British Library staff asked for a decent pay. Instead they got ‘a few money-saving present ideas’, such as ‘consider not giving presents this holiday season’. They are on strike this week. I wrote about it for @lrb.co.uk. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/de...

Still a few days left to send in an abstract for what promises to be another brilliant BAVS conference! 👩‍💻

I’m so tired. Must be all the taking I’ve done. Image: a Home Office X post saying “Britain welcomes migrants who contribute to our economy and society. High earners, entrepreneurs and skilled frontline workers like NHS staff will be fast-tracked to settlement - rewarding those who give, not take”

The first school to market itself as AI free is going to corner the market on people interested in actually learning. And I would not be surprised if rich families and the children of people creating this tech were the first movers.

For our next seminar, the wonderful @digivictorian.bsky.social is hosting our just as wondrous PhD researchers, Liam Pope, Laura Grande Mateu, Emily Hayes, & Emma Butler, for our #19thCFlashTalks. Join us for a pre-Christmas treat on Wednesday 10th December from 6 pm. Free, online, all welcome!

Dickens is going to Denmark! Will you go too? CFP deadline: 4 January Conference: 13-16 July in Aarhus on ‘Thinking Dickens’ dickenssociety.org/home

Thread of all HE threads 👇 Super depressing, but sort of nice in the midst of it all to know that you’re not alone in this experience…

TOMORROW - join us!!!

Never thought I’d be boycotting a work Christmas Carol concert, and yet here we are. UK HE really needs to sort out its priorities 🙄

one of the coolest things about ChatGPT is how you can actually just never use it. you can fill your whole entire life with simply not once using it. it's incredible.

THIS WEEK - join us on Thursday for some amateur theatricals and at least semi-professional zooming 😉

NEXT WEEK - join us!

And once you’re nicely beveraged, join the Theatre Caucus at 8 in the Hampton Ballroom for Lady Audley’s Secret!!! @navsa2025.bsky.social

Call for paper for a special issue on the Brontës and poetry - on their work as poets - on poetry in the novels - on poetic influences and legacies - hoping for creative responses too! Abstracts due April 26 Articles due December 26 #Romanticism #Victorian #Gothic Please share!

Preorder for The Theatre Artist's Guide to Consent-Based Pedagogy begins in ten days! I am so grateful to my dear friend and collaborator Kim Shively for researching, writing, and revising with me along the way to this resource for theatre educators! #theatre #education #theatresky

Three German universities offering post-docs for researchers "who cannot conduct or continue their work in the USA appropriately because of actual political pressure. " www.uni-konstanz.de/zukunftskoll...

Join us at the end of the month for David Coates’ paper on Amateur Theatricals 🖤🖤🖤 Hosted by @catherinequirk.bsky.social Free, online, all welcome!

Happy Nope-vember to all who celebrate!

If you’re looking to support on the ground Jamaican orgs, We Change Jamaica focuses on gender equality and LBGTQ+ inclusion & they are putting together aid packages for queer & trans Jamaicans who don’t feel safe going to shelters. gofund.me/09619a41e

“This revocation is part of Trump and his hogmen’s reworking of America’s immigration and visa system….This move also seems clearly to be part of a wider, authoritarian attack on things the government considers un-American: people of color, literary culture, and those it considers critics.”

Our first seminar was fabulous and has been recorded of you missed it - don’t miss our November event on Amateur Theatricals hosted by the very professional @catherinequirk.bsky.social! Register in the link below - free, online, all welcome!

Interested in the history of Seven Dials or London or the 1920s and 1930s? I'm doing some walking tours of the Dials with @stanfordstravel.bsky.social on Sat 15 Nov. There's loads to see, but Seven Dials is so small you don't need to walk far. manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/events/songs...

This #OAWeek, have a read of open access books in drama & performance studies, available via Bloomsbury Collections: https://bit.ly/4hmSM5A

Our @ehunineteen.bsky.social seminar series starts next week with @drreznicek.bsky.social talking to me about care in Romantic novels - register in skeet below! Free, online, all welcome!

Calling all c19 theatre and performance folks - you don’t want to miss this!

The full line up for our 2025/2026 #EHU19SeminarSeries is available to book now in the thread below! Join us for a free, online, and friendly discussion about cutting-edge research in nineteenth-century studies!

We are delighted to announce the first seminar in our 25/26 series: the wonderful @drreznicek.bsky.social will be presenting on ‘Too Bodily: Disability, Care, & Belonging in Romantic Novels’ on Wednesday 29th October at 6pm. Free! Online! All welcome! Register here: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

You can read 'Caryl Churchill's Eco-Socialist Feminism' by Elaine Aston (published by Cambridge University Press) for free online until 22 October: www.cambridge.org/core/element...

Fascinatingly, most of the things in the replies to this are…things I’ve not seen 😂

When it comes to intimidating racist protests including outside our homes or place of worship, Black and Asian people are supposed to just accept it and the government saying “we hear you” and “it is right to protest this” and “I love flags me”. No thought of “cumulative impact” for us!

Job alert! University of Auckland, lectureship in English, in the long 19th century: jobs.smartrecruiters.com/TheUniversit...

The English Department at Hunter College, CUNY is very happy to announce a Tenure Track position in #Medieval British Literature at the Assistant Professor level. Applications from scholars in interdisciplinary and/or global approaches are especially encouraged to apply. cuny.jobs/new-york-ny/...

I wonder if Carney had to crowd-fund his trip to the Women’s Rugby World Cup final, or if it was just the team who needed to do that…? 😒

ChatGPT Edu is built for conning education executives into subsidising and edu-washing planet-burning slop machines via non-consensual access to young people’s creativity AND DATA while attacking their ability to learn. At a university.

Michael Field in Context (Cambridge University Press) is out today! I'm so excited that this volume is finally out in the world. It features 35 chapters on so many different aspects of Michael Field's lives and work. Find out more/order for your library here: www.cambridge.org/gb/universit...

Every day, I find myself wishing that our new book, Read This When Things Fall Apart: Letters to Organizers in Crisis, was already out in the world, because I think it could really help people right now. Preorders really make all the difference in terms of helping a book become widely available.

Battle doomscrolling by posting 5 small pleasures in life The smell of firewood from a log burner on a quiet evening The comfort of a soft sweater The sound of a gentle sea Finding you have twenty minutes when you thought it was ten Coming home to your dog

battle doom scrolling by posting 5 small pleasures in life: - the sound of my grumpiest cat snoring - finding bees sleeping in the garden - a whole saturday spent reading - the first swipe of charcoal on a blank page - the colors of autumn against a bright blue sky

battle doomscrolling by posting 5 small pleasures in life: -the little sigh as a dog puts their sleepy head on your knee -the first bar of the overture in a hushed theatre -discovering the coffee pot still has another cup in it -rereading a good book -the smell of a fireplace on a crisp autumn day

Are you an early career researcher, based in the UK, looking to get published? The Bloomsbury Academic Writing Fellowship, in partnership with @writersandartists.bsky.social, may be for you. Applications now open until 1st October 👉 https://bit.ly/4nd2sBp

Be generous. Now be more generous. Share your privilege. We need creative professionals to step up & volunteer to mentor a young person who doesn't have the connections or financial backing to believe they could access a creative career. Sign up to mentor in 2026 👉 www.arts-emergency.o...

Here's how to support my work: I'll be teaching a version of my Columbia class on Race, Media and International Affairs 101 and 102 next month for @resistanceschool.bsky.social. The course is online/ hybrid. Deadline is Sept. 19th! Sign up! www.resistancesummerschool.com/fall-2025-re...

Doing this talk tonight at Guildford Fringe - if you’re interested in suffrage histories and theatre histories then it’ll be the perfect way to spend a blustery evening away from the news… guildfordfringefestival.com/events/deeds...

New rules: if you can't pass a Life in the UK test on the first go, you don't get to talk about immigration. If you wouldn't cheerfully pay twice for the NHS (your taxes + healthcare surcharge), you don't get to talk about immigration.

Unfunded hobbyist researchers of the world, unite!

Why did Pavlov have such great hair? He conditioned it.

New video out on our TikTok page about Chloe’s trip to see Frankenstein: The Musical (directed by @catherinequirk.bsky.social) at Edge Hill University last month: vm.tiktok.com/ZNdqGJcBf/

'Nigel Farage has hit out at universities for “poisoning the minds” of students with what he said was a “twisted interpretation of history” in his speech on the opening day of the Reform UK conference.' 1/3

“LAW AND ORDER” he screamed as a he nailed up yet another makeshift edict declaring another form of protest illegal without so much as a statutory citation

Glasgow pals, check out my new exhibition at the Mitchell Library on c19 theatre, empire, and celebrity! On display thru October. I'm also giving a talk at the Mitchell on race and c19 theatre on October 4 😊 www.glasgowlife.org.uk/event/1/exhi...