Yesterday the Society visited historians at Sheffield Hallam University and the University of Sheffield in the first RHS visit of 2026 bit.ly/4aAw9HH. Many thanks to our hosts and to Prof David Stack (Reading) for his excellent guest lecture: ‘History and Well-being: a Historian’s Perspective’.

Publication day! My book Keeping Hold: A Cultural and Social History of Possession in Eighteenth-Century Britain is out now. 20% discount code KEHO2026. www.cambridge.org/core/books/k...

Delighted to be giving a lecture on my new book at the V&A Museum on 23rd October- it’s free and open to all www.vam.ac.uk/event/E7WLeV...

Video now available of the Manchester book launch for my new book Vanished. A huge thanks to @mcrhistories.bsky.social for hosting the event, and @davidolusoga.bsky.social for being such a generous interlocutor. #skystorians #extinction #HPS #STS #HistSci www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfPF...

So I guess today's the day to remind anyone interested in the history of Kew's Palm House to take a look at my book, Palace of Palms! bsky.app/profile/rbgk... www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

My first few author copies have arrived 📚 ✨ 📖 feeling completely overwhelmed. You can pre-order your copy here: www.lundhumphries.com/products/lad...

Join us next Wednesday 28 May, in person at the IHR and online (17:30-19:30) to hear Annabelle Gilmore’s (Birmingham) paper “‘I shall describe no more’: Reconnecting Black Histories to the Beckford Collection at Charlecote Park” @ihr.bsky.social www.history.ac.uk/events/i-sha...

That the placards held by these presumably cis-women protesters seeking to deny trans women rights read ‘adult human female’, ‘large gametes’, and ‘biological fact’ encapsulates the biological essentialism, reductionism, and determinism at the heart of their definition of who counts as a woman.

This thread, and this point in particular, is important. I refused to travel to the USA when the ‘Muslim ban’ was in place and missed out on doing lots of events. Only one person acknowledged that’s they would make a note of saying I was unable to contribute for this reason when publishing.

My paperback out 1 May. Heartfelt & compassionate walks through rural Britain and its hidden history of empire.

Come do a fully-funded PhD with me! The 4-year scholarship is open to all UK, EU and international students. Very happy to answer any questions, do share with your students and colleagues.

Wonderful images of the letters to accompany the article! Thanks @salvarmyarchive.bsky.social ⬇️

Oxford! an event on colonial statues and contested heritage, April 9 - couldn't have picked a more suitable town for it - www.stx.ox.ac.uk/event/contes...

This is a brilliant book. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the relationships between colonial history and the history of science.

I am so bad at social media these days unless it’s being extremely mad at our government on a certain image based platform, but for some reason I’ve had loads of new followers here. I’ve been really occupied working towards our show, Design and Disability, tickets were released earlier this month.

These data essays were an output of the AHRC @ukri.org funded project 'Beyond Notability: Re-evaluating Women's Work in Archaeology, History and Heritage, 1870 – 1950'. We did archival research. We did public engagement. We made linked data. We wrote things. See beyondnotability.org for more info.

No better time than International Women’s Day to announce my new book THE PAINTER’S FIRE, a transatlantic revolutionary history written for a popular audience (July release)! It features some amazing historical women, like poet Phillis Wheatley (who inspired the title).

Our collections aren't just about Derbyshire. Take a look at our new guide to records of #BritishEmpire and #Colonialism - it took us a long time to compile because we hold so much material: recordoffice.wordpress.com/2025/02/21/a... #ExploreYourArchive #History

Big business are becoming smaller business in Sheffield as visa restrictions and hostile environments bite, and international student numbers drop (25% over 3 years at University of Sheffield and 36% at Sheffield Hallam). 1/2

Finally topped 150,000 downloads from open access East India Company at Home volume, 7 years after publication. Esp. pleased to see Indian downloads at the top of the table. A collaborative co-edited, co-produced book: a dialogue of academic & non-academic researchers. 1/[email protected]

I’m hosting a day of lectures, discussion & support for people in the educational, heritage or cultural sectors involved in educating about slavery, colonialism & Empire, or anyone else who wants hear about the scholarship. Sat 21 June, Sussex. Book here: onlineshop.sussex.ac.uk/product-cata...

I’m delighted to share that the Art Institute of Chicago has today returned a sacred sculpture - Buddha Sheltered by the Serpent King Muchalinda - to the Government of Nepal: chicago.suntimes.com/art/2025/03/...

4 days to go! 📢 If you have something to say about imperial collecting, frontier warfare, statesmanship or any of the other themes listed on our CFP, we want to hear from you! We're looking for 20-30 minute research papers and 10 minute context talks. Send us an abstract by Friday to be considered!

📣 Final call for abstracts for this exciting workshop! 📣 We want to hear from people with a wide range of expertise so please share widely. See the CFP for further details - closing this Friday. Feel free to contact me or @charjoyjohnson.bsky.social or send us an email if you have any questions!

If you are a PhD Student at an LAHP university, Kings College London, LSE, Queen Mary, SOAS, UCL, RCM, RCA, RCSd.. you can apply to come and work with me! www.lahp.ac.uk/collaboratio...

#provenance job at Nottingham in support of the project "Mapping the Indigenous North American Collection of Nottingham City Museums and Galleries."

Publication day! 📚 A huge to my brilliant colleagues for making this happen, especially Christopher, Dave and Leah in the publications team. 🖼️ It is a joy to have the opportunity to celebrate the women artists, designers and makers from across our places and collections.🏺#nationaltrust

Really nice intro to thinking through accessing museum data and images- looking forward to digging into the whole volume

It's a real honour to be series co-editor for Manchester University Press' longstanding Studies in Imperialism. Here's the book published last year.

Londoners, come along. We will be discussing Memory Culture - I will say a few words on 🔥Germany. Itay’s absolutely worthwhile book gives you the bigger European picture at at time when many are asking why we are remembering, which events, to what end, and for whom.

So glad to finally see Hew Locke @thebritishmuseum.bsky.social - As Hew says, this exhibition is just the beginning of the conversation as museums continue to be weighed down by the spoils of empire…Here’s to continuing those conversations. Also can more museums introduce free exhibition Fridays

Who Owns Museum Collections? And what should we do with them? Saturday 29 March, 10.00-16.00 bit.ly/3QfisUJ

My colleague Nicolas Revire will give two important lectures at Harvard University in March: The Return of Khmer Artifacts from Chicago to Phanom Rung, Northeast Thailand: asiacenter.harvard.edu/events/retur... Early Khmer Art Collecting in American Museums: asiacenter.harvard.edu/events/early...

1 month left to submit an abstract for our workshop! We want to hear from experts in material culture, imperial politics, the histories of collecting and display, colonial frontiers & more. See the call for papers for more details and get in touch at [email protected]

1 month left to send us an abstract for the workshop Curzon, Contacts & Contexts: Engaging with Imperial Histories at Kedleston Hall. If you have any questions feel free to send us an email or contact @charjoyjohnson.bsky.social or myself directly. Please share widely!

The beautiful London Library offers emerging writers one year’s free membership including masterclasses, networking opportunities, peer support, access to all the Library’s resources and publication in an anthology. Details below. Please share :) www.londonlibrary.co.uk/about-us/ll-...

📣 Funded PhD at York with the National Trust: ‘At Home with Angelica Kauffman: The Material and Print Culture of an Eighteenth-Century Artist’. Co-supervised by Chloe Wigston Smith @chloewigstonsmith.bsky.social & Rachel Conroy @curatorrachel.bsky.social #18thC wrocah.ac.uk/cda-projects...

New @EmpirePodUK Double Bill: FROM KEW TO BOTANY BAY: THE EMPIRE OF PLANTS With Sathnam Sanghera @sathnam.bsky.social linktr.ee/empirepoduk

Following you down the antimacassar rabbit hole: the chair protectors were so called after Rowland's Macassar Oil, a hair oil made of imperial plant products, chiefly coconut and palm oil. Its exotic name evoked the Indonesian port of Makassar, then in the Dutch East Indies. Just look at this ad!

The Art Institute of Chicago’s provenance research team is excited to offer a McMullan Arts Leadership internship: recruiting2.ultipro.com/ART1010AICH/...

Great to have my article published in a special issue on museum cases by Museum History Journal @tandfresearch.bsky.social this was all based on a lecture I gave way back in Jan 2020 (just before the world shut down!) at a brilliant conference at the Bowes Museum www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

At the Hew Locke exhibition at the British Museum and obsessed with how many of these colonial artefacts were donated by women to the BM: widows, goddaughters, great nieces.

Thread with CFP and details for an exciting smell studies conference in Cambridge this year, for which I am one of the keynotes. Please do share and consider submitting! Really looking forward to this!

We're up and running! If you'd like to attend, please do send us an abstract. We want to hear from people working in lots of different areas and have wide ranging conversations, so please give us a follow and share with your networks!

Come speak at our workshop! Curzon, Contacts & Contexts: Engaging with Imperial Histories at Kedleston Hall at the University of Derby from 19-20 June, Supported by the @paulmelloncentr.bsky.social Send us an abstract by 7 March - see the call for papers for more details. Please share widely!

Very excited about our workshop in June - we are looking for a broad range of interdisciplinary contributors. Please share far and wide!

Great review essay by @garethknapman.bsky.social, contrasting museum reactionaries’ construction of anticolonial straw men with the more nuanced & critical awareness of museums’ complex engagements with colonialism that we need going forward: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Registration is still open for Wednesday's online talk "Unpacking Provenance". Panelists will formulate research questions, brainstorm approaches, and share resources for tracing the history of Asian art. via: www.smb.museum/en/events/de...

Very excited about our workshop in June - we are looking for a broad range of interdisciplinary contributors. Please share far and wide!