Another day, another email with a REF task. I’ve been at my institution barely a year and already lost so many hours to this bleak stuff. I know everyone hates it but it’s even more exhausting when you’re fixed-term ECR and doing it for an institution that’ll turf you out as soon as contract ends

Starting some new writing today on a favourite topic - libertine women - with some motivational libertine treats

Not available until June 2026, but we have a cover! #earlymodern #skystorians

For balance - and for anyone struggling on their first monograph - please know that after I submitted my proposal to the publisher, Reviewer 2's report concluded that 'a book on Hortense Mancini's salon would be welcome but this is not that book.' Luckily, Reviewer 2 was overruled..

✨Excitingly my monograph now has a cover!✨ It’s out in November @bloomsburyhist.bsky.social, which means there will finally be a whole book on Hortense Mancini’s salon, the eager few will be relieved to know. It comes with an academic price tag £££ but will be Open Access. Library orders welcome 🙏

Graveyard exploring today & spent a while gazing at this early eighteenth-century stone with skull and fletched arrow decoration - beside it was the grave of Henry Fawcett, husband of the indomitable Millicent Garrett Fawcett

New on BBC YOU’RE DEAD TO ME we explore the controversial life and political career of Queen Marie Antoinette of France 🇫🇷 Our guests are Professor @100days1815.bsky.social and comedian Jen Brister This ep is only available in the UK on BBC SOUNDS for now, but comes to other apps in 1 month

It’s publication day! 🥳 🎈 🍾 Women Who Ruled the World: 5000 Years of Female Monarchy published by @wearefootnote and available in all good booksellers. #womenwhoruledtheworld #reigningqueen #femaleking #mybook #newbook #newhistory

A clarion call to colleagues in French studies and across academia from students of French in Gaza. "In Gaza, all the students study against death... We come to class despite illness and hunger. We don't give up. To study is to stand tall, to be free" www.lemonde.fr/idees/articl...

It has been a long summer of proofing and indexing (and battling against outsourcing and possible AI-interventions) but I've just approved the final file of my monograph... Oh sweet relief! Tumbling into autumn free and light as a conker 🍂 🍃

This week I gave a paper in the TUNNEL SHAFT of the Brunel Museum, which was very cool in every sense

Will we accidentally lose our capability in geopolitically key languages as universities close provision? on.ft.com/3Hw6eq3

We’ve long known Samuel Pepys was a sleazebag, but Guy de la Bedoyere’s new edition of his journal reveals it was way worse than that — he was a relentless sexual predator www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...

The Graces: The Extraordinary Untold Lives of Women at the #Restoration Court by Breeze Barrington looks beyond the warming pan to the real Mary of Modena. ✍️ Annalisa Nicholson reviews the recent #history book www.historytoday.com/archive/revi...

Delighted that the print copies of my first book 'Birth, Death, and Domestic Religion in early modern London', just published with @universitypress.cambridge.org, have arrived! 📚📚📚

Have you listened to this episode of BBC Radio 4's 'In Our Time' on Molière yet? Featuring Melvyn Bragg alongside three SEMFS members: Professors Jan Clarke, Joe Harris, and Noel Peacock. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

My review of The Graces: The Extraordinary Untold Lives of Women at the Restoration Court is out now in the August issue of @historytoday.com. Stans of the Stuarts, the Roaring Restoration, and early modern women - this book is for you 💘

The situation in many UK universities is awful, but the news coming out of Lancaster is especially bad: 1/4 jobs to go, with senior management either leaving or not taking a pay cut. Please sign and share this petition to support colleagues there: chng.it/X6g46TjMSC

Gone full name here as I have a couple of things coming out soon (eek), but all variants on my forename are still welcome ✌️

Our #siteoftheweek is the Thomson Index of Slavonic Translation Literature. The aim of the project is to preserve, digitize and extend access to this card index in order to preserve Thomson’s academic legacy as well as to promote + support further research in the field of Byzantine-Slavonic studies.

Hello UK friends - please, please could you sign this petition against the job cuts at my place of work - 1 in 4 us will be out of a job by August next year if we don't stop the cuts. And once you've signed it, please share. We need your help! www.change.org/p/stop-mass-...

Travelling home after a wonderful day in York at the Women’s Worlds workshop where we explored the relationship between salons and slave ports, organised by the brilliant @susannah-lw.bsky.social. Inspired by the new methodologies being pioneered by young scholars and cultural heritage sites ✨

This Friday 11th July from 12pm I will be introducing a newly produced full size reproduction of the stunning world map from 1546 we have been busy with at @thejohnrylands.bsky.social Come explore the world seen through the eyes of a French renaissance king!

Fellowship Opportunity! Corpus Christi College, Cambridge seeks one Early-Career Researcher (4 years). This year applications will be considered in the following subjects: Modern and Medieval Languages; Classics; Linguistics; Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNY167/e...

A wonderful evening celebrating the launch of Breeze Barrington’s The Graces 🚀. All about the most exciting, innovative, and scandalous women of seventeenth-century England. Tasters of the book are in her article on Maria of Modena in this month’s BBC History magazine @historyextra.bsky.social

Quite enjoyable to have a head-to-head with @proflroach.bsky.social @michaelledgerlomas.bsky.social and the fabulous Professor Sue Doran in the July issue of @historytoday.com www.historytoday.com/archive/head...

“You’ve got more languages students setting up successful start-ups than you do maths graduates, and the same number of history students setting up start-ups as engineers, so there’s a bit of myth busting that needs to go on.” www.ft.com/content/3162...

Researchers! Short-term fellowships for working with Beinecke Library (and all Yale special collections) are open for applications. Deadline is July 31. beinecke.library.yale.edu/programs/fel...

My partner likes to joke the French will put a croissant on anything - after we saw a croissant-handbag in a Paris boutique. Read a review this morning about French imperialism in India & the ‘Croissant’ vessel dispatched from France to the East Indies, imagining a little pastry logo on the mast 🥐🌜

Somehow things have conspired so that I am doing two proofs and two indexes this month(!). But I am so excited for my first academic book - and my little edition of Hortense Mancini’s letters - to be out in the world soon 🌍. A summer of printing and proofs 💫

Join us! We are advertising two part-time, paid Editorial Fellowships at History Workshop in 2025-27. Our fellowships support early career historians to develop expertise in public, radical and digital history & to gain experience of working in an editorial team. www.historyworkshop....

It is endlessly infuriating to me that Caster Semenya, and other women athletes, are punished for "naturally produc[ing] higher levels of testosterone than most women" - when that very same capacity is celebrated, rewarded, given medal after medal in the men's sports

Somehow things have conspired so that I am doing two proofs and two indexes this month(!). But I am so excited for my first academic book - and my little edition of Hortense Mancini’s letters - to be out in the world soon 🌍. A summer of printing and proofs 💫

I'm really so pleased that ordinary, working women's stories are being integrated back into the historical record. Their lives are interesting too, but part of me despairs when every Georgian woman's story has to be told in connection with Jane Austen. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

We are thrilled to announce that the Conflict, War and Violence in the Early Modern World Conference, with a keynote address by Professor Mark Stoyle, will be held on 30-31 October at the University of Exeter. Please help us spread the world, and consider submitting a proposal!🗡️

Lazy Sundays with Breeze Barrington’s new book on women at the Restoration court. Review out soon! 🌸🌻🌷

Not the main point but can’t stop thinking about how she changed her name from “Walker” to “Winn”. Was that the inspiration for the whole con? Did anyone in the publishing world realise she was using a pseudonym when her original name was so frighteningly perfect for her books? So many questions

hello. if you work at a university please ask your library to buy my book. it is all about books and libraries and also plants, museums, the Royal Society, and the ways we learn. I think it will be interesting to lots of people, hopefully. thank you www.cambridge.org/gb/universit...

NEW TODAY! - Ahead of tonight's launch event @byleaveswelive.bsky.social, @paulmalgrati.bsky.social reviews 'Esther', a new poetic play by David Kinloch and another milestone in the recent Esther Inglis Revival. Read the full review here - wp.me/p3nrhP-jwo

This country seems to have settled on a version of free speech where it's important to be shocked and offended at university but not permitted to shock or offend at a music festival

Taylor & Francis can afford to buy another university press, but apparently can't afford a simple mechanism on their website that redirects me back to *the original article I clicked on* once I've verified my institutional credentials instead of the scary giant search engine

Could anyone with Old Church Slavonic please translate for me this inscription on a cross, pictured in Jan Huygen van Linschoten’s account of the 1594 voyage to Novatya Zemlya?

Eligible authors – do submit your books for consideration! You only need to submit a PDF copy, which makes the prize very accessible. The SSFH's ongoing commitment to supporting junior scholars is so, so welcome, especially with the challenges French history is facing in Anglo-American academia

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...

Looking forward to this discussion with Emma Claussen, Jérémie Foa (@anakroniks.bsky.social), and Jenny Oliver hosted by FISIER! Online to bring everyone together across the waters. More detail listed here for now: modernum.hypotheses.org/tag/xvie-sie...

Funded PhD studentship of €25,000/year for 4 years plus fees available @tcddublin.bsky.social to work with me on Irish women's life writing from the long 18th century! Please spread the word! @ecfjournal.bsky.social @cecs-york.bsky.social @clhlwr.bsky.social @oxfordlifewriting.bsky.social

Snippets from the terrific talks and conversations we’ve been having at Cultures of Philosophy in Exeter the past few days on women and natural philosophy - featuring a cameo from Saint-Évremond in a paper not by me! Bravo @cultphil.bsky.social

Less than a week till our @cemskcl.bsky.social colloquium on early modern war narratives! Sign up here to attend in person or online! 👉 www.tickettailor.com/events/centr... Please repost! ⚔️

Left my first Women in French @wif-ukire.bsky.social conference full of hope & admiration for the future of our field. Every panel was so engrossing that I’ve no conference pics except these two of the nun’s seminary we stayed in - what a location!

We’re so looking forward to bringing together some incredible scholars in Exeter next week for our conference: Women Writing Philosophy in Early modern Europe - Spaces and Exchanges