#histchild #skystorians #histed 🗃️

I'm still looking for participants to interview about Reclaim the Night, squatting/housing co-ops and feminist architecture! Please share 💗

Had to share this from twitter just because

this is looking significantly worse for the gop than 2021 was for Ds. will pundits treat it as a sweeping rebuke of Trump? or are they not allowed to put that in the papers now?

Bonfire night prep in Elswick, Newcastle, photo by Tish Murtha (1956-2013).

Imagine having to sit in prison-like environs for two full days cus your boss didn’t like your hair. The normalisation of this kind of stuff in our schooling system really should be understood as a national scandal #edusky #edpsychs

A few final spooky reads for the season! drlauratisdall.wordpress.com/2025/10/31/r... #ripxx #booksky

There is no ceasefire. There never was.

"These proposals would mean deporting greater numbers and a greater proportion of the population than former Ugandan President Idi Amin's deportation of Ugandan Asians."

As I tell my students, historically speaking, the % of British women who never have children has been remarkably stable for the last 100 years in the face of huge demographic shifts. Women having kids later gets confused with a significant rise in childlessness that's not yet happening #skystorians

We're excited to announce the call for papers for #MBS26, the next Modern British Studies conference, at Birmingham in June 2026. We'll be launching the #MBS Association at this event, to support further regular conferences in Modern British Studies. www.birmingham.ac.uk/events/moder...

Last day! If you want to know why so many teenage girls in the 1950s killed off their imaginary husbands, why Cold War science fiction suddenly became obsessed with uncanny children, & what child-led organisation infuriated both Thatcher and British communists, look no further... #skystorians

Hello all! You can get 25% off the already surprisingly reasonable price of WE HAVE COME TO BE DESTROYED if you pre-order at @waterstones.bsky.social between 14th and 17th October using the discount code OCTOBER25! Pls share. Link here: www.waterstones.com/book/we-have... #skystorians #histchild 🗃

Hello all! You can get 25% off the already surprisingly reasonable price of WE HAVE COME TO BE DESTROYED if you pre-order at @waterstones.bsky.social between 14th and 17th October using the discount code OCTOBER25! Pls share. Link here: www.waterstones.com/book/we-have... #skystorians #histchild 🗃

Short thoughts on what I've been reading recently: drlauratisdall.wordpress.com/2025/10/10/f... #ripxx #booksky

The call for papers for the @histchild.bsky.social 2026 conference at the University of Sheffield, 1-3 July, is now up on our website! Deadline 14 December www.histchild.org/pages/sheffi... #histchild #skystorians #histyouth

One month to go until our abstracts submission deadline! Full details can be found on our website and please email us [[email protected]] with any questions.

Kicking off October with my first #ripxx post - two short, spooky reads, both publishing in the UK on the 9th drlauratisdall.wordpress.com/2025/10/01/r... #booksky 😱

Nice! Especial congratulations to @kieranconnell.bsky.social and Eleanor Barraclough!

'University of Sussex leader Sasha Roseneil said she felt opposition to higher education was often grounded in an explicit rejection of the expansion of access that has taken place in recent decades.' 1/2

Another witch historian joins the Blooniverse! Please welcome @drlaurakounine.bsky.social, who is writing a book on the untold history of #earlymodern WEREWOLF TRIALS! #monsters folks will know why I'm torn between "can't wait to read this" and "I want to write this" feelz. 😍 💙📚 🗃

Driving didn’t “naturally” become inevitable. We designed a society that make driving inevitable in most places. We can design something different

Reading Diary! PhD student woes, old-school SF and a woman who falls for a blob #booksky #sff drlauratisdall.wordpress.com/2025/09/29/r...

In further proof that the Booker prize is not for me & last year was a welcome aberration, exactly none of the novels from the longlist that I was interested in reading have made it to the shortlist www.ft.com/content/ee39... #bookerprize #bluesky

Useful thread:

Reviewing two very different (to put it mildly) short story collections for #ShortStorySeptember: drlauratisdall.wordpress.com/2025/09/23/s... #booksky

Come and work with our fab Americanists - a dynamic (and super nice!) group within @camhistory.bsky.social. We're hiring for a permanent position in twentieth century US history. www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/assista...

"Anti-immigrant march" is such a telling phrase. An immigrant is just a person who exercises the freedom they are born with, which is recognised by all human rights legislation, and moves across imaginary lines on the ground. Being "anti-immigrant" means anti-movement, anti-freedom and anti-person.

If you’re on academia dot edu, let me suggest that you strongly consider deleting your account.

We are at risk of losing a generation of researchers. It’s worse than the 1980s. I’d say: only do a PhD for its own sake. The work you do s as an ECR is itself important work. But this period of contractions is going to be incredibly hard for all career stages, & impossible for ECRs.

Cover reveal for my forthcoming book, WE HAVE COME TO BE DESTROYED: GROWING UP IN COLD WAR BRITAIN which tells the history of Cold War Britain (c.1956-89) through the eyes of children & young people! Out with @yalebooks.bsky.social 28 April 2026 #booksky #skystorians yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300...

UK could raise £2bn by taxing SUVs in line with European countries. Why do so many people want giant SUVs? They damage roads, create more pollution, cause more serious injuries and take up bigger parking spaces. UK buyers pay 20 times less tax than in other European countries. Tax them.

Cover reveal for my forthcoming book, WE HAVE COME TO BE DESTROYED: GROWING UP IN COLD WAR BRITAIN which tells the history of Cold War Britain (c.1956-89) through the eyes of children & young people! Out with @yalebooks.bsky.social 28 April 2026 #booksky #skystorians yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300...

Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, says UN inquiry

New blog post: some recent reading reviewed, from Booker-shortlisted historical fiction to 70s SF to a forthcoming literary novella drlauratisdall.wordpress.com/2025/09/15/r... #booksky

Absolutely astounded that the UCU and Unison branches at Kent and Greenwich were not consulted, and that staff only found out about the merger this morning via BBC news and Kent Online. Solidarity to all colleagues.

On the blog today, I review a literary speculative novel about a digital future that left me feeling conflicted: drlauratisdall.wordpress.com/2025/09/08/d... #booksky #sff

Typepad users in the UK can nominate #Typepad sites to be archived to the UK Web Archive by emailing [email protected] The UK Web Archive isn't currently able to display saved sites, but they are able to save them For more on the UK Web Archive and UK legal deposit law, see www.webarchive.org.uk

Why are we surprised that children don't want to go to a place that makes them miserable? And that parents can't (and often, rightly don't want) to force them?

It's grim out there, and we should be concerned. However, 'It remains the case that graduates are on the whole better off than those who do not go to university.' Current graduate unemployment rate is 6%. Rate for all 16-24 year olds is 14.3%. Graduate premium is declining, but still over 20%.

If you want to protect vulnerable young people then banning AI chatbots and making sure they have access to mental health services is much more important than invasive age verification barriers (which teens can easily bypass anyway)

Last day to submit abstracts for the interdisciplinary conference 'Opposition to Thatcher' this November. Already had some fantastic submissions. Please share to anyone who wants to submit a last minute abstract. @qubelfastofficial.bsky.social

More appalling behaviour from Goldsmiths management. The students and (amazing) convenor of this unique, excellent programme have been treated disgracefully. And the alternate tokenising display & deletion of this course tells a story tale about the college’s threadbare commitment to racial justice.

UK authors who've had books stolen to train AI! Important note below (incidentally from one of my favourite YA writers):

I feel so frustrated any time a post goes around suggesting that it's mean to criticize art because art is hard to make. there are two ways to read the word "criticism" here, and whichever one this most recent post means, I ardently disagree with it. 1/

In 'what my students probably imagine I do for fun and they would be right', I have written a long blog post about queer-coding in STRANGER THINGS, &, flashing back, about why teenagers of the early 00s were so passionate about reading between the lines drlauratisdall.wordpress.com/2025/08/24/d...

In 'what my students probably imagine I do for fun and they would be right', I have written a long blog post about queer-coding in STRANGER THINGS, &, flashing back, about why teenagers of the early 00s were so passionate about reading between the lines drlauratisdall.wordpress.com/2025/08/24/d...

The witch trials of 1612 still cast a long shadow.

Technically Arthur C. Clarke's Islands in the Sky, but what really got me into SF was the Animorphs series.

Speaking as a DC resident: statehood now. It is absurd that Trump can do this in our city.