New blog post! A creepy, summery, liminal spaces story drlauratisdall.wordpress.com/2026/06/30/2... #20bos2026 #20booksofsummer #booksky

This was accidentally posted early but if anyone fancies reading about my struggles with cosy books, go ahead drlauratisdall.wordpress.com/2026/06/27/2... #booksky #20bos #20booksofsummer

In case you didn’t know, Exeter uni, where I work, has announced a plan to make 25% of staff in my English department redundant. Left-over staff will do double the teaching while their research time will be shrunk to 1%. Meanwhile admissions for English at Exeter are HIGH, and on the rise this year

Thanks to all sending messages of support as me and my colleagues in Humanities and Social Sciences at Exeter face being made redundant in September. I'll be back here once it's less hot & I can think. Please consider signing & sharing this petition: www.change.org/p/stop-redun... #EarlyModern 🗃️

Little evidence that Australia’s under-16 social media restrictions have curbed use among adolescents, finds new BMJ Research. Longer term evaluation needed, but current age verification checks are “suboptimal” and being bypassed, warn researchers https://bit.ly/4agUnHL

Was delighted to speak about WE HAVE COME TO BE DESTROYED at @chalkefestival.bsky.social, first to school students on Tuesday and then to the general public yesterday. Now also delighted to be back in Northumberland where it is (reasonably) cool #skystorians #histchild #coldwar #heatwave

Exeter, Hertfordshire, & Northumbria: all after marks in & before the end of the financial year. We NEED someone to give a shit about #UKHE, @bphillipsonmp.bsky.social. All VCs care about are covenants; their shorttermist fragmented cuts accumulate to the UK losing a sector it can't afford losing.

Was delighted to speak about WE HAVE COME TO BE DESTROYED at @chalkefestival.bsky.social, first to school students on Tuesday and then to the general public yesterday. Now also delighted to be back in Northumberland where it is (reasonably) cool #skystorians #histchild #coldwar #heatwave

AI has started blocking the Wayback Machine from chronicling the web. Considering that nearly 40% of websites disappear after 10 years, this will enforce a giant loss in collective memory.

It is extremely important that Labour understands that the movement of voters between Lab and Ref was not the crucial factor, it was consolidation of the anti-Ref vote and Lab voters turning out in droves. Otherwise Burnham will make the same mistakes as Starmer in targeting only one set of voters.

Our colleague Dr Naomi Lloyd-Jones has edited a special issue of the @parlhistjournal.bsky.social, which is free to read until the end of June. Find out more about the issue and how to access pieces written by current and former @victoriancommons.bsky.social colleagues below.

Reform have now lost six by-elections in a row in England, Scotland and Wales. Their national poll rating is 26% – below Labour in 1983 – and Farage’s approval rating is -37. They’re very far from the voice of the people and need to stop being treated as such.

We have an 18-month temporary lectureship in early modern British and European history just advertised at Newcastle - closing date 9th July www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DRW166/l... #skystorians

There's just under 10 days left to apply for this funded PhD studentship on the history of unorthodox health activism in Britain! #HistMed #PhDFunding Strathclyde is a lovely place to work and Glasgow is a seriously great city! www.strath.ac.uk/studywithus/...

But that is exactly how the suffragettes operated. With a nationwide organisation of sleeper cells of arsonists and bombers. I’m gratefully people have reached out and referenced my work today. I remain (I believe) the only academic expert on the terrorism of the suffragettes. Links below:

Suffragettes organised this IN THE OPEN....they advertised for actionistas in The Times (1913 rail station destroyed by fire bomb www.nrmfriends.org.uk/post/votes-f...)

A discussion about the social media ban on under 16s. BBC: “You’re gong to have a lot more time to fill. What will you do?” Student: “Stare at a wall.”

New blog post! Kicking off my #20booksofsummer2026 with three wildly different reads that share a concern with how we romanticise the recent past. And one of them has time travel drlauratisdall.wordpress.com/2026/06/15/2... #booksky #sff #20bos26

I'm sorry but I am just regularly very disturbed by how some adults talk about young people over the age of 16. (Or as they are in fact better known 'other adults'.)

There is absolutely a question here of what children & young people are actually meant to do with their time, given the lack of free public space open to them & the fact that not everyone has parents willing or able to provide endless enriching activities at home (garden definitely a bonus).

Very funny to construct a situation where you'll apparently be old enough to vote, but won't be old enough to watch YouTube videos after 8PM

Pro-Palestine marches will openly be called "hate marches" in the press, but these arsonist pogroms, illustrated by a burned-out bus, are simply "disorder"

New blog post! Recent holiday reading, from travels through hallucinatory landscapes in rural Vermont, to Scottish bothies, to creepy SF religious institutions, to an 1860s miners' strike in north-eastern France drlauratisdall.wordpress.com/2026/06/10/h... #booksky #sff #amreading

“A number of families were evacuated from their homes in the east of the city after nearby vehicles were set on fire. Residents were forced out of their homes...” This is racist terror on the streets of Belfast. It’s being enabled by politicians and platforms who seek to legitimise racist violence.

Permanent lectureship in Modern British History at the University of Manchester. FT, £42-58k, closing date 30 June 26, starting Sept 26 onwards. For international people, this is equivalent to a tenure-track Assistant Lectureship. www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai... #SkyStorians

Extended CFP deadline to 15 June 2026: Please do share widely!! "Belonging to the Victorians? Community, Collections, and Care" - 1 day conference 4 September 2026, keynote @janehamlett.bsky.social to be held at Wilton's Music Hall [1/9]

What is ultimately the point? There is no consciousness behind an agentic AI. It is just a more elaborate form of probability machine, and as Ted Chiang beautifully argued in the Atlantic recently, it makes no more sense to attribute conscious, sentient, human agency to AI than to a Word document

Don' miss Prof. Lucy Delap's paper on Disabled Women, the Labour State, and Enterprise In Twentieth Century Britain this Friday 12 June at 5:30 pm in person at the IHR, London and on Zoom. #Skystorians

New blog post! What would happen if two of the surviving teenage girls from Eliza Clark's PENANCE grew up & decided to platonically queer parent together? The answer is more heartbreaking than you think drlauratisdall.wordpress.com/2026/06/08/i... #booksky #queerlit

It’s June, & with it comes my 279th #ScholarSunday thread of great public scholarly writing & work, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from the past week. Add more below, share widely, & enjoy, all! 🗃️ + blackwhiteandread.com/scholarsunda...

This. Meta is demonstrably tearing a hole through politics globally, and going ‘what people are seeing on here is hugely damaging, they must be 18 in order to look at’ is to totally miss the point of what is actually happening.

"UK universities have shed more than 30,000 jobs in the past three years..." Why is every sector worthy of governmental concern except ours? Even pretend concern? www.timeshighereducation.com/depth/i-dont...

It was great to chat to Dave about WE HAVE COME TO BE DESTROYED for the New Books Network podcast - listen here! #skystorians #histchild #coldwarhistory

Ahead of next week's #MBS26 conference, our website is now live! Check out our new blog series, Histories from Here, and our plans for prizes and conferences in Modern British Studies modbritstud.org.uk

The hoopla about social media is an excellent example. No one is even asking whether older people are radicalised, or damaged more, or in greater number, than digital natives. We just kneejerk demand the removal of the autonomy of younger people.

Listen! @lauratisdall.bsky.social talks to @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social about the amazing "We Have Come to Be Destroyed: Growing Up in Cold War Britain" newbooksnetwork.com/we-have-come...

My summer reading plans! drlauratisdall.wordpress.com/2026/05/25/2... #20booksofsummer #booksky #tbr

I'm so pleased to see that this chapter has been published. It's in a wonderful open access collection, Sexual Violence in Medicine and Psychiatry: Addressing Harms Through Interdisciplinarity which emerged from the SHaME project at Birkbeck. Link here: link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

Note: relatively stable institution; HAPP's a supportive (even harmonious) School; there's another Ancient History colleague; and pay at Queen's is now relatively high (starting salary is junior; post confirmation-in-post, lecturer starts c. £52k, SL starts c. £66k). www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DRP030/l...

New blog post! Speculative fiction set in the London Blitz, at the late Elizabethan court, and across the span of six future centuries drlauratisdall.wordpress.com/2026/05/18/m... #booksky #sff #amreading

Every single member of the History Department at Uni of Nottingham is at risk of redundancy. Every single one of us.

#skystorians Please sign and share. Petition to save the Humanities at University of Hertfordshire c.org/kK5v9MTdNr

Celebrating in the pub after the London launch of WE HAVE COME TO BE DESTROYED at @gowerst-books.bsky.social #skystorians #histchild #coldwar

12 May is Mass Observation Day in the UK! If you want to be part of this cool ongoing social history project, read more here - massobs.org.uk/12th-may/

Looking forward to my London double bill this week - I'll be at the IHR tomorrow and Waterstones Gower St on Wednesday. London friends, do come along! #skystorians

Really looking forward to talking with @lauratisdall.bsky.social this Wednesday about her fab new book at Gower St Waterstones - book below if you fancy coming!

Our next seminar is on 12th. May from 17:30 BST. We are looking forward to welcoming back @lauratisdall.bsky.social to hear about her new book, We Have Come to Be Destroyed. @yalepress.bsky.social have given me a discount code for the book to share with attendees! www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

Crucial point by John Curtis on BBC - Councils flipping from Labour to Reform are because Labour are losing **to the left**, & Cons to Reform Chasing Reform failed Labour; they lost the base & didn’t convince many on the right (Failed Tories too) Watch everyone learn the wrong lesson anyway

Great to see Aditya Chakrabortty pulling apart the language of 'grown-up' or 'adult' politics here, & how 'childish' is used to discredit politicians like Corbyn who dissent from the status quo. Why the language of age matters! www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...