Great to be in Prato for the LVII Datini Settimana, talking with colleagues about #guilds in pre- modern Europe. My paper from 28:30. youtube.com/live/57XLQVQ...

✉️ Explore 145,000 medieval merchant letters as a live map: the correspondence network of Francesco di Marco Datini (c.1363–1412), spanning Florence to Barcelona to North Africa. Visualise routes, travel times & seasonality. docuracy.github.io/datini/ #DigitalHumanities #MedievalHistory

Just over a week to go… tickets (free) available at www.bbk.ac.uk/booking/even...

Nominations are open for the London Archaeological Prize! If you’ve read – or written – a great piece of work about London's archaeology over the past two years, why not enter it for this prestigious award? Deadline: 20th May 2026 Nomination form here www.londonarchaeologist.org.uk/london-archa...

My second podcast on medieval London now available from @lrb.co.uk. 'London Revisited: Plague, Rebellion and Guilds' www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and...

Three - yes three! - medieval & #EarlyModern events at Birkbeck soon. Weds May 6th ‘Women, History and the Stage: Creative Encounters with the Medieval Past’, playwright Sarah Dickson, medievalist @mpdavies.bsky.social, with performance of ‘The Will of Ellen Langwith’: www.bbk.ac.uk/events/event...

Our Partners at the Thames Festival Trust are advertising for a Heritage Project Manager. Could this be you? thamesfestivaltrust.org/about-us/joi...

Do read @lucycmunro.bsky.social’s wonderful article and thread. Also fwiw some quick superficial comments -

Our first new issue of 2026 has been published! A 🧵 on its contents...

Looking forward to this event in Birkbeck Arts Week, 6 May, in which Sarah Dickenson and I will be discussing our collaboration on her new play about a remarkable medieval woman, Thomasine Bonaventure. Featuring a performance from Birkbeck MFA students. Please repost! www.bbk.ac.uk/events/event...

Finally getting round to a draft of a conference paper on guilds and regulation, and came across these lovely Coopers' marks from 1420 in Letter Book I. @thelondonarchives.bsky.social

The first of two @lrb.co.uk podcasts exploring the history of medieval London, in conversation with Rosemary Hill. This one takes the story of London and Westminster from the 5th century up to the end of the 13th! Ep 2 being recorded this week …

Another bump for this; expressions of interest due in by 24 March.

Artist Timothy Yufit’s In Place project uses Layers of London to document displaced headstones embedded within London’s parks and public spaces. These fragmented historical traces remain present within the contemporary urban landscape. www.layersoflondon.org/map/collecti...

On Friday, 6 March 2026, the MLA, ACLS, and AHA filed a motion for summary judgment in our case seeking to reverse the elimination of grants, grant programs, staff, and entire divisions and programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) www.mla.org/Resources/Ad...

Please repost - opportunity to work on a great project with a great team here at Birkbeck!

We are hiring postdoc researchers to join our #WrittenWorlds project at Birkbeck, with Sue Wiseman, @mdpowelldavies.bsky.social, @richardjansell.bsky.social and I. 0.5FTE, 13 months, focus on women's or provincial non-elite writing #EarlyModern 🗃️ cis7.bbk.ac.uk/vacancy/post...

Great to see the new website for ‘LIMINALWATER: Liminal Waterway Countercultures’, led by my colleague @bengidley.bsky.social and working with the fab @humap.bsky.social liminalwater.uni-graz.at/en/projects/

Sound on, hats off.

This is such sad news….

Terrible news of the death of Stephen Baxter, superb historian and kind colleague. www.spc.ox.ac.uk/news/in-memo...

It’s time for a new 🧵 about one of our editorial board’s choice of an article from the journal’s back catalogue that was influential on them. This time it’s our Board Chair Bob Shoemaker’s choice of Valerie Pearl’s 1979 article, ‘Change and Stability in Seventeenth-century London’.

The Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery (CSLBS) is excited to announce 3 new roles on our groundbreaking Valuable Lives project! 🔍 Open roles: • 2 x Research Assistant (Digital Humanities) • 1 x Research Fellow (Digital Humanities) 🗓 Closing date: 23 Jan 2026 shorturl.at/OCpLP

@britishacademy.bsky.social International Fellowships are now open Applications are welcome across the #humanities and #socialsciences from early career researchers anywhere in the world to come to 🇬🇧 for 2 years The deadline is 11 March www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/sche...

Today!

Uh oh for the university business model as student visa applications hit four year low since Oct. Only 29,300 applications last month, down from 35,200 in Dec 2024. Back in December 2022 more than 46,000 would-be international students applied… www.researchprofessional.com/news-article...

Calling all fifteenth-century scholars: if you have not yet submitted your proposal for this year's conference hosted by @memsunikent.bsky.social, now is the time to do so. CfP open until 31st January.

If you want to do an MA in London but have 'barriers accessing education or may face greater challenges while undertaking their degree' (specific criteria below), you can apply for a £3,000 tuition grant at Birkbeck. Lots of choices at @bbkhistorical.bsky.social: www.bbk.ac.uk/student-serv...

Coming up!

We're now advertising for open-ended Lectureships in Medieval Studies and in Art History, based in @bbkhistorical.bsky.social in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. See cis7.bbk.ac.uk/home.html Please repost!

Hooray! The British Library has just released a beta version of its rebuilt Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue: searcharchives.bl.uk 2,619 hits for 'petition' in Western Manuscripts, texts in English, in case you're curious. 🗃️

I am very excited for this workshop: please do submit an EOI or get in touch if you have any queries. Publishing a journal article doesn’t have to be a daunting experience, and we are very proud of our support for ECRs.

Our third and final issue of 2025 has now been published! A 🧵 on its contents...

We are running a free workshop at @tandfresearch.bsky.social's office in South London on 30 January 2026 to support early career scholars in developing their work into a publishable journal article. Expressions of interest due by 16 January. See here for more details (and please share widely!)

The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure invites applications for a two-week Summer School on ‘Micro-Census Insights into Historical Households, Mortality and Fertility’, held at University of Cambridge from July 6-17th, 2026. Application deadline February 2 2026.

Call for papers for our new special issue on 'Nocturnal London', edited by Maurizio Cinquegrani, Yihong Zhu, and @mcmccluskey.bsky.social. Abstracts due in by 31 March 2026. All submissions and reposts much appreciated.

The Curriers' Prize is now open! Submit your best unpublished essay on any aspect of London's history, and you could get a £1,000 award! Full details: 👇 w ww.history.ac.uk/funding/awards-bursaries-prizes/curriers-prize

‘The CBI and Universities UK… said universities already subsidised research by £5.4 billion a year, largely through international student income. A levy would "accelerate contraction" in research and innovation, they warned.’ www.thetimes.com/article/95f2...

Pleased to see my ‘viewpoint’ looking at the historiography of London’s crafts and guilds now available @thelondonjournal.bsky.social as part of the journal’s 50th birthday celebrations!

Our latest Viewpoint article is out: 'Guilds and Companies in London, 1200–1700: Contexts and Comparisons' by @mpdavies.bsky.social. A 🧵 on the insights provided by this article into the history and historiography of these key metropolitan institutions in the medieval and early modern periods.

I'm so proud of what we're building! www.bbk.ac.uk/news/meet-th...

Antisemitism: how to measure it, how to confront it. Read BISA’s David Feldman @dmf101.bsky.social, @bengidley.bsky.social and @brendanmcgeever.bsky.social in www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/religi...

Some more detailed analysis on the maintenance grants policy here from @wonkhe.bsky.social wonkhe.com/blogs/grants...

Happy #TrailsTuesday! Take a step back in time and explore #Clerkenwell's history of #radical politics on @layersoflondon.bsky.social www.layersoflondon.org/map/... #Islington #DirectAction #RadicalClerkenwell #London #History #Maps

Very sad news. I was fortunate to know Barbara when a graduate student and then when starting to work on medieval London. She was always insightful, with a prodigious memory for both documents and people! One of our finest medieval historians.

As we celebrate our fiftieth anniversary this year, we've gotten our board members to nominate an article from the Journal's archives that was particularly important to and influential on then. @tandfresearch.bsky.social have kindly agreed to make these all freely available for a period of time. 🧵

This is fantastic news for archaeology at Birkbeck, and for all of us in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences! www.bbk.ac.uk/news/birkbec...

Come and work with us, and an amazing national network of volunteers, early career researchers, experts in a huge range of fields, and the amazing @ihr.bsky.social.