... and Leicester... Languages, History... It's so easy to destroy, so hard to create. So much talent. So many lives. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Time to update your Bluesky profile, Mr Mamdani. Wonderful news in such dire times!

Italian government's immigration policy in tatters. After failure of Albanian detention centres, impounding of NGO vessels now in question. Catanzaro Court of Appeal rules NGO ship illegally impounded for disobeying Libyan Coast Guard, which cannot be considered a legitimate rescue organization.

Been back to my childhood village in Essex for a funeral. High Street is littered with tatty flags attached to every lamp post and telegraph pole, and by God, it looks awful. Everyone I spoke to hates them. So intimidating. Apparently- "Epping Forest council is scared of offending the nasties."

Draft Tory legislation on removing indefinite leave to remain is insane. Would chuck out those not earning over £38K - including many pensioners! + social protections seems to include child benefit, so load of people with (British!) kids! They'd remove my sis & mum who've been here 50 years.

Farewell Zoë Wicomb, the vivid voyager who wrote SA into the world www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2025...

Woke up to the absolutely shocking news that my colleague Francesa Orsini, renowned scholar of Hindi literature and a mild and diplomatic person, has been deported from Delhi even though she had a valid visa. No reason was given. Report and opinion in @thewire.in thewire.in/rights/globa...

It’s Fog on the Tyne season, paired with misty Durham Cathedral in all its majesty. Gearing up for meetings with advisees, followed by tutorials on canonicity, the value of English studies, Terry Eagleton and Pride and Prejudice.

This is true and important. I also note that the UK and others could have chosen to step up to at least make a small attempt to mitigate for the US reductions; however inadequate that may have been. Instead, under Starmer’s Labour, we did the opposite and retrenched ourselves.

Marie McGowan, 89, has died 3 years after a brutal assault during which she was put headfirst into a rubbish bin. Her attacker, Alex Bailey, believed she was "a man dressed as a woman." This is the world the transphobes are creating "to protect women." RIP Marie. share.google/PFaI5YTh9tBw...

Today's column is about the government's huge, unprecedented assault on nature ... and about the eerie, astonishing silence of the big nature groups. The RSPB, National Trust, Wildlife Trusts have 7.5m members between them. A vast force, completely unmobilised. 🧵 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The UN says Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza, having killed 15 Palestinian civilians since October 10, despite a ceasefire coming into effect. 🔴 LIVE updates: aje.io/ttcve3

In need of academic copyediting and/or proofreading? Please consider me: allitteditorialservices.co.uk Please share! Strictly no AI is used! I love correcting spelling! #Editing #Spellcheck #Proofing

145/1000 with 15 hours left… still plenty left to match

While the perpetrators of Gaza’s genocide pose as its saviours, survivors return home – to a wasteland | Nesrine Malik

We had a glorious, sunny, October day at Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal @nationaltrust.org.uk. Made even more special by the colours of autumn: it will no doubt be memorable for both our boys and for us parents.

Don’t be distracted by the news of the ceasefire. The bombing doesn’t stop for even a moment, and it’s being intensified insanely!!!! #ceasefire #Gaza

Govt promised to help Palestinians get to UK to study- but I'm in touch with 7 young Palestinians with scholarships at @bristoluni.bsky.social who are trapped in Gaza because the Home Office isn't doing what was promised Shocking neglect putting lives at risk www.aljazeera.com/opinions/202...

This is devastating but hard to think of more important journalism. 18,457 children have been killed in Gaza (many more not accounted for). Here, The Guardian prints their names and beautiful faces and tells us what they were like before Israel stole their lives. www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

I’m sharing a Palestinian account every day and today is Doaa. Doaa is the mother of 3 children Omar, 10, Yasmine, 8 and Youseff, 4 but she primarily started this fundraiser to help her sister Amal who lost a husband and son and is trying to support her children Hiam, 13, Omar, 12 and Jawad, 7.

The shortage of English teachers has not been resolved - cuts in bursaries for trainees are a mistake, argues @sarahmullin.bsky.social @englishassociation.bsky.social

Even those of us working in universities but on teaching-only contracts are excluded from a variety of opportunities and funding.

Delighted to announce that my co-edited special issue, Material Feminism and Posthumanism, is out today with Contemporary Women’s Writing @oxfordunipress.bsky.social! Featuring articles on Vinciane Despret, Mary-Jo Bangs, Larissa Lai, V.H. Leslie, Erín Moure, and Sarah Moss. doi.org/10.1093/cww/...

This year, in #NobelSoWhite (and white haired, and masculine). I don’t dispute the importance of their work for a second, but the optics are bad.

Read the full report: www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/policy-and-r...

People being carted off into police vans for carrying placards The government has stoked up so much more trouble than it was trying to solve. We used to be shocked when they did this in Russia? See how authoritarianism can move so quickly. Such a terrible move from this government. #PA

I ain’t gotta say much, y’all already know how bad things are in Gaza right now… just hoping you can help out, even if it’s just by sharing this post... chuffed.org/project/layl...

And there we have it, if we needed any further proof: people who have suffered unspeakable loss, who have lived under occupation for decades, defined as terrorists merely because they do not just up and go to make room for a colonial expansionist project blathering about its Lebensraum.

As a module leader and course director, I struggle to see how this can happen. Except that the RG over-recruit and there are so many students on courses nobody can monitor them. share.google/a0rqaLfYUnCn...

Sama’a is spending her days at the hospital, as her cousin Raad remains in a coma 💔 Please help her be there for his family during this very difficult time. tinyurl.com/support4samaa

UKIP have been given permission to march through Newcastle City Centre tomorrow to a hotel housing asylum seekers and people with refugee status. Please email complaints and concerns to Northumbria Police and Newcastle politicians (MPs and councillors). Link to template letter in alt text.

It’s gone so quickly from ‘boat people’ to all immigrants. So quickly from ‘I don’t mind if they come here legally and pay taxes’ to ‘actually it’s anyone foreign’. We are living in the ‘first they came for’ poem. All to give the population a scapegoat so the super rich can hoard yet more wealth.

Bookmarked. I haven’t listened to every episode, but have recommended the Ottoman and Persian series, esp the later episodes, to everyone I know. Plus, I regularly use the slavery and Indian Partition series in my teaching. An excellent, comprehensive podcast.

Small joys: my morning started with two lovely emails from students thanking me for past advising/mentoring, and references I wrote for them. One is returning from a summer fellowship in Canada, the other one is thinking about postgraduate options. This is why I love my job!

'Tylenol' is known in the civilised world as Paracetamol 2.4 million children born in Sweden between 1995 and 2019. Studied 186,000 children whose mothers were treated with paracetamol during pregnancy. news.ki.se/no-link-betw...

Please donate if you can to help out Lobna’s family: chuffed.org/project/1428...

It's almost as if, before the Gaza famine was officially recognised, it was a story, as media organisations could generate controversy by hosting Israeli government spokespeople and our own rightwing blowhards, insisting it was all a fabrication. Now that it can no longer be denied ... no story.

👇🏻

You can donate to help out Abdullah and his family here: www.gofundme.com/f/a-cry-for-...

Ta-Nehisi Coates has written the best yet commentary on last week's events, while pundits, politicians and others have disgraced themselves in their whitewashing of of this man's legacy. www.vanityfair.com/news/story/c...

'Just 27% of mothers achieve tenure, compared with 48% of fathers and 46% of other women.'

Fun fact: in Italian, still today, it is common to use ‘il fuoco di Sant’Antonio’(St Anthony’s fire), to speak of shingles, which we now know to be linked to the chickenpox virus. Not sure if this is related to Hildegard’s visions, but it surely has to do with burning sensations and rashes.

So much of this rings true about precarity and being an "early career" scholar frenchhistorysociety.co.uk/6691/

The season is changing, but it’s not term-time yet, which means it’s legit to still be doing research, right? What a joy when research coincides with teaching preparation for my new module on environmentalism, postcolonialism, and the sea.

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

1/2 ‘The convention, adopted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews by Nazi Germany in the second world war, defines genocide as crimes committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such”. ‘ www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

Maha has unique photos and videos (and a very detailed GoFundMe), social media in Gaza that predates the war and is neighbors with Traji whom I’ve shared. You can tell how much this family valued education, even the youngest siblings have specific plans, help them live to fulfill their dreams

And the University of Kent, a place that used to be a centre for genuine interdisciplinary critical work, European languages and cultures, and international exchange, has just announced a de facto merger with Greenwich. I fear the South East will get colder and colder, too.