'The UK is now between a rock and a hard place: how can it support the volume and focus of research needed to grow the knowledge-based economy of our UK industrial strategy, while also addressing the financial deficits that even the existing levels of research create?'

On X, a senior U.S. Justice Department official is promoting a post that praises colonization as “one of the greatest things that ever happened to the backwards parts of the world.”👇

The “make them afraid to be visible part,” or blame them for everything when they are, is so key.

Council for British Research in the Levant grants of up to £7000 for UKHEI-based early career researchers. Deadline 9 January.

Stromness this afternoon. The sun sets as another snow shower arrives.

This is where I once again feel sad for having lost Old Twitter and all my South Asian friends on there. I was sure there was a project mapping all the medieval and Mughal sarais (caravanserais) across India — anyone know what I'm talking about?

Avebury in snow. #StandingStoneSunday

Yes, hello? I don’t think 2026 is working properly. I’d like to cancel my free 5 day trial please.

'One of the most consequential changes [in the September 2025 Immigration White Paper] is the reduction of the Graduate Visa route from 24 to 18 months, which directly undermines the ability of international trainees to complete their Early Career Teacher (ECT) induction.'

Good article this. Racism really is the reverse of a performance-enhancing drug, the mad, stupid shit it leads people to believe in and to do:

Imagine working in education in any form, let alone a six figure VC job at a uni and actually saying something as embarrassing as “there are too many graduates”. Yep, too much education, that’s your problem right there, plebs getting degrees then being angry the economy is shite? Can’t have that!

So clever of US, UK and European universities, with ample encouragement from their governments, to have been closing down Area Studies, History, Languages and Politics & International Relations programmes, so clearly irrelevant to the world in the second half of the 21st century.

It’s perhaps worth a reminder that multiple languages were revived and/or heavily reshaped for nationalist reasons in the 19th century, and if you want to use this as an argument for the illegitimacy of a language or its identity then this also requires application to Irish, Welsh, and Greek…

Successive UK governments have been driving the country into the ground since recent graduates were in nursery-school, and somehow it’s their fault for getting a degree?

Once again, the responsibility of government to manage the economy in order to maximise the opportunities for its citizens’ talents to produce greater wellbeing is denied in favour of accusations of “overeducation”… www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Pour one out for the Latin American historians. May the gods of patience be with you as you do your public-facing work right now.

Out now! Open access in current issue of Renaissance Quarterly thanks to @ucdlibrary.bsky.social my thanks to everyone who helped me with this - but a special mention of the late Bríd McGrath for her wisdom, generosity and dedication to all the things that matter.

It’s exhausting and boring, but because the wilful misunderstanders will be out in force some of us are going to have to spend a lot of time saying: No, we do not like or support Maduro. We like and support the rule of law.

The US attack on Venezuela is an illegal act of aggression against a sovereign country (with lots of oil). Venezuela has become a more deeply repressive dictatorship & urgently needs democratic solution but this is unjustified & unjustifiable. Look forward to seeing swift UK Government condemnation.

Kidnapping the leader of a foreign state without any declaration of war and announcing it via social media is full-on rogue state stuff. From the world’s number one superpower.

I mean, sure, why not underfund universities just a little bit more then

Unless I'm missing something, and I'm pretty sure I'm not, Twitter's AI is cranking out CSAM deepfakes, Elon Musk is making jokes about it, and nobody is doing anything to stop it or hold anyone at Twitter accountable for its creation and distribution. Is that right?

He’s such an intensely creepy man: the kind of man that gives me such an visceral almost physical ick

Are we really to believe that voluntary migration coming into a nation where Native Americans already lived + involuntary enslaved importation was going to be unaffected by those to other subject matters? Pre-orders are available for a 3/10 delivery of a book that took 16 years of research. fin//

without African American and Native American history. Most of the historiography silos these literatures into subfields. But SCOTUS opinions talked about slavery in voluntary migration cases. Also, federal Indian law cases are cited as precedent for Chinese exclusion. It was too good to be true. 2/

Cover reveal. It's about how & why colonies/states controlled international & domestic migration until 1888, why in the late 19th c the feds took over, & what it was like for politically disfavored groups to live under that arrangement of power. You can't understand voluntary migration history 1/

This should not be shrugged aside. They have stopped with the fake 22 million illegal immigrants things and are flat out saying we want to deport 10's of millions of citizens and legal residents from "third world countries" Basically they are advocating removing 1/3 of the population on a gov site.

‘"Bears are experts in fitting into the smallest of openings under houses and decks, and once they're in, they make themselves at home”’

‘It was not in his nature to do anything by halves:’ Mary Booth on her husband’s work. No lie detected. I run a course that demystifies Charles Booth’s massive Life & Labour survey and the accompanying Poverty Map. Starts Tue 13 Jan at the Mary Ward Centre, nr Stratford High St DLR short.do/wLa3Vc

Just making sure that 2025 is definitely over

Marvelously tiny still lie of flowers in a glass, surrounded by various insects and a snail. Painted on copper in around 1615 by the infinitely talented Clara Peeters, whose day is today.

#ResearcherRenew starts again on 02.01.26. You're invited to a friendly, supportive and practical start to the year. No charge. #AcademicSky #PhDChat #AcademicChatter #PhDSky #HigherEd Find out how it works here: theresearchcompanion.com/researcherre... Full schedule in the pic below.

I choose to take this as a positive omen. (As named and drawn by Paul Kidby, illustrator of Discworld.)

If you're a UK Arts, Humanities or Social Science postdoc (or equivalent) within 10 years (excluding career breaks) of the PhD, you're eligible to join. You don't need to be employed, employed in academia, or currently research active to apply. Your skills are valuable & valued by the BA's ECRN. 3/3

The ECRN operates from 9 regional clusters across the 4 UK nations. Membership is free. It includes travel costs to in-person events and access to funding. The ECRN is researcher-led and taps into a wealth of human and institutional resources. Now generously @wellcometrust.bsky.social funded. 2/3

2025 has been a rotten year for most early career postdoctoral researchers, especially in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. For a better 2026, check out (or repost) this short thread on a free resource for UK-based SHAPE PhDs within 10 years (excluding career breaks) of the doctorate. 1/3

There would be ten of them and I would watch them all at least actually

This is because conservatives have decided to turn America into Stephen Miller’s Mojo Dojo Casa House and wildly enough no one wants to date the fascist losers who enforce said house’s rules.

this was a year of many collaborative, still in progress projects (I might owe you an email). I did start a newsletter to share new work in my field, which you can subscribe to here: carceral-history.ghost.io

For a lot of people – particularly white, successful, middle-class people, the sort of people whose privilege is unconscious – it was their first encounter with the state's power to compel them to behave in a particular way regardless of their feelings. Their fury is at complacent privilege denied.

Aside from the sheer entitlement of a man who had a FORTY year career in Harvard and is whining about things changing, there is something about how much the pandemic has radicalized so many people. Simply being asked to mask seems to have broken some people’s minds entirely.

They might, if they stop obsessing about what the Mail, Telegraph and Times say, and start listening to people who are theoretically their actual voters. But they are impressively resistant to that idea.

This is exactly it, and a polite way of saying what a lot of people are saying more bluntly in response to the article. It’s a losing strategy and they should have realised that a long time ago.

See those two black lines? The inner one is the line of the City wall. The outer one is THE CITY BOUNDARY. They aren't the same at all. GIVE ME STRENGTH 😵‍💫

Nope nope nope nope NOPE Why tf can no one get this basic fact right??

As with Boris Johnson, voters can get most enraged with leaders who disappoint their hopes

To try not to do analysis for a second, my personal dislike of Starmer, and I suspect that of a lot of those who did vote for him, comes from his utter failure to engage with the radicalisation of the right and the increasing acceptance of gutter racism in the public sphere.

Its fascinating how we're steadily moving towards the idea that anything that hurts my feelings should be a crime while simultaneously careening towards white theocratic nationalism and loss of civil liberties These things are probably unrelated tho.

Oh, I don't know, mate? Is it because Universities are not like car manufacturers, and because automotive brands aren't remotely like university reputations? www.cairneagle.com/wp-content/u...