me when someone cites the deep magic to me even though I was there when it was written: holy shit, for real? I don't remember that part at all

So many resources! But we can always have more! On blackwhiteandread.com, we now have resources for first gens like me (finding cfps & orgs), independent scholars (open access libraries/archives for unaffiliated researchers), job seekers, and public scholars looking to pitch work. Check it out!

Today we will be mainly posting pictures of artefacts that look like sweets. 🍬🍫

Silhouetted pteropod flapping against the distant sky

Huge thank you to @marloavidon.bsky.social and Aelfred for putting together @stuartsymposium.bsky.social! It was so much fun and I’d do it again without a second thought 😄

The lawn outside the Radcliffe Camera had a trim today 🌱 No, it’s not AI. Designed and carefully cut by James from our University Parks Estates team. 📷 Instagram | Jimigk13

“A great many things keep happening, some good, some bad”. Gregory of Tours (539-594):

Good morning from Christ’s College

Getting ready to blather on about PRINS JØRGEN AF DANMARK all day long at an exciting conference about the late Stuart court at Christ’s College Cambridge. Looking forward to hearing many amazing papers

FYI, this gallery has all the photos NASA is sharing from Artemis II in one place, with descriptions.

It’s the 189th anniversary of the birth of one of the oddest of Victorians – which is a high bar, because Victorians were deeply weird people, but this was poet and flagellation enthusiast Algernon Charles Swinburne 🧵

Roman Mosaic Unearthed - Southwark, London, UK <3 What Time Reveals (9 Photos): streetartutopia.com/2026/03/28/f... Two archaeologists gently uncover a large Roman mosaic beneath a construction site near The Shard in central London. The vibrant geometric patterns, preserved underground for nearly...

One of my favourite things to find in historical letters are scribbles by very small children: "Mrs Ann is last [in presenting her service] because she will haue itt in her own carictteer" ✍️

More publication news!! @sashahandley.bsky.social and my new co-authored article, 'Sleep, Scent, and Household Medical Care in Early Modern England', is now available open access in @historyworkshop.org.uk ! Based on research for @sleepingwelluom.bsky.social academic.oup.com/hwj/advance-...

📣Out now on #firstview Michael Edwards @jesuscollegecam.bsky.social on 'Samuel Pepys, the African Companies, and the Archives of Slavery, 1660–1689' #Archives #Letters #Diary #History 17thc 🗃️ 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Pepys ‘curated’ letters to conceal being offered enslaved boy as bribe Cambridge University historian uncovers letter to diarist who was a naval official in 1670s www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026... The actual #OpenAccess research: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #History #EnslavedHistory

Harriet Taylor Mill officially recognised as co-author of 'On Liberty'! dailynous.com/2026/03/19/o...

if you're not WRITING youre WROGNING am i right LADIES

this is who writes our posts btw

Roses are redde Violettes are blue Sayinge "thys technologye ys the future" Ys an ideological move

We've put together a select listing of c.100 national #history societies active in the UK & Ireland bit.ly/4rANJ52. These subject specialist societies facilitate research and promote the value of historical knowledge. Many are membership organisations and invite historians to join them #Skystorians

A giant whose work has shaped generations of scholarship. No doubt many of us benefit from Habermas’ work and from the contributions of those who respond to it— especially with regard to the “public sphere.”

This article took me a long time to research, think about, and write. A lot of colleagues read and commented on earlier drafts, and there was an extensive peer review process that greatly improved the final version. That's how academic scholarship works. It requires time and a generous community.

Hot off the press! I wrote an article that got published in the Journal of American History. It explores how abolitionists used runaway slave advertisements to ridicule slaveowners and slaveowners' northern allies. 🗃 academic.oup.com/jah/article/...

Currently setting up our new exhibition on #Swift and #GulliversTravels to mark 300 years since its publication. We're particularly happy with this staging of A Modest Proposal (1729), for which thanks to Joan Moynihan.

What do we do with duplicates? The original and duplicate are placed in a Document Arena (or Docudome™), then we turn away from them and allow one to consume the other, unobserved. This is a double-blind trial, where we don't know which was the original. Thus, only the strongest document survives.

I finally lost my shit about so-called AIs, LLMs, enshittification & everything fucking evil that @officialgrammarly.bsky.social is doing. I'm fucking furious, and not just about what 1 company has done. An open letter to Grammarly & the rest of the LLM hype machine www.moryan.com/an-open-lett...

I can't compete with this.

‘Hey’ came before ‘hi,’ and ‘hi' came before ‘hello.’ ‘Hi’ is most likely a variant of ‘hey.’ ‘Hello’ is not related to either. Goodbye.

Please do not do this we have already exceeded our ulcer-based casualty allowance for 2026.

Make any comment about the evil of AI on the internet and you inevitably get these people saying, "Ah, but you can't halt progress." You know what else people thought was progress not long after it was invented? Asbestos.

Just listened to this episode and I honestly think it’s pure delight from start to finish.

What medicines did Jacobites use? This chest belonged to a Jacobite doctor, personal physician to Bonnie Prince Charlie. Visit our museum to study its contents! 📍 Physicians’ Gallery, 11 Queen Street, EH2 1JQ 📅 Mondays – Fridays, 10am – 4.30pm Find out more 👉 www.rcpe.ac.uk/heritage/phy...

See the issue is that when I did comps and when I wrote the prospectus, I had no clue what this project was about. Therefore, how could I have read the things I needed to read before I knew I needed to read them? And people keep publishing things! Really it’s not my fault and I don’t have a problem.

I also had to hear this from my advisor recently 😅 I’ve still managed to add a half dozen new citations from more reading that I’m not meant to be doing. Oops. On the bright side, no one can accuse me of not having a grip on the historiography (historiographies).

Fun fact, my phd advisor had to literally tell me to stop reading books because I needed to write my dissertation already. I didn't need that many connections to that meany different literatures.

So as I sit here badly transcribing a piece of 'materia medica' that appears to be about a women's salon where everyone's putting on makeup, I've gotta wonder how many mistaken bits of medieval medical text there are out there that are really just narrative sources about... girlies being girlies?

Many of the trials I work on accuse women of applying unguents to aid them in demonic worship. One woman deadpanned the court by explaining what perfume was. I have rarely laughed harder.

Every library should also have the opportunity to be an archive of some cultural form of their choosing. Maybe it's local history or an eccentric crafts-person or media form, but part of a library's unique identity should involve a nifty room filled with objects that exist nowhere else.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that babies love bubbles 🔭🧪

We're all trying to be careful with our language, so as not to offend, or not to lose federal funding for talking about paragraph transitions. To help you out, here's a worksheet to guide you in swapping out troublesome phrases for real, historical eel expressions. 🗃️🧪

Be yourself. #grickledoodle #death #pretty #cartoon #art #drawing #funny #humor

Today's creative writing prompt

Publication day! My book Keeping Hold: A Cultural and Social History of Possession in Eighteenth-Century Britain is out now. 20% discount code KEHO2026. www.cambridge.org/core/books/k...

For Presidents’ Day, I thought I’d put together a thread of *other* Presidents talking about George Washington and slavery. Away we go! 🧵/1

You may laugh, but the Macbeths are a much better role model for a marriage than Romeo and Juliet. They discuss their problems (killing the king of Scotland), share their hobbies (killing the king of Scotland), and resolve their conflicts (by killing the king of Scotland).

Happy Friday 13th!

So. This Valentines Day, when your beloved -- or aspiring beloved! -- comes at you with chocolates or flowers, think about how they measure up to eels. Ask yourself: "Would they eat their own bones just to be with me?" Probably not. 'Cause no one's as romantic as an eel. /fin

You want to read this thread for what we (don’t) know about eel sex, and you want to stay for the alt text.