Another example (just like the Essex campus closure) of how refusing to have a structured and effective HE policy destroys the rest of the government’s place-based goals www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

How many times, in how many contexts, in how many ways am I going to have to say that this is what "AI" does— what it fundamentally *is*— before it sinks in? That all Bullshit engines do is statistically correlate training data & inputs via their weights to produce outputs you are likely to accept…

TV show pitch: ‘Tome Team’, where a group of rare books librarians and book historians are sent to investigate an uncatalogued library for interesting incunabula, marginalia and provenances - and they have just three days to do it.

Our old house is now back up for rent. The landlord is boasting that it is newly decorated and has NEW BLINDS throughout! After ten years of nothing or the very cheapest. The curtains that we bought are still there. He's literally done nothing else. I am so happy not to be renting anymore.

Next Wednesday, the Society visits historians at Sheffield Hallam University and the University of Sheffield. Our visit closes (5.45pm) with a guest lecture by Prof David Stack (Reading) on 'History and Well-Being: a Historian's Perspective' bit.ly/4aa4Yoe Open to all and followed by a reception.

#jobfairy this is an intriguing one - 18 month research fellowship for an object-focused historian, museums studies person or similar at Chatsworth House! £48k + £11k travel, outreach etc #skystorians www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQK358/d...

Losing friends younger than you is a new one on me and it hits harder than I could have imagined. Honestly it's a different kind of grief.

“I don’t understand why so many people have conceded that the university is a left space. Can someone show me a Marxist university president?”

Thanks to Warwick Digital Archives, but also the Marxist Internet Archive and the Internet Archive who make amazing historical documents like this available to unaffiliated researchers like me #MollyMurphy #HistNursing

"Eighty-two years after his execution by the Gestapo on June 16, 1944, the Jewish historian and resistance fighter Marc Bloch will be inducted into the Pantheon on June 23... His family requested that 'the far right, in all its forms, be excluded from any participation in the ceremony.'"

In today's surprising news from my mid 40s, I think I am now allergic to lemon juice. I have recently had really raw &small patches of eczema that seemed random until I realised that a certain salad we have with lots of lemon juice on it was the common denominator in sudden flare ups. What next?!

On 1 May 1517, xenophobic mobs, riled up by preachers who were in turn pressured by wealthy broker John Lincoln, rioted in London. They claimed that foreigners were stealing their jobs and welfare. Thomas More, then under-sheriff of London, tried to stop the mob with an empassioned speech.

I can't stand those 'you should monetise your hobby' people. No, Chad, I should do my hobby because it fulfils me in ways that work does not, because I am more than my economic output, because there is joy in doing something just because.

Excellent article but stark reminder that for all the perceptions of universities as ivory towers for elites, they are actually vital hubs in towns n cities supporting local businesses and providing key services as well as education….

Devastatingly sad. Every Labour MP should be forced to read this. In fact, every MP, who rushed back to Parliament to vote to save one steel mill, whilst hastening the collapse of dozens of universities - and harming the students, staff, communities and economies universities sustain and support

We're looking to capture experiences of what it means to be queer in the UK today! To do that we're collecting day diaries for 12th February. It doesn't matter what you get up to, or how you record it, we'd love to have it!🧵 (1/4) #LGBTplusHM #lgbthm26

18 month postdoc at the lovely IHR in London, $41,740. Deadline 7 March. 'The Fellow will play a key role within the IHR team responsible for hosting the 2027 North American Conference in British Studies (NACBS)' in London 2027. Repost to spread the word. #Skystorians

Gordon Brown sending all relevant information to the police to help them with their inquiries.

Three scholarships for PhD in Arthur Scargill Archive - quite the opportunity. Believe me when I say that I am sure that some of the stuff in here will be quite the eye-opener! (if the good stuff hasn't been already shredded or slapped with an embargo)

Today I was my aunt's funeral, which was weird enough without people coming up to me casually saying 'Hi Cath' who I haven't seen for at least 35 yrs, FIVE former teachers in attendance and a personal message from Vincent Nicholls, Cardinal of England and Wales. Well, it was something of a send off!

The latest issue of History Workshop Journal is out now, and it marks two exciting milestones: 50 years and 100 issues of innovative radical history. You can read the journal on the HWJ website through the link below! academic.oup.com/hwj...

New free online research training course 5 May 2026. Engaging Histories: Working with/in the Media as an Historian. www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

What changes were made to REF2029 as part of last December's 'unpausing'; and what are the likely implications - positive and negative - for History and the wider humanities? New on the RHS blog: bit.ly/3ZIfe0P #Skystorians @artsandhums.bsky.social

We’ve been trying to get to grips with Gorton and Denton, one of the UK’s strangest and bitty-est constituencies. Meet Mary, a lifelong Labour voter in her 60s, Abdul, a Reform-supporting Uber driver, and Rita, who’s in a toss-up between a Greens vote and a lie-in.

Nothing must be allowed to get between you and your service to capitalism. Oh, you're grieving your dead father? Here's an AI slop simulacrum for you to talk to on your down time, now GET BACK TO WORK.

Always a pleasure to read Sam on palaeography. Learning to read historical handwriting is often an exercise in language-learning, even if it's a language you already (sort of) know!

Even if you have absolutely no belief in life after death, you would be more authentically in touch with your dead grandmother by speaking to her photo.

It's my aunt's funeral on Tuesday. She was housebound for the last decade and her hairdresser of 30 years came round every week to do her hair. I just found out that she did her hair one last time at the funeral directors. One of the most moving things I've heard in a long time. True everyday love.

Epstein’s economic power among academics was made possible by a capitalist system that makes higher education dependent on the charity economy rather than a public good supported by taxing the rich

God, life can be so damn unfair. In related news, when you exchange texts with old friends saying 'we should meet up' you should actually meet up because you have absolutely no idea when will be the last time.

Noodling around the new Epstein releases; as before it’s interesting to see the concentric rings of academics (esp. Physicists, Philosophers, and Cog Sci types), from direct ongoing connection to JE, to grubbing for money/clout, to chattering-class brokerage via eg the Brockman/Matson hype channel.

The research guide on Environmental History that I wrote for The National Archives, UK is now live! Includes research advice and resources on colonial environments, pollution, agriculture, and animal histories. Available here: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-yo... #envhist #envhum

xbox live took stronger action against jeffrey epstein than the entire us government

To mark the 100th anniversary of the General Strike we have a special event planned @ihr.bsky.social on Weds 29 April. Prof Jonathan Schneer will be discussing his new book on the strike alongside Paul Novak, Jon Cruddas, Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite & Jim Moher. www.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

This just broke my geriatric millennial heart

Schitt’s Creek is a masterpiece that presents you with a bunch of horrible deluded privileged arseholes, and uncultured country hicks, and makes you love them all. Its an absolute joy and a celebration of humanity at its best.

Going to have to start Schitts Creek from the beginning. Again.

Oh no! No!

Niche research question: has anyone come across the Universal Youth Community for Peace, Freedom and Progress in the 1930s and whether it was in any way connected to the Comintern? I can’t find anything but worried I’ve missed something. @msadams.bsky.social @olebirklaursen.bsky.social maybe?

Labour has completely forgotten the concept of a public good and as a result I’m not entirely sure what the point of Labour is any more.

my dad didn’t go to university and he was extremely happy to pay taxes for his four children to do so; and, indeed, for the doctors who treated him at Addenbrookes to have gone to university as well.

Fascinating. I've just started on the Ibsen on iPlayer and it is glorious.

An open letter to @theguardian.com about their article last week about the Crown’s Silence, requesting that the Black scholar of Caribbean heritage who did the years of archival research behind this claim, and published it in 1979, Roger Norman Buckley, be acknowledged as the source of this reveal:

📚 Do you lend books out & never get them back? Are friends hoarding your literary stash? 📖 In 1938 John A. Gormley found the ultimate passive-aggressive solution, combining MASSIVE WRITING IN CAPITALS on the cover with a custom-made ink stamp imprinting his ownership across many, many inside pages.

'I suppose I miss the days when watching the toxic right was more of a cod-psychoanalytical pastime: when you could watch the Goodwin of 2024, preaching the superiority of Hungary in openly anti-migrant terms...and say, “wow, this guy’s been on a journey”.'

(from www.instagram.com/nobodyssweet...)

I’m sure there are lots of former colleagues, both academic and those who work as support staff, as well as students who are just aching to be asked about their wonderful experiences with the former academic and current propagandist professor Matthew Goodwin.

It doesn't say anything new but the first episode of the Netflix Take That doc really delivers in nostalgia. The Fast Forward Roadshow! Remembering my mother sat at the back of Wembley Arena reading a book & chatting to security while I literally left her and went to the front. On my own. I was 11.

This. I'm not a BBC-basher but IMO Mason is a poor political journalist. It's not that he's 'biased' per se, it's that he reports politics as a kind of giggly spectator sport and as such is preoccupied with spectacle, talking up 'exciting' events rather than analysing them. 1/2