📢PROJECT UPDATE📢 You may have seen the news that the University of Exeter, home of the wills project, has placed 500 academics at risk of redundancy. The project leader Prof. Jane Whittle & project co-investigator Dr Laura Sangha are both at risk, alongside almost all of the History department. 1/

Major funding secured! 🏛️💛 We’re thrilled to share that the @wolfsonfdn.bsky.social has committed £600,000 as a Founding Partner to help make our new permanent home in the City of London a reality. We're one step closer to bringing the UK’s missing museum to life in Spring 2028! 🧵👇 📸 Unknown Works

Did you know that #Elizabethans kept Andean guinea pigs as pets? In this extract from #AGoldenWorld for Unseen Histories, I trace some of the parrots, monkeys, crocodiles, boars, flying squirrels & other Atlantic creatures in English parks & country houses: www.unseenhistories.com/the-tudor-an...

Today I discovered that a letter attributed to a man was actually written by Ann Bathurst, the 17th-century visionary woman I’m researching. 🤩 Archival work might be slow and painstaking but it’s totally thrilling to be going in search of lost voices from the past and finding them! 📚

And not just Exeter. At least 2 History Leicester FBAs have had to leave the University to stay in the profession due to risk of redundancy, and they won't be the only ones. The much broader issue affects thousands of excellent academics across a spectrum of disciplines (including STEM ones). 1/2

New British Academy fellows at risk in Exeter jobs cull

Being at the ‘top of your game’ no guarantee of job security, warns decorated historian now facing the chop

timeshighereducation.com

open.substack.com/pub/lizzywil...

On Redundancy

Four weeks ago, the university that I have been working at for 9 years announced massive, unjustified, reckless job cuts, predominantly targeting the humanities, arts and social sciences.

open.substack.com

Blissful day at the British Library and a rare break from the whirlwind of looking after a 10-month-old, bc what do you mean I can read what I want, for hours, in relative silence without interruptions. Felt like a Lady of Leisure.

Please share! A rare PhD studentship @kingshistory.bsky.social *fully* funded by @slaveryinwar.bsky.social to work with myself and Maeve Ryan, supported by a broader community of experts in Caribbean history, transatlantic slavery, and the history of war. www.kcl.ac.uk/study/fundin... 🗃️

AHRC Studentship: Slavery and the Seven Years’ War within and across the Caribbean Archipelago | King's College London

The Leverhulme Centre for Research on Slavery in War (CRSW) is pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded AHRC doctoral studentship, to be jointly supervised across History and War Studies

kcl.ac.uk

✨ KCL is offering a fully-funded MPhil/PhD in French via the Sévigné Scholarship 🖋️. Details here: www.kcl.ac.uk/study/postgr...

French Research | King's College London

MPhil/PhD Research in French at King's College London.

kcl.ac.uk

One of our favourite nature facts is that a group of ladybirds is called a 'loveliness'. 📷 Rob Coleman

***job klaxon!*** Postdoctoral Research Associate on ERC-funded project TextDiveGlobal at QMUL 12 month post from 1 September 2026 Apply by 28 July: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSG130/p...

Postdoctoral Research Associate - 'TextDiveGlobal' at Queen Mary University of London

Apply now for the Postdoctoral Research Associate - 'TextDiveGlobal' role on jobs.ac.uk - the leading job board for higher education jobs. View details.

jobs.ac.uk

Thrilled to have my research on Elizabeth's letters, conducted on @misswalsingham.bsky.social 's FEATHERS project, in The Times: www.thetimes.com/article/093f...

Elizabeth I’s spymaster played up her ‘vicious’ temper

Research suggests Sir Francis Walsingham made the Tudor queen’s letters more emotional as part of a campaign to influence her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots

thetimes.com

My review of Lauren Working's 'A Golden World' will be in August's BBC History Extra. It's a brilliant book, and the review is the first time in print that I've called myself a historian (I've only been thinking and writing about the 'English' Atlantic and EIC for 13+ years pre-PhD).

Cutting language courses puts #SocialMobility at risk, say #UK experts. #HE, #MFL, #languages, #HigherEducation. 📚📝🎧🗣️🔍📉☹️ www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Cutting language courses puts social mobility at risk, say UK experts

Exclusive: University moves and falling exam entries fuel concerns about opportunities for working-class pupils

theguardian.com

I agree with all the takes about an attack on the humanities being an attack on critical thinking, &c. It’s also about joy, though. ‘Why bother studying that’ is always also a sneer at — why do you think you should get to do something you enjoy? Grow up and be miserable all the time!

First they came for the languages. In the hope that no one would have the words to say what was happening. 1/9🧵

University of Aberdeen's plans to cut modern language degrees were 'rushed' - review

The University of Aberdeen says it accepts there were "missteps" in its process in 2023.

bbc.co.uk

Whilst writing about trav(ailing) #earlymodern bodies all summer, I forgot to advertise that my latest article is out in the world. It’s about English travellers’ ahum stomach problems in the Levant (on brand, I knew, I think Kirsty Rolfe once called this draft ‘flux capacitor’…).

Naomi Klein is always excellent.

CALL FOR PAPERS  📣   Experiencing Relief in Early Modern Britain: 1500-1800   We welcome papers from ECRs, PGRs, and established scholars. For more info (e.g., how to submit a paper) please see our website: earlymodernreliefconference2027.wordpress.com #earlymodern #earlymodernists #AcademicSky

Thanks to all sending messages of support as me and my colleagues in Humanities and Social Sciences at Exeter face being made redundant in September. I'll be back here once it's less hot & I can think. Please consider signing & sharing this petition: www.change.org/p/stop-redun... #EarlyModern 🗃️

Sign the Petition

Stop Redundancies at the University of Exeter

change.org

🌟 Dr Genevieve Robyn Arkle @kingsmusic.bsky.social is among five of the UK’s most promising early-career academics chosen by BBC Radio 4 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to help shape Radio 4 programming and share their research with wider audiences.

Dr Genevieve Robyn Arkle named BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker | King's College London

Dr Genevieve Robyn Arkle has been selected as one of this year’s BBC and AHRC New Generation Thinkers.

kcl.ac.uk

Applications are open for the 2026/27 BSECS-Northumbria Fellowship, offering expenses up to the value of £4000 to support a visiting scholar undertaking research into the long eighteenth century. More information and apply at bsecs.org.uk/prizes-and-a... @bsecs.bsky.social

Our Annual Colloquium is next week! Join us on Thursday 11th June for a series of panels and a roundtable on 'Periodizing the Early/Modern'. Full details below! kingsearlymodern.co.uk/events/cfp-p...

Periodizing the Early/Modern - Annual CEMS Colloquium — CEMS KCL Blog

The annual CEMS colloquium. This year’s theme is on Periodizing the Early/Modern. The colloquium will feature several panels and a roundtable. The Colloquium will take place on 11th June.

kingsearlymodern.co.uk

A gorgeous evening celebrating a gorgeous book. Congratulations again @laurenworking.bsky.social on A Golden World, a book that traces the influence of the Americas in early modern England from canoes to copper, from silver to sunflowers🌻.

Really can't cope with the fact that Nottingham's now departed VC (now VC at Leeds - god help them) wasted £80 MILLION on a building it is now selling at a crushing loss (£14m), and is attempting to recoup some of that by sacking 100s of academics and decimating the institution. Absolutely criminal.

Onni Gust@onnigust.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Shedding 608 academic posts but creating 75 new managerial posts. No clear answers as to what those posts are, who they will go to, and why we need them.

When I tell you I cannot *wait* to read this 🫶

Nandini Das@rentravailer.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I'm in the new issue of @historytoday.com with a review of Penny Roberts's latest, an honest to god archival detective story which reconstructs sixteenth-century Huguenot networks from a bag of letters seized at the port of Dieppe. www.historytoday.com/archive/revi...

‘Huguenot Networks’ by Penny Roberts review

historytoday.com

Spanish-English Translations Database, 1500 – 1640 This freely accessible database records translation activity between England & Spain in the early modern period, with detailed title page transcriptions, copy specific details and index of dedicatees & printers. spanish-english-translation.ucl.ac.uk

Let it be clear: you are wanted here.

In both the US and UK, we will soon have higher ed institutions with hundreds of managers who have never stood in the classroom and no faculty.

Dr Dave Hitchcock@davehitchcock.bsky.social · 3mo ago

The Office for Students thinks "institutions should base their plans on more prudent forecasts to secure their long-term financial health and ensure they can continue to deliver a high quality education for students." What they mean is, you lot aren't cutting or merging hard enough or fast enough.