The Society is pleased to publish today the Shortlist of its 2026 Early Career Article Prize: bit.ly/4wEuVoW This year's list includes eight articles published in 2025 and follows an open call for submissions. Our two winners for this prize will be announced in July #Skystorians 1/2

I can tell already this report will be appalling, embrace-your-priors vulture consultancy copypasta, and that the phrase 'boost british business' will be in there somewhere, probably adjacent to some hilarious bung for 'taking on apprentices in the workplace.'

So far as I can tell all these 'allies' of Labours leadership frontrunners want everyone to lose everywhere and the whole thing to fail utterly?

"At long last, I am a stone-cold seven, the kind of guy who could win a Jacob Elordi lookalike contest in a farm town with a population of 200." www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/at-...

🚨 Opportunity! 🚨 Want to come to York for up to a month this June, July or August? Apps are now open for our Summer Interdisciplinary Research Fellowships based in our glorious #earlymodern Heslington Hall (1/2) docs.google.com/document/d/1...

The Folded Paw.

The Office for Students thinks "institutions should base their plans on more prudent forecasts to secure their long-term financial health and ensure they can continue to deliver a high quality education for students." What they mean is, you lot aren't cutting or merging hard enough or fast enough.

There's a bors comic for this.

Pointing out the obvious: those 'smaller, regional universities' being described by the OfS as more 'financially sound' are, in fact, a heck of a lot smaller in staffing and course offering terms than they used to be. Calling any of that 'healthy' is a violently incorrect description.

Ironically a place's research culture can get so bad that grant application numbers fall off a cliff, ask me how I know.

How do large projects reliant on AI-generated datasets get around the huge confidence interval problems with gen-AI? Answer:

In addition, Family Search frequently utilizes prison labor to digitize materials they make available so it's just a turducken of exploitation activehistory.ca/blog/2026/04...

To be very clear, I'm not trying to use the AI — I'm just trying to read the court documents. It's clear that the AI is programmed to replace offensive language. But what does that mean when it's being used to summarize historical documents? What happens when people rely on the summary?

Recently, FamilySearch digitized and uploaded tons of microfilmed records, including many from 18th-century Massachsuetts. They're using some sort of AI to transcribe/summarize the handwritten documents. I've noticed that the AI strips out references to race and enslavement in 18thc documents.

Students, if you’re thinking about dropping a note to that teacher or professor about what their class/project/mentorship has meant to you, but you worry it will be cringe or cheesy, let me just tell you they will coast on the fuzzy feelings prompted by that note for months, if not years

Anonymous Indigenous Caribbean chief to French missionary in C17th: 'Thy Country must needs be a wretched one, since thou leavest it to come and take away mine'.

Wes Streeting would be Labour's Liz Truss. His premiership would annihilate Labour in much the same way as Truss did for the Tories and what does it say about the party and the media that this is a credible political future now.

This is a long shot because this isn't the old twitter, but I'm looking for history articles/books that look at cases of British/Irish settlers/squatters being prosecuted for crimes against Indigenous/colonized people. It can be anywhere in the world, but ideally the late C18/early C19.

Yesterday Kier Starmer announced Labour will nationalise British Steel, and save 2700 jobs. Today, the Uni of Nottingham put 2700 staff at risk of redundancy. This is just one university. Across the UK 15,000 higher education jobs need saving. Where is the rescue package for our universities?

Yes, I've just been told that Andy Burnham is at Chiswick roundabout.

Hey Bluesky folks. If you’re in education or just follow for my thirst traps, would you please sign this if you can, and share far and wide? c.org/dCKk9vjqxY It’s much appreciated. My university is cancelling all UG humanities degrees. We need support and love right now x

Even this report, which is damning, is a kind of whitewash, because it mostly focuses on 'protections' for when the very worst happens and students cannot complete their degrees because their university sank into the ocean. PROPOSE A FIX. Tuition up with inflation IS NOT A FIX.

Starmerism: The Movie (2026).

Nevermind the bond markets as Chancellor, let's try the bond markets as Prime Minister!

I know people are frustrated that the mince has not defrosted. But, given time, it will defrost. Some people argue we should have taken it out of the freezer last year. But that is not what the British people voted for. The procedures are being followed and we are now reviewing when to remove it.

This part here is precisely why, 100% why, Starmer will be gone in about a month's time. If he makes it through summer he gets led to a sacrificial altar before Labour's conference season.

📢JOB ALERT 📢 We are looking to appoint a F/T open-ended Lecturer in Late Medieval / Early Modern History (1400-1700) @lancasteruni.bsky.social. This is an amazing opportunity that we are very proud to announce, so please spread the word far and wide! www.hr-jobs.lancs.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

The signs that your UK HE has entered the death spiral (may have started years ago) and is most probably getting advice from one of few HE consultants, such as Nous. 1. Losing your joint degrees if you had them, terrible for modern languages

Joint honours degrees MATTER. They allow students to think in more expansive and creative ways about knowledge and about how we understand our world. If they become the preserve of the “elite” universities, we’ll impoverish an entire generation of students.

We also cut a bunch but now they're back... PPE launches this autumn and is getting a lot of interest

I’m at a formerly large post-92. Over the past couple of years most of the joint degrees have been abandoned, despite (at least in humanities) them being the most popular path. I hate it.

Every single open day, we have applications ask about joint degrees. Every time. But trying to get management to listen to our applicants instead of “the market” (whatever that actually translates as) is an impossible task, so instead they insist that joint degrees don’t work.

Of course Nous hates combined subjects. A few years ago, this led to our whole joint honours scheme being axed, before being brought back in a more limited way when they realised the disastrous consequences of that. Guess what, we have slightly larger classes again ...

There are many ways to divide up the current set of universities in the UK, but I increasingly think the most revealing one is this: Universities that offer only single honours degrees. vs. Universities that offer combined honours and derivative discipline degrees. 1/2

Every guy in a videogame:

I've got a decent amount of time for Brown, he's been focused on UK poverty for years, but it all just seems a bit forced, too little too late stuff. Why are we scraping around 2-years in like this (I mean I know why, but the point stands).

Happy third birthday to this fuzzy idiot.

The Sargent at Arms blocks Representative Justin Pearson from Memphis from entering a committee meeting about redrawing the map specifically for the district he represents.

This country's Brexit psychodrama is nowhere near complete, and while that's hardly the only reason Starmer's labour eats crow today, it would be a mistake of party-annihilating stupidity to think that smacking around immigrants some more will bring that vote share back. They're gone, they hate you.

This is obvious and has been so for some time now, but then I'm a historian so I would say that. A working world of low-quality derivative slop places a premium on genuine, original, articulate, and critically conscious employees. That is the literal type of graduate the humanities produce.

I'm the point of contact for this one and will answer any and all questions folk might have about the scholarship, the university, us historians, even the city. So long as those questions are written by a human being. It's a good gig and there's still time to develop an excellent doctoral project.

PhD scholarship in History at CCCU closing date 22 May www.canterbury.ac.uk/study-here/f... #skystorians

This is a massive victory even just in law, and worth celebrating. What I am not now clear on is how, or even whether, many of the big funded projects that were terminated by weirdo 20-somethings and a chatbot can get back on their feet or get back any funding. I think the heist has moved on now.

NYT story 🎁 Proud & grateful for @historians.org and the collective. @acls1919.bsky.social's Joy Connolly: "Today’s decision is a step toward honoring the will of Congress and our mission as a nation—to... know ourselves and build a better future on that knowledge.." www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/a...

ACLS / MLA / AHA / Authors Guild won the NEH case against the mass termination of grants.

<annoying nasal voice> if you don’t like the changes we have made, the door is there. Please come back.

We know, but I'm typing anyways: Doing well in the REF will not save our programmes. Being good at teaching students will not save our programmes. Being diligent and agile employees will not save our programmes. Merging into the intellectual equivalent of hospice care will merely delay matters.

We will defend our staff and our students. We believe a University that serves its region and its economy needs Humanities degrees. The Humanities subjects also provide the University a huge income through exceptional performance in REF. This decision will result in massive reputational damage.