I don’t know what to tell you, man. I’m a medieval historian, and, in my field, if you don’t check your sources (and your sources’ sources) you are just asking to be taken for a ride by some bored 19th C. aristocratic English antiquarian with a penchant for inventing history.

I'm at TNA today for the first time in apparently a really long time- my last pass ran out in March last year! Excited to look at things 😊

Ooh it's up! ME TOO! I'll be speaking on the queen's ladies-in-waiting 😊

Thank you all so much for the replies!! If it happens it'll be three kittens who are littermates. I was planning on two, but it feels mean to split them. Haven't met them yet though so all hypothetical.

Anyone here got 3 cats? Is it significantly more stress than 2, or is there not much difference? Asking for...potential Reasons 👀😬

I have such a habit of deciding to start a book in one place, date-wise, then thinking 'ok I should just check out what these people were doing in the lead-up to that'...and then RABBITHOLE

Can anyone get me into this? www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Good morning on this fine Thursday! I am overexcited from non-work things, but combatting this (!) by marking dissertations.

The digitalisation of historical records used to be a net positive. But with the rise of AI, digitalised records now run the risk of being scraped, which leads to misinterpretations and erasure of key information. You cannot replace historical analysis with a machine.

Grumpy frustration when you had planned to use certain events in a chapter but the surviving source material doesn't allow you to tell those stories the way you hoped.

ARGH trying to send emails out to an academic mailing list from my academic email and it keeps getting blocked for sending spam. Didn't happen last year. This morning I kept each email under 100 recipients and still after a few it was flagged. Annoyance.

One of my favourite depictions of #StGeorge, in a medieval wall painting at St Cadoc's, Llancarfan, Wales (only re-discovered in 2008!). A slightly regretful George here as he slays the dragon, but a wholly focused and fierce horse... Visit it on the St Thomas Way: thomasway.ac.uk/explore-the-...

Call me Cassandra, but if you make thousands of HEI staff either compulsorily or 'voluntarily' redundant and create conditions in which senior staff take early retirement in an attempt to save more junior colleagues' careers without significant new hiring, a critical loss is exactly what happens.

New house is gradually becoming less of a part-time job. Today, there's only a damp survey, and it turns out that despite the stalactites of mold in some cupboards last week, it's less bad than I feared!

Excited to come to the beautiful West Horsley Place and talk about ladies-in-waiting this summer - Tudor Historians Day, Sunday 19th July, get your tickets here! westhorsleyplace.org/whats-on/tud...

Anyone got access to Peter Marshall, 'Religious exiles and the Tudor state', Studies in Church History 43 (2007) ? 'Request failed' at the BL

Not meditation per se but peace and counting bird noises. I have a thing for hanging out in graveyards and I've found the best one near-ish my new house. Not as big as Ladywell cemetery but more bluebell-y 🙂

ND friends, how do you feel about meditation? Does it work differently on us (or not work?) I don't have great memories of trying it.

Reintroducing student number redistribution is an easy fix that would actually stabilise the sector without even having to pump a load of money into it. All unis are spending SO MUCH MONEY & RESOURCES on recruiting & advertising rather than teaching & research. Plug that leak. Stop that volatility.

We have moved, in my adult life, from "you can't trust Wikipedia because they don't even have any gatekeepers" to "we gotta rely on Wikipedia to hold the line because universities have been coopted"

I don't know if anyone is interested in research and writing process, or rather if anyone is remotely interested in mine specifically but let's make some choices out loud shall we 😀

Oof. #UKHE

My shirt created a class discussion today about whether Mary I would have known about giraffes. What do we think?

Oh my god. Yes. YES.

I have a 2 hour class ready to go on medicine in medieval manuscripts! It's in a lecture then seminar format. If you'd like to pay me to give this class, you can contact me via my website, link in bio. #MedievalSky

Alrighty. What should I be reading on English Protestant exiles during Mary's reign, 1553-58 ish?

When it feels like your (meagre) inbox is hounding you and you know that's not reality, and when you want to cry because you're inexplicably having to tell a final year student to start their sentences with a capital letter, you know you maybe need to sit in the sun for a bit

❤️❤️❤️

House move update: we're in! But what do you do when you don't have enough lamps and would rather die than put the big light on? GO TUDOR and bounce candlelight off shiny things. Thank you, George Cavendish, for your banquet descriptions.

Srsly NYT c'mon

Three of us built three beds today and my lower back has gone to the place where bones die.

Considering doctoring some 'fragile' labels to say 'fragile AND SPIKY'

A query that came out of choir rehearsal this evening: was there Protestant presence in C17 Italy? Was it large and me ignorant? Very secret?

That feeing when you're updating teaching sessions, you reach for a book thinking ah, perfect, this will have the latest stuff on X topic in the bibliography...and the bibliography is of primary sources only 😩 #HungryForHistoriography

The problem with packing is that everything that was once stored away is now in boxes and there's nowhere for the boxes to be

House looking gorgeous. Moving early Feb. Packing nightmares have begun. Am also floored by awful cramps- very upsetting the way we are punished for being women trying to be contraceptively responsible 😩

'Balls, I just found a ukulele.' Quote of the day from my housemate, who is packing.

Tfw you accidentally put your hair in a much higher, tighter bun than you intended and now you feel like Miss Hardbroom from The Worst Witch books

Back on my bullshit

Someone’s not looked at a single early modern history book before opening their mouth, clearly. By 1600, over 4,000 immigrants lived in England’s second largest city, Norwich - one in three people in the city had not been born in England.

Do I know anyone who knows about furniture restoration? There's a thing I want to bid on, but it needs some love and I don't know what's possible

Carpets chosen and booked, front door ordered, all bits for second electrical fix arriving today, moving day confirmed and movers booked. It's all happening! Oh yeah and I should probably also do some work?

Can’t wait for this!!

Friends fear she's browsing furniture again. House needs things. I want to buy secondhand/vintage/antique, because it's cost, environment, and aesthetically efficient and because I have a thing for arts and crafts era stuff. Other than eBay, where would you look?

At what point will a brave university simply tell its staff to stop applying for grants, and just fund their research or give them time to write instead. I'm sure it would cost less than all that wasted staff time.

My bestie wrote a book! It's beautiful and incredible and hilarious and profound and you should all go and get it immediately.

Today I am at least trying to organise the overwhelm train before I ride it over the next couple of months. - Finishing house renovation - House move - Pile of marking (lands right around house move obvs) - Semester 2, with 3 hour sessions instead of 2 - At least one public talk 🫠

I'm the nearest thing my department HAS to a medievalist 🫠

Betwixtmas is weird af every year. This year I'm finding myself working quite hard to keep the inevitable 'this time last year things were Bad' at a dull roar. The anniversary effect is real

Aaaaaaaahahaha. I have indeed got another cold. And now I must get rid of it in order to see vulnerable people over Christmas. As if the whole Christmas debacle wasn't stressful enough.