I often bring knitting with me to conferences; this project came together almost entirely during the Women & the Household conference I just attended, and is finally complete. Meet Harold Fatmus:

Great look into the comprehensiveness of EEBO and EEBO-TCP and what that means for using those tools. Highly recommend for all computational bibliographers and early modernists doing large-scale work with EEBO

The fact that the UK is continuing to ban bringing back cheese from the EU should be considered a hate crime

More sights from Antwerp: the cathedral, Bakkerij Goossens, and Elfde Geboed

Spending a dreamy morning at the Hendrik Conscience library with the conference group and @svanimpe.bsky.social, who is a walking encyclopedia

Belgium will fry anything except bicycles

Ready for day 1 to talk about women, households, and books!

So Antwerp is incredible; obsessed with Jeanne Rivière, matriarch of the Plantins

I am in Antwerp for the Women & the Household in the Early Modern Book Trade conference (I’m very excited) and I have to say, in terms of hotel art, I really won the lottery

Thinking of my family, friends, and loves on this US election day. Go vote, please. It IS worthwhile; it DOES matter, even if it’s “just” for your school board and local officials.

Brits: so is NYC next to California My American mother: I saw the Cambridge train attack on the news and was scared you might be involved despite living in Newcastle and not traveling

Happy Halloween! 🎃

Apparently this is a new policy for CUL; instead of charging £75 for the new digitisation of theses, it’s a flat rate of £35 for all theses requests now.

I think a lot about the chance we had at the start of COVID to finally become a more compassionate, collectivist nation, and how profoundly we were failed not only by the sociopathic greed of the ruling class but by each other. It doesn’t mean we won’t get there, but the lost opportunity haunts me.

The fact that Cambridge University is out here charging £35 to a current student to get a copy of an already-digitized thesis is wild to me. Unrelated, if anyone knows Dr Jennifer D Melville or has a copy of her 1999 thesis they'd be willing to send on gender and space in 17c England...

Question for people who work with British records offices/collections: what might "Fac Office" be? I have a note from a researcher (no longer with us) who cites a record of a marriage allegation in "Fac Off." I've looked around and am generally just puzzled as to where I'd find the original.

9:23am is the perfect sunshine spot time in the front room

There's a magnificent passage in "The Dispossessed" about this.

This is one of our biggest arguments: that OpenAI is vampirizing universities for the cachet and legitimacy that affiliation with higher education affords

A lovely walk yesterday through the Gosforth nature reserve; saw 3 grey herons, a red kite, a kestrel, a young roe buck, and of course a thousand wood pigeons

As a once (& future?) library worker and current @ucu.org.uk member, I stand with striking BL staff. Library, and especially special collections, workers are often told they should accept low wages because they get “a dream job:” but any job needs to put food on the table & pay rent.

British Library staff are out on strike from Monday 27 October until Sunday 9 November over pay: please do not undermine their action by attending this exhibition (or any other events at the BL) during that time. www.museumsassociation.org/museums-jour...

Every year we stray further from God’s light

Join us for the online launch of The People of Print: Eighteenth-Century England, a collection of biographical essays about lesser-known figures from 18C book history! The event is free to attend but booking is essential: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/book-launc... #18thC #18c #18thCentury #BookHistory

The real Winner of Birthdays is always Abigail, who receives the best gift of all, no matter whose birthday it is: crinkle paper

Far away, and of course it’s smaller than the big cities, but feeling very warmed by my home state today x

British gf has made a quiz for her birthday party and it is absolutely unhinged

Recent birthday cakes: 1. for a grandparent—walnut cake with a pear, rosemary, and cardamom compote and a brown sugar cake soak, topped with a cinnamon Swiss meringue buttercream, chocolate dipped pears, and candied walnuts

A game my flatmates and I often play is “does the American/Brit know about this weird and horrifying thing from my country” and today I had the absolute pleasure of introducing them to Blucifer

Potential workaround if you're already logged in and get prompted by the ToS notification: opening this "privacy policy" link www.academia.edu/privacytakes you to a page where you can access the drop-down menu and reach "account settings." From there I was able to delete my account without agreeing.

You still have time to submit an abstract for next year's Queer Bibliography conference, either in person or online! It's an incredible topic and will be run by the amazing J.D. Sargan (below) and @elizott.bsky.social. Expect incredible things, whether or not you can make it to Georgia in person.

Hwaet! When I was a Yale undergraduate, I hated being asked what my major was. “Medieval studies? What will you do with that?” www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... #English #Literature #HigherEd

It's not Masquerade Monday, BUT! 'The Masquerade: A History of Extravagance and Intrigue' is now available for pre-order & you can get 25% off through Friday! www.waterstones.com/book/the-mas... If you think Bridgerton will be juicy, just wait til you get your hands on this 😏🤫 #18thc

My good pal and colleague @heggledepeg.bsky.social is starting an early modern instagram series focused on early modern sites in west Cork, Ireland. Go follow along, he’s great craic! www.instagram.com/matt_tells_s...

I've probably seen thousands of apprentice indentures at this point; although they are often of a muchness, there are wonderful details & differences sometimes, such as this little guy with his sheafs of wheat standing on the arms of the Brewers' Co. (indenture of Case Billingsley, bd 1713/fd 1721)

/slams “add to thesis bibliography” button/

Absolutely love this post. Another example why we need to study history from the bottom up, not necessarily top down.

There is some floppy haired man with RP on instagram making it sound as though the entire world went from telling stories around the fire to the printing press overnight and truly I am so tired of this

As an alum this is incredibly concerning to me.

“Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium, atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.” They make a desolation, and they call it peace.

Oh, I was also double-paying into the system by paying into NI through my paychecks and also paying an immigration surcharge to access health care, while having an state-issued immigrant ID card which said 'NO ACCESS TO PUBLIC FUNDS'

Having a cold while being a 17th centuryist in the middle of writing one’s thesis during the rise of fascism means having fever dreams about making protest signs featuring a clergyman who went to jail in Newbury in 1643

THERE IS STILL TIME TO SUBMIT YOUR PAPER PROPOSAL FOR #BSECS2026! The deadline is MONDAY 22 SEPTEMBER and there will be no more extensions! Come & share your research with us @pembrokeoxford.bsky.social, 7-9 January 2026. It's a lovely way to start the new year! #skystorians #18thC #academicsky 🗃️

The Zone of Interest illustrates this very well. Insisting that nazis and other people who do and did great evil are cartoonish monsters without any humanity is comforting (if they’re monsters it means we could never do those things!), but it’s a dangerous fiction.

More neighbourhood moggies from tonight’s run (stripey now knows i give scritches so they come running!)

The extremely thin, nearly non-existent silver lining to /gestures/ all of this is that I will no longer encounter disbelief when I discuss the fifth monarchists, dung in medicine, or witchcraft hysteria in EME to students because it’s all more sane and believable than what some people believe today

Had a great time at the York Book Fair, including accidentally trying to purchase an item a seller had purchased for themselves and spending enough that my credit card company thought it was fraud! But got a great set of “A-Z” guides to London to start mapping apprentices:

The evil that men do lives after them

A compilation of various neighbourhood cats I have encountered lately

Group chat mood these days