This is an excellent book - and a fantastic cover! Really looking forward to seeing ‘Museums and Patronage’ publish later this year 🎉 We’ve been an Associate Partner on the Museums and Industry project the book links to, led by the Science Museum Group. @sciencemuseum.org.uk @sas-news.bsky.social

University of London Press@uolpress.bsky.social · 2d ago

We LOVE the cover for new book, Museums and Patronage: The History and Ethics of Industrial Funding, edited by Scott Anthony, Alice Byrne & Harry Parker, publishing #OpenAccess in Dec. uolpress.co.uk/book/museums... Many thanks to designer Hayley Warnham! Check out her work: www.hayleywarnham.com

Cancelled Futures: Class, Race & Place in Post-Industrial Britain 16th September at UCL I'll be talking race, class & place with @alexkelbert.bsky.social & @lukedenoronha.bsky.social Hosted by @uclsociology.bsky.social & @sprc-ucl.bsky.social Tickets: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cancelled-...

Free advice: try to live your life in such a way that people won't be queuing up to celebrate your death.

Today's devolution announcements show that this govt is serious about doing it right. My post from this week on why I'm optimistic and the five big challenges to making it work. samf.substack.com/p/burnhams-d...

Burnham's defining project

The five biggest challenges to making devolution work

samf.substack.com

No shit!

There’s just two more days to get your abstracts in for @ukdishisthub.bsky.social’s November event! #CFP #DisHist

UK Disability History and Heritage Hub@ukdishisthub.bsky.social · 2mo ago

CFP alert: We are thrilled to announce the Call for Presenters for a hybrid event in collaboration with @britishlibrary.bsky.social! This will be taking place on 27th November 2026, with presentations happening both in-person and online. Deadline to submit your ideas is: 31st July 2026! #DisHist

Grateful for this review in the Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies!: ‘This book is a call to action, a reminder that current archival practice has just as much of an ‘active effect in guiding how we respond to and categorise objects’ as Sloane himself once did’ doi.org/10.1111/1754...

<citation type='book' id='jecs70047-cit-0002'><bookTitle>Hans Sloane's Library Collection and the Production of Knowledge</bookTitle>. By <author><givenNames>Alice</givenNames> <familyName>Wickenden</familyName></author>. <publisherLoc>Cambridge</publisherLoc>: <publisherName>Cambridge University Press</publisherName>. <pubYear year='2025'>2025</pubYear>. 264 p. £95 (hb). ISBN 978‐1‐00949‐739‐8.</citation>

Click on the article title to read more.

doi.org

This is an actual holy grail.

Gary Brannan@garybrannan.bsky.social · last wk.

Ach, you know what? Why not. Here’s Alan Bennett’s closing monologue from ‘On the Margin’, missing for nearly 60 years, and found on a Sony CV2000 tape in the Galton and Simpson archive You, dear viewer, are one of the few people ever to have seen this. Enjoy! discover.york.ac.uk/collections/...

As predicated, I wish to go back in time and have several strong words with myself.

Alice Marples@alicemarples.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Okay. Does anyone have any advice on monograph indexing? Is it madness to do it myself? What would I need to know to do it?

Puddles, Manchester, 2021, photo by Ruxx Naqvi.

My new book, An Injury to All: The Unmaking of the British Working Class, is coming out in October. You can preorder it from Waterstones with a 25% discount today and tomorrow! Place your order here ⬇️ www.waterstones.com/book/an-inju...

Playing music has been proven to be good for so many areas of the brain, it's even better if you sing at the same time. If we protect live music venues we are also protecting the nation's mental health and so much more. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Business rates to be cut by 20% for pubs, clubs and music venues in England

Burnham says relief for vape shops and other ‘non-positive’ businesses to be reviewed as part of £100m plan to fund cut

theguardian.com

I never get tired of this one.

Richard Kadrey@richardkadrey.bsky.social · 2w ago

Good morning

I spent 6 weeks in Manchester in 2019 speaking with people experiencing homelessness and documenting their lives for Outsiders. It was far and away the best city in Britain for the way it was dealing with the homelessness crisis.

Nearly 4,000 academic posts in social sciences, humanities and the arts have been axed in one year alone. In the 12 months to December 2024, just under 3,000 social sciences, 820 humanities and 240 arts jobs went. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Humanities among degrees being ‘extinguished’ by hard-up universities

Exclusive: Experts fear rise in education ‘cold spots’ and social immobility as 4,000 academic posts lost in one year

theguardian.com

God's Own, by Paula Dunn, Saltaire-based artist.

'Early career opportunities have rapidly declined in the fields of arts and humanities amid UK job cuts, with teaching-only roles increasingly the only positions available for those just starting out, an analysis by the British Academy has found.' 1/3

Humanities hardest hit as early career opportunities disappear

Analysis of staff data finds skew to teaching-only roles in entry-level positions, with scale of cuts not reflected at more senior levels

timeshighereducation.com

But the severity of what we're now seeing in SHAPE disciplines is new and different. Coupled with the contraction of teaching and research contracts, what we're seeing poses a threat to HE teaching and research alike. Who is minding the shop? 3/3

The pipeline has always been leaky. We know that we fail to attract and retain key cohorts of researchers: class, ethnicity, gender and race are among the known barriers to entry. 2/3

Early career researchers are the lifeblood of any discipline. Their entrance into academia is at the heart of its renewal. What happens when those arteries are blocked? That's one of the questions the British Academy's SHAPE Observatory is asking. 1/3

Loss of academic staff and "cold spots" for humanities and social science degrees threaten strategically important skills for UK, says British Academy

A new data map released today shows a sharp and widespread decline in opportunities for university staff in the humanities, social sciences and arts subjects in 2024-25. The data shows a precarious la...

thebritishacademy.ac.uk

And a Glasgow Style gesso panel by Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh: 'Summer'.

'The initiative, launched by Chatsworth House Trust with Derbyshire Libraries, allows groups of up to eight people to visit the house, gardens and grounds at no cost. The pilot comes amid the growing cost of living crisis...[that is] putting many cultural experiences beyond...[families'] reach.'

Chatsworth House pilots ‘community membership’ free entry scheme

Initiative with Derbyshire Libraries aims to boost access to cultural experiences and ‘champion reading for pleasure’

theguardian.com

'This week, reports emerged that the Department for Education (DfE) intends to remove teaching grant support for creative and performing arts courses in English universities as part of a wider reprioritisation of the Strategic Priorities Grant (SPG).' 1/2

We should invent a kind of canceling where the guy goes away

Your June reminder that if you're a UK-based holder of an Arts, Humanities or Social Science (SHAPE) degree, or equivalent, within 10 years (excluding career breaks) of your PhD, you are warmly invited to join the British Academy's Early Career Researcher Network. 1/2

Early Career Researcher Network

An inclusive, researcher-led network for UK-based early career researchers working in the humanities and social sciences

thebritishacademy.ac.uk

Sobering to see in one chart how June temperature records have been broken this year in so many European countries www.ft.com/content/5f06...

Keen to hear from any British-based historians looking for freelance research work. Happy to hear from all backgrounds and experiences.

Just ONE WEEK left to apply to these two fantastic (if I do say so myself) early career research development projects

Alice Marples@alicemarples.bsky.social · 2mo ago

We have two new 12-month postdoctoral fellowship opportunities at the British Library! Applications open soon to co-design projects in the following areas: - Colonial Deposit and our Newspaper Collection - Local Large Language Models and Personal Born-Digital Archives www.bl.uk/services/res...

AMAZING and very well done to all involved!!! 🥳

Digital Scholarship @ British Library@bldigischol.bsky.social · 4w ago

EThOS platform restored! 'Following restoration work, all metadata records previously available on EThOS have now been restored, along with an additional 14,000 records added since the service was taken offline' - more to come www.bl.uk/stories/news...