The "death" of English departments and other liberal arts fields is not about their obsolescence but about the fact that they're being actively *killed* by institutions that don't value them on principle, not because of any evidence. Glad ppl are catching up. www.nybooks.com/online/2023/...

OpenAI: We’re burning money like the Joker. A miracle needs to happen for us to turn a profit Microsoft: Please please use our AI systems, we’re teetering on the edge here Anthropic: I wonder what’ll kill us first: lawsuits, regulations or model collapse Media and universities: AI is here to stay

Found a Shakespeare thing; wrote about it in @thetls.bsky.social: www.the-tls.com/regular-feat....

👇 😍

all these universities kept axing medieval history departments as if they thought tyrants beefing with the Pope was going to stop being relevant

Time for a moratorium on pre-recorded whispery witch voices in Macbeth productions. As spooky effects go it’s fine, but I think I’ve now seen 4 productions do this in the last couple of years so we need to put it to bed for a while. Let your witch actors say their lines!

🚨 It looks like the UK government is gearing up to upend copyright law in favour of AI companies, legalising the theft of their work. This is despite creatives' huge protests, and despite previous proposals being roundly rejected by the public. Please spread the word. 🧵 1/4

I have decided, purely for my own amusement, to start a thread of critical quotes about Falstaff, but illustrating them with an image of Mr Blobby. '...a character deeper than life, a wit unmatched by anyone merely real whom we will ever know' (A. C. Bradley)

A real joy to put my work into dialogue with Roberta Magnani's at Swansea University's MEMO event today. Many thanks to @sally-barnden.bsky.social for the invitation to do so!

Delighted to share the finalized flyers for my practice-as-research event next month! 🤩 Concluding performance is open to all and will be opened by a critical/contextual talk from me. Happy to set up a Zoom link if anyone is interested in tuning in from beyond Swansea!

I gave a lecture on As You Like It yesterday and somehow Panopto was set to expect it to be in Welsh, so it has auto-generated Welsh captions based on its best estimate of what I was saying, and has generated some real nonsense (but sheep ARE bad at everyone’s learning, to be fair)

Beyond a tiny hardcore of rich universities, if you are an employee in UK Higher Ed you will be somewhere on the treadmill/ slippery slope below. You'll recognise exactly which step you are on at this moment. Take a look. 👇

trying to give appropriate focus to a very interesting research meeting while Howl's tail wiggles back and forth through my Zoom window and everyone politely ignores it

This is just going to always be my go-to response to this kind of thing anthonymoser.github.io/writing/ai/h...

a seasonal research query: does anyone know of any sources on the cultural history of snowmen? what's the earliest reference we have to temporary snow-sculptures? (humanoid especially, but also more generally!)

British Library staff asked for a decent pay. Instead they got ‘a few money-saving present ideas’, such as ‘consider not giving presents this holiday season’. They are on strike this week. I wrote about it for @lrb.co.uk. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/de...

Ongoing decimation of British universities part 252: Apx. 1000 academic staff at University of Essex just received formal ‘risk of redundancy’ letters via email. Please share @ucuessex.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk

Attention #EarlyModern and #Shakespeare friends: join me on this Giving Tuesday in donating to an Open Access fund for Meghan C. Andrews’s book. Cancer took Meghan from us in 2023, but her legacy can live on. Share widely!

my student has decided completely unprompted that she wants to write about Lust’s Dominion (or, the lascivious queen, etc). Suspect I know the answer here but—is there a decent edition?

Well worth a read. It’s so sad what AI is doing to students’ ability to think for themselves👇

Mary Baldwin University is embarking on drastic cuts of its liberal arts programme and of humanities subjects more generally. A bad case of mishandled management, and colleagues and students will suffer as a result (including #AmericanShakespeareCenter!) Sign the petition here: c.org/VmXd75Pf7h

ON STRIKE AGAIN BECAUSE THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH REFUSES TO RULE OUT COMPULSORY REDUNDANCIES!

With alt text.

As more of my valued colleagues face the threat of redundancy, here’s a quick reminder that it takes years and years of public investment to train an academic. Cutting someone with this wealth of experience loose isn’t “saving” anything. It is a massive waste of our collective resources.

Israel has illegally intercepted the Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters, abducting British citizens and seizing ships sailing under British flags. The government must condemn this attack on humanitarians, speak up for their safety and demand their immediate release.

“The former leader of Reform UK in Wales has pleaded guilty to bribery charges relating to making statements in favour of Russia while being an elected member of the European Parliament.” 1/

Your electricity bill is going up because data centers are raising demand, not because your utility started scaling out some renewables. Pass it on.

going to write a paragraph in my Two Gents review about how Lossi is unconventional casting for Crab because she's so elegant and has a mournful long greyhound face and generally seems like she might be the wisest character on stage

further disincentive for international students is of course *just* what the sector needs at the moment

Asking for a student: what is the figure on the right holding in the title-page woodcut to the Haec Vir pamphlet? my first thought was a badminton racket and shuttlecock, but a bit of cursory research into the history of badminton suggests this is unlikely! A handful of feathers and... a spoon?

Does anyone have institutional access to AM Digital's 'Eighteenth Century Drama' repository? I'm hoping to read Samson Penley's 1818 adaptation of 'The Jew of Malta'

- 400 jobs to go at Lancaster University - 1 in 4 people will be made redundant But where's the financial evidence for this extreme action? Please read 👇 Sign the petition 👇 chng.it/7F52bThYqn

Does anyone have institutional access to AM Digital's 'Eighteenth Century Drama' repository? I'm hoping to read Samson Penley's 1818 adaptation of 'The Jew of Malta'

Rediscovered an offcut from the ‘Royal Actor’ book about Coriolanus, the French Revolution and George IV misunderstanding satires about himself, and I’m tempted to polish it up as a short-ish article. I am technically meant to be doing several other things instead, though

the University of Warwick rebrand is deeply embarrassing, but the sad thing is I can also imagine our Head of School showing it off in a meeting as something that we should emulate

suddenly wondering if Sabrina Ghayour is making an Andrew Marvell reference

We're advertising two artist's residencies at Thin Ice Press: the York Centre for Print. Please share! www.thinicepress.org/research/pri...

Series of personal and professional knock-backs lately, gonna go walk the Salt path* *wales coast path, I’m not facing the M4 in this mood

Lovely Cymbeline at the Willow Globe this evening, worth the lengthy round trip to mid Wales

Seems important.

staging a show-and-tell about a fake genocide during a real genocide to the government that has done the most to seek justice for that real genocide is designed to break our brains. They know what they are doing. www.cnn.com/2025/05/21/w...

Very honoured and excited to learn that 'Shakespeare and the Royal Actor' is shortlisted for the Theatre Book Prize for 2024!

Absolutely chuffed and very grateful that STRAIGHT ACTING has been shortlisted for the Theatre Book Prize 2024 - it’s made my week! www.str.org.uk/grants-prize...

👑 A new book reveals how the royal family has historically benefitted from connecting itself to Shakespeare. 📕 By Dr @sally-barnden.bsky.social, Professor Gordon McMullan (@kingsenglish.bsky.social) Professor Kate Retford & Dr Kirsten Tambling. 🔗 Read more 👇 www.kcl.ac.uk/news/royal-f...

I was vaguely planning to jettison Volpone from my 3rd year module, but this year's cohort have written such excellent essays about it that I'm going to have to rethink. A victory for Ben!

A contributor has had to withdraw from something I'm editing, late in the day. I'm looking for a sprightly 10,000 book historical words on the broad theme of 'consumers/consumption' and the period 1450-1650 (not necessarily all of it).

Students: Leontes is an old man. Me: But we know he's in his early 30s at the beginning of the play ("unbreeched" 23 years ago) and therefore only in his late 40s at the end. Students: Like we said, old.

The Prime Minister imitating Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech is sickening. That speech fuelled decades of racism and division. Echoing it today is a disgrace. It adds to anti-migrant rhetoric that puts lives at risk. Shame on you, Keir Starmer.

My copies of “Shakespeare’s Afterlife in the Royal Collection” have reached sunny south Wales! 23 essays by 23 amazing scholars, plus colour pictures, for an unusually reasonable £30 global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Lovely final seminars with my Shakespeare second years on The Winter’s Tale. We talked in details about the pros and cons of different bears (CbJ’s startling projection, the Royal Ballet’s bear blanket, the RSC’s incredible puppet from 2009…)