What's lost when we lose staff, departments, programmes and faculties in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, and what's that got to do with organ donation? Amid the looming losses faced by Cardiff, Edinburgh, Lancaster, Leicester and Nottingham (among many others), here's a worked example. 1/8

There was a robust trade in live eels in pre-modern England, & I know you're wondering: "How do I ship live eels?" Not in barrels of water. They'll use up the oxygen & die. Nope. You pack them in layers of damp moss or hay, & off you go. They don't need to be in water. Wut? 1/3 🗃️🧪

This collaborative PhD project with the LSE and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, on Planting Decolonization: Plantation Science and Empire in the Twentieth Century, sounds amazing. I’m sure many of you might be interested. #STS #HPS #HistSci www.lse.ac.uk/study-at-lse...

📢Come and work at the Hunterian Museum 📢 RCS England Museums is seeking a dynamic, highly motivated and empathetic individual to develop, deliver and promote inspiring public and professional Museum engagement programmes, on site and online. 👇👇👇 hunterianmuseum.org/news/vacancy...

Yesterday I was @cuherb.bsky.social checking out its collection of Sussex #bryophytes, most of which were collected by William Nicholson (1866-1945), though there are also some from Thomas Laflin (1914-1972), and even William Mitten (1819-1906) 1/5 #bryology

New issue of Journal of the History of Collections Vol. 37, No. 1 (2025) academic.oup.com/jhc/issue/37/1 @sdallaglio.bsky.social @suziebirch.bsky.social @tfraser.bsky.social @rxcoulton.bsky.social

Foundations: please step up and take over the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). This is an absolutely essential scanned archive of all of the old journals and books from the 1500s to about 1920. Has been indispensable for my research. about.biodiversitylibrary.org/call-for-sup...

It's Tuesday. You're dragging yourself through the world, one cup of coffee at a time. Can nothing liven up this day? How 'bout a thread of eel ships on maps? These maps are what got me into eels in the first place! "Cool!" you say. "But wait...what's an eel ship?" Well... 1/14

late for #DigitalFriday but I think this is a useful article for the (comparatively few) people really saying "there's no use case for AI" - it's super important that we don't let slop genAI boosters muddy the waters & confuse their ecocidal theft-based tech with this careful, worthwhile stuff:

Interesting new work on the legacies of British slavery, taking here an holistic view of income and wealth. Bonus: if you buy the related book straight from the publisher, they offer a whopping 50% discount if you subscribe to the newsletter. Get buying!! theconversation.com/tracing-the-...

Not true. I see you're a luxury watch dealer. I'm also interested in watches. Let me show you how free and easy migration has allowed you to earn a living. 🧵

If you want to ask any questions about this post, get in touch with me!

Job researching plants and enslavement www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNK213/s...

Caribbean Connections: Seventeenth-century Barbados and Britain. A 2-day workshop 25-26 June in London at KCL. Be there. www.mmor.co.uk/events/carib...

New ship's log just dropped on our TEI Publisher site, the voyage of the King William (1699-1701) -- plot its route, read the daily entries, and search ships, people and places encountered at digitaltexts.qmul.ac.uk/eic_journeys @e-editiones.bsky.social #skystorians

Does anyone know the location of the missing Telford milestone near Holyhead? 82 of the distinctive markers along the Holyhead Road/A5 from Shrewsbury survive, but the one 2 miles from the port has disappeared. www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-w...

I briefly mentioned that I’ve started a PhD with Greenwich Uni where I’ll be looking at female gardeners and environmentalists in the long 19th century. Who are the best people to follow here into that topic? Any ideas? #history #victorian #19C #gardening #gardeners #environment 🌱

'[Learning occurs, wrote Herbert Simon,] "only as a result of what the student does and thinks." The assignment itself is a MacGuffin, with the shelf life of sour cream and an economic value that rounds to zero dollars. It is valuable only as a way to compel student effort and thought.'

Registration is now OPEN for our conference 'Plants and People'! Please sign up for attendance and workshops through our website: sites.google.com/view/plants-... Thanks to @sshmedicine.bsky.social @camhistory.bsky.social & the Material Culture Forum for their generous assistance.

OMG!! The ESTC is back!!!! datb.cerl.org/estc/

Please share: funded 4 yr PhD with #UlsterMuseum and @qmul.ac.uk funded by @ukri.org from Oct 2025. Would suit someone with interests in natural history and Ireland in c18-c19. Potential focus on #DigitalHistory #HistSTM #EnvHums. Apply by 23 May @ 5pm. www.qmul.ac.uk/sed/english/...

'Universities exist to foster and disseminate research, learning and critical analysis.' But this rarely comes across in recent media discussions of higher education says @eicathomefinn.bsky.social - a Vice President of @britishacademy.bsky.social www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-v...

New article! 'Seeing Women in the Early English and Dutch East India Companies' is now available as an Advance Article with Historical Research. It's been years of work, but I'm proud of this one. I hope #earlymodern #skystorians enjoy it! Some context below: academic.oup.com/histres/adva...

Have a listen! 📻 I'll be chatting about #NaturesMemory: Behind the Scenes at the World’s Natural History #Museums, with the legendary @cerysmatthews.bsky.social at 11ish today on BBC Radio 6 Music. 🤩 www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Might anyone be able to identify this plant, please? It is within James Petiver's Hortus Siccus Americanus, which was probably assembled around 1710. The label is hard to read, but includes the text 'ad: Mary[?] Rickson at ye Coffin in St Albans' #botany #pteridophytes

Please share: funded 4 yr PhD with #UlsterMuseum and @qmul.ac.uk funded by @ukri.org from Oct 2025. Would suit someone with interests in natural history and Ireland in c18-c19. Potential focus on #DigitalHistory #HistSTM #EnvHums. Apply by 23 May @ 5pm. www.qmul.ac.uk/sed/english/...

encountered this and other barely catalogued "Oriental Manuscripts" (apparently Tibetan) at Hampshire Records Office (26M62/BOX/31) -- if any #skystorians can decipher the second part of the pencil annotation, or if anyone knows the script and wants more detail, do get in touch

🚨 Calling all #PlantHumanities enthusiasts! Are you interested in multiple connections between plants and people? Then you're more than welcome to join us on 13 May 2025, in person or online, for our first colloquium at the @meertens-knaw.bsky.social. Register at: forms.office.com/e/YUJEB4GzuE

Enjoy hunting in libraries and archives? PhD placement "Unearthing the roots of Kew Gardens’ history" with @rbgkew.bsky.social and HRP, open to UKRI-funded students. Apply by 11 May, details see link at: kew.org/science/trai... or DM me

We have an exciting CDP studentship opportunity at the Ulster American Folk Park in partnership with Queen's University Belfast exploring Ulster immigrant life in an American city tenement, 1840-1910. For further details visit: www.qub.ac.uk/courses/post...

Delighted to partner with #UlsterMuseum to offer 4 yr PhD at @qmul.ac.uk funded by @ukri.org from Oct 2025. Please alert anyone with interests in natural history and Ireland in c18-c19. Potential focus on #DigitalHistory #HistSTM #EnvHums. Apply by 23 May @ 5pm. www.qmul.ac.uk/sed/english/...

'It cannot be seen as wildly elitist to say that there’s a hard choice to be made between immigration and growth; that manufacturing matters but the knowledge economy is a massive engine for future prosperity; that three quarters of a million jobs depend directly or indirectly on higher education'.

Refresh the page If you like this cartoon, I can draw one for you. www.worldofmoose.com/products/ref...

"In documenting the societal expectations that were imposed on the eighteenth-century elite, I demonstrate how women were constrained in their scientific endeavours and pushed to the margins of botanical networks." - Anne Griffiths niche-canada.org/2023/05/01/v... #envhist #histsci #womeninstem

The University of London Press is now accepting for new proposals for short-form books (20,000–30,000 words) on Digital Cultural Heritage on themes of use, access, value(s) and ephemerality uolpress.co.uk/book-series/... #BDCAM25

'UK research council leaders are bracing for cuts to quality-related (QR) research funding of up to £100 million a year ahead of next week’s Spring Statement – a move likely to lead to a fresh round of redundancies at UK universities.' 1/3

PhD on offer at Kew: Plants and their Products: Biocultural collections at Kew Gardens & the South Kensington Museum during the long nineteenth century If only I could apply! Fascinating mutual interests of Kew and the V&A in plants. Closes 16 May www.royalholloway.ac.uk/studying-her...

This is blood-boiling. Charles Rogers was awarded the Medal of Honor in Vietnam after being wounded three times leading the defense of a position. Google his name and the entry below comes up. When you click, you'll see the page has been deleted and the URL changed to include "DEI medal."

Come work with us on this project! We're looking for a postdoc interested in intellectual history, history of botany and/or colonial history. This project brings together Dutch and Surinam perspectives on botanical knowledge circulation. Drop me or Richard a line if you have any questions.

Brilliant but devastating editorial in the Financial Times. “In the past 10 days, he [Trump] has all but incinerated 80 years of postwar American leadership. If you are not at the table, you are on the menu. America has turned.”

Fascinating programme for the Colonial Natural History Seminar Series of Spring 2025

President Zelenskyy has been one of the greatest leaders of our time, guiding Ukraine through the darkest period of its recent history, rising up to Russia’s unwarranted aggression, being an inspiration to the Ukrainian people and ensuring that Ukraine’s voice is heard on the world stage.

The value of #NaturalHistoryCollections lies in the provenance data, which can reveal the hundreds of thousands of hidden hands behind the prominent few who are attributed as the 'collectors'. This paper provides data that can be applied across so many different disciplines #CollectionsMatter 🌏🧪

Our data paper is out today: Collecting and cataloguing the world: the botanical collections of Hans Sloane (1660–1753). Co-authored with Vicky Pickering, @rxcoulton.bsky.social, Julianne Nyhan and Mark Carine doi.org/10.1080/1477...

I honestly believe our most powerful position in a toxic time that feeds on cynicism, apathy,& despair is to genuinely care and act for a better world. Cynicism is our enemy. We should check it, incl. on the left. It’s not intellectually superior. It’s the virus they’re trying to infect us with. NO

'There is no sense that Labour has yet grasped the delicate interconnected forces that underpin the arts. It is not OK to shove everything together, from ballerinas to florists, into a thing called “the creative industries”. The arts are different, and they need attention.'

Annette Doherty, Royal Society of Chemistry: “the level of change needed is not something any one group can change in isolation”. She called for a “concerted push by all stakeholder groups, right the way from national and devolved governments down to individual schools, universities and businesses”.