Languid hot dog, Uptown today.

I think there is a direct line from my fights about the value of browsable physical collections (which have largely been decimated in academic libraries) to LLM summarizations and brainstorming/searching offloading. AI is just the latest, albeit dangerous in its own ways, step on this path.

You should write your book now so you can write it without having to write it for the rest of your life after that

I'll be at Lewes Speakers Festival, East Sussex, talking about 'These Isles: A People's History of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales' on Sunday 10th May, 9.50-11am. Book here: www.speakersfestivals.com/lewes-speake...

I'm looking for colleagues in the UK, #HistSTM, #HistMed, or #STS who work in institutional settings where they find it is difficult to place them in the right Unit of Assessment for REF2029. DM if that's you?

I'm making one last push to let people know about this online talk -- sponsored by the British Library in conjunction with their current exhibition on fairy tales. The live stream starts at 7:30 tonight, but if you buy a ticket *before* the event you can watch it any time over the next 7 days.

Relatedly: digitizing archives should be an add-on, not an excuse for destroying physical documents. I used to be a curator at the British Library Map Library. An essay of mine that connects the physical space of a library/archive to arguments about why LLM-based genAI can only ever be garbage:

Enjoyed Liz Williams’ lively account of the transgressive aspects of British folk customs past and present. #folklore

Cool OER resource on disability history useful for survey courses I learned about in the last panel of the #OAH2026 www.weteachnyc.org/media2016/fi... 🗃️

Press pack arrived today and claims it'll be out in paper in MAY! *looks at calendar, screams quietly*

Here’s the US distributor link, KENNEDY2026 will work here too for 20% off! But don't stop now! Follow this thread to find out what you get for your CAN/USD!

no one likes historians because every time someone says “oh this is unheard of” historians are all like “well actually” and fundamentally it just doesn’t sound as impressive if you have to say “in these slightly precedented times”

I also have this question.

📢New article in JBS! 📗"False Desertion and Fancy Men: Women and Welfare Fraud, 1945–70," by Charlotte Wildman Open access here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Calling all historians, we might have a purposeful skill for the folks over at the @newberrylibrary.bsky.social - transcribing handwritten texts in their collection. It could make for an excellent assignment I should think. www.chicagomag.com/chicago-maga...

Pope Leo: "The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants, yet it is held together by a multitude of supportive brothers and sisters.”

Nothing discourages detailed guidance for one’s successors like the certainty that administrative fickleness and the drive to look productive means a new online platform will be put in place every other year.

Fucking perfect that the story about losing access to web content is behind a "you've read your last free article" wall.

Following! You might look out for @brettrushforth.bsky.social and Christopher Hodson's BEYOND THE OCEAN, out in a few weeks: global.oup.com/academic/pro...

As I told my students this morning, for years I strain for relevance to the contemporary world, and then it falls into my lap.

See, this is the sort of thing TikTok is for, not keeping up with news: hearing a baritone use the acoustics of a sewer to deliver Phantom of the Opera.

I am happy that this book is now published (in the series Connected Histories in the Early Modern World)! Performing India in Early Modern England 1575-1642 Commerce, Spectacle, and the Formation of the East India Company By Amrita Sen www.routledge.com/Performing-I...

I don't ordinarily include post-1500 studies on my 2nd Plague Pandemic bibliography, but I'm making an exception for this study of 17thC outbreaks in the Carpathian Basin b/c it's so innovative in its methodologies: www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1... #histmed #EpiSky #EarlyModern #OttomanEmpire

10 April 1583: At the assizes in Essex, a gentleman called Thomas Tusser from Tolleshunt is tried for giving forth false prophecies - the text is in the image. Political prophecy still seems rather a neglected topic, and this one is certainly cryptic (an elephant in ... 1/ #earlymodern Source:

@caity.bsky.social Your bread article has me transfixed!

'THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER'

Let's take a moment to remember this very relatable diary entry by Leo Tolstoy. #RetailTherapy

Absolutely. #BookSky

As an early modernist, I have to say that no-one can truly understand Hungary without a longue-durée appreciation of its historic status as a small polity caught between the Habsburg and Ottoman empires...

Hi everyone, here's a little thing I wrote about ghost tours as a tool for historical research (?). If you don't have access but would like to read, let me know! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Thornton doesn't write much about her life post 1669 so the @thorntonsbooks.bsky.social project team enjoyed this court case about her sheep being stolen. Calvert (who ‘cared not for his Mrs’) offered them to some men he had been drinking with in return for a proportion of the sale. #EarlyModern

Another new resource on our site is a guide for scholars looking to start shifting into public scholarship or adding it to their repertoire. Please check it out, share it with first gens, grad students, and ECRs, and make any suggestions for additions! Also see our other resources on the site!

I spend nearly every day of my life looking at natural philosophy from the 17th century and nothing scares me more than the prospect of meeting someone who 'loves the enlightenment'

An article last year claimed that tree-ring data shows a link between drought and late Roman conflicts such as the "Barbarian Conspiracy" of 367. We show problems with such claims and appeal for interdisciplinary palaeoclimatic research to respect historical method. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Join the Art UK team 📣 We're looking for a People and Culture Officer and a Schools Officer. More details and how to apply 👉 https://artuk.org/about/jobs

Across history, witchcraft has been understood in many different ways. 🧙 In this Journal of the British Academy conversation, leading academics explore the cultural history of witchcraft and how its meanings have shifted over time. Read if for free on Open Access 👇 https://bit.ly/4sjcuTv

My first journal article, Moral Panic in the Industrial Town, explores a very Scottish 1960s crisis. academic.oup.com/tcbh/article...

I now feel better about the time someone complained to my boss about me doing an online meeting (during lockdown) from my bed.

Alas! It’s the 400th anniversary of Francis Bacon dying because he tried to stuff a chicken with snow by the side of a road in Highgate 🧵

I do wonder if critical systems are going to have to revert to a foundation of paper and ink

#CfA 📢 3 Postdoctoral Researchers for the project 'Travellers’ interactions in early modern Italy', funded by a Consolidator Grant from the Fondo Italiano per la Scienza. 🏫Italian-German Historical Institute (Trento) ⏰Deadline: 8 May 2026 🔗 jobs.fbk.eu/Annunci/Jobs... #EarlyModern

I'm thinking about all the people googling "Avignon papacy" or looking it up right at Wikipedia, and I love this for all of us. It gives me hope.

A good day at the #thrift #booksky #folklore

Always exciting to see the Avignon Papacy in the news

‘What is Military History and what is its Utility for the Military Profession?’ My chapter in Ann Marie Hagen and Kjetil Enstad (eds) "Advancing Military Practice through Military Humanities" (Routledge 2026). Open access: lnkd.in/eiZY4-De #MilitaryHistory #PME #History #WhatsHistory🗃️🪖

last day to download for freeeeee!

Whatever you are working on today, remember that you are in a long line of humans working with too many mails, various opened text documents, too many other manuscripts lying around, etc. So have your thinking hat ready might be of help to tackle this situation.

For the past few years, little bags of stone tied with inscribed labels have appeared alongside/ within "Daphne" #DaphneProjectLancs #OvidAlert