for sure consider applying for a Curran Fellowship. Anybody can apply, and the process is blessedly straightforward. My late friend Eileen Curran would be proud to see all the fine projects that her generosity has assisted in.

19th-century ads indistinguishable from suggested videos on YouTube

Unsurprised, but disappointed, to see that Newnham College's JRFs are being defined as explicitly trans-exclusionary: newn.cam.ac.uk/research/res...

Available to read Open Access!

I'm going to @thenacbs.bsky.social this November (wahoo) in Montreal. My own funds are quite tight, does anyone know of funds available to ECRs to support attending I'd be really grateful!

Letter of the day (in the Times)

My first article is out! It examines the conjunction of fiscal policy and gender politics, highlighting the moment in 1920 when different income tax rates for the married and unmarried were first introduced into the British tax system 🧵 1/7 academic.oup.com/tcbh/article...

Update on withdrawals from the Polari Prize: Jason Okundaye, Sacha Coward, Amy Twigg, Mae Diansangu, Ciara Maguire have all withdrawn so far, in protest of the inclusion of John Boyne.

On Friday, Sept 26th, we'll be marking the retirement of @petermandler.bsky.social as Professor of Modern Cultural History at @camhistory.bsky.social with the launch of 'Democratising History: Modern British History Inside and Out', published by @uolpress.bsky.social. (Free) tickets available!

In 1908, means-tested, non-contributory Old Age Pensions were introduced in Britain, payable from the age of 70. Here, incredibly, are photographs of two of the first citizens to claim them (plus a dog).

And if that wasn't the moment, this is: goodlawproject.org/the-ehrc-is-... 53000 people responded to the EHRC. 26000 of them will be ignored. It was never a consultation, it was a stitch up. Just like Stephenson's appointment, just like the Cass/Levy reviews, just like Sullivan's report.

I'm excited to get stuck into this!

Oh boy, do I have some of these!

Campop blog #59: Some say rises in lone motherhood since c.1950 indicate breakdown of the nuclear family & call for returns to Victorian values. But 19C levels of lone parenthood & reconstituted families were similar to today's ... @camunicampop.bsky.social www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog/2025/07...