Not that Routledge told us very far in advance, but our edited collection from last year is being published in an affordable* paperback on September 25th! 😀 www.routledge.com/The-Theatric...

A few interesting freelance gigs lined up for the next few months! If you or anyone you know is seeking an experienced speaker in early modern drama and history, or someone with hands-on public engagement and exhibition curation experience, do reach out at [email protected] 😀

As much as I dislike Starmer - and I do - I love the fact that if Musk actually understood facts and figures he'd probably cry himself to sleep at night over the fact that Starmer's net favourability is still higher than his own.

Bye bye Elon. I'm not even going to support this manipulative bullshit by leaving my dormant account on your fascistic platform. It's time for as many right minded people as possible to stop helping to line this idiot's cavernous pockets.

Reminding everyone that Robert Hardy published scholarly works on the English longbow. And now every celebrity is pumping out children's books. A handful are flooding the market with murder mysteries.

Couldn't resist spending a bit of my holiday on the trail of more travelling players - this time at Boston Guildhall in Lincolnshire.

Off the back of this, I also now have a mini profile up on Manchester Met's Break with Rome Anniversaries Group page. I'm available to heritage/education talks for museums, groups, schools, and universities, plus musum consultancy. Feel free to get in touch 😄 mcphh.wordpress.com/break-with-r...

This is a momentous Friday - it's up and running! 😄 The fruits of my 2024-5 Nottingham postdoc, transforming an underused space at Shakespeare's Schoolroom & Guildhall. (The only permanent exhibition on early modern drama beyond Shakespeare, within an authentic early modern performance space.)

I'm currently seeking peer reviewers for a journal special issue I am currently guest editing on the theme of Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton. If you would be interested, please do get in touch 🙂 My DMs are open, or I can be emailed at [email protected].

In June, I gave a lecture for the Hall's Croft Club. It was great to engage with the local community. I am open to further speaking opportunities (societies, museums, schools etc) and have several projects I'd love to share. If you know of any opportunities or want to speak directly, do message 🙂

My exhibition is indeed complete and ready to go live at the guildhall of Stratford-upon-Avon - I can't wait to see it in place 😭

My exhibition is indeed complete and ready to go live at the guildhall of Stratford-upon-Avon - I can't wait to see it in place 😭

The exhibition includes physical media and digital content which is currently being produced by Wide Sky Design, a Nottingham-based digital heritage business. The work will transform the space, exploring the guildhall as a venue that hosted travelling players from 1568 fo 1622.

Thank you to all who have followed this account so far! This project grew out of an AHRC-funded knowledge exchange partnership with Shakespeare's Schoolroom & Guildhall + the University of Nottingham in 2024-5. For this, we curated a new interpretation of an underutilised space - opening very soon!

I'm not quite sure what I plan to do with it yet, but ahead of my new exhibition fully opening at Shakespeare's Schoolroom & Guildhall later in the year, I've set up a BlueSky for the Travelling Players Project! Check out @travellingplayers.bsky.social for what I hope will be some exciting updates 🙂

I'm not quite sure what I plan to do with it yet, but ahead of my new exhibition fully opening at Shakespeare's Schoolroom & Guildhall later in the year, I've set up a BlueSky for the Travelling Players Project! Check out @travellingplayers.bsky.social for what I hope will be some exciting updates 🙂

Been asked to review a couple of books lately, both of which arrived today. Well, that's August's reading list sorted.

Portrait of a man about to lead a session at Nottingham's distance learning summer school.

Tomorrow, I'm leading a workshop for the University of Nottingham's English summer school for distance learners 😀

Next week (Thurs) I'll be presenting at SRS 2025 in Bristol, sharing some work from my recent postdoc and my plans (hopes?) for further work in this field 🙂 I'm so grateful to be receiving funding from the British Academy's Early Career Researcher Network to cover the cost of attending. Can't wait!

Hey, yesterday it was a year since our BritGrad plenary!

I've been invited to write for History Today again, this time a feature related to my recent work on travelling theatre and local politics 😱

Yesterday evening I had a great time giving an after dinner talk on regional performance and the Stratford-upon-Avon Guildhall for the Hall's Croft Club - a real privilege to be invited for my first paid engagement sharing my work with the local community 😄

30 mins to my talk, and just FYI, Bertie won the argument.

I'm giving an invited talk tomorrow evening at the Hotel du Vin in Stratford. So tonight I am pondering the question... do I rock out the Bertie Bassett cufflinks?

Governments: "Everyone should make little sacrifices like walking more, driving less, recycling, saving energy, and we might just save our planet 🤗" Also gov: "Also we're betting the economy on AI which will wipe out all the progress we've made in environmentalism in just a few quick prompts 🥰"

Once again: AI was *never* intended to assist the average person. The rollout was designed from the start to make the richest employers ever richer. We're heading for a huge recession due to this. Maybe the silver lining is that then no one will be able to afford these companies' products anyway.

You know you can just not use AI, right? You can make a choice not to be part of this. Even if your job uses it, YOU don’t have to in your normal life. You don’t have to let your kids use it. You didn’t have it three years ago. You can just…be on Team Human. You can choose.

Ugh. Given that every random-ass question asked of ChatGPT uses (without the possibility of re-use, as I understand it) a significant amount of water, & that the data centers are using energy like they're small countries, I'm not sure there's anything more selfish in 2025 than most AI usage.

OUP published my first book and did a fine job of it. The involvement of professional human people at every stage did not strike me as a luxury or something that could be easily disposed of.

So, due to contracts ending I seem to be entering something of a career break. If anyone needs any research assistance, guest speaking, or teaching, do let me know. I'm 4 years post-PhD with experience I archival research and public engagement, and hold FHEA status. And please share if you can 🙂

So, due to contracts ending I seem to be entering something of a career break. If anyone needs any research assistance, guest speaking, or teaching, do let me know. I'm 4 years post-PhD with experience I archival research and public engagement, and hold FHEA status. And please share if you can 🙂

I agree. If we're going to collectively take a stand against this nonsense I think we need to know - because publishers aren't going to be upfront about this themselves. Even though they keep telling us how much we all love AI, for some reason they're very cagey about these things 🤔

I could rant & rant about it, but really want everyone to know how rubbish & laborious & ineffective academic publishing is becoming. If there is a next time, I will 100% be asking to choose my own copy-editor before a contract (or checking for in-house) - & looking to non-exploitative publishers

The publisher has cut their costs by outsourcing to this company, the company has cut their costs by using AI/low-paid staff instead of paying for a proper job, while I’ve spent hours & hours fixing the manuscript, so all the extra labour from cost-costing has fallen on me, the unremunerated author

Academia in 2025: For weeks I’ve been working through botched copy-edits of my monograph, outsourced by the publisher to a company I’d never heard of, until it finally dawned on me the terrible job might be AI. A quick search confirmed the company recently launched new AI software, which now means..

Still chipping away at the final days of the walking challenge - even in this weather. Because that's how dedicated I am 😎 www.justgiving.com/fundraising/...

My first monograph, Assemblages of Cancer. Experiences and contexts of #breastcancer in the UK, France and Italy, published by MUP @manchesterup.bsky.social, is out. If you are interested in having a look, the book is also available in open access here www.manchesterhive.com/display/9781...

BHO is having intermittent downtime at the moment. We're being hammered by AI bots and scrapers, overloading our servers. Our server engineers will be back on the case after the long weekend. Apologies for the inconvenience, but this is due to third-party bad actors.

This is just digital enclosure of the commons. AI of this nature was not designed to help humanity, but to automate as much human labour as possible, keeping expenses down for those who are already society's wealthiest. And there is no plan in place for when the creative sector collapses.

My plans for a major retail emporium are being threatend by wholesalers who won't let me steal the stock.

Cool, Clegg. So what you're saying is arts and culture should die so that the tech bros can line their pockets? www.thetimes.com/uk/technolog...

Mom look I'm (a) famous (or at least "featured" alumnus in the halls of my alma mater, Winchester) now!

Is there such a thing as a medical humanities ECR/PGR community or WIP network? does anyone know of any groups that come under this purview?

I've decided to keep all of my updates on this challenge in a single thread. For those interested in supporting the cause or who are just generally interested in my progress, this will provide a neat overview, and I'll likely post every few days or if a walking route was particularly picturesque 🙂

At long last, a complete manuscript of this is done and is ready to be sent off to the editors later today 😍 Thanks to everybody who has supported me through this over the years. Here's a sneak preview of the contents!