It's a lifeline, not a comprehensive solution to the crisis, but if you're a UK-based PhD (or equivalent) in a SHAPE subject within 10 years of your viva, do join the British Academy's ECRN. It's free, has resources & you don't need to be employed in research or academia to be a member. 3/3

On a bus with a load of schoolchildren, one of whom is, disorientatingly if you were alive in the early 1990s, listening to some sort of video that has What's Up by 4 Non Blondes as the soundtrack.

Wilson Pickett, to the media, promoting a Soul Clan concert in summer 1981: "I think you all realize we all have our own personalities and our way of expressing ourselves. Me? I'm mad as shit." (Tony Fletcher, In the Midnight Hour, p. 217)

Last shout for this event tomorrow - hope to see you there!

I've written about Richard Aldington and the First World War, on and off, since my MA thesis (2002). I don't think it's too much to say that the war affected his physical and mental health, and his relationships, for the rest of his life.

I'm sure I'm preaching to the Bluesky choir, but on Remembrance Sunday it's worth remembering that the important thing is the remembrance, not the ritual.

Merry Christmas from Burntisland High Street.

There's 60 booked for this in person, and more than that again online - we'd still like to see even more of you by either means!

After a very long day yesterday, me today in my 9am seminar (not paper)

Just finished my first full rehearsal for this and I am buzzing! There are still some tickets left for both online and in-person attendance, just use the link below. And if you're joining us in Edinburgh, let me know and we can organise a FWW meet-up ahead of the lecture? I'd love to meet more ECRs!

'In February, Sheffield Hallam University, home to the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice (HKC), a leading research institution focused on human rights, ordered one of its best-known professors, Laura Murphy, to cease research on supply chains and forced labour in China.' 1/3

I m advertising a PhD position as part of our ERC project BLOCKADE. The PhD cand. should focus on myth/narratives of the hunger blockade in Germany, Austria in the era of the World Wars. 4 years of funding, wonderful team, amazing city (evidence attached)! Pls share! www.hsozkult.de/opportunity/...

Not a vintage time to be a member of staff at Edinburgh universities, plural

"I haven't fully worked this out, but here goes"

Remember guys, @pcsunion.bsky.social staff at the BL are on strike for the next two weeks. Please don't cross the picket line to go to reading rooms, attend exhibitions or anything else. They've endured so much on low pay since the cyberattack in 2023 and the least we can do is have their backs now.

Sometimes, when you're travelling and your laptop battery dies, then the plug socket doesn't work, and then your pen runs out, you've just gotta accept defeat in the attempt to work.

Absolutely savage burn by David Byrne on modernists and avant-gardists: "Now I'm not sure how I feel about the avant garde / Now I like the idea, their politics too / But I'm not really sure if that means that it's good" youtu.be/Z97dtHprbAo?...

Quick reminder that this is 3 weeks today! Please sign up if you haven't already - in-person and online.

Some retailers posted pre-orders early, so I've already been enjoying this. Matt does a great job of linking the very personal and local with larger historical trends in engaging style. It deserves and is accessible to a readership beyond the academy. Congratulations!

Alright, who's this...

books should have an anti-acknowledgements section where the author talks shit about all the people who fucked them over while they were trying to write the thing. not bc I personally want to write one but bc I love gossip

*FIFTEEN THOUSAND JOBS LOST*. If this were in a sector in which the PM could go and do a photoshoot looking like One Of The People, we’d have had a government intervention by now.

"we cant uninvent ai" no we cant but we couldnt uninvent nfts either and nobody gives a fuck about them anymore

Just back from the last show of Edwyn Collins's last tour, in Edinburgh, his birthplace. An incredibly moving show, packed with favourites and hits. And the beginning of the encore, where he played 'Low Expectations' and 'Home Again' was absolutely emotionally devastating.

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

The best things happen where social media enhances your real life - so, meeting some great people in person, but also thinking about writing pithily has been good for me whatever audience I'm writing for/speaking to.

Wild to live in a country where the names of the two major parties bear zero relation to their agenda. Labour regularly acts against workers. The other lot has no interest in conserving anything. So here we are.

MUP and @thejohnrylands.bsky.social are thrilled to announce that Bulletin of the John Rylands Library is now fully #OpenAccess🔓 Throughout October, the Bulletin's Editorial Board are highlighting journal issues or articles of particular importance on the MUP blog.

Chris is one of the best.

I'm on the final leg of my journey back to Fife from the @fwwsoc.bsky.social conference at the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki, so here's some pics and thoughts. Firstly, well done @sdanisimova.bsky.social and local organisers for putting on a great, truly international, collegial event!

As more of my valued colleagues face the threat of redundancy, here’s a quick reminder that it takes years and years of public investment to train an academic. Cutting someone with this wealth of experience loose isn’t “saving” anything. It is a massive waste of our collective resources.

It’s easy to say that this is the last desperate hurrah of a dying party, but can we be clear: Trump’s ICE agents are literally kidnapping people, detaining them without due process in concentration camps (yes, this is the right term) and 1000s have disappeared. These are fascist practices.

From The Times, 4 April, 1974

📢 🧵 This year the International Society for First World War Studies @fwwsoc.bsky.social is hosting a conference in the University of Macedonia! If you can't attend in person, you can still take a look at the work that has been published in First World War Studies by some of this week's speakers.

Just an appalling government.

We’re very excited to share that First World War Studies Volume 16, Issue 2 was recently published and is now available from Taylor & Francis (tag). This new issue brings together fresh perspectives and critical reviews that push forward the study of the Great War. 📝Articles include: ⬇️⬇️⬇️

I laughed out loud for approx 5 mins at this from the Dalgety Bay Diary Newsletter (sic)

Absolutely rancid discourse around this in so many different ways it's difficult to know where to begin. You can't appease proto-fascists who don't want to vote for you anyway. www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cw...

A real shock

Unsurprising at this stage, but what a milquetoast response. Are morals and ethics totally out of fashion?

I'm getting guitar and vocal lessons from Jeff Buckley. (Tho I suspect he wouldn't have been a good teacher - few people who are that sublimely talented are.)

Folks, has anyone written anything on bisexuality and modernism and/or the First World War? I can't immediately see things, but maybe they're hiding in work without that in the title.

Pretty disgraceful.

So, can #UKHE please follow the Sorbonne’s example? Loads of money and manpower wasted on giving that data to rankers who distort the purposes of universities. Can’t get more prestigious than being in the same category as the Sorbonne, surely?

"The extreme nationalism of today will probably go down as one of the most singular & deplorable aberrations of the human spirit, … an aberration comparable in its foolishness ¶ wickedness to the witchcraft craze which for several centuries afflicted the Christian world." Johan Huizinga (1936)

Can we shift away from low-quality UUK leadership?

Not fit to speak for the interests of the sector.

When people say "don't speak ill of the dead", what they usually mean is "don't draw my attention to the terrible things this person did when they were alive".