OK, let's imagine a world where the humanities never goes into crisis in the 2010s. let's say a multi-billionaire tech dies and his will lists "the humanities" as his only beneficiary. what does your field look like? Here's what I think English would be. /1

Presented a poster at the Health Ethics and Narrative Ireland (HEaNI) summer school @ucdmedicine.bsky.social last week! First time making a poster and really happy with how it turned out !

"Not unlike the consumption of porn, the LLM-user fictional exchange is often defined by familiar genres, instantaneity, repetition, niches, and momentary gratification" arxiv.org/abs/2606.22748

Exeter has a phenomenal track record of literary studies research AND enrollment. The unbundling of the two will sabotage them both. And that is by design. The fewer research-intensive humanities departments there are, this thinking goes, the easier it will be to censor what they produce.

Call for Papers. LIFE at its Limits: Medicine, Literature, Philosophy. Host and dates: Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary | 10–12 December 2026. #essecfp. 👉 essenglish.org/cfp-conferen...

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

"One of the many failings of reactionary centrism is its utter unfalsifiability: if you lose an election you have to move to the right on social issues to win next time. If you win an election you have to move to the right to govern." www.liberalcurrents.com/starmer-out/

It’s time for the British people to accept that all their attempts at self-government in the past 1600 years have failed, and resubmit to Roman rule

“a sad day for Ireland’s future when almost half-a-billion euro in public money was allocated towards so much industry-focused, commercialisable, tech-focused entrepreneurial research” - @jenniecstephens.bsky.social www.independent.ie/irish-news/e...

Wellcome no longer accepting lead applicants from ireland is, hmm, quite catastrophic news to stat the day tbh.

Ned Flanders when Ned Wallonia enters the room

Listening to a @theresthistory.bsky.social episode where the presenters suggest that Belgium and (checks notes) Italy are “made up countries” as opposed to England and (checks notes again) the United States. So it’s time for this:

Scheduling a shirtless gladiator fight on your front lawn while you're losing a war is certainly a choice.

I often think about this too. For reasons I won't go into, I was a terrible student in secondary school. I would never have been allowed to go to university in Ireland. Yet being a teenager is really hard. It seems incredibly unfair to me that so much of one's future hinges on arguably some of the

We might elect human politicians to Parliament, but actually the corporate hivemind speaks through them.

Delighted to have a chapter on Alasdair Gray and Hugh MacDiarmid in the hot-off-the-press The Edinburgh Companion to Alasdair Gray and the Arts, published by @edinburghup.bsky.social

Free Gifts by @alybatt.bsky.social is now 50% off! This book is a timely new critique of capitalism’s persistent failure to value nature. Use code SPRING50 at checkout until June 9th: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

This is nicely put. The machine that subordinates all life to its own algorithm of self-expansion is already operating: It’s called capital. www.newyorker.com/science/anna...

If you're a university researcher in Ireland, especially in humanities or social sciences, please consider signing this open letter: openletter.earth/concern-abou...

This interview with @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social about my new monograph, Tales of Health: Illness, Disability, and Citizenship in the Romantic National Tale from @livunipress.bsky.social , was such a good conversation open.spotify.com/episode/1cXr...

If you missed the first webinar in the new series 'Narratives of Illness and Dis/ability in Scottish Literature' last week, featuring talks by Holly Faith Nelson and Graham Morgan, the full recording is now available on the IASSL YouTube channel. 🎦

In addition to the general conference CfP, the following streams have issud their individual CfPs: Marxism & Disability Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Struggles Marxism, Culture and the Arts New Technologies Workers & Capital Climate Imperialism & Anti-Imperialism Eastern Marxisms 😍 Submit, submit!

Unbelievably shortsighted and a blow to humanities teaching in the SE. Solidarity with our brilliant colleagues in Carlow. www.rte.ie/news/2026/05...

Hard to get my head around the fact a former Taoiseach said that we shouldn’t be letting Congolese people into the country and a week later a Congolese man has been killed George Floyd-style by security guards kneeling on him on Dublin’s traditional main shopping street

LLM’s are, in a sense, genre-identifying machines. The literary terms ‘genre’ names something potentially statistically-identifiable - a basin or attractor in the field. The LLM’s success at pastiching a certain kind of postcolonial Caribbean prose shows that it’s become generic

Hans Demeyer and Sven Vitse, Affective Crisis and the Possibility of Attachment: A Comparative Study of Contemporary Fiction in Neoliberal Ruins - UCL Press, April 2026 (print and open access) uclpress.co.uk/book/affecti... @uclpress.bsky.social

What the hell?!?! The Silk Road Cafe at the Chester Beatty provides probably the best lunch in Dublin. This is tragic. Please say my comination @marshslibrary.bsky.social and silk road days are not gone forever. www.thejournal.ie/silk-road-ca...

New episode out today: youtu.be/nyHD4OQdyhI

Tá Conradh na Gaeilge sa Bhruiséil ag ullmhú don féile Éigse na Bruiséile a bheidh ar siúl i Meán Fómhair i mbliana. Dúirt Róisín de Bhaldraithe gur féile cultúrtha, ceoil agus Gaeilge í a bhíonn ag tarraingt gnéithe de chultúr na hÉíreann le chéile. jrnl.ie/7025834

Congratulations to everyone involved in the publication of the works of Agnes Owens. The first of the reissues, including Gentlemen Of The West, are out today - with introductions by Scottish writers and terrific use of Joan Eardley paintings. A beautiful set of books.

A student who sets out to write a research paper will now encounter chatbots who will offer to do their work in their word document, in their learning management system, in their email, in their web browser, and in certain library database interfaces.

Really enjoying Ella Risbridger's book on romantic fiction!

new! The Future of Totality Fredric Jameson and the Prospects of Critical Theory @dukepress.bsky.social has the intro available for download in advance of publication thanks as ever to the wonderful @roberttally.bsky.social ! www.dukeupress.edu/the-future-o...

Dying at how this video is going viral because it was filmed in a school about 15 min from my parents' house in Belgium and the principal now regrets letting them use the space because he didn't expect there to be 'smoking,' 'bullying' and 'violence' in the project A man of culture I am sure

The voter registration deadline for the Dublin Central and Galway West by-elections is midnight tonight. You can check the register here: www.voter.ie #SpeirGorm

Great lecture coming up at @molimuseum.bsky.social! moli.ie/events/moder...

The next IASSL webinar is going to be the first session in the new series 'Narratives of Illness and Dis/ability in Scottish Literature', featuring talks by Holly Faith Nelson & Graham Morgan. 15 May 2026, 8:30 pm UK time on MS Teams, all welcome!

it's @princetonupress.bsky.social 's spring sale—50% off with code SPRING50 that means you can buy CLOSE READING FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY for $12.48

Also worth remembering that research suggests that the most effective way of reducing AI's appeal to students is not to play bad cop and enact surveillance, but instead to increase AI literacy, that is to explain how AI works and fails to work doi.org/10.1177/0022...

"The practice of using “dynamic pricing” to set pay on gig economy platforms including Uber should be banned because it leaves workers at the mercy of shadowy algorithms with no certainty over their earnings, trade union leaders have urged."

A propos of nothing, in Belgium, we are asked to show our ID when we vote. But everyone is registered automatically, voting takes place on Sunday, you rarely have to queue for more than 15 minutes, and we've never heard of Gerrymandering.

Having a house in Scotland with solar panels is a really eye opening experience. Solar panels work in Scotland - and if they work here, they work anywhere, because everywhere else in the world is sunnier than here

This is a very good documentary by the Palestinian filmmaker Suhail Nassar; you can watch it on YouTube now (with subtitles and a slightly different title): www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYj-...

A delicious twist: the man who became famous for ridiculing faith ends up believing the chatbot loves him

🎭🔬Don't miss Colin Murphy's new play 'Miasma' at UCD Trapdoor on 5 May! Dramatising the research of the VICTEUR project, this compelling one-hour detective story about the cholera pandemic in 1840s–50s reflects challenges still faced today around misinformation vs evidence. 🎟️ lnkd.in/dazUXnTF

I like the Dublin Inquirer but have all news sites collectively forgotten about paragraphs? Why is every sentence isolated? If anything it makes it less readable? Or am I just getting old and grumpy?

The IHA Statement of Solidarity and Support with Ulster University Colleagues. www.irishhumanities.ie/assets/PDFs/...

This looks like it'll be sold out soon, so if you have an 11-14 year old in your household or clan, get them a ticket! Let me tell them about comics and silly ways to tell stories with pictures! The youth yearn for workshops. phizzfest.ie/event/phizzfest-childrens-special-edition-sketchbook-club

Freedom -Langston Hughes