My third peer-reviewed article is now out with the journal Ethnohistory! It is about Powhatan sovereignty in the early 17th century. My thanks go to a number of friends and colleagues who provided feedback on this article over the past three years. It wouldn’t be possible without so much support!

Market ideology teaches us to blame ourselves for failing in a rigged economy. Perversely, doing so also makes us feel more in control. Read: open.substack.com/pub/gracebla...

"Households in the top 10% of the income distribution now account for half of all consumer spending in the US - an astonishing concentration of purchasing power, which suggests that the long-term foundations of US economic growth are unsustainable." graceblakeley.substack.com/p/the-us-eco...

J’espère que c’est le début d’une nouvelle manière d’aborder le sujet de la Palestine dans les médias.

"By building our digital sovereignty, we can be free [...] to serve our own needs and aspirations, to reflect and nurture Canadian values and identities, to be a truly free and sovereign federation in this new age." Full letter: broadbentinstitute.ca/research/concerning-canada-digital-sovereingty/

#ICYMI “Four #trains will do a direct link, bypassing #Kingston and all the other stops along the way. Apparently this is an effort to compete with air and car travel,” said MP Mark Gerretsen. Mayor Paterson shared the MP's frustrations. More: www.kingstonist.com/news/ludicro...

Canadian mining companies are 'getting away with atrocities' in South America and across the globe, says Brandi Morin. She shares the details with @racheldonald.bsky.social on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast. Listen now @mongabay.com

Having graduated in the spring, all my books are due back today (!) so I’ve sentimentally parted with many items that I’ve spent long nights pouring over, like the 4 volumes of the Virginia Company Records, which I’ve been reading and analyzing for the past three years.

Humanities, arts and social sciences degrees are disappearing in many UK regions. With more young people than ever studying close to home, course cuts are narrowing their choices at university. @timeshighered.bsky.social covers our 'Cold Spots' report today. Read more at https://bit.ly/46e3wOy

There is nothing more irritating than trying to explain how restricted work-places have become, in terms of employee freedoms, to boomers who have only earned a living as sole-proprietors in the past three decades. Like no Cheryl, I can’t simply take a month off because I feel like it.

Best thing I've ever read about AI and the academy - every line a banger

It’s funny to me that people enthusiastically voted for the Liberal party of Canada and are surprised that they have become the harbingers of neoliberal austerity policies which are actively destroying this country: www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

I would support this, if only the historian Peter Brown hadn’t taught me that billionaires and mass wealth inequality are entirely compatible with Christianity, including Catholicism. It is in fact completely possible for a camel to get through the eye of a needle.

As someone who grew up on a small farm in the middle of nowhere, nothing brings me greater anxiety than living in a place, even a big city, that has no local food infrastructure.

I feel for Irish youth who emigrate due to inequality, just as my grandmother did. For a millenium, France has always been another home for the Irish - I just hope that policy makers & their critics learn the right lessons. Opinion: “I left Ireland for a better life in Paris” jrnl.ie/6814687

Was out for a walk today to decompress after submitting a big postdoc application and got to see the RCAF Snowbirds show off between Kingston Harbour and Wolfe Island. Here’s to good luck!

Very excited to see sociological research on Indigenous atheism, and its connections to decolonization, coming out. We need much more of this kind of work. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I had hoped that this was a Beaverton headline. I was wrong.

What the Taliban comps do is a) suggest Islam is uniquely violent and b) elide the entire history of Christianity which is filled with violence

It’s odd to see parochial advocacy like this when the Canadian historical profession is itself going extinct. Where’s the advocacy for adjuncts and early career scholars? There is no job market left in this country and funding is dried up to the point where new scholars are condemned to poverty.

The classrooms should benefit from the creative minds of our members. But until then …

The dystopia that we are seeing in Gaza is truly staggering. In addition to blaming corrupt politicians, I put a lot of blame on eschatology which I feel like not enough people talk about, since the most opportune way to create dystopia is through apocalypticism. www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblo...

Canadians support immigration policies that prioritize high-skill, in-demand sectors  such as healthcare and construction. There is skepticism about the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, and concern that it harms both Canadians and foreign workers.

I don't think AI is the biggest threat to the American historical profession.

Underlying some of the undergraduate disengagement with the humanities in North America, there is, I suspect, a certain degree of resentment towards the « hidden curriculum, » or the uncommunicated rules and expectations about style, argument, and interpretation which we don’t actively teach.

Dalhousie @dalhousieu.bsky.social has already contracted Nous Group to do surveys...One wonders if the "crisis narrative" of the upper level admin (i.e. the "deficit crisis") and the strange behaviour of the board is somehow related. Please read on: circles.eduvation.ca/posts/inviti...

❤️‍🔥 open.substack.com/pub/pollyhem...

While this solution is imperfect, I have stopped buying many goods from US companies and am doing my utmost to support local small businesses as much as I can. I hope more people step up and do likewise. www.cbc.ca/news/busines...

Matt Numer, Health Promotion, urges the @dalhousieu.bsky.social board back to the table. Let’s save the Fall term. Students need this resolved. #keepdalstrong @ansut.bsky.social @caut.bsky.social @cupe3912.bsky.social @nsgeu.bsky.social

Given the rampant defunding and growing inequality in academia, it is high time that Canadian PhD programs in History abandon course work in favour of more hands-on experience or move direct into dissertation writing. This is something departments have the power to do but remain stubborn about.

Adding this story to the long list of reasons that I am opposed to LLMs: www.cbc.ca/news/busines...

Faculty are concerned about the impact this lockout @dalhousieu.bsky.social is having on students and the fall term. Admin, let’s get back to bargaining and #keepdalstrong @ansut.bsky.social @caut.bsky.social

2% is a milk, not an offer! #keepdalstrong Keep Dal Strong Dalhousie Faculty Association

We should fight the defunding of humanities everywhere but let’s not forget that research associations and university departments in Canada are being complicit in the destruction of whole fields as we speak. You only have to look at the priorities of the major funding agencies to see the problem.

Proud to see some faculty associations doing the right thing and sticking it to university boards of trustees and senior management.

Intently watching the situation in Repparfjord where the Sami are defending their lands and reindeer herds against a Vancouver-based mining company that is trying to build a mine which will, as it so happens, dump toxic waste into the fjord. www.arctictoday.com/stop-mining-...

Solidarity with colleagues at Dalhousie.

Yup. One doesn’t play against the Covenant and become sympathetic to theocratic regimes or political parties. I honestly think it’s too bad most political analysts and academics have completely ignored the moral and political thought of video games. They explain way more than one might anticipate.

Job ad: history of healthcare and health equity, jointly at Dalhousie & University of King's College (tenure-stream, junior/mid-career): dal.peopleadmin.ca/postings/19481

It is pretty easy to see this for what it is: a fanaticization of the military. It is dangerous. I am also not convinced that saying “this is not what proper Christianity looks like” is going to help either. Christianity has done this kind of thing all the time. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

This is comically good.

Didn’t want to believe this was true. It’s true.

I really hope that Canadians learn from what’s happening to PBS south of the border and ensure that we continue to have a public broadcaster.

Trump’s tariffs are hurting American businesses — not Canada. But only CBC is explaining it. That’s why Conservatives want it gone. Silence the facts, sell the fear. Save the CBC. r.pebmac.ca/https://www.... #SaveTheCBC #TrumpTariffs #PublicBroadcasting #CdnPoli

Indeed. It’s sad that the “resistance historians” would rather become footnotes to US court opinions than actually do anything about rebuilding the profession into something that could actually make a difference.

Returning to Happy Hunting Grounds Cecil Youngfox ~ Ojibwe 1981

80 years ago today, the United States bombed Hiroshima with an atomic weapon made with uranium mined from Délı̨nę First Nation in the Northwest Territories. Dene peoples have spent a lifetime grappling with the spectre of nuclear weapons, though I am not sure everyone else has.

Very pleased to be among such accomplished company for the W. J. Eccles Prize for best conference paper by a graduate student at the French Colonial Historical Society meeting this past May!