"Labour defines the university as an economic engine, and then suspends the laws of capitalism to expect more output without new investment." 🤷🤷🤷 Reality not big on the agenda of Labour when it comes to #UKHE

This term card is on 🔥🔥🔥 📍📍The London History of Anticolonial Political Thought Seminar📍📍 ⌛️Seminars are hybrid and take place in-person in London & Zoom, 5:30-7:00pm (GMT).⌛️ 📲To sign up to our mailing list for the seminar, please email [email protected]

Really detailed and thorough reporting but dismayed by the “bothsideism” about the flags. *Very few* people - even people without criminal records or neo-Nazi affiliations - who put up flags this summer did so innocently regardless of their stated motivations.

Conservatives have today ditched their Mass Deportation Bill, 5 months after Chris Philip tabled it in the Commons, but a week after it was dubbed the Idi Amin Tribute Act, as it proposed Deportations of settled & legal migrants on a scale never seen since 1972 & never proposed in a democracy before

With the rise of fascism and of the sea levels, we absolutely do not need any more people actually understanding human societies and the environment... That Labour enables this through their failure to act is ghoulish.

This is really poor by BBC researchers and producers. Goodwin hasn't been an active academic for a number of years, yet is described as one (thus legitimating his relentless Reform activism and constant bad faith misrepresentation of evidence). 1/?

Normalisation? Musk saying civil war inevitable in UK (at least third time) + socalising violence (the second time) is mostly not considered newsworthy. He wrote: "It is time for the English to ally with the hard men, like Tommy Robinson, and fight for their survival or they shall surely all die"

📢CFP: Annual Olivette Otele Prize 2025/26! Our annual prize for Black UK-based history PhD students is now open for submissions! 📆Key dates: - Abstracts due on 28th November - Notifications on 19th December - 8000 word essay due on 27th Feb (1/3)

"If you wanted to design a policy that would cause human misery and be about as popular as typhoid in a jacuzzi, it is difficult to imagine how you could do better than this. This is a more extreme policy position than, say, the BNP’s 2005 manifesto"

Turn on the caps? 100% yes, for the benefit of everyone at every level of UK higher education’s system

Starmer and Labour talk about "delivery" but they've been in office for more than a year, with a huge majority, and have barely managed to legislate on their manifesto pledges. For example: Where are we on the employment rights bill that would outlaw this action by Solent? Why hasn't it passed yet?

This essentially means you cannot marry or form a long term relationship with a foreigner - if they fall sick, have a baby, lose their job, or just decide to take a break and write a book about cheeses of the West Country, they can be deported.

"These proposals would mean deporting greater numbers and a greater proportion of the population than former Ugandan President Idi Amin's deportation of Ugandan Asians."

The fine UK east coast city of Kingston upon Hull #Yorkshire is in the good news bracket today having made Nat Geo's cut for one of the top 25 global destinations in 2026 - & it is worth a visit. Here's the cover to the 1931 Official Guide #Hull ↘️ flic.kr/p/2rB53Kv

Olive Morris's former squat and centre for the Brixton Ad-Hoc Committee against Police Repression. £1.4m themodernhouse.com/sales-list/t... www.decolonisingthearchive.com/remembering-...

Here is my first publication from my new project on the history of colonial Newfoundland and the Beothuk people, and I'm rather nervous to put it out in the world. Genuinely, all thoughts on this work are welcome as I head into writing a book about it...

For the first Anthropocene Histories seminar of 2025-2026, we're talking about 'Cities' with Adrián Lerner (@adrianler.bsky.social) and Pollyanna Rhee (@parhee.bsky.social). It'll be online on 29th October between 3-5pm GMT. Open to all, sign up here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/anthropoce...

The sense of quick unraveling and complete loss of any backbone and coordinates is the oddest thing about waking up to how British political establishment is talking about cleansing and deportation as if it were just normal? And even if I see how we got here, it doesn’t make it any less depressing.

“Following his lecture, Yarvin will debate the legendary British historian David Starkey on history and the future of conservatism.” Everything about this is so cursed. Masks off at the University of Oxford.

I have a new article out. TLDR: Actively courting deportation by air is a way to claim rights as a stateless person and even as a refugee. academic.oup.com/past/advance...

We're excited to announce the call for papers for #MBS26, the next Modern British Studies conference, at Birmingham in June 2026. We'll be launching the #MBS Association at this event, to support further regular conferences in Modern British Studies. www.birmingham.ac.uk/events/moder...

York people, I'm giving a paper at the Uni History Department's research seminar on Wednesday 15 October. Particularly keen for feedback from historians of crime, historical criminologists, and criminologists.

The reason the Right are so invested in the myth that the arts have no value isn’t because the arts don’t generate wealth (they do); it’s that studying the arts teaches people to imagine better ways of judging the value of an idea than by counting how much money it makes…

This Israeli government decision to host Tommy Robinson will widen the growing gulf between the Netanyahu government and the British public, including the broad majority of Jews in Britain (3/4 of whom dsapproved of Netanyahu, before this new link to this anti-Muslim racist UK far right convict).

In honour of the 50th anniversary of the Chapeltown Bonfire incident, I’ll be talking about Black women’s community activism in Leeds at Leeds Beckett University. ⏰ 18:00 - 19:00 📍 Rose Bowl, City Campus 🎟️ bit.ly/480KUUD #BlackHistoryMonth #BlackBritishHistory

I’m honoured that my book, MULTICULTURAL BRITAIN: A PEOPLE’S HISTORY has been shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize. Hugely grateful to the judges and the many people who have supported this work along the way @wolfsonhistory.bsky.social www.wolfsonhistoryprize.org.uk/2025-wolfson...

Already 20% of the workforce gone and yet somehow still looking to impose compulsory redundancies? What on earth is going to be left of Brunel when this management team is done? co-sign here: speakout.web.ucu.org.uk/stop-brunel-...

Can we stop doing this? There is no sense in debating whether people are themselves racist, or sexist, or homophobic, if the context for this debate is how these people have done racist, sexist or homophobic things

i've seen so many articles on this today, and not a single one so far has pointed out that where "not taking any benefits payments" is concerned, you have no access to public funds on a visa. this has been the case for years. but nobody, from the BBC down, will challenge this or anything else

Getting mighty tired of the meme on here of “oh, it is just so difficult for the government to set the agenda”. The government (which literally employs thousands of press officers) is setting the agenda - it’s just that it is setting it on toxic ground it can’t win.

If you want to know what a new UK digital ID for immigration would mean, read "States of Ignorance" a book that came out of an ESRC project comparing the development of UK control with two countries with ID. From this research, I think it's a dangerous idea 1/ www.cambridge.org/core/books/s...

We have two jobs at KCL History! 16-month post in Modern Irish and/or British History: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOU178/l... And 5-year post in Early Modern Europe & The World: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOU182/l... (both to start in January 2026)

Why is @ucu.org.uk engaging in the very behaviour that we/it publicly call out when members’ employers employ such tactics? It is shameful. It undermines every branch of #UCU It’s utterly destructive to staff morale and our branches’ leverage Not in our name. Solidarity @uniteucu.bsky.social

I like the way Starmer says ‘We recognised the State of Israel more than 75 years ago as a homeland for the Jewish people’ as if the UK had no role in those events and no responsibility for how they played out.

Living in an era quite this anti-intellectual is just so tedious.

Reviewed @lottelydia.bsky.social's "Imperial Island" for the American Historical Review. Great to see this picked up by Harvard UP in the States. academic.oup.com/ahr/article-...

Cats say a £22bn investment in Dreamies and new Catnip technologies will boost Britain's economy in the next few years

It's fairly pointless fact-checking this sort of racist bilge, but as it happens I live in Plaistow and -- of course the area is undoubtedly multicultural, one of the most diverse in the country -- but there are certainly white children here. I've got two of them in my house.

This weekend we witnessed one of the most disgraceful and distressing demonstrations of racism in British history. Speakers including Elon Musk directly incited racist violence, calling for British people to ‘fight back’ or die. Read our full statement 🔗 www.runnymedetrust.org/news/stateme...

Has anyone else had articles eaten by the Taylor & Francis submission portal? I have received automated submission receipt and peer review emails... but when I login to submit revisions there is nothing there!

One week left to apply 📅 We’re hiring for a Research Officer and a Lead Researcher. Are you passionate about conducting qualitative research on poverty and financial hardship? Do you have a strong commitment to ethical and inclusive research? Apply here: www.jrf.org.uk/careers.

Another thing I love about the present moment - Musk regularly goes 'don't worry, we are going to change THAT' whenever Grok produces an answer that doesn't align with his priors, yet the British Labour government thinks that they are going to be able to land an argument on there in 2029.

📣Calling all new research students in history & historical subjects. Do you want to learn how the IHR can help you during your studies? Join us on the 8 October to find out more. @royalhistsoc.org @ihrhistorylab.bsky.social @historyandpolicy.bsky.social @chppc.bsky.social bit.ly/41UPOyG

Some big news: the University of Birmingham is launching a new MA in Gender & Sexuality. It's interdisciplinary, with a focus on combining theory & practice. It's going to be amazing. I'm convening it: message or email with questions. www.birmingham.ac.uk/study/postgr... @unibirmingham.bsky.social

Ah yes if black and brown people throw a party we need to scan their faces. White supremacists organising a hate march do not need to worry about their privacy. The police have them covered. This btw is also why everyone arguing for digital id in this country is either naive or dangerous.

Not surprising for anyone who has been working in universities and journalists should take note! How many millions have been spent across the sector and by UUK?

UPDATE: Reform is excited to tell you that freedom of speech is now bad. thecritic.co.uk/free...

It’s almost as if the uncritically accepted assumption that all of our lectures must be recorded whether or not we want them to might have extremely serious implications.

The Reform UK conference gives a standing ovation to "special guest" Lucy Connolly, who pled guilty to stirring up racial hatred after she called for asylum hotels to be set on fire with people inside them.