'In 2025, women are still only the focus of 12% of history lessons, while 59% feature no women at all. None. The named women who are taught are dominated by four exceptional figures – Elizabeth I and Mary I...Emmeline Pankhurst and Emily Davison'. 2/2

The Purina cat is currently looking very creepy. CGI, AI, or a puppet, do we think?

It's a research day, and I'm back to thinking about What Is Historical Games Studies Anyway. Also enjoying that today's non-digital reading list is quite well colour coordinated!

Sometimes I think I should stop designing the first class of my modules like "Welcome to the course! Now let's talk about Foucault/Saussure/Gramsci/Butler!" But I suppose at least then everyone knows what they are getting.

A pretty big moment for @blackmillgames.bsky.social as we celebrate 12 years of the WW1 Game Series and continue the countdown to Gallipoli! 🗃️ store.steampowered.com/news/app/306...

Nothing screams "First day back on the job", like urging colleagues everywhere to delete their Academia Dot Edu pages. Which I'm about to do myself as soon as I got coffee in me.

That was the sixth highest successful women's List A run chase in England. In a remarkable season that has completely transformed the concept of a chaseable target, five of the top six highest have occurred in Metro Bank League 1 this year.

I am glad the game is still happening, but the mud levels at the Hampshire/Surrey semifinal today look quite ridiculous.

We're shortstaffed on RPS and need some rad PC-minded freelancers for urgent review work. Specifically: - Borderlands 4 (yes I know it's out already) - Dying Light: The Beast - Silent Hill f Standard rate is £200 GBP per review, make yourselves known at [email protected]

I do wonder what would happen if we made the workload lie a reality. 50 mins total prep for a lecture then pens down. Max 10mins per essay, use crap irrelevant genAI prompts. Actually let students experience the reality that management design.

Very much looking forward to my first Interactive Pasts conference in a few weeks. Hope to see some of you there!

📣 Calling all PhD Students in Classics, Archaeology, Ancient History, and related disciplines 📣 Register now for our Classical Studies PhD welcome event 22 October 2025, 3:00PM - 4:00PM Learn how the ICS’s resources and activities can support you in your PhD research: shorturl.at/pxRQe

Historians (rightly) get annoyed when other academics weigh in on their subject & claim to have “solved” or “completed” history, ignoring existing research & nuance. Yet historians keep weighing in on games as if no one has ever paid attention to them before (& it’s not great)

Last week we hosted a discussion panel at the @royalsoced.bsky.social Curious Festival. Our brilliant speakers (incl. @chriskempshall.bsky.social @drtimpeacock.bsky.social) explored history & fantasy in games & media. Find the recording here if you missed it! www.historicalgames.net/recording-un...

Not an isolated incident either www.theguardian.com/education/20...

A friend of mine was on Charlie Kirk's "watch list" of Black professors. She received so many death and rape threats that her university offered her a security detail for the walk to class. This is Kirk's legacy. You would never know it from reading all of these legacy newspaper op-eds about him.

I have had quite a productive weekend, including some good editorial work & teaching prep. However it's now 5pm on Sunday and I'm going to sign out of everything and play games until the end of the weekend. Some fun required.

Also putting it out into the world I would also love to be in touch with a musicologist knowledgeable in Native music and/or language, particularly that of the Wompanoag/Algonquian nations of the Northeastern Woodlands Again, this is for a musical project Music Bluesky please do your thing!

Putting it out into the world that I would love to be put in touch with a musicologist knowledgeable in 17thc English Music. I’m doing a project and I’m interested in the relationship the Separatist Puritans had with music, and what music came with them to the American colonies Thanks!

#WCCWiki is back after the summer break!! For your calendars, the next #WCCWiki online meetup & editing session is 13.00-15.00 GMT, Wed 25 September. We'll be editing together to improve the gendered rep of classicists (broadly conceived) on #Wikipedia, & we can provide training to start editing

This hurts my soul - my heart axtuslly ached reading this, thinking of the future generations of knowledge that will never be, of students unable to specialise in languages, pursue music, read Latin, take up English literature, become an Art critic, write history. This is how cultures wither & die.

(There is something quite weird about playing this storyline out repeatedly when you *are* an adult...)

At this point it feels like it would be more of a surprise if most of the adults DIDN'T betray everyone and go evil at the end of a Persona game.

Things the Guard has got a good grip of: the hope that he can suffer nothing else than his fate. Things the Guard should have got a better grip of: himself. (Antigone teaching prep).

Is it still possible to get the old fashioned mochi without ice cream in them? It always seems to be the ice cream ones everywhere now.

30 September 5-6pm BST: We're launching a new research report on the history of women's cricket in Scotland. I'll be chatting to Fiona Reid @bayfirth.bsky.social, Nic Wilson (Cricket Scotland) & former Scotland players. Zoom link & more info here - come along! www.bayfirth.co.uk/women-s-cric...

May or may not be currently writing a footnote which basically says " @alexvandewalle.bsky.social wants to call it antiquity games studies BUT I DON'T AND LOOK AT ALL THE PEOPLE WHO AGREE WITH ME!" Very scientific, very mature way of setting terminology for the field, this.

I would definitely be more productive if I could spend less time worrying about if there will be a next job.

What is the point of the character in the Persona games who always narrates the battle situation? I can see and count that there are four enemies thanks, they are right in front of me. I don't need you to announce "There are four enemies! Attack!"

This morning I've been working on how best to teach and talk about ideology with my third years. What is it, how do we talk about texts establishing, upholding, or undermining it, etc. Especially how do we do these things without spending five weeks on philosophy and critical theory.

This event is happening on Wednesday! I think there's still time to book a place for either in person or to attend online and watch some very smart people (and me) talk about history and fantasy in games and media! 🗃️

I may have to do something about the piles of books soon. It's getting a bit like an attempt at a vertical library in here.

This week I'm working on an introduction and a book chapter, around teaching prep (term is coming!) Big questions to think about as a result: What is historical games studies? And why do we still perform Greek Tragedies about women?

EXCLUSIVE: Middlesex To Go Pro By 2029

Not limited to one country either...

I know Drew is critiquing universities here, but I'd like to point out that tenure-track search committees all over the country rarely value the work adjuncts do, often privileging research and potential over teaching and classroom experience

Lovely to meet Frances Thompson, a direct descendant of Vera Cox, who gave a fascinating talk about Great Comp based around Vera’s letters. Including the stresses of having to arrange the 1937 Australian tour of England (Vera was the main organiser) & have the ENTIRE Aussie team stay at the house!

A wonderful women’s cricket history pilgrimage today to Great Comp in Kent. This is where Frances Heron-Maxwell and Vera Cox(2 of the founders of the Women’s Cricket Association) lived for decades, and where many early WCA matches were played.

It was a fascinating event, and brilliant to finally meet the wonderful @rafnicholson.bsky.social in person!

Hivemind, anyone know any Leeds/Yorkshire based comic writers? It's for a fantastic project that the British Library has been working on with care experienced and looked after children in Leeds, making a comic about their experiences. I would love to get some people down to support the launch.

BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT! @mahliann.bsky.social, @marcuscarter.com, and myself have combined our collective brains and written a wide-reaching introduction to the complex and interdisciplinary field of Game Studies in this forthcoming book for Polity. www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?b...

“…women’s cricket is one of the movements of today which counts enormously in the sanity of nations and has an ever increasing part to play in the peace and happiness of the world…” Vera Cox WCA Annual Report 1937

I have too many spare copies of my book, and am seriously thinking about scattering them about my department as a sort of very unvaried scavenger hunt. Except I'm a bit worried people would just bring them back to me. Maybe I could leave them all in a library...?

There's still a couple of weeks left to get your abstracts in for our @imc-leeds.bsky.social strand next year! We how to see a lot of you there. Deadline 17 September.

Well. It’s official. You can now submit your proposals to the New Perspectives on Ancient Greek Religion book series, published by Edinburgh University Press! #ClassicsBluesky 🏺

I can tell when I've been working too much on Greek lyric, because I start thinking terms like "storm-winding" and "many-charioted" are useful English turns of phrase to write in my prep, and not kind of nonsense...

It's 1st September, so I'm now in my last year of contracted employment (again). It's raining. And I've just turned down my first (and very unlikely to be my last) interesting-sounding PhD student of the academic year, as I'm not able to supervise PhDs on my contract. Sigh. Welcome to autumn.

Hi I spoke to @oneofmoo.bsky.social about Mythmatch, an intriguing puzzle game combining RPG and match-three elements with a slyly anti-techbro narrative www.theguardian.com/games/2025/s...

🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳

Fastest women's T20 hundred: BF 36 Sophie Devine (WEL) v OTA, 2021 38 Deandra Dottin (WI) v SA, 2010 42 Grace Harris (HEA) v STA, 2018 42 Davina Perrin (NS) v LS, today #TheHundred