I usually enjoy contrasts in the daily run of things, but there is something deeply painful about the gulf between the relentless AI-evangelisation & the smell of fresh muck on the neighbouring fields.

Don't miss our Curator's Talk & Tour on 28 April, which is part of a programme of events to mark our new exhibition Ink & Innovation: the earliest printed books of the Royal Irish Academy. We're sharing a taster here and you can book your free place at the event now: www.ria.ie/events/ink-i...

One of the many gems from the 1492 edition of Steffen Arndes' Passionael. This monk - used for the legends of both Pirminus & Marinus - is casting out the snakes, & they seem genuinely terrified. [Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA M 15, f.241r]

New Directions in the History of Liturgy Study Day Saturday 25 April 2026 Cambridge, English Faculty, 10-5 Tessa Webber, Henry Parkes, Juliette Day, Sarah Hamilton - & more - Bede's deathbed, Canterbury pontificals, the early history of Prime, C14th Frankfurt... royalhistsoc.org/calendar/new...

One problem of achieving an editorial breakthrough while walking the dog is when it happens on the wrong side of midnight.

This is Ms. Codex 1057, a Ferial Psalter - that is, it contains prayers in addition to psalms. It was copied in Italy, probably Trento, around 1350, although the binding is not original - it’s a late 16th-century blind-stamped pigskin with two brass clasps. 🔗: https://bit.ly/40BoBzJ

#ReliefWednesday One of my all-time favourite reliefs from Tuscany. Beneath pair of fantail doves, lion and unicorn w lovely feet are licking a cross. C 8-9 pluteus (dividing structure made of large slabs). Originally in church of San Concordio, Lucca, now in city's Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi.

This is a brilliant thread by one of my favourite contemporary voices, which highlights the limits of traditional journalism when it fails to perform its duties.

Sometimes, the rhythm of the fjords is more noticeable amidst the daily routines. Today, after chatting with a neighbour about tides, the dog & I had to use extra caution when passing a pine-holt because a white-tailed eagle had just settled there.

Chuffed to see this out. Very grateful to Jonathan Lyon and Simon MacLean for the opportunity to take part in this volume. Rightly dedicated to a scholar who, a decade ago, sat in the Ship and Castle patiently listening to me both enthuse and rant about the very text translated here

wonderful middle-grade book with an Iranian American heroine in a tale of present-day ornithology and Sufi tradition. can't recommend this enough, and it won some prizes from other folks too: www.wildlingpress.com/laleh-and-th... officially out today

Mystery Bookplate! I’m trying without any luck to identify this bookplate after checking through printed sources and online databases, and would be grateful for any advice! 📖🔎

Amia Srinivasan’s “Sex as Pedagogical Failure” should be required reading. Whenever a man in position of authority pursues a subordinate woman, he is changing her trajectory in that space forever. The research on how much even “consensual” affairs hurt the women involved is jaw dropping.

Out today!

A 12th and 13th century representation of St Peter BnF Latin 14789; In septem epistulas canonicas, Hieronymi Prologus; 12th century; f.30r @gallicabnf.bsky.social BnF MS Latin 14790; Epistule canonice; 13th century; f.21v @gallicabnf.bsky.social

religious literacy — not to be confused with “religion” as such — is a civic good.

Combining scholarly activities with rural life sometimes provides strange contrasts in a day's work. Today, I've been reading up on eighteenth-century austral utopias & prepared a blood trail to train my youngest sister's dog as a tracker.

¡Gente de Santiago de Compostela! Este jueves 16 me pasaré por la USC para impartir una conferencia titulada "Sexo y poder en el románico" dentro del ciclo de conferencias Mazarelos. Será en el Salón de Actos de la Facultad de Filosofía a las 12:30. ¡Espero veros por allí! 😊

You Europeans, by the early destruction you wrought on what you call "monsters," have deprived yourself of the means of knowing those great truths - Rétif de la Brétonne, Le découverte australe (trl., David Fausett; quoted in Fausett, Images of the Antipodes, p.156)

Exciting times for the study 11thC England: the 'lost' seal of Edward the Confessor has been rediscovered in the Archives nationales de France! #SkyStorians #MedievalSky

Time I would like to reclaim: - spent on ads - spent on pointless meetings - spent filling in reimbursement forms - spent reading Harold Pinter's The Homecoming

El mundo avanza hacia la tragedia por culpa del imperialismo y, para combatirlo, ¡queremos estar preparadas! En este episodio descubriremos a las mujeres que sufrieron los imperios coloniales y lucharon contra ellos.

Finished season 4 of Dark Winds this evening. Damn what a fantastic show that is.

ICYMI: I chatted with screenwriter @colehaddon.bsky.social about the links between politics and pop culture, and the entangled history of humans and monsters. 💙📚 🗃 #medieval #earlymodern #histsci #histmed #politics #HAMH #monsters

"When Badin died, he left behind diaries, a vast book collection, private letters and an autobiography offering a window into his life in 18th- and 19th-century Stockholm." New Black Europe exhibition at the Swedish National Museum #earlymodern 🗃️

Exciting day: "Critical histories of the Arts and Crafts movement", edited by Thomas Cooper and Imogen Hart, is now up on the @manchesterup.bsky.social website - with preorders open! Thomas and Imogen brought together a wonderful group of contributors, and I'm very proud to be one of them.

In uncertain times, I always draw some comfort from the still-familiar scenes of a lake on the edge of spring. Last evening's sunset proved to be both uniquely splendorous & also typical.

Starting next Moday (13 April), I'll be offering a Biblia Arabica reading group/seminar, which I plan to be a continuous thing each semester accompanying our work on the new Biblia Arabica project. If you're interested, you or your students are welcome to join! For more deatils 👀👇

I'm currently revising an article draft after a very thorough & helpful peer review. It is painful & immensely tedious. This is the kind of work that could be outsourced to AI, but at every turn I am reminded of why that would be an extremely bad idea.

After Trump's latest genocidal utterances, I'm posting this again from Anaïs Nin’s diary from 1939-1944: “America is in even greater danger because of its cult of toughness, its hatred of sensitivity, and someday it may have to pay a price for this, because atrophy of feeling creates criminals”.

An urgent appeal to preserve Iran’s civilian infrastructure. Posting this again, now on a more reputable site. Please sign this to oppose T-rumps mad and criminal threat to destroy Iranian power plants. This catastrophe will lead to thousands of deaths! Please sign! c.org/YqBjzSXXbL

I'm procrastinating having to read my own words in the form of an article draft finished last October, so I went for a walk by the rising tide instead.

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky - T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Journalism, like ethnography, is extremely susceptible to ventriloquism. Ultimately, an epistemology that insists on taking all testimony at face value and refuses to look at the structural conditions of knowledge production isn't going to get you anywhere...

Ever heard of vā? 'Vā Moana: Space and Relationality in Pacific Thought and Identity’, brings together a range of voices, many from Pacific communities themselves, to share how vā is understood, lived and evolving across different places and contexts. Get your copy today: doi.org/10.22459/VM....

A view from yesterday evening, as two friends & I went into the woods to light a bonfire to mark the end of Easter.

The West is a project not a place. It is a violent project indeed.

Database on vikings in Irish Chronicles AD 794-902 which was completed as part of my doctoral research (a looong time ago) www.celt.dias.ie/publications... #medievalsky #archaeology #spéirghorm

Whatever your faith or lack thereof, this Resurrection Sunday is a good opportunity to listen to a recording of Tomás Luis de Victoria's Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae.

If you're hype about Artemis, there's a new, annotated version of Jules Verne's truly batshit speculation about what would get humans to the moon, edited by @anaklimchy.bsky.social with essays and annotation by me, @samitbasu.bsky.social, and more!

The Exsultet, traditionally sung at tonight's Easter vigil, on a leaf from an elegantly written MS, now recycled as a book cover (Trier, Stadtbibliothek, Ad 104) nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0...

I appreciate that this term exists, because it is, sadly, very useful.

Initial 'R'(esurrexi) with images of the three women at the empty tomb and the harrowing of hell #HolySaturday Morgan Library Gradual; MS M.933; Italy, ca. 1260-1270; f.180r

Collégiale Saint-Aubin, Guérande, Loire Atlantique 44 (Pays de la Loire) 🇫🇷 emiliaromanica.com/2026/04/03/ 📷 @emilia_romanica　 11 mai 2025

Limited tickets to attend Sacred Networks: New Perspectives on Hagiography and Saints’ Cults in the Celtic and Norse Worlds *in person* remain - register soon to avoid disappointment! @networknorse.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sacred-net...

The crucifixion, the lion, and the unicorn #GoodFriday Württembergische Landesbibliothek, WLB Cod.bibl.fol.23 Stuttgart Psalter; 801 CE-850 CE; Paris, France; f.27r

Happening now!!

New open-access volume for historians of medieval travel, pilgrimages, and the Crusades - a critical edition of Rorgo Fretellus’s 12th-century "Descriptio de locis sanctis" (text in Latin and Italian): www.sismel.it/publications... #MedievalSky

As someone who spends a lot of time writing & navigating text for professional reasons, I have never used generative AI. Moreover, I have never felt compelled or curious about trying it out, & I have no intention of starting.