Please read our amazing RA @helenvmurray.bsky.social's evocative blog post on the @victorianhand.bsky.social website, which conjures the tactile, time-spanning qualities of G F Watts' affecting hand casts. As she points out, they were a big influence on the conception of the whole project.

Get your abstracts in today!

😯

Please do submit something if hands are your bag!

Don't forget to submit to [email protected] by Monday 22 September!

Touch transcends time... Last week, @helenvmurray.bsky.social was getting some haptic shivers whilst exploring spiritual hands in the archives of the Society for Psychical Research. Meanwhile, we're levitating with excitement to receive your abstracts for The Hand: Emotions, Embodiment, Identity.

Not sure what 'secure' even looks like for most of right now, be it early, middle, or late career.

Does anyone out there, anyone at all, recognise this government as a LABOUR one? In chasing the far right, all they will do is hand them victory by collapsing their established base of support among social and economic progressives. How many academics would vote Labour now?

This is a desperately ignorant position from UUK that endangers research that benefits grassroots communities and ignores the fact that much knowledge-building is incremental and begins with small investigations that provide proofs of concept and space to develop ideas:

One of the things that really grinds at the “elite” is that RAE/REF has shown for 30 years that research excellence really IS spread far beyond their narrow vision. They absolutely HATE it.

To what extent and how do UUK despise the rank and file academics who work in the Universities they are meant to represent? Discuss

I've secured a fair share of external grant income over the years (>£1.5 million either individually or collaboratively), but this was only possible due to an 'unfunded' reserch allowance. What part of my research is 'low quality'/'hobbyist' or does it all count as such now because it's not STEM?

Very worrying indeed.

This is a jaw-dropping statement from anyone in a uni leadership role — but also — what exactly is ‘low-quality’ and ‘hobbyist’ research? Nearly every academic I know is burning the candle at both ends and STILL producing important work in their fields. This feels like an anti-humanities dog whistle

Way to represent the sector guys 👏 Looks like UUK and Labour are shaping up to decimate the sector. Would it have been any worse under the Tories?

Fascinating stuff!

I know it is starting to sound shrill, but these kinds of event are harbingers of further job losses, course closures and 'mergers' that threaten the very ethos of higher education. The sector burns while government watches on.

Genuinely excited to participate in this panel on "Picturing Health: The Evolution of Medical Photography",with a strong focus on ethics, at The Francis Crick Institute as part of the Wellcome Photography Prize public programme: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/picturing-...

Absolutely delighted to invite applications from prospective HEI supervisors for four Collaborative Doctoral Partnership opportunities, to start October 2026. Deadline for applications Fri 28th Nov, 5pm. Further details below and here: www.bl.uk/services/res...

Not a day goes by that I don't think we are witnessing a epochal narrowing of the field of collective human consciousness.

We've got a chunky @britishacademy.bsky.social report out looking at the emergence of 'cold spots' where you can't study arts, humanities or social science subjects close to home. We call for an urgent review of HE funding & monitoring of at risk subjects www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/news/univers...

It’s Tommy Robinson. Literally. Personally. These are fascists marking their territory and daring the tolerant majority to stop them.

Good job if you care about the arts and humanities. Executive Director for Portfolios, Partnerships and Engagement at the Arts and Humanities Research Council - £91k-£99k fa-evzn-saasfaukgovprod1.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

What subjects did Britons enjoy at school? English: 70% enjoyed History: 66% Geography: 61% Biology: 58% Food tech: 54% Art: 51% D+T: 50% Maths: 49% PE: 47% Chemistry: 45% Music: 44% Languages: 43% Physics: 39% IT: 37% RE: 32% Drama: 29% yougov.co.uk/society/arti...

Had a spare five minutes, so taking the chance to boost mine and @medhistoryman.bsky.social's open access article on a sexual scandal from the 1820s! If you are teaching 19c sexuality, politics, masculinity, or religion why not add it to your reading list! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Please do join us for this exciting event!

FFS!!! The New ‘Executive Director of Communications’ - Tim Allen - was a Trustee at transphobic lobby group ‘Sex Matters’ until this morning!!! 😖😖😤 Don’t tell me the ‘trans lobby’ are powerful while transphobes sit in Number 10 Downing Street! 😠😡 👉🏻 www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

sorry to my friends who work there, but UCL is a truly disgusting institution

Do take a look at the call for papers for our conference on The Hand 8-9 Jan 2026, @lcflondon.bsky.social. We're seeking contributions from a range of disciplines! Please check it out and get involved!

Re-sharing this open-access article that @medhistoryman.bsky.social and I recently published: Exhibiting Tommy Atkins: senses, spectacle and military modernity in late Victorian Britain. Check it out for the concept of emotional objects and 'prosthetic feeling'! url: academic.oup.com/histres/arti...

Wonderful event on 30 Oct in London: "Challenging maps and exploration symposium" @rgsibg.bsky.social @kparkerhistorian.bsky.social & co-organised w/ the amazing Sunderland Collection (oculi-mundi.com). www.rgs.org/events/upcom... #maps #histsci #skystorians

'The quilts were the work of Ellen Freeman, who had stitched together offcuts salvaged from the floor of Lister's Mill in Manningham, then [the 1860s] one of Bradford's great textile powerhouses.'

Are you a researcher who could do with £8k to engage the public about your research working with a gallery, museum, library or archive? We’ll shortly be opening a call so I just wanted to give you a heads up this is coming www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/shap...

Riding an elephant, John Barclay attempts to enter Edinburgh University as comparative anatomy chair in 1816. One naysayer – mineralogist Robert Jameson, I guess – protests 'Bar-Clay! I know it not Neither is it mentioned by the Illustrious Werner'. Satirical print by John Cay, Wellcome Collection.

This is a thrilling opportunity for interdisciplinary research exchange. I am so excited to be co-organising @victorianhand.bsky.social's conference. Whether you're a historian, a maker, an activist, a healer - we want to hear from you!

Check out the call for papers for The Victorian Hand project's conference, January 2026. We can't wait to hear from you!!

We are really very excited indeed by this event. If you share our interest in the cultural significance, symbolic meaning, and lived experience of the human hand either in the past or today (or both!) then please do think about putting in an abstract. And please sprad the word to your networks!

🙌Call for Papers🙌 We are excited to invite abstracts for an interdisciplinary conference on The Hand: Emotions, Embodiment, Identity, at @unioftheartslondon.bsky.social on 8-9 Jan 2026 Send abstracts of 300 words to [email protected] by 22 Sep - please circulate among your networks!

@jbhist.bsky.social and I are very happy to get a mention on this weekly round-up of wonderful, publicly-accessible scholarship. You can access our article on the emotional sensescape of the Royal Military Exhibition of 1890 completely Open Access here: academic.oup.com/histres/arti...

Here it is, my 235th #ScholarSunday thread of great public scholarly writing & work, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from the last week. Add more below, share widely, & enjoy, all! 🗃️ americanstudier.substack.com/p/scholarsun...

Michael and Joanne delivered a wonderful presentation on this research to the Bristol Senses and Sensations group earlier this year, so I hugely recommend reading their new article!

Check out our new publication. This one is an intersensory and intermaterial approach to popular militarism. It's Open Access too!!

New publication (not on hands, but on emotions and senses) from project leads @jbhist.bsky.social and @medhistoryman.bsky.social. It's completely Open Access and free for anyone to read.

We argue that the emotional sensorium of the RME cultivated positive 'prosthetic feelings' about the army & encouraged imaginative investiment in the figure of Tommy Atkins. We put embodied experiences at the heart of discussions about the rise of popular militarism in the age of New Imperialism.

@jbhist.bsky.social & I are excited to see that our new article on the Royal Military Exhibition of 1890 has been published Open Access by @ihr.bsky.social. This takes a sensory & emotions history approach to the topic of late Victorian popular militarism. academic.oup.com/histres/adva...

@jbhist.bsky.social & I are excited to see that our new article on the Royal Military Exhibition of 1890 has been published Open Access by @ihr.bsky.social. This takes a sensory & emotions history approach to the topic of late Victorian popular militarism. academic.oup.com/histres/adva...

Thank you so much to Prof. Sharon Thompson for her amazing review of 'Deserted Wives'. "It is a shining example of the best of legal history." 🤩 Please consider ordering it for your library 📖 www.bloomsbury.com/uk/deserted-...

I'm most grateful to Amber Vella, an AHRC-funded PhD student at Leicester, for her most generous review of Emotions & Surgery in Medical History. It's deeply satisfying to have it described as a 'fantastic intervention in the history of surgery'. Thank you 🙏 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

The reviews for Emotions & Surgery have taken a while to come but are now beginning to appear. It's so gratifying in difficult professional times to read someone as eminent as Prof. Mick Worboys describe it as a 'landmark work ... that compellingly revises the history and historiography of surgery'😇

Please get those applications in if you are interested in becoming part of our project team!