Do I want people to watch my film? Yes Do I enjoy talking about my research? Yes Does being perceived and showing people my work give me the absolute fear? YES

I'm delighted to share that my postgraduate degree classification has been announced - Master of Letters in Gender Studies with Merit

I’m looking for recommendations of tattooers who are good with woodcut print style - any suggestions?

Me, a working class woman, talking in my state school educated regional accent in the hallowed halls of prestigious universities about widening access to HE, because academic elitism can get tae.

Working class, state educated people like me aren’t inferior quality scholars. We’re priced out of pursuing academia, and we’re alienated by a classist culture of elitism.

Lyrics as a poem This is an audio recording with no images. I’m reading the lyrics to Frank Turner’s ‘Graveyard of the Outcast Dead’ without music, so it sounds more like a poem, in my own accent.

15,000 – a zine I really like zines as a way to communicate research. This is another element of my multimedia portfolio submission. As a dyscalculic, I find it difficult to visualise what 15,000 people would look like, so I used some familiar spaces to provide context. The full zine layout on A4…

Tactile aesthetic experience I submitted my MLitt multimedia project on 12th December (woo!). Alongside the short film, I handed in a selection of small handmade art pieces that are intended to be handled by viewers. The aim of this is to enhance the experience by providing a tactile dimension.…

Being an “overly sensitive” neurodivergent who’s interested in history right now feels like being in a crowded building that’s on fire, trying to extinguish flames, yelling that we need to do something, with most people carrying on like nothing’s wrong. Or adding fuel.

Hey, so if you’re not familiar with Alice Wong’s work, I urge you to honour her memory by looking up the Disability Visibility Project, and reading the books she wrote and edited.

Also, I’m on holiday this week in Faro. Aside from Capela dos Ossos - the bone chapel - what shouldn’t I miss?

I’m an avowed After Dark listener, but other podcasts are available. I listened to two episodes of @goingmedieval.bsky.social’s Gone Medieval on my flight today and they were SO GOOD. Ballads of Love and Death with Amy Jeffs, and The Real Lady Macbeth with @valmcdermid.bsky.social.

Historic evidence of bisexuals, who’ve been doing awkward thumbs up since at least c500 BCE

Data visualisation by a dyscalculic cemeteries researcher: If all the people estimated to be buried at Crossbones were to attend a University of St Andrews graduation ceremony, they'd fill Younger Hall 15 times over.

I had a brilliantly insightful conversation Bodmin Jail manager Jess Marlton earlier today about performative memorialisation, constructed narratives, and representation of women's historic experiences. Have I mentioned recently how much I love my research area?

This #MementoMoriMonday is from the tomb of Mr Richard Blisse in Southwark Cathedral.

Unfortunate juxtaposition…

2,400 year-old skeleton mosaic reads: “Be cheerful, enjoy your life” Discovered in Turkey

Watch out for Ea Nasir this Halloween!

This week’s #MementoMoriMonday is a day late because I was up in Aberdeen then down in Edinburgh, which was a lot of driving! This one’s from my thesis site, Crossbones, carved into the entranceway.

This Daily Mail journo appears to be writing fanfic about Zack Polanski #hatecrush

I can talk about my neurodivergence very openly. I’m happy to talk about having endometriosis and chronic pain. Ehlers Danlos Syndrome isn’t that well known, and I speak about my experiences no bother. But cPTSD is so much harder for me to explain to people. It’s painfully vulnerable.

I was raised by a single mother who worked as a nurse in the 80s and 90s. One of my earliest memories is being on an RCN / Unison anti-Thatcher march on (fittingly) Union Street in Aberdeen. I’ve always joined my workplace union, and I’ve been a rep. Unions are support and solidarity. Join yours.

Got through my first day at work since sabbatical followed by illness. Over four months away = inbox of horror, but it was good reconnecting with colleague-pals and using my day job skillset again.

#MementoMoriMonday comes from the pleasingly alliterative Moulin, a village just a mile outside Pitlochry. The church dates from the 1800’s when it was rebuilt after a fire, but there was a church on the site for a long time before that. The churchyard holds a 12th century crusader knight’s tomb!

probably most people know this but: if you have an age related or disabled Railcard you can ask London underground staff to put it on your oyster and you get 1/3 off off-peak fares on tube/DLR/overground. with a disabled railcard it works for peak fares too

Queer friendships are sacred.

Hooray for the Internet Archive for allowing me to access at cite a book published in 1906, for free, without having to leave my couch.

An excerpt from my thesis: "I am not, after all, Mr Brightside, and to date, I have never stepped outside and screamed from the top of my lungs "what's going on?", though it doesn't seem an unreasonable course of action in the current global climate."

• Indiana Jones and the Same Sex Double Burial Who Were, Like, Probably Roommates or Something • Indiana Jones and the Series of Small Walls • Indiana Jones and the Object of Probable Ritual Significance That Looks Suspiciously Like a Seggs Toy

I’m a Scottish Greens member. Let’s make hope normal again! @zackpolanski.bsky.social we stan 🙌

It’s apparently Columbus Day. Here’s a picture of me flipping him off, because fuck colonialism forever. #LandBack

Sunday stitching the sweary scene from The King’s Speech

I cannot stress this strongly enough: Support your local theatre, café, bookstore, bakery, and library. We breathe life into these places when we support them. They need us, and more importantly, we need them.

Taking advantage of the sunny weather and finally getting round to blocking this crochet jumper

My friend picked up a miniature of a selkie at Tabletop Scotland, painted her up and and posted her to me. This is apparently in exchange for the screaming possum I crocheted him a while back. I love these sort of creative exchanges!

Memento Mori Monday!

This is last week’s #MementoMoriMonday, cause hoo boi I’m not well!

Feeding garden birbs is so damn good for the soul

Heeeey, so I got covid and then a lung infection on top of it, and it’s rough as hell. PLEASE mask up if you’re coughing, and wash your hands.

Y’know what I realised last week?It’s burnout. It’s f’cking burnout with a heavy side order of being an AuDHD, queer, disabled woman with cPTSD trying to complete a thesis and work in equalities when the world is an enormous bin fire and oh look, there’s ableism.

I’m gonnae start prefacing my info dumps about cemeteries like this

Autism and painkillers, hell yeah!

More disappointments with the recent announcements of HP audiobook / TV show castings. Good to know who doesn’t give a shit about trans people…

Apparently Guillermo Del Toro has ruined Frankenstein by… being relatively faithful to the source material. Oh my.

⚠️ Women in the UK don’t need to be told what danger looks like — we live it every day. ⛔ One woman is killed by a man every three days in this country (Femicide Census, 2023) ⛔ In 2023, 1.7 million women experienced domestic abuse (ONS, 2023). It is not trans people who perpetrate these crimes.

Nice.