📢 Applications are OPEN for #DMSI 2026! Join us for the fourth #Digital #Medieval Studies Institute in: 🇺🇸 US: 13 May (at ICMS Kalamazoo) 🇬🇧 UK: 10 July (at IMC Leeds) ⚠️ Bursary Deadline: 20 Jan 2026 ▶️ Info: US: tinyurl.com/DMSI-2026-US UK: tinyurl.com/DMSI-2026-UK Questions? 📧 [email protected]

It's grading season, so that means it's time for my favorite grading music. Max Pommer's 1987 recording of Handel opus 3 is a fave. www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHXK...

CFP, War in the Ancient World, deadline for paper proposals is Jan 15. Conference is June 9-11 in Winnipeg and Madrid. deremilitari.org/2025/10/call...

It’s publication day for Law, Society and Political Culture in Late Medieval and Reformation Germany! At last, the key sources from the Holy Roman Empire - laws, treaties, and polemics - are available in English translation. #medievalsky #earlymodern manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526165893/

@haskinssociety.bsky.social Paul Freedman takes Haskins into the world of English and Catalan cookbooks. #Haskins2025

One of my good friends is among the clergy at this protest. I don't yet know if he's among those arrested.

Session 4 is full of revelations and thoughtful insights regarding penance, pain, childbirth, and the medieval body. #Haskins2025

Yesterday I was in Brussels for the Global Gateway Forum - a gathering of world leaders to talk about how to connect a fractured world. What I saw instead was something extraordinary - a moment when peace might have taken shape before our eyes. 🧵👇

Chapeau to @pseudo-isidore.bsky.social for his wonderful new book which has just arrived, an amazingly global and ecumenical volume, in all senses! Beautifully produced by OUP (and before publication day!?). A spur to others!

Life is all weddings, (imminent) funerals, farm crises, or political crises these days. Spend time with those you love, folks.

Prague Strahovský Klášter DF III 1, which contains the only known complete version of the Historia de expeditione (the "Ansbert" chronicle) of Frederick Barbarossa's crusade, 94r-110v. (the Graz manuscript is incomplete) new.manuscriptorium.com/hub/catalog/...

New Medieval Books: Routledge Handbook of Medieval Military Strategy, edited by @medievaldaniel.bsky.social and John Hosler published by @routledgehistory.bsky.social www.medievalists.net/2025/09/new-... #militaryhistory #medievalmilitaryhistory

The amazing Roman pharos (lighthouse) at Dover, still standing after almost 2,000 years! 🤩 The tallest surviving Roman structure in Britain, and one of only three surviving lighthouses from the former Roman Empire! Dated 1st-2nd century AD. 📷 by me #RomanSiteSaturday #Archaeology

Proofs!

CFP for a 2026 SMH (Society for Military History) panel on medieval military strategy, geography and time frame open within the rough 500-1500 periodization.

One of the nice things about RBC, as a junior college, is that we have actual faculty bio pages. I wish the publications weren't on the side column, but I'll take it. (also yes, Routledge should be 2024 not 2025. I'll fix that in the next edit cycle. www.rbc.edu/why-rbc/facu...

What should historians do when our sources do not tell us what we want to know? Submit your research to the American Historical Review's upcoming special issue. Submission deadline: September 16, 2025: oxford.ly/45Isir6 @historians.org

A huge moment -- Melvyn Bragg steps down from In Our Time after over a quarter of a century. What a programme and what a legacy! Just a model for how to make great, clever, engaging radio, and a twenty-seven-year experiment that proves there's a huge global audience for smart, scholarly programming.

1/20 A thread about the appearance of the ‘Papal Banner’ in episode seven of #KingandConqueror. In an article that was published in 2021 in the @haskinssociety.bsky.social Journal, I expressed some scepticism about the veracity of William of Poitiers’ claim that the papacy sponsored the Norman...

6. Immersing yourself in the archive for a significant period of time is great but often the archival experience is taking a lot of photos and getting out because researchers cannot afford to do otherwise

100% true, but for reasons that are difficult to explain and make you sound like a jerk when you try.

Please for the love of god I know everyone wants to be interdisciplinary these days but that involves walking into your colleagues‘ department with a coffee and maybe cake and asking them if this is a good idea or if anyone has written about the French Revolution *after* Lefebvre (1932)

National WWII Museum just keeps delivering great content. The 80th Anniversary End of WWII Symposium is well worth your time. www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

As time goes on, Richard Evans' "In Defence of History" has become one of my go-to books on the subject. "If your main aim is to shape the future, then it is not a good idea to devote your life to studying history." Some colleagues could use to ponder this. Pure utilitarianism = bad history.

Watching the University’s SMT ripping my local scholarly community apart is a professional low point My Department is defunct Our individual offices for one-to-one meetings with students &c are no more Our books are objects to be moved away from campus

"Always write as if everyone were to read, and not merely to read, but as if they were about to set out from every shore and bear your message to every land." --Petrarch to Cola di Rienzo, Tribune of the Roman People, July 1347.

Kerak This is Kerak, centre of one of the most powerful lordships in the kingdom of Jerusalem (modern day Jordan). Its size reflects the substantial revenues it could draw from the trade routes passing beneath its walls, which connected Damascus and Egypt. Notice its ... (1/2)

Stop scrolling and post two characters that bring you joy and happiness.

“A Noble Theme”: Orderic Vitalis as a Historian of Crusade, by @rozierhistorian.bsky.social www.medievalists.net/2025/07/a-no... #crusades #historysky

Full list of all projects supported by the European Association for Digital Humanities, @eadh_org . Lots to check out here, beyond one of my favorites, 1914-1918 Online. eadh.org/projects

The village memorial at Tintigny is stunning. The Collards were two young brothers helping the allies actually entitled to the British war medal. They were found out by the enemy and the executed for espionage. #WW1 #Wallonia #Belgium @stevemarsdin.bsky.social @istoriatravel.bsky.social

Wallonia is full of “martyr towns”. In Éthe, one fifth of the civilian population was killed in the space of three days during the Battle of Frontiers. @stevemarsdin.bsky.social @istoriatravel.bsky.social

Keep an eye out for this. Story from July 26. "Armenia Is About To Put Its Ancient Manuscripts Online For Free" share.google/aLLlbG9FlqCO...

I have a student doing a project on the Taiping Rebellion. Good research--actually answered some questions I'd had about available sources. Western reports on the conflict can be found here at ANU. openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/items/3004cd...

Evaristo Muchovela, born in Mozambique, trafficked to Brasil, died a free cabinet maker in Cornwall in 1868, sung about by Angeline Morrison in the great @bbcradio3bot.bsky.social Prom on right now.

"if you never build those muscles". Same goes for art. You've got to learn the fundamentals, experience life, and draw draw draw. A creative writing teacher writes about AI and the impact on her students. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/18/o...

It was at that moment, in paleography class, that I realized I was not going to specialize in early medieval.

My therapist: Don’t worry, Merovingian cursive is not real, it can’t hurt you Merovingian cursive:

Faces of later late antiquity: stunning portraits painted on stucco from Oasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi, one of the desert palaces of caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik. Second quarter of the 8th c. Damascus National Museum 32506 and 32486, on loan in Institut du monde arabe, Paris.

Johan Åhlfeldt's project Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire. Impressive work. imperium.ahlfeldt.se

Two years ago I drove down the mountain where Otto of Freising and part of the German crusade army struggled to cross, in an attempt to reach the Levant via Antalya.

Interested in Frisian trade in the Rhine? Pippin the Short? Dorestad and its coinage? Or just can't sleep in your Leeds hotel bedroom at IMC? Why not download this new article about a recently discovered Dorestad denier from Sankt-Goar (in German): www.academia.edu/130389105/MF...

What does the web mean to you? As we celebrate 1 trillion webpages archived in the Wayback Machine, we want to hear your story. Why does preserving the web matter to you? 📝 Share your story now: forms.gle/c3XqotHUToKe... #Wayback1T #WaybackMachine

Take that, Voltaire. Definitely gotta listen to this.

@milhistlee.bsky.social just wanted you to know that I'm having tremendous success with freshman students using your "capacity, calculation, and culture" schema in world history. It's really helping them organize their thoughts.

Experiments with NCH's PhotoPad. Basilica di Santa Chiara (left) and Chiesa di Santa Maria Maggiore (bottom center), Assisi, photographed from the Rocca Maggiore in 2023.

The AND's own transcriptions of 13 unpublished Anglo-Norman texts (including religious narratives, a legal treatise and language manuals) are now also accessible through the Oxford Text Archive. hdl.handle.net/20.500.14106...

New post. open.substack.com/pub/danielfr...