CFP alert: We are thrilled to announce the Call for Presenters for a hybrid event in collaboration with @britishlibrary.bsky.social! This will be taking place on 27th November 2026, with presentations happening both in-person and online. Deadline to submit your ideas is: 31st July 2026! #DisHist

“Is the sector really committed to sustaining anything like a full humanistic and cultural education? Because this is not a luxury in a climate of polarised and historically myopic conflict.” Rowan Williams asks THE question. The government needs to answer it too. Where is the leadership?

"Ultimately, the UK needs to review how higher education is funded and regulated. We cannot leave the future of essential teaching and research to a scramble for students and a race to recruit." #Skystorians

Erythrina Fulgens, from an album (Vol.IV, 19), 1780, by #MaryDelany (English, 1700-1788) who was born #otd, May 14. Held by the British Museum, britishmuseum.org/research/col... #womenartists #artherstory #hernaturalhistory

Today’s Education Select Committee report on higher education is the best report on HE to come from Govt/Parliament in ages. It takes a rounded view of the whole system, moving away from the more atomistic or narrow accounts we’ve seen 🧵 committees.parliament.uk/committee/20...

I'm in @theobserveruk.bsky.social today looking at why so many unis are in financial trouble and what the government needs to do to save HE. observer.co.uk/news/columni...

Social media is no longer social. Most of it is passive viewing of videos and pictures from people we've never met. But we're still studying social media like it's 2010. We've entered the post-social media era — and research needs to catch up. osf.io/preprints/so... preprint w/ Richard Rogers

'The fundamental problem is that the relationship between the English state and higher education – what this paper terms the “HE/state nexus” – is broken....This mechanism has failed, by every metric its architects set for it, and its failure is structural, not incidental.' Stark and to the point.

🌿 Learning botany at home 🔓️ In our latest BJHS issue, Brad Scott explores how the Talbot family studied mosses—by collecting, drawing, and naming—showing how botanical knowledge was shaped in domestic settings and through networks, even without formal structures. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Timelea / Thymelaea, c. 1631, by #GiovannaGarzoni (Italian, 1600-1670). F.39 (seq. 88), Piante Varie, c. 1650, held at the @dumbartonoaks.bsky.social Research Library, doaks.org/resources/ra... #hernaturalhistory #womenbotanicalartists #artherstory #womenartists #InternationalPlantAppreciationDay

📖 New issue of the BJHS now out! This issue brings together a rich set of contributions that explore how scientific knowledge is produced, communicated, and imagined across different contexts. BSHS members enjoy full access to all articles! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

‘As a history of Africa in 45 objects, it would be hard to top the developer’s selection here.’ Samuel Reilly plays Relooted, a video game that allows us to pull off heists of African art from Western institutions.

Tory MP Matt Vickers invited constituents to a coffee morning to discuss their concerns, but only if they paid £5 for the privilege. The cash would go to Vickers' campaign fund. No one should have to pay to see their parliamentary elected representative. www.mirror.co.uk/news/politic...

It is past time to do a power mapping of which consultants are advising which universities, and which Super Efficiency Optimizing Plans they're laying out as their Burger King menu of options

This week, Brexit finally killed our family business. We cleared out our warehouse, handed back the keys, paid the final bills and said goodbye to our last employee. What was once a thriving firm died a slow, sad death, all thanks to Farage, Johnson and the gullible idiots they conned. 1/18

Fully-funded AHRC Collaborative Doctoral PhD Studentship at UCL and the V&A: 'Invisible Hands: Migrant Labour and British Craft in the 18th Century' Ignore the 'top ten' hype; focus on the ace resources, environment and support. Deadline 15 April. #Skystorians

🥳The Routledge Handbook of Health and Environmental Humanities is published today! Ed. by the fab Amber Abrams, @victoriabates.bsky.social & @rothiotome.bsky.social. It also includes a chapter 'Research on the Move' by @draflint.bsky.social and me. (Probably one to ask your library to order tho' £)

CONGRATULATIONS 🎉 to the winner of our Digital Prize 2026: Eighteenth-Century Libraries Online (ECLO). The project is the result of a 5yr AHRC-funded project on the role of books in social, cultural & political change across the #18thC Atlantic. www.liverpool.ac.uk/history/rese... #skystorians 🗃️

Ever wondered how pressmen and compositors at the early-modern Plantin Press structured their careers? 📘🕰️ Join the University of Antwerp as a PhD fellow and dive into the rhythms of labour between 1580–1840 Apply by 1 July 2026 👇 #PhDPosition #EarlyModern #PlantinPress #PrintingHistory #Antwerp

The University of Essex has proposed to discontinue most of their undergraduate language provisions as well as the Languages for All programme as part of large-scale restructuring. Sign their petition to urge the Executive Committee to reconsider the proposal: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Join the Lancaster-Manchester Environmental #DH Seminar on March 11 @ 3pm UK (online) for a talk by @jimclifford.bsky.social & @historyjacob.bsky.social: "Solving OCR: Using olmOCR to Follow Commodities across the British World" www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/solving-oc... #dhist #ocr #envhist 🗃️

Delighted to find in the mail today my hard copy of Sonia Tycko's 'Captured Consent: Contract Labor in English Charity, Colonization, and War, 1600-1700' -- an outstanding book that warrants a wide readership. www.cambridge.org/core/books/c...

Next Friday! Registration will be open until next Monday! #envhum #dh cc @northernenvhistory.bsky.social @envhumsoxford.bsky.social @ukiedh.bsky.social

QMCECS Seminar 17 February 2026: Esther Chadwick (Courtauld): 'Art, Bureaucracy and the Stamp Office'. In person at Queen Mary Mile End campus, ArtsOne 1.36, starting at 17.15. All welcome. More info: www.qmul.ac.uk/sed/english/....

These beautiful plant drawings were made by an unnamed Chinese artist, possibly at the behest of colonialist John Bradby Blake in 1771-2. Ordinary sticky tape is a nightmare for archives, but acid-free repair tape can be used to patch up torn pages. #ExploreArchives #EYAConservation

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...