A postcard that carried hope across the Iron Curtain In July 1979, Ukrainian poet Vasyl Stus signed a small pink German postal card in exile in Magadan, far in the Soviet Far East. Next to his signature, he squeezed in a few extra words:

Last chance to register for Friday’s workshop (in person or online)!

The North American #Dostoevsky Society invites applications for the Deborah A. Martinsen Conference Travel Award. This cycle will support an award of up to $1000 towards the cost of attending the 2025 @aseees.bsky.social Convention. The deadline is September 29. bloggerskaramazov.com/2025/09/18/c...

Ah, the hallucinating spires

As always with Peter Kyle, the context makes it worse. He’s actually talking about how British students aren’t entrepreneurial enough. What does that even mean? Everything he says really does come from ChatGPT doesn’t it.

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'

Call for papers: BASEES 2026 Conference Colloquium - 'The Long Eastern Crisis: Habsburg, Ottoman and Romanov Europe in the Struggle for Imperial Definition, 1860–1916 networks.h-net.org/group/announ...

Join us for a lecture & event with Arbër Qerka-Gashi, Ana Ilievska -Zavrsnik, Mirela Xhaferraj and Ramona Gonczol: The Balkans, its Diasporas, and the Stories of Material Culture 🗓️18 November at 5pm 📍UCL SSEES ➡️Free and open to all: www.ucl.ac.uk/arts-humanit...

I do wonder what would happen if we made the workload lie a reality. 50 mins total prep for a lecture then pens down. Max 10mins per essay, use crap irrelevant genAI prompts. Actually let students experience the reality that management design.

Passed me by last month, but Russia banning the International Baccalaureate feels like a real blow. According to a (now former) examiner, the most popular authors chosen by Russian students for IB literature essays recently were Orwell, Bradbury & Zamyatin. www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/08/25/r...

This is genuinely (academically) dystopian — Kings featuring a lecturer who has to mark 100 scripts in a fortnight (!) and presenting AI as the approved workaround to that problem. This is why we can’t let this stuff into our working practice…

86 years ago today Red Army marched into Poland acting as an ally of Nazi German, occupying parts of it. This phrase alone can land you in prison in Russia.

🚨 THIS IS NOT A DRILL 🚨 We’ve just seen this, by creator “Menapian” - a 4,998-piece set of the Great Exhibition (1851) Crystal Palace - complete with a bonus Megalosaurus and Ichthyosaur… beta.ideas.lego.com/product-idea...

“As scholars of literature, we have something desperately important to teach our students: what and how we read matters.” Today on the blog, Vadim Shneyder sits down with Melissa Frazier to discuss #Dostoevsky, #science, and the power of #language: bloggerskaramazov.com/2025/09/15/a...

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

This as well.👇🏻

What is wrong with journalism when a Labour minister defends Nazi rallies as ‘free speech’ and he’s not asked why old ladies are arrested for passively supporting Palestine Action?

I can't even. Wtaf

This👇 and teaching materials are subject to intellectual property rights, not to be given to the chat bot billionaires for free

“You can have a verbal conversation like you would with a professor and you can interact with it.” Alternatively, you can have a verbal conversation with your actual professor, who has office hours for this precise purpose. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

'And to make it more complicated, there are the non-financial benefits such as evidence of longer lifespans and better personal wellbeing than for non-graduates.' If universities had spokespersons who understood what we do, somewhere in this article there might be a mention of the life of the mind.

Now worried that ignoring the weird PhD inquires I regularly receive from young men who basically think they’re Raskolnikov is going to result in mass murder.

Margarita Vaysman & I have been working on this for the past 5 (!) years, but it's finally done- the online version is up and the hardcover should be out later this month! Welcome to the Oxford Handbook of Global Realisms, feat. 41 chapters and beautiful cover art: academic.oup.com/edited-volum... 🎉

This is a jaw-dropping statement from anyone in a uni leadership role — but also — what exactly is ‘low-quality’ and ‘hobbyist’ research? Nearly every academic I know is burning the candle at both ends and STILL producing important work in their fields. This feels like an anti-humanities dog whistle

This is a desperately ignorant position from UUK that endangers research that benefits grassroots communities and ignores the fact that much knowledge-building is incremental and begins with small investigations that provide proofs of concept and space to develop ideas:

'"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.

One of the things that really grinds at the “elite” is that RAE/REF has shown for 30 years that research excellence really IS spread far beyond their narrow vision. They absolutely HATE it.

Same here. Thanks, @uilleamblacker.bsky.social, for stating the problem--and some possible solutions--so succinctly.

I echo what my fellow russianist and colleague @sarahjyoung.bsky.social says, and fully support what @uilleamblacker.bsky.social calls for in his essay.

Brilliant, thought-provoking essay by my colleague @uilleamblacker.bsky.social - as a russianist who fully accepts that I have contributed this problem, I’d welcome the sort of institutional change Uilleam argues for here, and am trying to work towards that. www.eurozine.com/russia-is-no...

Bykov has taught at Cornell University since 2022 and is now a modern language and cultures professor at the University of Rochester.

Zero traffic deaths is achievable, with political will

Brilliant, thought-provoking essay by my colleague @uilleamblacker.bsky.social - as a russianist who fully accepts that I have contributed this problem, I’d welcome the sort of institutional change Uilleam argues for here, and am trying to work towards that. www.eurozine.com/russia-is-no...

Over 20 residents queuing for pensions killed as Russians drop aerial bomb on Donetsk Oblast. Horrific.

Today Russia killed over 20 seniors in Donetsk region it claims to be liberating. Russians dropped a bomb at a spot where people gathered to collect their monthly pensions.

Apart from anything else, the sycophancy is nauseating, in this and Trump’s message. The willingness of grown men to abase themselves for power and influence is really quite revealing.

100% this. Slow handclaps everyone on HEC who voted for magic beans being conjured up by a National IA ballot. To those on HEC who tried to say this will predictably sink local action + negotiations, I'm sorry you couldn't win the vote. VOTE @matthewbarnard.phd + Adam Hansen for UCU HEC

Complete agree with Matt here. Now is not the time for strikes over pay, even though we absolutely deserve more. We need to put our efforts, energies and our limited resources into protecting those colleagues whose jobs are under threat. We need to offer our solidarity to those that need it most.

We should allocate funding to places that produce research that makes a difference to people's lives and is produced in an environment that supports researchers to do interesting work rather than pit them against each other like Pokemon. That's my controversial opinion for today.

Led By Donkeys have got Fartrage's number.

“Nigel Farage says….” has been the headline of the decade. Look at what he does, ffs. Look at his tax affairs. Look at his grifting. Look at his lies. Look at his prejudice. Look at his allies. Look at his manifesto. Look at his Brexit. He is the embodiment of personal greed and national failure.

There are HUGE majorities for teaching the complexity of history properly. Nigel Farage is a devious scheming liar.

'Nigel Farage has hit out at universities for “poisoning the minds” of students with what he said was a “twisted interpretation of history” in his speech on the opening day of the Reform UK conference.' 1/3

Some (no doubt annoyingly) glass-half-full reflections on REF2029 pause, for academic and PS staff involved in HEI submission(s). If, like me, you're having to deal with the hiatus in the known unknowns, what's a viable approach to take? Some very preliminary thoughts. 1/7

Your last saved pic is your philosophy Seems about right

On the same day in the Telegraph:

Which departments are Oxford and Cambridge doing to be encouraged to close, then? Or is it only the rest of us who will be expected to identify our — doubtless market-oriented — specialisms?

An earlier episode in the long history of Russian efforts to suppress Ukrainian culture - Alexander writing for the Manchester Guardian www.theguardian.com/theguardian/...

My local bookseller, and a real character. RIP.