If someone earned 50 shillings a week 100 years ago, was that... good or bad? Our handy guide 'What could you buy with a working class wage?', c.1900s-1920s, may be able to help! Explore examples of weekly budgets, ads for consumer goods and more at warwick.ac.uk/services/lib...

Martin Peterson's creative response to being banned from teaching Plato (shared with his permission).

What does a new exhibition on 200 years of British trades union history reveal about the tumultuous story of workers organising for change? Marybeth Hamilton sits down with historians and archivists to discuss the exhibition and the unexpected stories that it unveils.

Well, maybe: but I've also got a list of 'people I'm very glad predeceased social media and the internet generally'. E.g. I think any benefit Marie Stopes might have achieved in the struggle for reproductive rights would have been outweighed by the vicious flame wars she got involved in.

I sort of think the Europeans should just station a brigade in Greenland and see if he'll literally attack NATO soldiers.

A library based on access to subscription databases that vanish completely as soon as the payments stop is, in an important sense, not a library. It is not a repository. It's just a viewing platform.

Looking for an intellectual treat? @petermandler.bsky.social 's Ford Lectures on 'The Language of Social Science in Everyday Life' begin Thursday 22 January and continue weekly through 26 February in Oxford. #Skystorians

Facing protests and new Threats from Trump, is the Iranian Regime on its last legs?

My @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social interview from a couple weeks ago with Jack Bratich about his book "On Microfascism: Gender, War, and Death" is (unfortunately) very timely for the current moment and can help explain much of what is happening in the US. newbooksnetwork.com/on-microfasc...

Say you've never read a book about colonial history without saying you've never read a book about colonial history

My US History class formerly capped at 40 will have 100 students in the spring. Did anybody tell much less ask me? Lol no. But if I’m lucky I *may* be assigned a TA so 🤞🏼

Trump: "We're going to have our very large United States oil companies go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure and start making money for the country. And we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so."

any organ that construes its job as relaying press releases has ceased to play a role in maintaining democracy

Norfolk Record Office run some great online talks & training sessions... Interested in finding out more about settlement papers & the pre-1834 poor law? They may have just the intro for you! The Feb talk on gay life in WW2 looks well worth a look too Follow @norfolkro.bsky.social for more updates

Netanyahu asked Qatar to boost financial assistance to Gaza a month before Oct. 7 www.msn.com/en-us/news/w...

It’s 31st December. So I’m allowed one. This essay was possibly my favourite thing I wrote this year. engelsbergideas.com/essays/logis...

Again,

A television reviewer (who from his headshot was No Adonis Himself) complained that the participants (including Yours Truly) in a programme about the history of sexuality were Not Hotties. (I had assumed that we were Being Experts, not Eye-Candy, what did I know.)

One of my theories is that Houston-inside-the-610-loop is a small town, and my latest piece of evidence is that I ran into 3 lawyers of my vintage at the bougie tchotchke store.

Many years ago, when I curated this exhibition, one of the exhibits was a wonderful cartoon of a woman doc with a hypodermic towering over a cowering little man saying 'all this fuss over such a little prick' (not in the booklet -?copyright issues? wellcomecollection.org/works/bkr6sj...

Of course it hasn't - archives are really, really under-resourced and just processing the holdings so they have a good idea of what they've got (and doing conservation work if necessary)? - massive backlogs! Digitisation is a cherry on top of the basic work.

As the cataloguing of the NUM archives nears its end, our Project Archivist writes on the Miners' Hall, Barnsley: The completed Yorkshire Miners' Association archive catalogue is at mrc-describe.epexio.com/records/YMA NUM catalogue (work so far completed!) at mrc-describe.epexio.com/records/NUM

Looking for a New Year's resolution that is good for your mind and (relatively) easy to keep? Check out the Institute of Historical Research seminars for January 2026. Fourteen seminars in week 1 alone. Free, broad-ranging, open to the public and usually available both in person and online.

slow day in the office so figured we'd start some beef with museums

End of history, anthro, and soc majors at New School ⚰️

'The widespread adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is "likely" to displace people from jobs in a similar way seen during the Industrial Revolution, the governor of the Bank of England has said.' Factors typically ignored in the pervasive IR comparison include: colonialism, population growth...

My life's work lies in ruins The Center for European Studies, the African Studies Center, the Carolina Asia Center, the Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies, the Institute for the Study of the Americas and the Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies are all slated to close.

It's that time of year again... the History Workshop team present our "Radical Reads" for 2025! www.historyworkshop.... Image source: Openverse.

My book has arrived and I have officially unboxed it! Thank you so much to everyone at @uncpress.bsky.social and esp to @lucaschurch.bsky.social for making this happen!

Totally surreal that after 12 years of working on this thing, it’s out of my hands. Coming to you in the Hodding Carter III imprint at @uncpress.bsky.social next fall! Huge thanks to @simpsonvos.bsky.social & the many, many people who helped along the way.

Of course you can still download the book as a whole as a free PDF from @uclpress.bsky.social or purchase the paperback from them (In challenging times, it makes an especially excellent Xmas or other seasonal holiday gift). 2/2

Teaching Slavery: New Approaches to Britain's Colonial Past is now available as individual (free to download) chapters from JSTOR (no subscription needed). The first set of chapters deal with historical perspectives and the second set with pedagogical perspectives. 1/2

100% this

In the aftermath of the office Christmas lunch, we're taking festive hat inspiration from the archives This collection of unposed looking seasonal revellers featured as part of the Brewers' Society's long running 'Beer is best' ad campaign #ArchiveAdventCalendar #FestiveClothes

Good news for now from the State Library of Victoria (SLV), which once was one of the world's great libraries. A respite at least until the next external consultant comes along to vandalize the institution, with the support of its 'management'

The author of our latest article @natalicinelli.bsky.social has just joined Bluesky - welcome Natali!

This is tonight! 6pm! York! Come along if you're in the neighbourhood

This is actually a good example of why the customer model is wrong. I wouldn't have chosen poetry writing, but UNC made me take a class. And it absolutely made me become a much better writer, with an eye to concision and an ear now trained to the rhythm of words. I'm a better historian as a result.

If you teach histories of British slavery, don't miss this Thursday's book launch and talk: Teaching Slavery: New Approaches to Britain's Colonial Past, IHR, London 11 December & on Zoom. 5:30pm. Registration details are below and a link to the open access book in post 2/2. This post is 1/2.

One thing social media platforms do is meld the British and US higher ed crises into one. I think there are similarities but, tbh, the UK feels much more like a catalogue of shambles and poor policy decisions than a real ideological attack—even if the consequences remain the same.

This month is UK Disability History Month. You can learn more about the history of disability in the UK and Ireland through the Bibliography of British and Irish History's (BBIH) free reading list, which includes more than 450 recent publications in the history of disability buff.ly/OK5HSbu

Around a million Syrians have returned since the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024. And every day at Damascus airport, families separated by years of war and dictatorship, are finally being reunited.

my one very sincere piece of business advice to universities: it takes *a lot* of indignities to kill the goodwill of people who choose to work at universities but managing to do so is not something to be proud of

We have a new guide to archive sources for #co-operative #history on the website. You can download the 35-page PDF here sslh.org.uk/2025/12/07/s...

A couple weeks ago we got a lovely note from someone on the other side of the country thanking us profusely for ILLing a book to them. Curious, we looked up the book they borrowed. It would have cost $1,200 for them to purchase it. ILL is one of the things I love most about libraries.

Whatever gets you through the end of semester. Zero judgment here.

Anyone writing history without a methodological training in the subject struggles with one aspect: historiography. It’s our core toolkit. It defines every story we tell. Let’s nurture it.