UK’s industrial regions face ‘entrenched disadvantages’ going back decades. But 'beacons of hope' in Aberdeen, Brighton, Bristol, Cheshire West and Chester, Edinburgh, Oxfordshire, Reading, West Berkshire and Manchester. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

It's been a pleasure being on the great organising team at York and Northumbria for next year's NEHN meeting - a collaborative worksop on the many histories of 'unwanted life'. Do see the CFP below, and send in a submission if it appeals!

now sharing professional and adjacent silly escapades on instagram! www.instagram.com/drferriday (absolute result that I’ve beaten all other dr ferridays to it)

Funded PhD opportunity at King's!

The Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at @kingshistory.bsky.social is inviting applications for prospective students to pursue a PhD in the History of Science and Technology. For more information, click here: tinyurl.com/mw84w7py

It’s important not to get caught up in pastoral fantasies that before various technologies we didn’t have many of the same struggles concerning power and equality, but it’s likewise essential to recognize that industrial “progress” involved an era of machines ripping off the hands of child workers.

If you are a historian with policy-facing interests who has recently submitted their PhD (or will do so imminently), this fantastic new London-based postdoc fellowship in Applied History could be for you. www.history.ac.uk/fellowships/...

In the year's most unsurprising news

Opportunity for historians of empire to contribute to the discussion. #Skystorians

🚨 Job opportunity🚨 We are looking for an editorial assistant to work with me on the RGS journals (TIBG, The GJ, Area & Geo) as we move online systems. 🗓6 months fixed term 🕑0.4 FTE 📍Remote working option ❗️Closing date 11th Dec Please share & apply! Happy to answer Qs. www.rgs.org/about-us/wor...

📢Applying for a PhD?📢 My excellent colleagues are running a Zoom masterclass next Weds 3 December on how to write a successful PhD proposal and how to apply for funding. Free, register below - choose from: - 10am: lnkd.in/eUPhAXHc - 4pm: lnkd.in/e_U79jUt 🗃️ #PhDChat #Humanities

🗣️ A rally is taking place TOMORROW Wednesday 26 Nov at 3pm outside KCL’s Strand building in solidarity with KCL student Usama Ghanem who fled persecution on Egypt and is now facing deportation after having his visa revoked by the College for his Palestine solidarity. Please join!

A fab opportunity!!!

Are you a PhD student & interested in using museum collections in your teaching or research? We're running a *free* doctoral training programme for students at any institution to learn about working with collections. Find out more: collections.reading.ac.uk/whats-on/

Join Ella Sbaraini, Dan Matlin, Adam Sutcliffe and Lena Ferriday, to hear how King's academics work with the emotions in their own historical work followed by a chaired panel on the nature of studying these slippery but important histories. www.kcl.ac.uk/events/getti...

⏰ Hampstead Heath’s swimming ponds consultation closes on Tuesday 25th. If you care about this, please complete the survey and say that the current arrangements work well.

I’ve written a piece on the curious lack of media and political interest in the issues faced by our national @britishlibrary.bsky.social. This is strange given we live in a world where ideas, knowledge and research are a long-term source of innovation and insight www.cityam.com/the-british-...

If you're in London and at a loose end this Saturday (15 Nov) I'm doing some walking tours of Seven Dials with the wonderful @stanfordstravel.bsky.social. Sign up link below. Come for the coffee, stay for the whistle stop tour of the Dials and sideways look at the history of 1920s and 1930s London.

Cambridge people! I'll be speaking at the HPS Anthropocene seminar tomorrow lunchtime (1-2pm), on proximity, 'meetings' and embodied knowledge in spaces of extraction. www.hps.cam.ac.uk/news-events/...

Join us for More-than-Human Sensory Worlds, the first in our hybrid 'More-than-Human/ities' seminar series, a new collaboration between UoB's CEH & EUC at York University, Toronto. Come explore the shared sensory worlds of human and nonhuman animals! 🦅🐇🌃 Wed 19th Nov 17:45–19:00 Online & in-person

Hey folks, as news of Watson's demise spreads, please don't set aside his weighty legacy of misogyny and racism. He was truly among the worst of us. www.vox.com/2019/1/15/18...

🔍 Bristol glass, taxidermy pangolin & colonial silences—what stories do they tell? Join Materiality & Museum Extraction at Watershed, 19 Nov. Talks + creative insights from historians, artists & scientists. 👉 www.bristol.ac.uk/brigstow/eve... @cabot-institute.bsky.social #DecolonisingMuseums

The full transcript of Zohran Mamdani's acceptance speech is very much worth reading in full. Even if you don't agree with your politics, it's very beautifully put together. archive.is/8VqQJ [this is a useable link to the NYT transcript]

Really pleased to announce the launch of the all-new, all-dancing, London Lives website - www.londonlives.org It has been thoroughly re-engineered to facilitate more types of search, and redesigned for phones and tablets. The team very much hopes peope like it. 1/

Anyone listening to Chris Philp’s Today interview, predicated on the premise knife crime is rising, might like to read my piece from yesterday setting out the more nuanced reality: on.ft.com/47Aw3hT

Many AI data centers are state & federally permitted, theoretically held to pollution standards so as not to overburden communities. The data tell a different story: Those living near these centers face higher air pollution, especially communities of color. envirodatagov.org/blogs/commun...

In today's Guardian I spoke about the need for the Home Office to be broken up to ensure migrants are dealt with by a department designed to make the system work rather than simply projecting a hardline stance to the public.

A portion of every dollar spent on Harry Potter merchandise goes to anti-transgender campaigns.

Thai villagers are not giving up on saving their homes from coastal erosion.

Don’t cross a picket line, folks. I know it’s super difficult and inconvenient so let’s hopes resolution can be agreed and planned action called off

2026 Canadian History & Environment Summer School is going to Prince Edward Island!! The theme of CHESS 2026 is Climate & History. Keynotes by @dagomardegroot.bsky.social & Liza Piper. Apply to attend the PREMIER Canadian #EnvHist Event by 30 November 2025. niche-canada.org/2025/10/20/c...

It's Electric Wind publication day!💨 Join @dudleymarianna.bsky.social for the launch of her new book, online and at @bookhaus.bsky.social. Details on the MUP Events page🎟️👇 A cutting-edge history of wind power in Britain from the industrial revolution to the present. Electric Wind is out now💡

Historical anatomy textbooks are built on the bodies of prisoners, the poor and the powerless – and we’re still using them today.

📜 On this day in 1820, John Harris FRHS - miner, poet and proud Cornishman - was born at Bolenowe Carn, near Camborne.

It was a pleasure to review this wonderful collection for the latest issue of Technology and Culture. Thanks to all the authors for their contributions and to @finnarne.me @dollyjorgensen.bsky.social for drawing such an interesting group of scholars together! muse.jhu.edu/issue/55712

Join us for a roundtable on 'The Modern British City' in January at Senate House, London, with Simon Gunn, Erika Hanna, Owen Hatherley, Peter Mandler, Otto Saumarez Smith and Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, followed by wine! www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

An amazing opportunity for a PhD and a 4-year postdoc on this important project with the brilliant and lovely @smschober.bsky.social - hair, race, trade and multispecies history! #EarlyModern 🗃️

A Brief History of Men are Becoming Less Manly 🧵

How might hands reveal an inner self – a soul, a character, an identity? Join us on 12 November at Lancaster University to explore this question with Professor Alison Bashford (University of New South Wales) as she presents her book, Decoding the Hand. Tickets: thevictorianhand.uk/alison-bashf...

The IHR seminar series on 'Bad Habits' look fascinating this term, particularly for @drinkingstudies members as @jameskneale.bsky.social and David Beckingham are both giving talks on their temperance research. More information and sign up here: us8.campaign-archive.com?u=e075dbc3a1...

Fabulous job for a death studies ECR in Manchester. www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

Great news! JSTOR now have a free account with an Independent Researcher category. You can access 100 documents per month www.jstor.org/action/showL...

Still can't quite believe I have a couple of poems in this wonderful anthology 'The Book of Bogs', edited by Anna Chilvers and @clareshawpoet.bsky.social. Such an honour to be alongside a stellar line-up of nature writers 👇 www.littletoller.co.uk/shop/books/l...

New on advance access: "Bodies, Tides, Timber, and the Global History of London’s Docks, 1860–1928" by Simeon Koole (@uobrishistory.bsky.social) and @benmechen.bsky.social (@uclhistory.bsky.social) #OpenAccess doi.org/10.1093/past...

New this week in 'Transactions of the Royal Historical Society'. "Us and Them: Disability Ethics, Oral History and Inclusive Praxis in the Reuse of Asylum Photography", by Alana Harris and Laura Mitchison bit.ly/4gH9e0f #Skystorians 1/2

The summer has seen anti-trans campaigns across the UK and US, alongside a crisis in healthcare. But what use could trans history have in these time, beyond proving 'we have always been here'? Sam Rutherford @echomikeromeo reflects on Imagining Trans Futures: www.historyworkshop....

We have two jobs at KCL History! 16-month post in Modern Irish and/or British History: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOU178/l... And 5-year post in Early Modern Europe & The World: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOU182/l... (both to start in January 2026)

I am really excited to announce the call for the PhD Course in Energy Humanities! Held at the @greenhouseuis.net from 1-5 December. Applications are welcome until 24 October. #envhum #envhist #energyhistory

This is absolutely unhinged from Johnson and others. Kirk was a proponent of Great Replacement Theory who called for gays to be stoned and public lynch mobs to murder trans people. He is the definition of a right-wing extremist. The cowardice, avarice and opportunism of Johnson knows no bounds.