We're putting on an exciting range of research events this year at @manchester.ac.uk on 'Queer Bodies' in 18 & 19C Britain. Colleagues in English, Art History (@emmamerkling.bsky.social), & History are exploring queer approaches to bodies and embodiment and their cultures. See poster for more!

I was expecting Born With Teeth to be good, but it was Really Very Good.

Are you a postgraduate researcher trying out digital methods, tools or resources as a means of exploring historical phenomena? Consider applying for our Postgraduate Seminar Series ihrdighist.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2025/08/ihr-...

$483k!! Can we get to half a million for PCRF?

Last year we got a box of Lego to use @ntudoctoralschool.bsky.social for inductions and development workshops, so today I’m at the University of Birmingham for a whole day of training on using Lego for inclusive teaching & learning facilitated by the @britishacademy.bsky.social ECR network

Current fiction TBR. Starting with The Year of the Witching, then maybe The Midnight Shift next? Finished Victorian Psycho yesterday, but didn’t find it as satisfying as Mrs March - the textual presentation and the engraving illustrations I did however really appreciate.

And for the visual version: youtu.be/qRiDK5aWqQc?...

THEY’RE BURNING THE LABUBUS. The Association is in session and we’re discussing the Labubu craze, the people crying demon, and the Gothic history of moral panics. Guest starring Lauren’s Labubus, obviously. Apple: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t... Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/26fk...

Spotted this yesterday at the Graves Gallery in Sheffield: a circular chronology of George III’s reign, including the National debt, prime minister, military engagements and the price of bread. I wish I’d discovered this when I was doing the PhD instead of hand drawing timelines! #AcademicChatter

An absolutely amazing night at the world premiere of Survivors: The Spectre Of Threads, here in #Sheffield where the film was shot 41 years ago. I can't stress enough how much I want @craigimann.bsky.social and Robert Nevitt's brilliant documentary to be seen as widely as possible. #FilmSky

And if you prefer to consume who video: youtu.be/24I-Ln9oL8s?... #WednesdayS2 #booktalk #GothsAssemble

This evening’s meeting of the Ghoul Guides Association is Lauren’s thought on Wednesday season 2 so far, as well as some recommending reading if you’re looking for some more dark academia, mystery or weirdness. Spotify link (or find us on other platofrms!) open.spotify.com/episode/6IkC...

It’s heeeere

Doh Ho Suh’s Walk the House at the Tate Modern. Nothing in the exhibition was made from the materials I thought they would be and this was maybe the first time I’ve had to consciously remind myself not to touch the artwork

To whoever finds my the copy of JK Chukwu’s The Unfortunates that I have managed to loose somewhere in Seven Dials I wish you well

Some favourites from the Yoshitomo Nara exhibition at the Hayward Gallery.

The guy in Pop Mart tried to shake my confidence and said this box felt like the sweetcorn but OH HOW WRONG HE WAS.

On our YouTube: youtu.be/GNO2ZeNIlIk?... On Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/1chO... #horrorreview #gothsassemble

A coworker said to me ‘you watch horror right’ and I explained that actually, I don’t, @mazgoing.bsky.social explains the plots to me on the Internet because I get too scared.

The first episode of our podcast series for Ann Radcliffe, Then and Now is live! Join Michael Gamer discussing his editing of The Italian by Radcliffe with project research associate Rosie Whitcombe.

Jumping on the Jane Austen bandwagon and offering a short course from Halloween to her birthday (approx!) - join me! Or help me spread the word! Please and thank you!!

New: 'The Holograph Letters of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots (1489-1541)' bit.ly/4mtRQgS The Society's latest Camden volume of primary sources presents the 115 holograph letters of Margaret Tudor. This new edition, by Helen Newsome-Chandler, is an unprecedented epistolary archive 1/2 #Skystorians

Have you read Asako Yuzuki’s ‘Butter’ yet? This week at the Ghoul Guides Association, @laurenjnixon.bsky.social reviews the global bestseller and recommends some more reading! #GothsAssemble

Last we set up a network for PGR doing emotionally demanding & ‘difficult’ research: what troubled me was realising how many of us don’t realise or feel able to acknowledge we’re in that category. My works all about war but because it’s historical it took supporting others to see I needed it too

Huge thanks and love to everyone who's shared this post and others like it. We can't fix everything by ourselves. But there's ALWAYS something we can do. And there are SO MANY people who care. Here's a thread of some more more places I've sent money to help Gazans during this horrific time...

Ghouls, what does the sublime, the British Empire and custard creams all have in common? Pteridomania, baby! On this meeting of The Ghoul Guides Association, Lauren deep dives the Victorian cult of the fern - and its Gothic influences. Listen now: open.spotify.com/episode/30WD... #GothsAssemble

Well, when I'm done with my lesson prep on the National Park System, I know what to do. 🤩 @laurenjnixon.bsky.social @uniwalespress.bsky.social

Oh, to be a war scholar in an art museum. Finally went to the National Gallery and saw the Reynolds portrait I use constantly. Being a pleb I didn’t know Raphael’s The Dream of a Knight existed so I will be adding that to my chivalry explainer folder, too. #AcademicChatter

Favourite creepy Christ Childs (children? @emarlow.bsky.social what’s the plural?) at the National Gallery so far

I sometimes get raised eyebrows when we run ‘how to chair’ workshops for PGR, but it’s so important to a good panel! As someone with a terrible internal clock I always appreciate a good timekeeper, too.

Fun activities for a British heatwave: - taking a nice drive down the M25 - getting the tube into central - going to a gig at Brixton academy

One thing you can count on is I will buy pretty editions of texts I already own, especially if they fit in a Uniqlo crescent bag

Closing out #GlobalJaneAusten at the Empire panel, with explorations of Austen in the colonial and post colonial world, including the curriculums on Sub Saharan Africa and decolonisation reframing in Indian television.

Really interesting to follow this hashtag and catch a glimpse of this really interesting conference! Great to see conference presentations and ideas being shared on Bluesky!

Look at that unfurled Border Riding from @stoutstoat.co.uk

Fandom panel now: first is Rita Jones looking into how Austen memorabilia and merchandise furthers readership and fandom. I started my career in the JAC gift shop and have always been fascinated by what was and wasn’t popular with visitors so I’m very intrigued to learn more #GlobalAusten250

Chaired my last panel on the final day of #GlobalAusten250 (sob - it’s been a thing of beauty & a joy forever). Great papers from Danielle Dempsey on Intermezzo as gender-swapped S&S, @sinsleyh.bsky.social on adapting free indirect discourse, and Hironori Furukawa on Persuasion as detective fiction

Word of the day is ‘swullocking’, from 19th-century East Anglian dialect: sultry, sweltering, and sudiferous (sweat-inducing).

This morning @friede.bsky.social and @emnk.bsky.social are demonstrating the many ways we can bring adaptation, play and exploration to the classroom, our research and our living rooms at ‘Playing Austen: An Alternative Workshop’ #GlobalAusten250

This evening’s conference entertainment: a performance taken from the Austen families collection of printed scores, books and handwritten music books, exploring Austen’s experience of music thinking about art, time and place #GlobalAusten250

@historyworkshop.org.uk is looking for new editorial fellows! For early career historians with an interest in radical, public and digital histories: paid, part-time work commissioning and editing on our digital history magazine. www.historyworkshop.org.uk/article/hist...

Hannah Moss on the Jane Austen and Art panel unravelling the discourse around the proposed statue of Jane Austen at Winchester and the complex (and often emotional) narratives around statues of historical women, and how place plays a part in responses to art #GlobalAusten250

Overview of my paper: In Austen, particularly Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey, war appears at once distant and near, the losses and gains never actively discussed but always influencing and shaping the societies depicted in her novels #GlobalAusten250

Last on our panel is Ula Lukszo Klein on The Queer Economics of Persuasion, exploring alternative models of successful relationships with a focus on the British Navy and its potential for facilitating non heteronormative relationship models #GlobalAusten250

First up on Austen, War and Imperialism is @junghsinhsieh.bsky.social, who is charting the engagement of 20th century author Katherine Mansfield with Austen’s novels. The young Mansfield saw writing as an act of imitation and faciliation of vicarious experience #GlobalAusten250

The conference experience in a nutshell: go to a panel to learn more about a thing, learn more, panic about not already having known more, have a five minute crisis about your work because you didn’t know more before, remember you know other stuff and you’re sat here to learn more, repeat. #Academia

Pamela Buck on Soniah Kamal’s Pakistani Austen reimagining, Unmarriagable: Pride and Prejudice, focusing on fashion and transnational identity. Austen’s framework facilitates an exploration and critique of post colonial modern Pakistan #GlobalAusten250

Ros Ballaster exploring Jane Austen’s ‘fashion bible’, La Belle Assemblée, the iconic women’s fashion magazine of the era. While there’s no record of their readership of the magazine, we know from Austen’s letters she and Cass were nonetheless interested in fashion #GlobalAusten250

Dr Amy Weldon on fashion and in particular corsets in Wollstonecraft and Austen. I go to conferences to find kindred spirits (Austen Monday’s viewers may know my ‘White Shirt Hypothesis’) #GlobalAusten250

A swift (and pretty sweaty if I’m honest) flight down the motorways this morning and we are officially at The Global Jane Austen. I’m on panel 5B ‘Austen, War and Imperialism’ tomorrow morning, talking war and (crap) military masculinities in Austen’s novels #JaneAusten #GlobalAusten250