Please spread this far and wide! I’m on the convening team of this exciting new IHR seminar series and we are looking forward to hearing about all the cutting-edge research being done by ECRs across the country!

There was indeed a swan-panic in 2003 Britain - I remember it well - but it wasn't a British invention. Rumours thatthe swans at Schönbrunn Palace were being eaten by Roma migrants were widespread in 1990s Austria. So the British rumour was itself a migrant...

Trijn van Leemput was a Dutch heroine of the Eighty Year’s War and became a lasting symbol of Utrecht’s resistance against the Spanish. According to legend, in 1577 Trijn led a group of women to begin the demolition of the city’s Vredenburg Castle — hence the pickaxe and the brick.

It is with profound sadness that The Yorkshire County Cricket Club announces the passing of Harold Dennis “Dickie” Bird MBE OBE, one of cricket’s most beloved figures, who died peacefully at home at the age of 92. Read more: yorkshireccc.com/news/harold-...

Happy Independence Day, Bulgarian friends! (even if it was in fact 5 October in the Gregorian calendar). Son has just landed in Sofia and would be very happy to be invited to any parties (related to this or otherwise..)

A scholar is listing their languages as 'Romanian, Moldavian, Moldovan' - huh?

Gone into production!

On the National Day of Catalonia, explore Catalonia’s literature, history & identity with a free issue of Catalan Review, published for the North American Catalan Society. Available online at: bit.ly/CATR-36-1 #Catalan @wviestenz.bsky.social @berlihe.bsky.social

🇪🇺 Tomorrow @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu delivers her #SOTEU speech, setting #EU priorities for the year ahead At PLATFORMA & @ccre-cemr.bsky.social we’ll be listening with our Bingo,📝 hoping she recognises the role of #LocalGov in international action Check what we would love to hear in her speech!

Fascinating by Gabe Eckhouse & @ewangibbs.bsky.social on "Two Late Imperial Oil Booms" (UK & US). To my mind though a crucial distinction is the massive domestic resource base and origins of the US #oilandgas industry & the imperial origins of the UK's. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The Hamburg team (Professor Alan Kramer) of our @erc.europa.eu Synergy Grant BLOCKADE is looking for a FOUR YEAR PostDoc to work on blockade as 'slow violence' in the Great War-era Middle East. Please share! www.uni-hamburg.de/en/stellenan...

"La prima vedere, un subiect simplu dar spectaculos, ori în realitate este dificil, pentru că autorul a înțeles să-l trateze într-un mod complex [...] Merită ca munca lui să fie dusă mai departe." - thanks to Radu Mârza for this review #Istoriamămăligii peregristorii.wordpress.com/2025/09/05/a...

Learning a foreign language and have trouble with days of the week? Start from Romanian and learn Welsh, problem solved

The European dream: “In 2020-2021, the Dutch Labour Inspectorate reported that more than two-thirds of severely disadvantaged workers employed by an employment agency in low-wage industries were Romanian. The trend is most pronounced in the meat industry…”

My op-ed in the @chicagomaroon.bsky.social on the University of Chicago’s appalling plans to gut the humanities and possibly eliminate the South Asian studies department chicagomaroon.com/48353/viewpo...

Plums (ctd.)

Jammy morning #Sunday

Plums (ctd) – pitting and halving the damsons for oven drying #Saturday #ilfautcultiver

My students learn the roots of the words 'data' & 'facts': - data is stuff that's 'given', you don't interrogate it - facts are 'made', the historian has to establish them A big difference

Thinking about "La Grande Peur" as a historiographical construct, the Ngram graph for the phrase is quite curious (See, I too am a scientist, am 'measuring' stuff..)

Are any pals planning to be in the Dutch Nationaal Archief any time soon? I have two things I'd love to see (no more than a page of manuscript to photograph in each) if anyone's there and has the bandwidth!

🧵1/ Our branch just passed a motion condemning the stealth closure of the MA in Black British History. We did this to demand accountability — for the future of the MA and for the College’s promises on racial justice and equality. shorturl.at/gIUVG

Feels like #autumn

This is a fantastic database of Dutch West India Company employees in the seventeenth century (1635-1664) - 168 entries for people from Hamburg alone 👇

There will be many casualties from UChicago ending ('pausing') PhD admissions in Humantities, but one which I am keenly aware of: this is close to a death sentence for teaching cuneiform in the United States (esp. Sumerian, Hittite, Elamite, Eblaite, Luwian) and it will affect the whole world.

Happy Independence Day to the Republic of Moldova! Have a listen to Zdob şi Zdub, "Hora cosmică" www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f_8...

CFP: Living with Water: Food and Life. Sixteenth International Conference on Food Studies, University of Osaka, 2026 food-studies.com/2026-confere...

Um, ok. Thanks, GPT-5.

We are seeking a PhD candidate with an interest in East–West European relations (1970s–1990s) to work with me and Aline Sierp. The deadline for submitting proposals is 28 September. vacancies.maastrichtuniversity.nl/job/Maastric...

Haide bre! According to several dictionaries, the pan-Balkan salutation 'bre' comes from Balkan Turkish 'bre' < Greek μπρέ < contraction of Byzantine Greek μωρέ, vocative of μωρός ‚stupid’. If this is true, then ‚bre’ has the same etymology as English ‚moron’.

New 📖 - "Balkan Historiographical Wars: The Middle Ages" edited by Diana Mishkova, Roumen Daskalov link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

Changing from gas to induction hob means I'd have to change my beloved moka pot which has never gone wrong in a decade. You can get induction-compatible ones now. But the big question is, can you make #mămăligă on an induction hob? Advice welcome

Eco-brag - I now have an air-sourced heat pump and couldn't be happier 😀

Did not know - Dutch/German 'kind' and English 'child' do not come from the same root 1st is PG kinþiz 'kin, race', 2nd is PG kelþaz 'womb, fetus'

Main word for child different in each major Romance language (enfant, copil, bambino, criança, niño) & none of them descends from the Latin puer (Katzner, Languages of the World [1977] 2002 edn, 13)

Very exciting: the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography published a cluster of new entries on women stationers. See the intro by Valerie Wayne: www.oxforddnb.com/newsitem/906... ODNB entries are so helpful in identifying women from traces on printed material. So happy to see this work ❤️

Pronouncing words like şaisprezece (sixteen), ţânţar (mosquito) and aşteptaţi (you are waiting) can feel like chewing cotton wool at first, but I’m glad I persevered, because that blend of hard and soft textures is one of the Romanian language’s great treasures. www.gordondarroch.com/romanian-ody...

Two types of travel writer- the liar and the bore (Henry Fielding)

Weird how, if everyone's supposed to be good at maths, they can't report statistics properly

Graduate outcomes and incomes as well as course satisfaction in History are all actually strong. Suggesting that Humanities degrees are not 'career-related' is simply bizarre. 2/2

Saturday #ilfautcultiver

Revise and resubmit for the article. People should be more happy with this, I got such constructive suggestions, how can you not want that? Always be grateful for good peer review, it will improve your published work

The advert I got when googling news about Iliescu's death

Saturday #ilfautcultiver

Lottery ticket from 1833 i win a house in Bucharest! (Romanian Academy Library) aleph23.biblacad.ro:8991/F/F5CK2AQKS1...

Mirabelle plums vs. parsnip & mushroom soup

Mary Shelley on Invention (Frankenstein, preface to 1831 edn.)

Word counts for history journal articles should be proportionate to what needs to be said - what is wrong with 1000 or 20000 words?