Does anyone have suggestions for good scholarship on malaria or other mosquito-borne diseases in the ancient world? Bonus points if Greece specific. Happy for self-citations - would love to hear about your research! #ClassicsBluesky

Given that academic job interview season is in full swing, for those of you who are in permanent positions - maybe check in on your precarious colleagues. I can guarantee a lot of them are having an awful time which is exacerbated by the fact that they have to do this every year.

I'll be here for all your hellscape demon-summoning needs.

I am once again copying out demon summoning rituals into an excel spreadsheet. It is impossible for me to do this without reading them aloud, so I hope they don't work. I have my rosary on standby... just in case.

A beautiful obituary for the great historian Averil Cameron by @tigerlilyrocks.bsky.social

Great new review of 'Living and Cursing' by Alex Mullen, alongside the fabulous books by Celia Sanchez Natalias and Roger Tomlin. Curse tablet scholarship goes from strength to strength! doi.org/10.1017/S007...

Delighted to share that the Magpie Theory Reading Group will be running again with this summer! @bigfridge224.bsky.social and I have chosen Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass for this year's theoretical text. Thursdays at 2pm, starting 4th June, for 6 weeks.

I created a PRIVATE Facebook group 'Non-permanent MCRs in Humanities' at www.facebook.com/groups/14504... This is a temporary measure and aims at carrying out a survey among the MCRs and offering initial peer support and advice while gathering together those with 7+ years from PhD... #MCRNetwork

CURSES!

i love european olympics opening ceremonies. the second the ioc names a european host city the prime minister calls the culture minister into their office and says "find me your strangest homosexuals. give each of them a period of our great nation's history, a kilo of cocaine, and Ten Million Euros"

Your periodic reminder that you can start learning ancient Greek right now, free of charge!

Curling is my winter Olympics guilty pleasure.

Even if Helen of Troy *was* a real person, Nolan could still cast Lupita Nyong'o because she's a great fucking actress. Why is this even a debate.

This is all the incentive I need to get back into answering questions on there

From the perspective of a precarious ECR, this already exists. A whole generation of PhDs stuck in FT teaching-only contracts, covering the teaching of permanent researchers.

Your day will be like... an expert chariot rider, charging across the plain, shifting his weight perfectly, a wonder to all who see him. Iliad 15.679.686

Anyone else have a 'to read' list that works like a hydra? Every time I cross something off, another 3 articles fill the space.

"The Dark Lord has taken over our land. What do we do?" "Learn from the goblins." "What? Those useless little-" "Takes skill to mask rebellion as incompetence." "What?" "They know His reign will end. For now, they persist and resist." "Oh." "Also: remember every moment of joy is a victory."

In my Athenian history module this week we're getting to the bit where the hegemonic imperial power becomes so sure of it's position that it invades a distant island for its resources, fails spectacularly, pisses off its allies and ends up with an anti-democratic coup.

Today's job is to tackle the 'to read' folder of random pdfs I've downloaded. Give me strength.

Post a game you remember playing that nobody else remembers

I don't know which other precarious academics need to hear this in January, but you are good enough. You are loved and appreciated and seen.

📣 Places on @jactdurham.bsky.social are filling up fast 📣 Join us in July at St John’s College, Durham University for a week of #Latin and/or #AncientGreek! New for 2026: Classical Civilisation - Women: The Reality Behind the Myth! Register online: www.durhamglss.org

It's been a bit of a mad week, hasn't it? It's Friday so let's do some ancient magic for fun. The PGM contain a Homer Oracle. The idea is that you roll three 6-sided dice and, depending on the result, you get a line from Homer that predicts your future!

Begging Melian Dialogue lovers to see the sweep of the Thucydidean history, from Periclean virtue to an appeal (from virtue) through realism in the Mytilenean dispute, to brutal realism in the Melian Dialogue, to the slave mines of Sicily.

Marking student essays on the growth of the Athenian Empire through bullying and direct attacks by a major power on smaller allies. It reminds me of something... can't think what...

Are there any beautiful Latinists out there who could help me translate this? I can get the gist, but the specific details elude me. It regards the trial of Agnes Westland for bewitching Elizabeth Cheesewright to death (happy New Year!)

Depending on which of her lives we're talking about, I'm either an air raid warden, a civil servant or a housewife. Or I died of Spanish flu during childhood.

2025 has been a particularly crappy year but there are some things I'm proud of anyway. 1) I published an article on the magical uses of bodily fluids in Pliny the Elder, and what we can learn about Roman attitudes to their own bodies: www.mohrsiebeck.com/en/article/p...

So much this. I got a revise and resubmit on a journal article today, with a generous deadline of 6 months. But for the next 6 months I will need to spend serious time finding a job for when my current contract expires in September.

Rails thrum with trains that never arrive. Limbs made phantom by branch line butchery become ghost grooves for steam-powered spirits to move across the land. No aspect of what was once modernity is immune to temporal shading, is immune to being haunted. – #CJosiffe #Ghosts

The current REF system really encourages temporary staff to burn down their own careers - either you complete research because you need it for your CV, but an institution can claim any resulting outputs before making you redundant so you've nothing to take elsewhere, or...

Every time discover a new piece on the dangers of LLMs, particularly for research and teaching, I add it to a Zotero library. I figure that I might as well share it, so here's my library of Cautionary AI Tales: www.zotero.org/groups/62758...

I wrote about Roman curse tablets in Ancient History Magazine - available now! www.karwansaraypublishers.com/en-gb/produc...

I've restarted Hades. For some reason endlessly and fruitlessly trying to climb out of hell felt like a good activity for Right Now.

Here's your annual reminder: whether you received A-level results today, years ago, or never, there's space for you at the @openuniversity.bsky.social!

We're 300 followers away from 70,000. 300 more would be really nice. But you know what would be even better? 300 plus 30,000. Bluesky: help a museum out

A useful reminder to permanent academic staff. Many of you may have temporary staff joining your departments soon. It's nice to at least pretend to think they are people - why not learn their names and their field of interest, to develop this basic level of polite collegiality?

One like, one Thucydides opinion.

I'm knackered after a full day of travelling yesterday, so let's do this. One like, one curse tablet.

This is Mark Fisher's Hauntology - we are haunted by a future that never materialised. "We’re all dreaming of a better time from the past, since there is no future. We’ve stopped dreaming about building – now we dream of recreating."

4. Every other discipline thinks they can do history but they often cannot

Historians Politely Remind Nation To Check What's Happened In Past Before Making Any Big Decisions theonion.com/histori...

Immortal fame.

Black Sabbath's Ozzy Osbourne dies aged 76. An immortal legacy. Rock on Ozzy \m/

Today I am collecting demons, much like all those evangelical Christians thought we were doing playing Pokémon in the 90s.

Maybe just because I want to see magic everywhere in the Roman world, but I love the idea that these were apotropaic. Can guard dogs protect against evil spirits?

As a student of the classics I *already* have a degree which involves asking questions of oracles who are high on drugs or fumes and interpreting answers which have precious little basis in understanding the topic.

OMG this is exactly the book I need at this precise moment - DEMONS

It's the earliest written evidence for beekeeping in Britain!