And here we are. Another damn’d thick, square book. A real wrist-sprainer. UK edition (pictured) has endpapers showing Crick and Brenner’s blackboard and colour plates. Both U.K. and US editions have sections heralded by a double page photo as here. Loads of illustrations. Out in November!

Also published this week in 'Transactions of the Royal Historical Society' "Us and Them: Disability Ethics, Oral History and Inclusive Praxis in the Reuse of Asylum Photography", by Alana Harris & Laura Mitchison bit.ly/4gH9e0f What are the ethics of historical research using asylum photography?

Call for Applications! @esehnextgate.bsky.social is seeking new members to join its committee for a two-year term 2025–2027. More info below!!

@greenhouseuis.net has beaten us all on this I believe. Not that we’d expect anything less! 🌱

A must-read for environmental historians, labour historians, & historians of embodiment, trade, Britain, the Thames, and more. Conceptually ambitious & a really good story with an unexpected & dramatic denouement. #envhist

Electric Wind is here! Thank you for the surprise post @manchesterup.bsky.social ! Available for pre-order and in all good bookshops from 14 October 🙂

I'm doing a talk in Bath! Come and join me at Komedia on the 4th November 2025 for a whistlestop tour of women in the Gothic across four delirious centuries! It will be fast, furious, and hair raising! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gothic-fic...

📣 It's publication day! 🔥Burning Swamps🔥 is out with @universitypress.cambridge.org ! My book tells the forgotten history of peat in the context of Russia’s industrialization & electrification and points to the lingering presence of past extraction 1/5 #envhist #energysky

Today is publication day! EXTRACTION: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism is officially out with @wwnorton.com - find it at a bookstore near you or order online💚📚 wwnorton.com/books/978132...

EHN is a wonderful platform for early career scholars and a valuable resource for the entire #envhum and #envhist community! Please support their fundraising drive if you're able. I just donated!

AN #EARLYMODERN POST!! They still exist! And a lovely one at that, for five years and with the brilliant people at KCL who have turned that place in quite the hub of exciting early modern research. Run, don’t walk.

Call for papers: "Animals on the Move: Towards a Multispecies Understanding of Mobilities." Deadline: 30 September. cham.fcsh.unl.pt/actividades-... #envhist #envhum #animalhist

Great news in era of disappearing/disappeared archives: 'Leverhulme Trust and Wellcome Trust combine support for the Humanitarian Archive Emergency (HAE) project based at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute at The University of Manchester.' @leverhulme.ac.uk @wellcometrust.bsky.social

Yeeeessssssssss 🐻

Any recommendations for key scholarship at the intersection of productive gardens/agriculture and health institutions like sanatoriums, leprosariums, and convalescent homes?

Oooooooh! #histmed

Today marks the 350th anniversary of the great fire of Northampton. There is a special light show at All Saints this weekend

Join me for a workshop on archival research in the Environmental Humanities at The National Archives! We're seeking early career participants - apply to attend to hear from speakers, view original documents, and help test our research guidance. #envhum #envhist www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/archival-r...

'“It looks awful now....says Carl Sayer, a professor of geography at UCL, who is dancing with glee around the bleak-looking, freshly dug hole. “The colonisation is so quick. Within a year, it is full of water plants. Within two years, it looks like it’s been there forever".'

An actual quote from the Secretary of State for Business and Trade Too often people go to university to ‘explore research and knowledge’ Look forward to Wes S saying 'too often people go to hospital to have operations' or Heidi Alexander saying 'too often people go to the station to catch a train'

Good morning. Together with @littletollerbooks.bsky.social we publish a very important book The destruction of our peat lands is of international concern. 40 nature writers incl. Rob Macfarlane - Amy Liptrot - Horatio Clare & music legend Patti Smith. You can order here: www.littletoller.co.uk

Cover reveal for my forthcoming book, WE HAVE COME TO BE DESTROYED: GROWING UP IN COLD WAR BRITAIN which tells the history of Cold War Britain (c.1956-89) through the eyes of children & young people! Out with @yalebooks.bsky.social 28 April 2026 #booksky #skystorians yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300...

BBC coverage of research using Northampton General Hospital's archive: Child hospital care dates from 18th Century: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... The study itself is #OpenAccess: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #History #MedicalHistory

I am really excited to announce the call for the PhD Course in Energy Humanities! Held at the @greenhouseuis.net from 1-5 December. Applications are welcome until 24 October. #envhum #envhist #energyhistory

Today to celebrate anniversary week, we're thrilled to share a crosspost with our friends at @nichecanada.bsky.social: @micaamy.bsky.social's incredible comic for fire season #envhist #envhum envhistnow.com/2025/09/17/l...

Hello #academicsky! I'm sharing a cfp for an edited collection on "Naming & Classifying," pulled together by me, Kristin Girten, & @aaronrhanlon.com . We'd love to see your work! Please also circulate to anyone you think might be interested. Deadline 10/31. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

👀"His proposed solution to the social care crisis was in part to encourage family members – in particular, women – to care for ageing relatives themselves rather than outsourcing their care to the state, even if it meant being unable to continue with paid employment." @rmcunliffe.bsky.social

BHL's future is uncertain, but hopeful. Securing its future requires new partners & sustained investment. For more information, follow along here & on the #BHLblog: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/tag/transition. Help us safeguard the world’s collective biodiversity knowledge. #ILoveBHL 🧪 📖 🌱 🌏

Strangers at Home: Plant-Human Migrations A conversation with Yota Batsaki and Giovanni Aloi Thursday, September 18, 2025 12:00 - 1:00 pm Central US Time We think of plants as rooted to the spot, but they travel constantly through their adaptations or the actions of humans.

What can we learn from the pioneers who started the citizen science beach cleanup movement? I wrote about the lessons we can learn from their plastics activism for the conversation.

This week from @centreplacewriting.bsky.social PGR for @sensing-climate.bsky.social event with @sarahbell85.bsky.social - online free event Thursday at 2pm. #PlaceWriting #DisabilitySky #EnvironmentSky #AcademicSky sensing-climate.com/events/louis...

Last week, scores of Union flags were tied high to lampposts by a group of South Bristol residents with an anti-asylum seeker message on 2 streets in Bedminster. Over the weekend they were removed by local residents who put up 'welcome' messages instead. www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol...

Looking for a manuscript critique & 1-2-1 session? Royal Literary Fund Consultant Fellow & award-winning writer, Dr Lydia Syson, is selling one place in aid of the Southwark Day Centre for Asylum Seekers, which is in danger of closing thro' lack of funds: www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/save-sdcas Pls RP🙏

CFPs - 'Historicising Commercial Determinants of Health' A workshop as part of the @kthabitproject.bsky.social to be held at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine @lshtm.bsky.social on 15 April 2026 Deadline for abstracts: 13 October #histmed #medhumanities #histSTM

Applications now open @rbgkew.bsky.social for @ahrc2025.bsky.social funded #ECR #FELLOWSHIPS in #CULTURAL & #HERITAGE INSTITUTIONS 2yr fellowships up to £312.5k Contact: [email protected] Deadline 10 Dec 2025 ukri.org/opportunity/... #interdisciplinary #plant_humanities #early-career

It’s the politicisation of the midlife crisis and I’m only half joking. Loneliness, divorce, redundancy/not getting the deference they feel is due at work, loss of power + seeing that decline reflected in your town. What’s more startling in a way is the over-50 female reform shift

I think the word the Daily Fail is looking for is ‘Vandalised’.

I think about this poem by Ian Duhig — about Jo Cox, the Labour MP assassinated by a man shouting ‘Britain first’ — every day at the moment. No other contemporary poet has looked so clearly at the political reality of the far right as a minority who must always be appeased

Botanizing and ethnobotanizing at the INPA herbarium in Manaus with Beto Vicentini and Mike Hopkins: important collections from the early 2000s documenting sophisticated environmental knowledge of the Baniwa and Yanomami people of Amazonas state, Brazi

Report from @theguardian.com on the IOF's plan to bomb decades of finds in Jerusalem's French Biblical and Archaeological School. Immense solidarity with all our Palestinian colleagues risking their lives daily to save heritage in Gaza, and all of Palestine. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

With the phrase “unfunded hobbyist research” the new Universities UK President continues a much longer history of contempt that UUK has shown towards the labour of all those who work in universities

I'm collating heavily used phrases in HE management and how they shift over time. Currently I am seeing "no longer aligned with our research priorities", often used in restructures and redundancies. It's all connected.

😬😬😬

Historian of science here: it’s worth pointing out that getting paid for doing research is a fairly recent thing. William Harvey did his research as a hobby, as it were. So did Charles Darwin.

The last REF found that 98% of UK research was either "internationally recognised", "internationally excellent", or "world-leading". If you think low-quality research is the noteworthy challenge in UK higher ed right now, you are wilfully looking in the wrong direction

Can we shift away from low-quality UUK leadership?

'"You can’t have hobbyist research that’s unfunded going on in institutions. We can’t afford it.”' Such a badly formulated phrasing of the issues, so open to so many misinterpretations. If this is the level of thinking about research among sector leaders and policy-makers, be very afraid.

Pet parrots which typically live alone (whilst those in the wild live in large flocks) were given the technology to call each other. They would use it for up to three hours a day, and developed favourite friends 💔 on.ft.com/3K05vhS

Scrapping People, Culture, and Environment from the REF makes *total sense* in a sector intent on literally firing swathes of academics and professional services staff thus ruining research culture and trashing the higher education environment!