Call for Papers – Mountains, Danger, and Endangerment 12-13 November 2026 Geneva (Switzerland) Proposal Deadline: 30 April 2026 "Danger and endangerment have long been central to the experiences, knowledges, and governance of mountain environments." niche-canada.org/2026/03/30/c... #envhist

Getting ready for the new season

We're hiring! 🌿 The Greenhouse Center for Environmental Humanities at the University of Stavanger invites applications for a 3-year postdoc in Environmental History. See thread for more details. #envhist #envhum

Published book🥳Janicke Kaasa, Ulrike Spring and I edited the volume Collecting the North in @degruyterbrill.bsky.social series Arctic Humanities. It examines natural and human-made objects from 18th-20th century, their relationship to Nordic countries and European Arctic. brill.com/display/titl... 🧪

Cricket and the India-Pakistan Rivalry @karachikhatmal.bsky.social joins to talk CRICKET, including the sport's colonial history and recent events in the world's most heated rivalry. We had A LOT of fun with this one, with something for novices and experts alike. open.spotify.com/episode/3SZ4...

This looks ace! "As the focus intensifies once more on the Arctic, it’s important to remember there isn’t one history, there are many histories. People have long moved in all directions, from all places." Congrats @issygapp.bsky.social and #MarkCheetham! www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...

So pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded PhD opportunity co-supervised with Royal Geographical Society (with IBG): "Collaborative Research as Pedagogical Method: Reinterpreting Photographic Collections at the RGS-IBG" Deadline: 30 April. Full details here: lnkd.in/euQvMmrR

Our 1st #envhum #book talk of 2026 is on Monday, 19 Jan, 16:00 CET/15:00 GMT. Join us to hear Isabelle Gapp @issygapp.bsky.social discuss her book A Circumpolar Landscape: Art and Environment in Scandinavia and North America, 1890-1930. All are welcome! newnatures.org/greenhouse/e...

"For most of its residents, this is not a talking point or a piece of content from which they can move on or swipe away. It is existential": www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

I have a new article out in the Journal of Tourism History, looking at how travel guides, infrastructure and photography shaped tourism in Norway. What and who did travel guides depict, in text and photographs, and how? www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

This year's Borders and Crossings conference - "New Francophone and Anglophone cross-perspectives on travel writing" - is in Marseille and Aix-en-Provence in September (which sounds very pleasant). CfP deadline: 15th February www.crlv.org/actualites/a...

Winter afternoon in Oxford

Merry Christmas! 🎄 This year's very on-brand present:

people get really, really weird about jofra archer's gold chain. why does a piece of jewellery get them so rattled? a material culture analysis via gold chains in hip-hop style 👇 daisycutterzine.wordpress.com/2025/12/22/i...

Have you listened to the new mountains podcast yet? Put on by @mountainsofgreece.bsky.social @jonwestaway.bsky.social and @profpitches.bsky.social, the "Mountain Stories, Mountain Futures" podcast has published its first episode. Also, follow the podcast on Bluesky: @futuremountain.bsky.social .

In looking for something positive to read about the Ashes, I discovered this Mike Selvey piece in the LRB from 1987. The main concerns: the amount of one day cricket being played and the schedule of the County Championship... www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v0...

It's been a pleasure being on the great organising team at York and Northumbria for next year's NEHN meeting - a collaborative worksop on the many histories of 'unwanted life'. Do see the CFP below, and send in a submission if it appeals!

A wintery Wear in Durham

This looks like a great opportunity for people interested in working with the Alpine Club collections 🏔️

Hello! Here is my critical microhistory of modern Arctic exploration. You can now pre-order a paperback copy for $32 CDN during @ubcpress.bsky.social’s winter sale. Also available in hardcover, ebook and PDF! ❄️❄️❄️ www.ubcpress.ca/a-cold-colon...

The @scottpolar.bsky.social are looking for a librarian. This is a rare opportunity! Work with (probably) the world's largest dedicated polar library alongside archive and museum colleagues. The dream 😍 📜

Some new (to me) Nordic travel writing: William Sansom's THE ICICLE AND THE SUN (1958)

📢Call For Papers📢 Sociability & Political life Marc Jaffré & I are organising a conference! We're asking: can there be politics without sociability? How have friendship, intimacy, socialising & informal attachments been central to political projects & movements? Get your abstracts in by Feb 14th!

At the moment, you can visit the exhibition "Away From Home: The Untold Stories of Women Football Fans" at Maiden Castle! ⚽ Throughout history, women fans have always attended football matches. Usually, their stories get lost in the crowd, but this exhibition gives them a voice 📣

A wintery Durham from the train ❄️

Some of the installations at Lumiere in Durham. A botanical feel this year - rhizomes, flowers and harvests 🍄

Academic books don't often have covers worth revealing, but this one is pretty good. Samia Ounoughi & I have been working on this for about 100 years, but we've just sent the final proofs, so here's the cover & contents. Writing on the Move, due out from Berghahn early 2026. #travelwriting studies

My colleague Marie-Theres Fojuth has advertised a fully funded 3-year PhD Fellowship in Museum Education @unistavanger.bsky.social with the «Into the Fjords: Blue Museums as Arenas of Learning about Vulnerable Ecosystems (FJORDS)» project. Perfect for Scandinavian-speaking #envhum #envhist people!

Spread the word about this brand new Masters in Public Environmental Humanities with me and The Greenhouse crew in Norway. For those outside of EU, registration is in second half of November, so don’t miss it!

Rowers on the Wear this morning

Autumn in Teesdale 🍂

Excited that “New Research in Arctic Pasts,” the series I’m co-editing with @issygapp.bsky.social, has just launched on @nichecanada.bsky.social, showcasing the work of 10 Arctic researchers across disciplines over the next 6 weeks niche-canada.org/2025/10/23/i...

This looks fascinating, seems like an interesting outgrowth of the sort of 'industrial' nineteenth-century tourism that made mines into tourist destinations. Or, indeed, tea/coffee/etc plantations in Southeast Asia, as I discuss in my book.

Some autumn woodland colours 🍂

The book is finally sent to print, and we could not be prouder (or more exhausted)! 🤩🥵🫠 @thalesorlie.bsky.social @haraldol.bsky.social «Usynlig til stede» deals with photography and society in Norway after 1945 and highlights several new perspectives on how photography has changed Norway. 📸

We're thrilled to be taking part in Norsk Tinde Klubbe's Slingsby Week next July. The event celebrates British climber W C Slingsby's contributions to Norwegian mountaineering & coincides with the 150th anniversary of his ascent of Storen. Members can register here ➡️ alpineclub.org/event/slings...

I feel like I post about this every year, but it would be useful if the media explained that it is not, in fact, easy to immigrate to this country, to get a national insurance number, to get indefinite leave to remain, to get citizenship. It is, in fact, already very difficult.

#CFP: "Cold altitudes: knowledge, imagination, and experiences of mountain ice" (May 11-12, 2026, Switzerland). Deadline: 31.10.2025 Info: networks.h-net.org/group/announ... #envhist #envhum #hstm #ecolit

Most humanities research — including the best, most world leading research by people we’ve all heard of — is unfunded, by which they mean produced as part of one’s routine job as a university lecturer, just “not funded by a big competitive external grant”. This would mean the death of research.

Bluesky historians - I have a student that has made a transcription of 'The Arctic Moon' a short-lived hand-written polar newspaper from 1881 housed in the National Archive. She'd like to share it or to archive it. Any suggestions?

Kvikk Lunsj on the BBC! I like how this article traces changing ideas of nature and recreation through what people ate outside: www.bbc.co.uk/travel/artic...

Excited to see this chapter in print - it's about British travellers in Jotunheimen, travel infrastructure and the idea of remoteness: books.radbouduniversitypress.nl/index.php/ru...

Absolutely astounded that the UCU and Unison branches at Kent and Greenwich were not consulted, and that staff only found out about the merger this morning via BBC news and Kent Online. Solidarity to all colleagues.

The centre-left bloc has won the Norwegian parliamentary election. I am temporarily relieved. We have a lot of work to do in the years ahead, but this could have gone so, so much worse.

Having decided I want my public scholarship to be properly public, rather than behind a paywall, I've decided to make everything I've written for my newsletter - going back over two years - free to read for the foreseeable future.

A huge moment -- Melvyn Bragg steps down from In Our Time after over a quarter of a century. What a programme and what a legacy! Just a model for how to make great, clever, engaging radio, and a twenty-seven-year experiment that proves there's a huge global audience for smart, scholarly programming.

Check out this guest lecture at U. of Stavanger this Friday with Professor Mathias Danbolt from Copenhagen U. "Monumental Expectations: Notes on Queer, Feminist, and Antiracist Public Memoralization in Norway." @sebmergence.bsky.social and I will have a podcast interview with him soon as well.

Peter Wessel Zapffe bouldering near Tromsø in 1927 📷: Nasjonalbiblioteket

Vi står sammen i kampen mot rasisme! 🌻

Denmark PM apologises over ‘physical and psychological harm’ caused by IUD scandal www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...