Shakira from Love Island x Judith Butler, lmao I love it 🙌🏼

With almost a year left of my PhD I am thinking about ~life after~ which is scary! Pre-PhD, I didn't realise most academics move cities/even countries for their career. I don't want to move away from Scotland EVER!! I wish someone had told me this before 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

'Cocaine, Literature, and Culture, 1876- 1930' from @bloomsburylit.bsky.social in the BAVS newsletter: 'The 1st significant study of cocaine in the literary and cultural imagination of the late 19th and early 20th centuries' available open access: www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph?do...

Registration for @rrrjournal.bsky.social's annual conference is now open! Please join us for what will be an intellectually stimulating and rewarding day for PGRs, ECRs, and academics to connect and discuss 'Sex in the Long Nineteenth Century'! www.eventbrite.com/e/sex-in-the...

did not have Harvard English professor Elisa New emailing Jeffrey Epstein about Lolita on my 2025 bingo card

Tip of an iceberg?

When I’m not PhDing, I’m selling at record fairs, and then spending the money I make on finds like these 🪲 I have a 1962 record of OG monster Boris Karloff reading Hans Christian Andersen for children (v cute and heartwarming) but it didn’t occur to me they used to put spooky stories on vinyl too 🪲

omg love the results but conference organising is SO HARD 🥲

This is my Sophie's Choice

I don't know anything about fantasy and sci-fi as genres - is there crossover? I feel like they share a lot of similar traits and I'm wondering if time travel narratives can be classed as fantasy 🤔 (does it depend on if the method is magical or scientific?) Any recommended reading?

Short and sweet (and broadly applicable for premodern study of transformative work)

Piece about this Austen podcast I’m in theconversation.com/jane-austens...

An excellent first proper day at @chawtonhouse.bsky.social ✨️ introduction to the reading room means an exciting start to the fellowship and a lovely chilly walk around the grounds this morning

🤣🤣🤣

Today in this class where we pair canonical texts with contemporary engagements I am teaching “Tintern abbey” with Zadie Smith, “some notes on attunement,” where she goes to Tintern listening to Joni Mitchell; and we will hear “California”. And like Zadie says, it might all bring me to tears!

Excited to be speaking in Dunblane on 15 Nov for the Leighton Library. I'll be sharing findings from my PhD and the @books-borrowing.bsky.social project. Do come along to hear more about Enlightenment and conspiracy in the reading habits of Leighton members!

Thanks everyone who came to hear my paper on 'Jane Austen and Scotland' at Stirling's Eighteenth Century Studies Group! We had some interesting discussion about Austen, race, and English depcitions of the Scottish in 18th c. literature. Also reflecting on adaptations like this 2023 Mansfield Park

“For someone who’s never read Pride and Prejudice, I would desribe it like Love Island on a stately home.” - Harris Dickinson, Audible’s new Mr Darcy Just the most recent of 100s of instances of people comparing Austen and LI (including Helen Warner + Horrible Histories!)

We are delighted to announce the first seminar in our 25/26 series: the wonderful @drreznicek.bsky.social will be presenting on ‘Too Bodily: Disability, Care, & Belonging in Romantic Novels’ on Wednesday 29th October at 6pm. Free! Online! All welcome! Register here: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Could Charli XCX be Gen Z's answer to Lord Byron? Read my first @theconversation.com article to find out!! theconversation.com/why-charli-x...

5 days left to submit your abstract!

David Bowie wanted to write a musical about criminals and satire in 18th century London! Apparently he especially loved Jack Shephard, who I wrote about in my book Dead Famous and who was the focus of one of our early episodes of BBC You’re Dead To Me www.bbc.com/news/article...

Charli XCX on Lord Byron - interesting! Excited to see this film (Erupcja)

USW have posted a response on their instagram which does little to explain why the wording of this email is openly discriminatory to Palestinians. It is shocking that anyone in Higher Education would think this is an appropriate email to send to a student.

My time as Glasgow Zine Library's funding intern has come to an end! I am so grateful to @sgsah.bsky.social for offering paid internships for PGRs. The team at GZL were so welcoming and attentive to my development needs (I leave the role with a PVG, 420+ hours of experience, and SO MANY ZINES)

Less than a month to submit your abstract 🚨🚨🚨🚨

RRR Journal is now accepting abstracts for our 2026 Conference! I’m thrilled to be hosting at my home institution as the journal's incoming Editor in Chief. With generous BAVS funding, we’re also offering travel bursaries up to £100 for eligible PGR & ECR delegates. 📅 Abstract Deadline: 22 Sept

Someone at work asked what I was reading and I almost lied. I’m a Jane Austen PhD student, so I felt like I should say something 18th century or academic. But I was reading a Harry Potter fanfic about gay werewolves. 🐺 (1/3)

In an age where walking is once again praised for its physical and mental benefits, #JaneAusten's fiction reminds us that these virtues are not new. Her characters have been walking for centuries. scroll.in/article/1084... ✍️Nada Saadaoui Via The Conversation

RRR Journal is now accepting abstracts for our 2026 Conference! I’m thrilled to be hosting at my home institution as the journal's incoming Editor in Chief. With generous BAVS funding, we’re also offering travel bursaries up to £100 for eligible PGR & ECR delegates. 📅 Abstract Deadline: 22 Sept

I love chairing panels at academic conferences and I Have Thoughts about it! I think it’s a really important service role AND you can create the conditions for everyone in the panel to have a good time AND it can be fun! A 🧵👇 1/9

A mad dash to Chawton House to see the new Sisters of the Pen exhibition before my flight! Beautiful! Grandison is on display! First editions everywhere!

Goodbye to #GlobalAusten250 from myself and 3D printed Jane, who will now watch over my desk side eyeing my writing 👀

My first article, "Becoming Jane on stage: queerness in early twentieth-century Austen bioplays," has been published and it is open access 🥳🥳 Huge thanks to the editors at Adaptation Journal and peer reviewers who have been a pleasure to work with doi.org/10.1093/adap...

The Global #JaneAusten Conference just released its program. I'm blown away at this once-in-a-lifetime "Wow" gathering of brilliant scholars at the University of Southampton in mid-July. Thank you in advance to co-orgs Profs. Dow & Halsey for making this happen! www.southampton.ac.uk/leaf_content...

A nice end to the week to receive a copy of this in the post. Congratulations to the editors, @themedievaldrk.bsky.social and Melek Karataş, and thanks again for allowing my small contribution!

Austen country visitors in 2025/6! I contributed to the new @chawtonhouse.bsky.social exhibit, "Sisters of the Pen: Jane Austen, Influence, Legacy," during my time as a visiting fellow. Open until Feb 2026: chawtonhouse.org/whats-on/exh...

I know they won't but if they let jack lowden keep his Scottish accent to play mr Darcy it would literally do more for anglo-scots relations than the act of union 👨🏻‍🦰

'After the Dance.' (1899) Ramon Casas began studying under John Singer Sargent's mentor Singer Carolus Duran when he was just 16. A year after painting this work, he held a solo show in Barcelona which established him as the leading Catalan portrait painter of his day.

'A Year of Books and Borrowing'- read Katie Halsey's round-up here: borrowing.stir.ac.uk/a-year-of-bo... 😃📖📚

I was honoured last week to be a highly commended runner-up for the 2024 Keats-Shelley Essay Prize! The prize giving was held in the historic John Murray Publishing Rooms (a joy for any Austen scholar), and presented by this year's chair of judges, Tom Holland.

#FeelGoodFriday The winner of the #BSECS2025 Digital Prize is the Books and Borrowing, 1750-1830 database! The database contains borrowing records from 18 Scottish Libraries, 43,000 register pages, 162,000 borrowing acts #skystorians #18thC 🗃️ @books-borrowing.bsky.social borrowing.stir.ac.uk

@rrrjournal.bsky.social is searching for 2 reviewers for our next issue. Reviews are 800-1500 words long, on any area of the nineteenth century (arts and humanities + social sciences). We always try to provide a physical reviewers copy or tickets for exhibitions/performances.