📢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/

Fifty years ago, Carlo Ginzburg published a book about the extraordinary mind of an Italian miller, demonstrating the power of microhistory. A new edition has just been published and I've reviewed it for @historytoday.com: www.historytoday.com/archive/revi...

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! 📚

Some very REQciting news. My Court of Requests pleadings (REQ 2/16-424) project is now complete. Over 28,000 items dating from c.1547-c.1625 (Edw VI to Jas I) now searchable online. Happy researching everyone 🙂 discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/browse/r/h/C...

Reminder that the deadline for Birkbeck's Access to Postgraduate Study Scholarships is 31 July. A great scheme for studying on a master's degree programme at an ace institution. Wide range of eligibility criteria (see next post). Do encourage eligible applicants (or apply yourself). 1/2

Spending a few weeks in a proper country with proper trees.

Last week, about a third of the History department were able to gather together on graduation day. Rather than lend our intellectual authority to the official procession and ceremony we invited our students to come and celebrate their achievements with us in a shady courtyard. They came. 1/

We are hiring a new Editorial Fellow who specialises in pre-1800 CE history from any part of the globe 🌍 👉 this 2-year fellowship runs from October 2026 - September 2028 👉 this role is paid and part-time (3 hours per week) 👉 the application deadline is Friday 7 August Please share widely!

Call for Applications: Editorial Fellowship at History Workshop, 2026

History Workshop is seeking to appoint one Editorial Fellow in 2026, with specialism in pre-1800 CE history from any part of the globe.

historyworkshop.org.uk

Now I'm back from parental leave, a shout out to my book - Violent Waters: Environmental Politics in Early Modern England - which came out four months after our baby. 🐣 👉 www.cambridge.org/core/books/v...

Things are so bad I joined WhatsApp (still don't have a smartphone though, no). In amongst the serious stuff in our 'at risk' chat are some Very Lovely Things. For instance, my colleague who works on the Italian Renaissance shared this photo of the Archivio di Stato di Roma, where she currently is:

Just a reminder to everyone: join a trade union. And if you're already a member, please be active. Vote, volunteer, become a rep or an officer. You are the union. The larger the union membership the more strength and agency we have.

Is it coming home? No. But for centuries football, home and identity have been closely entwined, as @aucointaylor.bsky.social reveals in this fab new blog post... manyheadedmonster.com/2026/07/17/b...

Becoming Home: Football and Geographic Identity in Early Modern Britain

This summer’s football World Cup has prompted lots of talk of ‘historic’ matches and rivalries that have played out over decades, but the game’s history – and its conn…

manyheadedmonster.com

This is amazing-- a page of Mi'kmaq hieroglyphs or gomgwejui'gasit, with their meanings in Mi'kmaq and some in English; these were written by a Naskapi-Innu man named Gabriel in the 1790s.

My first book is finally out! Here's a blog post about it: cambridgeblog.org/2026/07/fren...

Who held the power during an arrest in early modern England? @lucyjsclarke.bsky.social explores how bystanders could uphold or undermine the power of the state.

Being an Audience to Arrest

Lucy Clarke examines the arrest in early modern England, reconstructing how bystanders could legitimise or challenge the power of the state.

historyworkshop.org.uk

Utter confusion exists among the historians

Today's the day! We getting more than twenty staff, research fellows and postgrads together at Birkbeck to talk about all our different projects, hosted by our Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Worlds: www.bbk.ac.uk/research/cen... Primary sources! Pastries!! Air conditioning!!!

In the final week of my Microhistories module at @bbkhistorical.bsky.social, I asked students to imagine a microhistory starting with just one primary source. The results were brilliant, so follow along to hear about a bunch of books that definitely need to be written! 🗃️🧵 #Microhistories 1/?

The weekend! Why not write a quick email to your MP to encourage them to stop #UKHE spiraling? With the change in leadership and Burnham's focus on regional strengths, there's a window to change government's strategy. Template with suggested low-cost interventions: docs.google.com/document/d/e...

I'm back: I may be made redundant in September, but right now I am still part of a world leading @leverhulme.ac.uk research project, working with a whip smart group of people using cutting edge AI technology to produce a dataset of of unprecedented scale. I will be focusing on research when I can.

Today the government repealed the 1824 Vagrancy Act. The focus has been on rough sleeping but the government has also accidentality repealed one of the most anti-Romani pieces of legislation. I've been researching the act and here's why its interesting www.gov.uk/government/n... 1/5

Rough sleeping no longer a crime as Vagrancy Act repealed

The government will repeal the Vagrancy Act on Monday 29 June 2026, ending nearly two centuries of legislation that has criminalised rough sleeping and begging.

gov.uk

📣 Call for Applications 📣 History Workshop is seeking to appoint one Editorial Fellow in 2026, with specialism in pre-1800 CE history from any part of the globe. This is a part-time, paid role. Application deadline: 7 August 2026. Please share widely!

Call for Applications: Editorial Fellowship at History Workshop, 2026

History Workshop is seeking to appoint one Editorial Fellow in 2026, with specialism in pre-1800 CE history from any part of the globe.

historyworkshop.org.uk

Ok, look, what's been particularly infuriating about the redundancies at Exeter (and Nottingham and Newcastle and and and) is this weird idea that it only affects those individuals and institutions. It harms us all because we are so closely interconnected.

Pretty much every academic at every UK university has a significant possibility getting the 'at risk of redundancy' email. Act accordingly.

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · last mo.

Outside permanent posts at Cambridge and Oxford, there are no safe spaces. Accepting that is an essential step toward resisting it. Likewise, there are no safe disciplines/subjects. Thinking strategically demands thinking with solidarity.

Along with almost all of my colleagues in history, this afternoon I got an email telling me that I am at risk of redundancy. It looks like the University of Exeter sent this email to the vast majority of people in Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty. Bit hard to breath right now.

Ben Phillips@benphillips1989.bsky.social · last mo.

A statement from Exeter UCU branch @ucu.org.uk - please share far and wide.

The death of Carlo Ginzburg prompts me to recommend to you all @vreinburg.bsky.social's recent wonderful article in the 2025 Huntington Quarterly on Menocchio, which fills in some gaps in that microhistory. #earlymodern muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/journ...

Brodie Waddell@brodiewaddell.bsky.social · 2mo ago

'to undertake a narrow investigation of a solitary miller may seem paradoxical or absurd, practically a return to handweaving in an age of power looms' But he did it anyway. Saddened to learn of the death of Carlo Ginzburg, one of the greats.

Again for the morning crowd. I wrote this because I'm troubled by the recent rash of 'lamentation' pieces about the so-called death of the university, and because I strongly feel climate analogies need to be used ethically and responsibly. #UKHE #UCU

Matilda Fitzmaurice@matildaf.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Hi #UCU. l wrote a response to Lorna Finlayson's latest NLR piece, 'Irreversible'. It's from the heart as a precarious academic, a trade unionist and, frankly, someone who thinks the climate change metaphor used in the original piece is unhelpful and damaging. ucucommons.org/we-shouldnt-...

'to undertake a narrow investigation of a solitary miller may seem paradoxical or absurd, practically a return to handweaving in an age of power looms' But he did it anyway. Saddened to learn of the death of Carlo Ginzburg, one of the greats.

Rehabilitating Wilfrid! New from Peter Darby in @ihr.bsky.social Historical Research. 'The 2 Wilfridian petitions provide evidence that a sophisticated & learned community, inc skilled administrators... was fostered by Wilfrid [which]... endured across at least 3 decades...' doi.org/10.1093/hisr...