New visualization of Joseph Banks network focused on his work to use Indian resources to solve the oak bark crisis in England. jburnford.github.io/JosephBanksK...

Just now on R4 Today @lizforleicester.bsky.social re-announcing the AI Skills programme ( www.gov.uk/government/n... ) that led to a 70 signature open letter back in July on developing a more inclusive, independent and collective approach to AI literacy: connectedbydata.org/blog/2025/07...

After announcing it in the summer, today the UK government launched free training courses to AI upskill workers. It's free because it's funded by big-tech companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft and others, and not by local organisations in the UK who have been working with communities->

Thanks to the many who showed up to the first - the second on Thursday 29 January at 5pm in the Examination Schools is about 'Media' - how did people learn a language of social science and how do we know what they learned?

This is the way to go.

Don't miss my picks for environmental history worth reading from December!! niche-canada.org/2026/01/13/e... #envhist #envhum

For a fortifying shot in the arm of sharp historical thinking about neoliberalism, read this (and get your students to read it) from @quinnslobodian.com @tsasson.bsky.social Priya Lal & Gary Gerstle www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

wikipedia turns 25 today! the last unenshittified major website! backbone of online info! triumph of humanity! powered by urge of unpaid randos to correct each other! somehow mostly reliable! "good thing wikipedia works in practice, because it sure doesn't work in theory" - old wiki adage

Happening tomorrow! Join us for a discussion of The Overseer State with Sascha Auerbach.

Call For Papers: #CFP #Film ‘Stars and Screen’ #Cinema and #Media #History Virtual #Symposium, May 16, 2026 Proposals Due: February 1, 2026 starsandscreen.blogspot.com/2025/10/call... #CinemaStudies #MediaStudies #FilmStudies #conference #CallForPapers #CinemaHistory #MediaHistory #FilmHistory

Historians since 2016

If anyone remembers that list which said historians were second in line to be replaced by AI, I've had some thoughts about it... and how it relates to some aspects of public history and the current climate facing historians. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Brits overestimate the amount of Muslims in the UK by 350%.

"[U]sable pasts can create elegiac narratives, calls to arms and empathetic dramas, but they can also lead to historical orthodoxies that marginalise the hidden, the silenced and the inarticulate." A rich review essay on the 1984/5 miners' strike by Keith Gildart. doi.org/10.1093/ehr/...

What does it mean to write the history of a place as it is being destroyed before our very eyes? Anne Irfan on the stakes of studying, researching and writing the history of Gaza.

As historians, we depend on libraries and library staff, and we owe it to our library colleagues to show up for them. It would be great to see more historians sign!

I'm glad to have signed this statement in support of queer and trans staff at the National Library of Scotland, who by the sounds of it are going through an awful time at the moment: docs.google.com/document/d/e...

This looks great and is open access. Amelia Acker, Archiving Machines: From Punch Cards to Platforms

My first lot of marking has arrived but so has the cover of the book!

If any journalists would like a copy of Electric Wind: An Energy History of Modern Britain to review, please get in touch w me /MUP. It's a rigorous history of wind energy written for a wide audience, with plenty to say about today's energy challenges. manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526182968/

Delighted to be at the proofs stage with this. Out in April with CUP!

Teaching the histories of slavery and keen to inform your students with insights from the most recent research? Just a month to go before @uclpress.bsky.social publishes this open access (free to download) expert volume. uclpress.co.uk/book/teachin...

A policy this expansive would certainly mean mass stripping of permanent residence status from people with ILR (including pensioners and parents of British children) on a scale far beyond anything any democracy has ever done before. There is no public support for such an extreme policy.

There's just a day to go until @manchesterup.bsky.social publish my latest book Songs of Seven Dials: An intimate history of 1920s and 1930s London. I thought I should explain a bit about where the book came from. 1/15

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

And here is the table of contents.

✨ call for proposals ✨ - "Digital Humanities Today: Critical Inquiry with and about the Digital", London 23-26th June 2026 - coinciding with 25th anniversary of @kingsdh.bsky.social. deadline: 30th September 2025. further details here: jonathangray.org/2025/09/11/d...

The latest in our Creative History in the Classroom cluster, edited by @luciejones83.bsky.social and me. Great piece.

Trailer for The Lowdown-->Ethan Hawke, Sterlin Harjo, Tulsa history. YES. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE9b....

Calling historians and researchers. The BBC Written Archives Centre has changed its access rules without consultation. This means an end to proper independent research into the BBC's rich history. 178 have already signed the open letter. Please join the campaign: tinyurl.com/bbcwaccampaign

Fund. Cataloguing. Hire. Cataloguers.

When did Tony Blair first use the internet? New evidence from this file: Information Technology Policy Part 1, 2001-2002

This was entirely predictable in an environment where there is little to no spare cash in universities to cover research expenses.

It's pretty bleak, but this is a useful visualisation of UK HE finances... wonkhe.com/blogs/what-t...

Does a ChatGPT query really use ten times more energy than a Google search? Does training any AI model emit as much CO2 as 5 cars? and can AI help us reduce global GHG emissions by 10%? 🤔 We tracked down the origins of these numbers 🕵‍♀️ and wrote a paper about it! arxiv.org/abs/2506.15572

This is fantastic.

The regional newspaper has a live feed going, btw. Might be geolocked, but if it isn't you can see the progress (or lack of it) pretty well.

We are pleased to share the details for the Annual Gender & History Lecture, which will be given by Dr Onni Gust. Their talk is titled 'Kin: transgender history with and beyond the human'. May 15, 2025, 15:00 - 16:30 (In person and Online) Register here 👇 ticketpass.org/event/ELMPHJ...

Heartened to see that close to 900 fellow academics and educators have already signed our letter in support of trans rights, trans wellbeing & trans inclusion, and against essentialist, anti-scientific, racialised & regressive views of womanhood. Please do read, share & sign! tinyurl.com/mud7va29

Don't be sorry

Shout out to Carleton who calls it like they see it on Poilievre. And I'm here for Mark Carney's crinkly eyes and economic acuity.

Both intrigued and apprehensive of what could possibly populate the Guardian's live-blog of the Canadian election.

Oh for the moments when tariffs made up the stuff of dull history jokes.

It looks like they just fed their 'model' into a standard dataset to get the tariffs - hence they have ended up 'recognising' Taiwan and tariffing uninhabited islands. It looks like this is the dataset they used www.census.gov/foreign-trad.... And it's certainly the one ChatGPT links to ;)

Beautiful piece on Linda Williams (1946-2025 💔) in the NY Times. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/30/a...

For folks without institutional log in, some details of the conditions under which universities are supposed to emergency notify Research England:

Lecturer in Digital History  UCL - History Department #skystorians 🗃️www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMI974/l...

T-80 days, but roaring and ready to land! A huge thanks to some truly roarsome peeps for reading and sharing their kind words: @davidolusoga.bsky.social @hjm.bsky.social @historianmemory.bsky.social @alanlester.bsky.social Please do share. Info & preorder links @ www.penguin.co.uk/books/309254...

Do you like humanities data? Do you like project documentation that goes into quite a bit of detail about what that data is/are*, the methodologies used, the decisions that were made, and the alternatives that weren't? Then hoo boy do we have the pdf for you! *delete as appropriate

This week, we are launching a new series on "History & Higher Education in Crisis". We are inviting articles on: 🎓 the history & origins of this crisis 🔮 its impact on research, methodologies, specialisms & teaching ✊ building solidarities & collective action www.historyworkshop....