Benjamin Thomas White
@btwhite.bsky.social
Researching and teaching refugee history. No DMs, I'm afraid, please email me (easy to find).
I used to make choices based on what helps students learn. Now I make choices like I'm trying to identify replicants with the Voight-Kampff test
Bryan Edward Stone (שָׁלוֹם)@bestonetx.bsky.social · 5d agoI'm going back to in-class exams this semester, which are harder to schedule, less intellectually rigorous, slower to grade, harder to secure, more prone to error, harder to provide disability acommodations for, and use up a lot more paper than online exams. AI makes everything worse.
1. Amnesty International has withstood threats from death squads and dictators. But it could not stand up to JK Rowling and the anti-trans movement she finances. It has apologized for calling those groups "anti-rights" after legal threats. Subscribe to support our journalism.
Amnesty International UK Caves To JK Rowling, Issues Apology For Calling Anti-Trans Groups "Anti-Rights"
The organization has stood up to dictators and death squads, but Rowling and the UK's anti-speech laws were apparently too much.
erininthemorning.com
When you hear politicians, in particular, shouting about "military age men" what that really means is "ending asylum for women and children as well" because none of them are talking about opening genuinely safer options. It's a handy phrase to increase hostility and racism, but means nothing. 3/
Last year, we hosted a series of workshops with @glasgow.ac.uk to reflect on, discuss and learn about #refugee camps as they are experienced by the practitioners who work in them. Read a newly-published summary of these conversations ➡️ buff.ly/MgLhq0u @btwhite.bsky.social @kerrie115.bsky.social
Refugee camps: current practice and historical perspectives
This outcome note details the reflection, discussion and learning that were generated in a series of workshops that sought to bring together stakeholders from a wide range of organisations led by and ...
buff.ly
The Funds for Women Graduates Theodora Bosanquet Bursary is available to PG women studying History or English Lit to finance up to 4 weeks of basic accommodation in London in summer 2027. Email grants@ffwg.org.uk for an application form between 31 August and 31 October 2026. Details: www.ffwg.org.uk
Funds for Women Graduates – Funds for Women Graduates
ffwg.org.uk
A reminder that UC _faculty_ and Faculty Associations — not the universities themselves nor their administrators — are waging this battle in court, demonstrating great bravery and moral clarity.
White House admits it used keywords to kill billions worth of California research grants
Federal agencies that terminated more than a thousand research grants at the University of California last year admitted that they used keywords related to diversity, gender, vaccine hesitancy and COV...
apnews.com
What's gender go to do with it? Within UK SHAPE disciplines, women are 51% of academic staff (39% of professors). In STEM, that's 45% of all academics (27% of professors). What are the impacts of disproportionate SHAPE redundancies on those stats? Is anyone attending to gender equality? 1/2
Come along to the Watershed at the Briggait during Festival 2026 and the Merchant City Festival. Two weekends of river rights events, talks, poetry, song, storytelling & more! Hosted by UofG's @louisewelsh00.bsky.social & architect @judebarber.bsky.social ➡️ www.eventbrite.co.uk/cc/watershed...
This petition needs as many signatories as the Exeter one. Please sign and share — don’t let Hertfordshire managers get away with this just because a Russell Group one took the spotlight. #UKHE
Joanna Bourke@joannabourke.bsky.social · 3mo agoShocking news about redundancies in the Humanities at the University of Hertfordshire, despite their exceptional research activities. I have signed the petition against these actions: it would be great if you would as well: c.org/kDQynZV7J4 @bbkhistorical.bsky.social @bisa-bkk.bsky.social
📣 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
A statement from Exeter UCU branch @ucu.org.uk - please share far and wide.
This is timely. My institution, one of the most financially secure in the country, has just announced a voluntary severance scheme and a promotions freeze.
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.
There is a LOT to think about in this thread.
Crystal Fleming クリスタル@alwaystheself.bsky.social · 2mo agoI'm attending a digital humanities event in Montreal. There was a keynote on AI and something about the talk made me wonder if it had been written by Claude. I said as much in the Q&A. As I posed the question, the speaker shifted, looking slightly uncomfortable. What he said next shocked the room +
Thanks for helping push this up the charts - a modest achievement but we've done this with relatively little mainstream media coverage. That's something we expected, so we came up with a plan to circumvent, which is why all your recommendations, shares, feedback etc matter a huge amount.
Daniel Trilling@trillingual.bsky.social · 3mo agoIF WE TOLERATE THIS is out today! These are worrying times politically but if there's one thing I want to get across, it's that the slide into far-right nationalism is not inevitable. Please help me spread the word. uk.bookshop.org/p/books/if-w...
❗REMINDER ❗ This online event takes place on Tuesday 23 (next week). Phil Crockett Thomas @stirunicriminology.bsky.social will explore utopian temporalities and abolitionist world-building in her presentation. Just bring your lunch and your curiosity and we will see you there!
Scottish Centre for Crime & Justice Research@thesccjr.bsky.social · 2mo ago📍@philcrockettthomas.bsky.social will explore themes from her article 'Straying with the Trouble: Science fiction, utopia and the anti-carceral imagination' at our next Justice Futures Seminar. Tues 23 June, 12-1pm, Online. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1990402334...
An excellent thread on museums and AI.
Sonja Drimmer@sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 2mo agoOne of the things I research is the cooperation of cultural institutions like museums in pitching tech products--specifically AI--to the public. This is advertising for the capacity of AI to educate and thus to reshape education itself as a project better left to private tech companies. 1/n
NEW: A Reform UK activist who campaigns with top party figures joined the racist rioters in Glasgow on Tuesday and has claimed that “Jews" are trying "to dilute our Protestant stock and shatter the Union”, The National can reveal.
Lovely, thoughtful article in the Bell on Glasgow's characteristic sandstone and the challenges of maintaining it: www.glasgowbell.co.uk/glasgow-sand...
Glasgow’s sandstone is beautiful. But can it last?
'Even the Alps will end up in the sea'. The same forces are at work in Glasgow
glasgowbell.co.uk
As in the case of Section 28, the CoP’s effects will be highly uneven and more about fear and silencing than anything else. Carving out spaces in our own communities where its effects can’t be felt is an essential aspect of resisting it.
Lisa Power@thisislisapower.bsky.social · 2mo agoToday’s the anniversary of the passing into law of Section 28 in 1988, the first homophobic legislation in a century. Politicians and media said it was our own fault, told us to shut up and give up. We didn’t. Dont you dare give up now on trans people.
I spoke to @scotsman.com about social class as a dominant inequality which rarely speaks its name in Scottish politics. Holyrood is dominated by a professional polo class and has failed to meet the trade union movement’s hopes for a ‘workers’ parliament’.
Is social class Holyrood's hidden inequality?
A new study shines a harsh light on the Scottish Parliament’s class representation
scotsman.com
Every summer I repost this article on how to spot drowning. Please read it and pass on. In the last few years I’ve had SIX messages from people who saved a kid’s life after clicking on the link from my feed. slate.com/technology/2...
Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning
Drowning is not the violent, splashing call for help that most people expect.
slate.com
I heard a cuckoo in Queen's Park this lunchtime, and it seemed to me so unlikely that I have to assume someone was (very convincingly) imitating one.
Solidarity with uk (and global) trans folk. Archaeology says gender is and always has been complicated, contested, dynamic and definitely not binary. None of us is free until all of us are. Trans liberation now!
Archaeologists for Trans Liberation | anthro{dendum}
By The Black Trowel Collective To be an archaeologist is to revel in the diversity of human expression through time. Trans perspectives and voices add necessary further dimensions to our…
anthrodendum.org
Some people may remember that the majority of series editors resigned last summer in protest against Amsterdam University Press' sale of their film and media program to Taylor & Francis/Routledge. T&F and Routledge, while formerly respectable publishers, are now / mediastudies.hypotheses.org/6850
Sale of the Amsterdam University Press (AUP) film, media and communication list to Taylor & Francis – Resignation of series editors and editorial board members
It is with great dismay that we, the undersigned, learned that the film, media and communication list of Amsterdam University Press (AUP) has been taken over by Taylor & Francis, a subsidiary of Infor...
mediastudies.hypotheses.org
My #UrbanPrehistory book, The Archaeology of Prehistory in the Contemporary World: Deep Time in Global Urban Spaces, is now available for pre-order in the UK, and I expect it to come out towards the end of 2026. I'm currently working on the proofs. www.bloomsbury.com/uk/archaeolo...
The Archaeology of Prehistory in the Contemporary World
This book offers a timely roadmap for navigating the material and intangible legacies of prehistory with which we live today. Drawing on a series of global case…
bloomsbury.com
A monument in Glasgow to the 1948 massacre of Palestinians at the village of Deir Yassin, which also serves as a remembrance of the Nakba.
New post on RefugeeHistory.org by Emma Dal Mas on international Catholic action for children in the early Cold War: refugeehistory.org/blog/2026/5/...
Caritas Kindertransporte: Catholic Relief, Mobility, and the Cold War — Refugee History.
In October 1949, a train left the main station in Vienna with five hundred children on board. It headed towards the Spanish border city of Port-Bou, crossing northern Italy and France. Christine was o...
refugeehistory.org
I will never be able to say, or spell, the word 'quantitative' without having to check myself at least twice
