The deadline has now been extended to May 10

There are 10 funded PhD opportunities at the Uni of Brighton, only for home students (unfortunately!). Find info here (there is a special focus on widening participation): www.brighton.ac.uk/research/pos... There are wonderful people you could work with! The second round deadline is end of May

📢 IGALA 14 is coming to York St John University, UK | 21–23 July 2027! Theme: 'Researching Language, Gender and Sexuality in Times of Political Challenge' Follow for updates on keynote speakers, call for papers & more. Save the date! 📅 #IGALA14 #GenderAndLanguage #Linguistics #Conference2027

Dr Sophie Oliver is curating an exhibition on modernist Gertrude Stein, opening this summer at the Harry Ransom Centre: www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/... In the meantime, the Times discusses Deborah Levy's new novel on Stein, alongside Oliver's upcoming exhibition. www.the-tls.com/literature/f...

The average person doesn’t give a fuck if AI has some niche use where it actually excels if used properly. In fact, that is what a tool is *supposed* to do and none of us will have a problem if it is used like that. What we see is AI fucking up real life in a massive way.

This looks great: Leverhulme-funded PhD scholarship to work with Olivia Knapton on how insects are framed in educational and learning contexts, aiming to better understand the widespread aversion to bugs in the UK! 🐛Please share with prospective PhD students: www.kcl.ac.uk/study/fundin...

I've recently started (re)watching classic US movies - (the shift in) Kim Novak's accent in Hitchcock's Vertigo made me dig a little deeper, and this short video is a really good summary of the Mid-atlantic accent.

Liverpool people! I’ll be in conversation with Saul Leslie next Tuesday 21st April about his fantastic debut novel at Waterstones Liverpool. Tickets on sale now at the link. All welcome! www.waterstones.com/events/saul-...

Interested in the history of British Chinese food? In May, Dr Ursula Kania @instantlinguist.bsky.social from @livunienglish.bsky.social @sotauol.bsky.social is giving a tallk as part of @pintofscience.uk based on her research into British Chinese food coverage in newspapers. Details ⬇️

Join me for 'A Feast for the Mind' at Lime Street Central on Wednesday, 20th May, from 7pm, as part of @pintofscience.uk. I'll be exploring the history of British Chinese food through newspaper coverage! #pint26 @livunienglish.bsky.social @sotauol.bsky.social pintofscience.co.uk/event/a-feas...

The "being anti-Ai is ableist" thing is not only a condescending weenie take, but also untrue. Crappy AI substitutes for access don't work, but become a quick go-to excuse to take away real accommodations that do.

Same here - and definitely not good for my blood pressure, either...

The summer term is right around the corner & so is Season 10 of #BæFoLa (Bayreuth-Berlin Food and Language lecture series)! 🍩🍩🍩🍩 Join us for all things #LanguageAndFood, this season as international as ever with speakers from the UK, Italy, Belgium, the US, and India 🤩 #Linguistics

I love #WooltonPictureHouse - went to see 'Rear Window' there on Tuesday, and have already booked tickets for 'Vertigo' next week :-) Such a gem!

Transphobes do not represent the overwhelming majority of women. The @nionwomen.bsky.social petition is to show this. They now need only just over 4,000 more signatures to make it to 100,000. If you don’t want to be used as an excuse to take away trans people’s human rights, please sign & share

NO LGB WITHOUT THE T 🏳️‍⚧️

if you want to know the history of this kind of policy, I made a podcast two years ago that explained why these tests make no sense, how they were already used and eventually abandoned by the IOC in the 80's and 90's, and the devastating impacts they have on real athletes: www.tested-podcast.com

The extra materials for this podcast very kindly mention my (German) book chapter on queer cookbooks - let me know if you'd like me to send you the pdf (also always happy to talk about US/UK/German queer cookbooks, online/offline/over coffee :-))

Check out this podcast episode on the language of food - featuring a short clip by yours truly, and lots of other brilliant researchers. Bon appétit :-)

WTF?!

👁️‍🗨️ Take a tour of avant-garde art collector Gertrude Stein's home with Dr Sophie Oliver, Senior Lecturer in @livunienglish.bsky.social and BBC/UKRI New Generation Thinker. Listen below 📻

Late to the party but: Prima Facie is hands down one of the best plays I've ever seen and Jodie Comer deserves all the awards for her incredible performance. This one is gonna stay with me for a long time.

Late to the party but: Prima Facie is hands down one of the best plays I've ever seen and Jodie Comer deserves all the awards for her incredible performance. This one is gonna stay with me for a long time.

Recording a short clip for this was such fun - can't wait to listen to the whole episode :-)

This appalling fat cat wants to shut the door on all my mature students, many of whom left school after GCSE and give up a lot to go to university. I can tell him that they’re the hungriest for education and far from being unable to graduate, they regularly get the highest grades. Hateful man.

When academia's stars mistreat people, they're "punished" with relief from teaching, mentoring, and service responsibilities. This frees them to spend more time on the more valued work of research. And dumps less valued responsibilities onto colleagues, making it harder for them to become stars.

How to turn off Gemini in Gmail without turning off tabs & other innocuous "smart features." In the general setting tab you'll see a check box to turn on smart features. You don't want to uncheck that. You want to click on "manage workspace smart features" and toggle the features off in the popup.

It never ceases to confound me just how many folks think the point of essays is to provide teachers with essays. That teachers just like, collect them, or need them for sustenance or something. Rather than the point of them being the *actual fucking act of learning how to think about shit*

#academicsky heads up: If your institution uses Canvas as its LMS, be aware that they are currently offering a bunch of AI features for free (drug dealer model) and they just announced this: community.instructure.com/en/discussio...

One of several scholarships for Palestinian students available at the University of Liverpool. This one is for the MRes in Irish Studies. Please share to relevant circles. www.liverpool.ac.uk/study/fees-a...

Call for Papers, please circulate! Ethics of queer in/visibility Heidelberg, September 30 - October 2, 2026 queer-in-visibility.de Keynote speakers: J Calder (Linguistics, University of Colorado Boulder) Anna Hájková @ankahajkova.bsky.social (History, University of Warwick)

📚 Get a lucky dip of 15 Babels ✉️ £10 UK, or free for UK schools. Email for overseas prices 📧 Get in touch at [email protected]

Ooof 😥

For UK people feeling gaslit by our government’s plans for “AI” “skills” “training”, here’s a series of videos by an actual expert that will tell you how it works and how to engage with it critically (if at all); see also @olivia.science's excellent papers.

If you are also horrified by ICE's actions in Minnesota, here's a great resource for finding organisations, communities and individuals who need donations. Everything from mutual aid to help people cover their rent and fund emergency food packages to organisations offering legal defence.

Please check your vaccination status - I was so sure I'd gotten both MMR shots but when I checked early last year I realized I actually hadn't. Quick call to the GP, all done within a couple of weeks. Free on the NHS.

Call for LavLang32 now on Linguist List. Submit a paper here: lavlang32.ppls.ed.ac.uk

My course syllabi now contain a link to this document, "why Professor Holliday Doesn't Use Generative AI". Feel free to share/repurpose or just check out the links for your own reference. It won't stop some of them, but I want students to know why. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Yay - going to Lancaster for #CADS2026 as well, with 2 (co-authored) papers: 1. 'Representations of Chinese foodways in the UK press ‘post-COVID'' and 2. 'Multilingual parenting discussions on Reddit'. Looking forward to seeing lots of my brilliant colleagues and friends there!

Are you a PhD student or ECR in language, gender & sexuality? Join me (an ed. of Bloomsbury Studies in Queer Linguistics book series) and Lexi Webster (an ed. of Gender & Language journal) for a FREE @lgas-baal.bsky.social online seminar on publishing (2pm 18 Feb) docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Random factoid: Reminder that the University of Victoria (@uvic.ca) host the world's largest Transgender Archives, and it's all digitized for your online use around the world. Trans rights are human rights.

Learn more about my newly out book How to Organize Inclusive Events and Conferences. Here's a brief excerpt: microcosmpublishing.com/blog/2026/01... @microcosm.bsky.social @mcgillarts.bsky.social

Sky News on Renee Nicole Good murder: "There are deeply conflicting accounts of what happened." REALLY? Gonna both-sides this? One "account" can be seen on video and is confirmed by a dozen eye-witnesses. The other is a social media post by history's most notorious pathological liar. Grow a spine.

Just filed my tax return early (24! days before the deadline) - please clap!

Tomorrow is the publication date for my book How to Organize Inclusive Events and Conferences comes out tomorrow!! microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/book... @microcosm.bsky.social @mcgillarts.bsky.social

Join us for #LavLang32 in Edinburgh this September!

Diaries at the ready... the next Corpora & Discourse International Conference will take place from 23-25 June 2026, at Lancaster University. We are also very excited to launch our website, with plenary speaker info, key dates, and much more besides: wp.lancs.ac.uk/cad-2026/. Please share widely!

📣 RedditScraper, already a browser plugin, now also lives as a web app to help you build corpora of Reddit posts for discourse analysis. #linguistics #discourseanalysis

On March 17, 2026, join us as we discuss queer food access. This event is a collaboration between Right To Food's Indigenous Network and Queers at the Table contributors. To attend this free, virtual event, here is the zoom link: www.eventbrite.com/e/queer-food...

The name "Popular Science" doesn't mean we shift our coverage depending on public opinion. It means we cover relevant subjects that are rigorously researched, reliable, and grounded in reality. And trans lives are grounded in reality. We see y'all. No matter what. www.popsci.com/science/tran...