Culture wars are not a natural phenomenon. And there will be another Arday. It’s not if but when. It’s not an aberration, it’s the business model. We have to get wiser about not just who’s behind them but how we fight back

Worth reposting for the am crowd, especially for its pragmatic advice on how to support yourself or a colleague in a pile-on. So, essential reading for (among others) academic staff, deans, PVCs and VCs to have on hand.

Carole Cadwalladr@carolecadwalla.bsky.social · last wk.

NEW: It was a digital lynching. And the media is never going to hold itself to account for the role it played in Jason Arday’s death. But there are things we can do. This is a practical guide based on my own experience. broligarchy.substack.com/p/a-digital-...

Worth reading the follow-up thread:

Jim Clifford@jimclifford.bsky.social · 2w ago

I guess I finally figured out how to go viral on BlueSky. At lot of the reply and quotes have not read/skimmed the dull economic Canadian history paper, which is fine. The point was to understand what is possible so we can collectively think about the future. www.routledge.com/Artificial-H...

My article — “Black is Beautiful”: Gender, Pigmentation, and Political Blackness in Modern Britain — is now available to read! It reinserts the politics of complexion into our narratives of the Black Power and Black Women’s movements. #BlackBritishHistory academic.oup.com/histres/adva...

‘Black is beautiful’: gender, pigmentation and political blackness in modern Britain*

Abstract. By examining political literature, ephemera and oral histories, this article investigates the politics of pigmentation within the Black Power and

academic.oup.com

Yearning for trousers weather. Just yearning.

An excellent piece on how the language of empire does not easily apply to the current moment of big tech/digital capitalism.

Ilias Alami@iliasalami.bsky.social · last mo.

Great essay by @quinnslobodian.com www.theideasletter.org/essay/digita...

not so much throwing museums a lifeline as massively exaggerating the biases in the sources, if the cited case at Leighton House is anything to go by

AI companies are throwing museums a lifeline. What do they want in return?

Touted as a way to engage visitors and boost funding, new tools are triggering concerns around trust and ethics

ft.com

Of interest to UK university #Skystorians: Royal Historical Society open online meeting on 'The crisis in UK higher education: The future for History'. 4 August 2-4 pm.

The Crisis in UK HE: the Future for History

An open meeting for historians in UK higher education on what is needed to best support and protect the profession and discipline.

eventbrite.co.uk

A reminder: this Friday (10 July) is the closing date for applications for the Society's Funded Book Workshop Grants, 2026-27 bit.ly/4vfL6av Grants fund a day workshop for historians writing a 2nd or 3rd monograph, to discuss their project and manuscript with up to 6 specialist readers #Skystorians

'The new TPS valuation is expected to reduce post-92 universities’ costs by around £900 million by 2030, according to the Universities and Colleges Employers Association.' (Research Professional News 8 am Playbook)

There’s a permanent modern British history post going at Manchester 🎉Come and join a great department and please share with anyone who might be interested. (Don’t let the short deadline put you off). #skystorians 🗃️

Lecturer in Modern British History (post-1800) at The University of Manchester

Apply now for the Lecturer in Modern British History (post-1800) role on jobs.ac.uk - the leading job board for higher education jobs. View details.

jobs.ac.uk

Thanks Christine. Here is the new interactive version: jimclifford.ca/col_matching...

This is a serious issue. Data is infrastructure - essential for modern life, largely behind the scenes, and very visible if it fails (like clean water, electricity, etc). It's generation and use involve lots of trade offs and require someone with expertise and accountability to make them.

Hetan Shah@hetanshah.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Good data is essential for policy. Today it’s been a year since we had a permanent National Statistician. No news on what is happening with the current recruitment which began Oct 2025. This is an under the bonnet issue that points to state failure 🧵 uksa.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/news/stateme...

A sad tale of disappearing databases lukemckernan.com/2026/06/28/l...

After creating a visualization of mobility between Canada and the empire, I decided to visualize all of the career mobility recorded in the biographies in the Colonial Office List. (I need to do the same work with the Indian Office List to complete the network.)

One question I started with when I found the Colonial Office list was how integrated Canada was in the British World System when it came to career colonial officals. #digitalhistory

Some excellent work here with Colonial Office Lists 🔥🔥

Jim Clifford@jimclifford.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I've been working with the Colonial Office Lists (1867-1965) for months. I've finally parsed the biographies of about 30,000 colonial officals into a knowledge graph. Here is the offical who worked in the most colonies during his career. Locations, institutions, and jobs grounded to Wikidata.

I'm really grateful to @enghistrev.bsky.social for getting this out in time for the anniversary. Why not relax ahead of the England game by reading about "Brexit as Democratic Crisis"? It asks why Brexit was so hard for our democratic institutions to handle - & what that tells us about democracy.

Oxford Academic@academic.oup.com · 2mo ago

Today marks 10 years since the historic Brexit referendum. In a new article in The English Historical Review, @robertsaunders.bsky.social explores how Brexit became a crisis of democracy, reshaping debates over Parliament, “the people,” and political authority. oxford.ly/3Sr1SFU

A grim day in a grim week in a grim month for UK higher education, with Dundee, Exeter and Hertfordshire all making major announcements of planned redundancies. Shrinkage of the research & teaching base by the invisible hand's visible fist is not an 'us' or 'them', SHAPE or STEM phenomenon. 1/2

📣 Come join us at @ihr.bsky.social for last @cont-brit-hist.bsky.social seminar of 2025/26. A great paper to end the term with @ruthdav.bsky.social speaking about her forthcoming book. Book via link below: Weds 24 June: 5.30pm, in-person only. See you there @womenshistnet.bsky.social #skystorians

Women's welfare activism: Everyday power and politics in twentieth-century Britain

Contemporary British History Seminar

history.ac.uk

'Union members at the University of Lincoln have declared “no confidence” in their senior leadership team while further strikes have been threatened at Northumbria University as concerns mount over job cuts in the English sector.' 1/3

Job cuts fuel staff discontent at Lincoln and Northumbria

UCU declares ‘no confidence’ in Lincoln management while redundancy plans prompt fresh dispute in north-east

timeshighereducation.com

Worth the read, if only for the names of the beavers introduced in 2022 www.cbc.ca/news/world/l...

A family of beavers is living their best life in London — and preventing flooding | CBC News

A family of beavers that came to London in 2023 is thriving in west London, and preventing flooding by doing what they do best — building dams.

cbc.ca

More public bodies backing down on supporting Pride events due to ‘recent legal developments’: Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service this time www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/whats-on/mer...

Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service withdraws support from Pride

The organisation said it was 'seeking independent legal advice'

liverpoolecho.co.uk

I so clearly remember reading the Cheese and the Worms in grad school.

Microhistory pioneer Carlo Ginzburg, who gave voice to the marginalized, dies at 87

Carlo Ginzburg, a renowned Italian historian, has died at 87. The Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa announced his passing in Bologna on Wednesday.

apnews.com

New article (open access!!) online now with Contemporary British History www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

‘In the eyes of the law I might be a man but what do I look like?’: trans women and sex work in 1980s and 1990s England

This article considers the precarious position of trans sex workers in 1980 s and early 1990 s England by examining the ambiguities of medico-legal interpretations of their identities and labour. D...

tandfonline.com

More useful work by the SMF on the dangers that an underregulated social media sector is creating for *adult* users. www.smf.co.uk/commentary_p...

Deep Fakerfield? – misinformation in Makerfield - Social Market Foundation.

SMF's Jamie Gollings analyses the extent of misinformation in Makerfield before and during the "most consequential" by-election campaign.

smf.co.uk

📢Introducing 1776: Views from the British World! Timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence that launched a revolution that created the USA, this series complicates traditional narratives of this event by situating it in a larger British world context.

NEW from me: I'll be speaking at Loughborough University's GLOW-Ready Workshop on 'user needs, trust, and responsible use of AI in government archives'. I'll be talking about the 'deluge of data' in contemporary history. It's online, sign up here! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/glow-ready...

GLOW-Ready (Getting Government Archives GenAI-Ready) Workshop 2

Join GLOW-Ready workshops on user needs, trust and responsible GenAI-assisted discovery for government archives.

eventbrite.co.uk

having been subjected to r4 this a.m., i note that reporting on the horrors in belfast implicitly endorses the legitimacy of racist concerns. i heard that they have targeted “immigrants” +a “hotel housing asylum seekers” but surely they targeted people they *assume* are immigrants/sanctuary seekers

Over the next three weeks, we feature the 8 monographs and 8 articles shortlisted for the Society's 2026 First Book & Early Career Article Prizes. Today: 'The Bonds of Freedom. Liberated Africans & the End of the Slave Trade', by Jake Subryan Richards (Yale UP, 2025) bit.ly/4onv2BK 1/2 #Skystorians