It's official! I've been 'doctored'. So many folks to thank - for now, fab supervisors @digivictorian.bsky.social, @bethgaskell.bsky.social, @drbeard79.bsky.social, @miaout.bsky.social, great examiners @jimmussell.bsky.social, @sarahfoxhistory.bsky.social and many friends/colleagues @rs4vp.org.

I'm super excited to be chatting to The Byron Society about how volcanoes have shaped the Gothic and why Lord Byron was the ultimate 'Volcanic Gothic' celebrity. Featuring cameos from Jo March, Dracula & the Dark Lord Sauron! 📆 26/02/2026 5:30 pm. Online. 🎟️ www.thebyronsociety.com/events/volca...

More Research Training from the IHR . The term 2 calendar is now live. www.history.ac.uk/study-traini...

Applications are now invited for a new RHS programme for 2026, co-hosted with @ihr.bsky.social and @chalkefestival.bsky.social 'Pitch my Project' is for early career historians to present their research at the Chalke History Festival in June bit.ly/44kfUMM. Closing date: 6 February. #Skystorians

Here are 8 successful *proposals* for academic books/monographs. I am hoping that these help someone who is starting out trying to write one and wants to see what worked for me. They are provided as examples, rather than exemplars. A lot of it was just finding my own way eve.gd/2026/01/16/s...

📣3 days to go until the deadline - we can't wait to see you for our 50th anniversary in Lancaster!

We used to do real science

Birkbeck is hiring a Lecturer in Medieval Studies (c.1300-1500), full-time and open-ended. They will be formally based in English but expected to be able to contribute about 0.5FTE to History, including teaching and supervision. Closing date Feb 23rd: cis7.bbk.ac.uk/vacancy/lect...

People of the UK! 🇬🇧 There’s still time to vote for an inspiring history teacher — the entry criteria is on the HRP website. I’m proud to be on the judging panel and look forward to celebrating great history teachers www.hrp.org.uk/schools/insp...

If you missed it, series 11 of YOU’RE DEAD TO ME launched on Saturday with an episode about Roman Emperor Nero. Our guests are the superstar double-act of Professor Mary Beard & Patton Oswalt You can listen now in the UK on BBC SOUNDS, or it’ll be out on January 30th on all global podcast apps

🚨NEW SERIES ALERT‼️ You’re Dead To Me is back for series 11, and to launch us off I’m joined by the brilliant classicist @wmarybeard.bsky.social and the hilarious comedian @pattonoswalt.bsky.social to discuss the controversial life & reputation of Roman Emperor Nero www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Work in progress. I'm slightly obsessed with turn-of-the-(19th)century theatre/pantomime/circus playbills at the moment, so I'm re-creating posters and ads for more recent productions (and products) in that style. #graphics #movies #davidlynch #victorian

Can anyone help me decipher a bit of handwriting from 1852? I'm trying to figure out the cause of death in this record.

This Is Just To Say I have eaten Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, and who you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me he was delicious so sweet and so cold

Prove you’re not a Whig.

The latest issue of @historyextra.bsky.social is out! I’m part of a new monthly feature called ‘Ask the Experts’ — each issue, a group of expert historians all answer the same question. This month, we’re asking who is the most ‘overrated’ figure in history? Who do you think I picked?

I made a video for @wired.com answering questions from the internet about Victorian history! youtu.be/10iYlK7bsJw?...

This week we launch a new programme for early career researchers with @ihr.bsky.social & @chalkefestival.bsky.social 'Pitch my Project' is an opportunity for early career historians to present their research at the 2026 Chalke History Festival bit.ly/44kfUMM Applications now invited #Skystorians

TODAY!

THIS WEEK! Join us!!

19C literary folk - who was Mrs Lawrence? it's all good humour up until this point. she made quite an, erm, impression.

all academic applications should have consolation prizes. doesn’t have to be much, like a mug that says “i applied for leverhulme 2020” or a t-shirt “UKRI reject 2023”

For our next seminar, the wonderful @digivictorian.bsky.social is hosting our just as wondrous PhD researchers, Liam Pope, Laura Grande Mateu, Emily Hayes, & Emma Butler, for our #19thCFlashTalks. Join us for a pre-Christmas treat on Wednesday 10th December from 6 pm. Free, online, all welcome!

This is a wonderful thread. Scholarship, creativity, a portrait of a generation.

I appear as an expert historian in a new documentary film about the trials of Oscar Wilde. Check it out on History Hit from today! access.historyhit.com/videos/a-ver...

NEXT WEEK - join us!

Our next #RSVPDigiEvent is coming up on Friday, 21 November! We'll hear from the editors of 3 top Victorian studies journals (including VPR's own kmalonephd.bsky.social) on "How to Get Published in an Academic Journal." Come one, come all! buff.ly/ydJkKAK

This is one of three cartoons I have in the current Private Eye.

It’s lovely to see our BAVS CFP out. If you research/teach any aspect of the Victorian period (broadly defined) do consider joining us! You can submit a paper, roundtable, creative workshops/ pedagogical paper. We really are open to a wide range of talks! victorianist.wordpress.com/2025/10/20/c...

Our @ehunineteen.bsky.social seminar series starts next week with @drreznicek.bsky.social talking to me about care in Romantic novels - register in skeet below! Free, online, all welcome!

19th century writers love describing all the different compartments of a woman's face. "Vaulting eyebrows. Rose petal lips. Eyes like a gelid pond." I'm not a police sketch artist. Just say "brown hair".

“Copyright growing pains” is one hell of a euphemism for the biggest IP theft in history

Funeral Invitation, 1688. Funeral invitations first appeared in the 17th century, and acted as an admission ticket to both the church and the funeral feast. Pallbearers were often assigned a number on the ticket to signify their position in carrying the coffin.

Well don't I feel stupid

With science falling under increasing attack, this medical historian is here to remind people of the power of #vaccines. THREAD🧵 Hard-hitting polio advert from 1958. In the first half of the 20th century, polio was the leading cause of death in children and young adults. 1/7

So @digivictorian.bsky.social encouraged me to do this

the quaint world of Victorian porn advertisements

We don’t all share the same internet. The personalised algorithm has siloed us into parallel worlds

I’m on TV tonight! Check out the first episode of Britain’s Railway Empire at 8pm on Channel 4. It’s a new, two part series about the history of the railways, starting with the Victorian Era. It’s not just a story about tech and engineering, but covers the social and cultural impact too.

It was such a joy this morning to see Lela Harris’s extraordinary portrait of Miss Lambe, Jane Austen’s only character explicitly of African heritage, from the last novel she worked on. She died at age 41 without being able to finish Miss Lambe’s story. 1/

Hello UK friends - please, please could you sign this petition against the job cuts at my place of work - 1 in 4 us will be out of a job by August next year if we don't stop the cuts. And once you've signed it, please share. We need your help! www.change.org/p/stop-mass-...

does anyone know of any research on the history of the 'family newspaper' - by which I mean a 'newspaper' produced usually by children, about daily goings-on in the household? think Gad's Hill Gazette, Hyde Park Gate News, etc...

Talk about The Wire, Sopranos, Game of Thrones all you want, but the greatest US television program ever made is Sesame Street. It's not even close. 50+ years of treating kids across class, ethnicity, religion not as mini-consumers...but as citizens with a stake in this world.

Of use to those working on 1852-1879, it includes a chronological index of open-access copies of the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, a widely read (affordable) secular early women’s monthly miscellany. jmsw.github.io/edm-index/ Now updated with a searchable spreadsheet of contents by category!

Speaking of the Illustrated London News, a paper whose pages I never tire of turning, here's an account of its (mainly 19th-c.) history I put together some years back for the publisher Gale, which has made the essay free to access. It was fun to write. www.gale.com/intl/essays/... #C19th

IT'S ALIVE!!!!! I had the best time working with Annemarie to edit our fabulous contributions - huge thanks to our authors for sharing their research, and for being polite when I suggested revisions. Huge thanks also to VPR ed Kathy Malone for her patience and making the editorial process so smooth.

Job alert! We're advertising for a full-time, permanent Lecturer or Senior Lecturer in 20thC American History at Edge Hill. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNX206/l...

This is terrifying, and happening right now. My university is about to reduce the curriculum from 6 20-credit modules per year to 4 30-credit ones, one assessment per module. Explicitly designed to reduce subject richness in favour of skills (and save on teacher numbers). Students will hate it.