Heads up research nerds; JSTOR is running a survey that includes questions about AI use in research and your perspective about the JSTOR database. Now would be a good time to let them know what you think about AI inclusion in teaching and research #academic #history #JSTOR #AI

Edinburgh University is closing the Institute for Academic Development. Download these student resources while you can. Making notes, reading strategies, time management, dissertations and so on. CC licenses. Pdf and text only versions. #HE 🗃️ institute-academic-development.ed.ac.uk/study-hub/le...

since chatgpt has coached another young person in a mental health crisis to their death, I am yet again tapping the sign

Sign and share to support! STOP THE CUTS!

(Also @profgabriele.com and I wrote about other aspects of this trend last January and I'm glad Matt pushed me to write this with him as it's proved useful to me as a way to link disparate manifestations) slate.com/news-and-pol...

When people learn with ChatGPT instead of following their own searches, they end up knowing less, caring less, and producing worse advice, even when the facts are the same. Friction is an essential ingredient for learning! Convenience makes us shallow. academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

wtf

There is a LOOOOOOOOONG history of fascism’s love affair with Tolkien!

Tuesday’s ‘elephant done by a medieval artist that had never seen one’ - 15th century, Ghent, JPGM, Ms. Ludwig XIII 5, vol. 1, f. 55

It’s not simply this: I think universities will pivot back to valuing the arts and humanities in a way where they’ll be grabbing for painful excuses as to why that infrastructure is currently being destroyed.

Medievalismsists well positioned to contribute to scholarly dialogues around this.

Churches showing an AI Charlie Kirk telling congregants, through an artificial voice, not to let evil win is a new level of instrumentalizing the dead. When Trump goes, I think we’re going to see the same thing. Visions and AI slop will abound. Prophecies and messages from beyond the grave.

I'm sorry, but no. You cannot blame the existential threat on international students. The existential threat is because you made your country's public good wholly dependent on international students. The venues for all the rankings that reduced higher education to competition not blameless in that.

As the @thinkuhi.bsky.social graduations season continues, we would like to send huge congratulations to all our students celebrating their achievements! Our Dr @linseyhunter.bsky.social & Dr Lucy Dean had the great privilege to be part of the celebrations at UHI Perth yesterday 🎓🎉 #UHIGrad

Start by NOT standing down their REF team at the end of each assessment cycle. Current practice reduces analysis of abundant data that REF generates & leads to the loss of granular knowledge about what worked/didn't work when the next cycle gears up. Also increases the miasma of REF misinformation.

📣Save the date!📣 @uhihistory.bsky.social is celebrating the publication of two new books by our staff Dr Lucy Dean and Dr Nicola Martin. For further details on the event, bit.ly/4nXKDX4 📅Monday 27 October 2025 ⏰ 7-8pm 📍Online bit.ly/4pOGKWk #ThinkUHI

When we train people to use AI, we're "training people to explain away the inconsistencies of Large Language Models, and to assume individual responsibility for what is an innate flaw in how large language models work." Fantastic essay: www.wheresyoured.at/the-case-aga...

This is a problem.

I’ve been struck by how the British far right is using deepfake technology — less to deceive about specific events, more to tap into fascistic affects & desires. This is really frightening. My dispatch from grim corners of the Internet, for @lrb.co.uk online. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/se...

Coming very soon. Please sign up! We can only do this together. We're starting small but we have big ambitions. Because if there's anything that the last few years have shown us, it's that we desperately need diverse, fearless INDEPENDENT media. www.thenerve.news

Scottish Funding Council's reports on financial sustainability of universities.

This is repugnant. May I also add that no one’s place in history is ‘settled.’ History is not settled.

Smile like you mean it, says the skeleton from a 1493 medical broadside from Nuremberg. #bookhistory #skystorians

Our fall 2025 issue is out! Featuring three articles, a forum on women in wartime, a review essay, a performance review, two exhibition reviews, and 22 book reviews www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/emw/curr... #EarlyModern

We want robust, enormous research that is SUCH good research, you already know how important and right and insightful it is before you even start it. We want research so predeterminedly world-changing that there is hardly any point actually doing the research at all.

Worth bearing in mind that most STEM research in UK universities is "unfunded". It's not just Humanities that are being attacked here.

After three exciting days filled with numerous inputs and discussions, the question arose: What can historians do to combat the shift to the right and historical revisionism? We discussed this with Jakob Schergaut (@stattmythen.bsky.social), Michał Bilewicz (Warsaw), and Branimir Đurović (Belgrade).

If you combine their most recent accounts, there’s a trading surplus of £76.9m, and cash generation of £18.5m Which does suggest that they’re merging from relative strength www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I would "ethical AI" edtech companies to stop pitching me. I despise you. I want you to fail. I want you to go out of business. I want you to sell all you own and walk the earth like Caine on Kung-Fu. This message will repeat.

Do read. A skillful and expert consideration of the challenges of debunking legendary history when media clickbait and commercial interests are at stake ... I know the feeling, as does every witchcraft historian.

The database from my PhD-dissertation is finally publicly available! Detailed data from 3250 south-Swedish probate records, both urban and rural, from between 1570 and the 1860s, free for anyone to use for your own projects. www.lusem.lu.se/organisation...

To potentially oversimplify this, but the number of people arrested at the Palestine Action protests exceeds the entire number of people, on average, attending the anti-asylum hotels protests, yet they are called "fringe" and those outside hotels are called the "voice of the people".

My academic grandmother, Barbara Harvey, died earlier this month; there's a short tribute to her from @somervillecollege.bsky.social here: www.some.ox.ac.uk/news/barbara...

@thinkuhi.bsky.social is 2nd in Scotland in the National Student Survey 2024-25 for overall satisfaction in the history category & @uhihistory.bsky.social team received 10 Highlands & Islands Students Association nominations & highly commended awards in 4 different categories. Well done! #UHI

Wonder if JK Rowling will say anything at all about this

@nature.com I love this article - but WHY are the only share options to X and Facebook when the whole point of the article is that science-based posts get more shares here? www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Thread: LLMs👏 ARE 👏 NOT 👏 SEARCH 👏 ENGINES 👏 AND 👏 THEY 👏 ARE 👏 NOT 👏 BUILT 👏 FOR 👏 THAT 👏 TASK 👏

Paying rent in the Middle Ages: Roland the Farter was a jester who (according to the Liber Feodorum) held his land in Suffolk in return for "one jump, a whistle & one fart" at King Henry II's Christmas court every year. What a deal! Huth Psalter, c.1280-1300 British Linrary, Add MS 38116, f. 89r.

Hic Paddington Ursus Interfectus Est

Yes. For example, the Encomium Emmae Reginae gives the impression that Edward the Confessor got on well with his mother, whereas the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us he arrested her at the start of his reign. From this I think we can reasonably conclude he must have beaten her to death with his crown.

What is wrong with these people?

Another disaster waiting to happen that central govt hasn't got the faintest clue about. 👇

How's this?

Holy fuck that NYT ChatGPT suicide story is absolutely horrific. Why aren't we running these crooks out of town.

I will pay real $$ for the longtime free computing tools I use all the time if they would come with ZERO AI. Email. Project Management. Browser. Word Processing. Search tools. Any of it. I am infuriated every time some "upgrade" forces AI down my throat. I want its existence to be opt-in.

In a couple of weeks we’ll all be treated to the now annual round of ‘Bristol students offered accommodation in Aberystwyth’ type stories, cos, whatever they say, managers at these places don’t actually care that much about the ‘student experience’, let alone the sector as a whole.

God, some of the university stuff I've heard about. Big name providers way above even their inflated targets for home recruitment, and miles over their previous Clearing numbers. Total blowout, esp in cheap-to-provide subjects. Joke 'regulator' and sponsor dept not even interested.