Finally, the short film on the collaboration between historian Dr Laura Sangha and musician Chris Hoban: youtu.be/rWf0qo6IDB8?... #EarlyModern 🗃️

Wills as Windows onto Past Lives: Creative Fellowship 2025

YouTube video by The Material Culture of Wills Project

youtu.be

For more on the approach that researchers in the team are taking to analysing the objects found in 30,000 English wills from 1540-1790, see this blog post by Professor Jane Whittle, the project leader: sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult... #EarlyModern 🗃️ #MaterialCulture

Here are the links mentioned in the newsletter: For more on the cultural, creative and public outcomes of Chris Hoban and Laura Sangha's [@lsangha.bsky.social] collaboration, see the project website: sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult... #EarlyModern 🗃️

📜 New @materialwills.bsky.social Autumn 2026 newsletter - see the pdf below for some important updates!

The Material Culture of Wills Project@materialwills.bsky.social · 4w ago

📢AUTUMN NEWSLETTER OUT TODAY📢 This edition includes an important update on some changes to the team that impact the project's future. Those on our mailing list should have a copy in their inbox, for others see below, or DM your address to receive a pdf. #EarlyModern 🗃️ #DigitalHumanities #HTR

A Top 5 Career Highlight for me!

Huge thanks to the Landmark Trust for awarding us the stay in Bath and allowing us this precious time to live and work closely together as we developed our research and explored our findings.

As well as each presenting on our research in progress, we also took time to visit local historic sites to see 18th-century material culture in the flesh.

A _lot_ of tea was consumed during the week, naturally. Plus @bhamhistory.bsky.social's homemade hot cross buns surely deserve a place in the book acknowledgements.

Just looking at photos from the wills project research retreat in Bath as I prepare the latest newsletter, and there are some real gems in here. @kmbarton.bsky.social - I have no idea what was so funny ... !

😊 Justin, a member of the project advisory board & contributor to our edited collection, has been doing some great things with our data 👇 📜 Update: it's 30,000 wills now! #EarlyModern 🗃️ @leverhulme.ac.uk

Justin Colson@justincolson.bsky.social · 2mo ago

The Exeter Material Culture of Wills team have done an AMAZING job with their Transkribus transcriptions of 25,000 wills. I've been playing with the marked-up raw files kindly provided by @bhamhistory.bsky.social

The Exeter Material Culture of Wills team have done an AMAZING job with their Transkribus transcriptions of 25,000 wills. I've been playing with the marked-up raw files kindly provided by @bhamhistory.bsky.social

It's really hard to see this news about the MCW team facing redundancy risk from Exeter. They've set an incredibly high bar for participatory research & engagement with their contributors. I regularly use MCW as an exemplar for teams who want to use @zooniverse.bsky.social. Solidarity with the team.

The Material Culture of Wills Project@materialwills.bsky.social · 2mo ago

📢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/

Thank you so much to everyone who has shown an interest in, supported, and volunteered for the project to date. We are very proud of everything that we have achieved so far. 6/6

Whatever happens, we will share the autogenerated transcriptions and our database next year as planned, and they will be available in an open access in a repository in the longer term. While we focus on publications we will be quieter on here and will pause the will of the month blog series. 5/

Though things are therefore very uncertain for the project at this moment, all of the team are committed to doing everything they can to bring our research to publication so the fruits of the project can be shared with volunteers and academics in future. 4/

While that planned research is ongoing, it has of course been severely disrupted as the processes of redundancy consultation, voluntary redundancy process, and selection for compulsory redundancy are happening across July-September. 3/

This summer the project researchers, including Jane and Laura, were meant to be focusing on analysing and publishing findings relating to the 30,000 historic wills that we have transcribed with the help of thousands of volunteers. 2/

📢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/

🎉 🥳 🏅 🎵 📜 🗃️ Chris Hoban and I are absolutely delighted that our collaboration has received an Honorary Mention as 'Cultural Knowledge Exchange Project of the Year' in the inaugural National Centre for Academic and Cultural Exchange (NCACE) Future Icons awards. 1/

Instead of death by a thousand cuts, focused initially on Humanities but radiating out through Social Sciences to STEM and Medicine, we need a systematic conversation and assessment of what is at risk. From closed university museums and galleries to Jodrell Bank, what's at stake if we don't? 2/2

British Academy President: UK higher education crisis risks irreversible damage

As course closures, shrinking provision and widening regional inequalities threaten the future of UK higher education and research, President of the British Academy, Susan J Smith calls for an immedia...

thebritishacademy.ac.uk

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

Welcome to my new followers! Before I was put at risk of redundancy last month I was working on a chapter on 16th-18th-century finger rings. 💍 My sample is around 10,000 rings mentioned in 30,000 English wills from 1540-1790. 1/

Congratulations to our shortlisted authors for the 2026 EHS Book Prize! Christopher J. Bonura, Mark Earngey, Robert A.H. Evans & Emily Vine (@emilymayvine.bsky.social) have written four fantastic new offerings to the field of #churchhistory 👏

Professor Whittle is one of four colleagues in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Faculty at the University of Exeter elected to Fellowship of the British Academy this year. 🗃️ ALL FOUR of these outstanding scholars were placed at risk of redundancy last month. Here's their statement:

🥳 Enormous congratulations to my outstanding colleague & friend Prof. Jane Whittle, on her election to the Fellowship of the British Academy. Jane is a world renowned scholar of the history of work & gender in preindustrial Europe. She currently leads The Material Culture of Wills project. 🗃️

we have some fun 4 July news over at The National Archives! a new copy of the US Declaration of Independence, with an amazing story behind it (privateers! printers! prisoners!) - but also, a find that shows the power and importance of our volunteering and cataloguing projects.

‘Vanishingly rare’ copy of US Declaration of Independence found by volunteer in UK archives

One of 11 surviving copies of ‘Exeter printing’ and only one known outside US was taken from American privateer ship

theguardian.com

📢 In Case You Missed It 📢 📜 There's a new 'Will of the Month' post up on our blog! ⛪ Read all about a Tudor clergyman from Cumberland who had a tumultuous life, but regained considerable material wealth at his death 🪙🪙🪙 #history #SkyStorians #EarlyModern sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult...

New article has just been published OA @womenshistoryrev.bsky.social ! Lots of archival work in here tracing the the women who ran “Indian houses” in #17thc London. Including one woman who may have helped plot the Glorious Revolution!! #earlymodern www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Something deeply troubling & shocking is happening at Exeter University*, where a mass cull of staff is planned, even though it's in surplus. No good justifications given. @jamesgdyke.info provides the details: www.technosphere.earth/the-bonfire-... *Disclosure: I have a Visiting Fellowship here. +🧵

The bonfire of the humanities

150 academic posts at the University of Exeter are to be cut, most in the humanities but also in social sciences, engineering and environmental sciences

technosphere.earth

📢NEW WILL OF THE MONTH📢 The will of a curate mixed up in the case of Elizabeth Barton, the ‘Holy Maid of Kent’. #EarlyModern 🗃️ @leverhulme.ac.uk sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult...