This is one of the most reasoned & persuasive arguments for not allowing LLMs anywhere near reading & writing intensive classrooms. We can 100% choose not to outsource our reading & writing labor to a bot, and model for our students why they should do the same. #EduSky www.tue.nl/en/our-unive...

Study finds ChatGPT Health did not recommend a hospital visit when medically necessary in more than half of cases. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

A good day to live in Manchester! 💚💚

“In fact, the left appears to be so successfully engaged in matters related to AI that one can’t help but wonder if allegations about its supposed ignorance of the technology are motivated by a desire to change the very terms of the debate.” - @bcmerchant.bsky.social 🔔🔔🔔

Full details of the final opinion poll in Gorton and Denton. Greens ahead and more likely to be the choice of tactical voter to keep out Reform. Share. Everywhere.

These are “low enrollment” majors but the classes are regularly at capacity. They changed the funding structure a few years ago here, switching the allocation from course enrollments to majors then blamed these departments for a structural, top-down change. This is entirely a political choice.

Just LOOK at this gorgeous fore-edge painting from Gaetano Polidori's 1919 'Traduzione del lament di Tasso di Lord Byron'. @preraphaelitesoc.bsky.social 😍

🚨Job klaxon 🚨 Come and be my colleague at York! We're looking for an Associate Lecturer in Modern British History and Public History. Two year post - apply by 19 March. 🗃️ More details here www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQO971/a...

If you’re a fan of the pod or just looking for a small gig, pls help us out with some new (spooky, fun) music! Pls share widely

As part of the new special issue on "The Intersection of Humanities and Ethics in Dentistry," you can now read open access my article "The Dental Phantom as a Tool for Exploring Fear, the Face, and Dental Education." 🦷 Hoping to turn this into a much bigger project! commons.ada.org/cgi/viewcont...

When we model giving feedback, setting up in-class workshops, and splitting students into different pair and group dynamics, these are the forms of community we are seeking to instruct them in. Not every task has a carrot or a stick. Some are just about the complicated work of being together.

Calling all Thomas Hardy scholars - I bought a book for an obscure Algernon Blackwood story only to discover that it appears to be inscribed by Hardy. Can anyone confirm? And who is Caroline (‘Sammy’)? 🧐

3 weeks to decide, 9 months salary to choose to leave - almost certainly forever - the industry you've dedicated most of your adult life to.

You can completely uninstall/disable copilot on Windows. Your system and local search will run faster afterward. www.howtogeek.com/how-to-rip-o...

THREE lectureships available in the Music Department @kingscollegelondon.bsky.social @kingsmusic.bsky.social — see advertisements in the thread below.

Hi everyone, I'm organising a conference in Leuven, 4-5 June, and you're all invited*! It's called 'Performing evil: the mediation and display of diabolic spectres 1700-2000' and here is the call for papers (get in touch if you'd like a pdf!). Please share widely! *to submit an abstract before 21/3

When engineered scarcity & competitive entrepreneurialism become defining features of intellectual life, terms for understanding material struggle tend to metastasize into tokens of prestige accumulation & self branding. This should be resisted. www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

For anyone interested in our 18-month post in British Studies please follow the link below. @ihr.bsky.social www.jobs.london.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

Apply for our PhD placement scheme to get involved in extraordinary research at the Library. There are eight available placements exploring a variety of themes including war poetry, 21st-century digital tools, illustrated newspapers and decarbonisation. Find out more: link.bl.uk/PhDPlacements

Gave a little talk today for a colleague's class on historic images of mills & factories and was surprised again by the fact that this image is from 1881. It's a watercolor by Joseph Pennell depicting Bethlehem Steel Works in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a place I called home for a few years.

Best novelist in PMG's 1885 '10 Greatest Living Englishmen' poll throws up more surprises, for a paper of the London clubland. Wilkie Collins on top (346), only just ahead of William Black, & Walter Besant. Hardy a distant 9th (a mere 20 votes), Meredith (9). 5 in desperation for the dead Trollope.

My first book, Darwin and the Queer Origins of Life, will be published by Yale University Press on 11 August (UK) and 8 September (US). Please help spread the word! 🙏 UK: yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300... @yalebooks.bsky.social 🏳️‍🌈📚🐵 US: yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300... @yalepress.bsky.social 🏳️‍⚧️ 🗃️🦋

My essay 'The Sticky Sundew: Plant Carnivory and Queer Erotics' is out! Musings on Darwin’s writings on his 'beloved' Sundew & the erotics generated by his encounters w this carnivorous plant—making visible forms of relation in which pleasure & pain, desire & disgust, life & death stick together

OpenAI’s president is a Trump mega-donor

The UK version of “Project 2025” by the Reform party includes a British ICE, a concentration camp for 24,000 people, mass surveillance and withdrawing from refugee, anti-torture and anti-trafficking conventions. It’s on their website. That’s how comfortable fascists are in the UK today.

He chose his PhD topic based on what would provide him the knowledge necessary to sabotage Apartheid South Africa’s nuclear programme - which members of Umkhonto we Sizwe indeed did, based on the information he provided. 🫡

It was, quite honestly, the high point of the summer getting to put together this podcast with @nathankhensley.bsky.social for Studies in the Novel on his book ‘Action without Hope’ www.studiesinthenovel.org/interact/pod...

Lucien Pissarro, Boy and Pine Tree, 1894 https://botfrens.com/collections/14375/contents/1119753

Thanks to @brianleiter.bsky.social, we can read an excerpt from Texas A&M philosophy professor Martin Peterson's initial letter to his department head, Kristi Sweet, as well as his syllabus. leiterreports.com/2026/01/06/t...

on this sunday-est of sundays, syllabus-ing for a new term you're not alone against the oligarch agenda of cognitive deskilling, data capture, surveillance, and bias: we've got assignment ideas, memes, recommended readings, o' captain speeches, syllabus policies, and so much more against-a-i.com

Thrilled about this new grant we are offering for under-represented early career scholars. The first cycle is for scholars in history and area studies. Please spread the word widely. @universitypress.cambridge.org ********************************* Read more here: 🔗 cup.org/4pF5xvr

Another delightful ICYMI - the dinosaurs of Crystal Palace get a new lease of life - great piece here from FT mag on the history of this crazy Victorian project (many hours of my SE London childhood spent staring at a muddy member of the troupe) www.ft.com/content/2451...

A few days ago, I wrote up some thoughts on generative AI and the work of historians: “At best, we’re talking about software that’s very good at making sentences seem sentence-shaped.”

Nativity by Piero della Francesca, 1470s. The angels are making music and yet the silence feels complete.

So many aspects I could quote from this, but this was the first that stood out to me. read.dukeupress.edu/critical-ai/...

The tech bros call us Luddites as an insult but they were, in their day and for just a moment, the voice of us all, crying out that the worst instincts of capitalism can and must be resisted. Change may be inevitable but suffering need not be. #19thc #steampunk

After a series of delays, my article "Harry Price and the Crawley Poltergeist" has finally been published in the Magazine of the Society for Psychical Research. A big thanks to @emmamerkling.bsky.social, who originally directed me to the case and digitised the requisite archival material.

A few more days to get your proposals to us!

Looking for something to do on the spookiest day of the year? @cncsi.bsky.social is running our annual online Halloween workshop tomorrow with the theme of ‘Gothic Afterlives’ — looking at media receptions of c19 gothic themes in tv, film, video games, & radio 👻 www.durham.ac.uk/research/ins...

Calling all c19 art and queer theory ppl! @frankiedytor.bsky.social and I are still welcoming proposals for our #AAH panel on c19 British art after trans studies: see CFP below. #c19 #lgbtqhistory

We're putting on an exciting range of research events this year at @manchester.ac.uk on 'Queer Bodies' in 18 & 19C Britain. Colleagues in English, Art History (@emmamerkling.bsky.social), & History are exploring queer approaches to bodies and embodiment and their cultures. See poster for more!

"Something ineffable happens when you write down a thought: You think something you did not know you could or would think and it leads you to another thought… the process of writing itself leads to previously unthought thoughts [and] crystallizes half-formulated or unformulated thoughts" - Lynn Hunt

everything in this thread.

somebody speak to a single historian challenge! “Religiosity tends to decline across generations.” what an extraordinary untethered statement to make based on recent polling data. and yes i know i know its Nature *again* but (1/2) www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🗃️

I saw a job posting for a heritage project focused on Romany history. I wasn't sure how visible it would be so wanted to share so that the job gets seen by the people whose history it is focusing on. Give it a share, perhaps? museum-services-jobs.le.ac.uk/job/learning...

The recording of my @gothicauob.bsky.social talk on nature, horror, occultism, beauty, gender and Victorian art has been uploaded to YouTube! youtu.be/cRWhEOjMfMc?... watch along for more on these themes and for my recent work on Annie Swynnerton’s magnum opus “Oreads” (1907)

Help! Seeking readings for a 'British art and the environment in the c19' course that bring together botany, classification, colonial collecting, and visual culture for undergrads. Ideally linking this to museums / collections like Kew. Nothing I've found quite seems to bring all three together...!

🏛️Today - guided tour of @morethanadodo.bsky.social with John Holmes & Birmingham’s 19CC 🦠Weds - Disease and Narrative workshop I’m hosting @unibirmingham.bsky.social with @mediaandepidemics.bsky.social & the 19CC 🎨Thurs - Occult Art @gothicauob.bsky.social with @emmamerkling.bsky.social

Any Hans Christian Andersen experts following me? Came across an issue of The Spiritualist for which he seems to have written as a correspondent... including on William Crookes and the psychic force. Was this really him? iapsop.com/archive/mate...

Don't miss 'Occult Art Gothic' with @emmamerkling.bsky.social next month! As an art historian, Emma will be focusing on Gothic British art 🖼️🖤 DM @gothicauob.bsky.social to join 👇 📅Thurs 19th June 🕐6pm - 7.30pm 📍Zoom