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Dr Imogen Knox (she/her)

@imogenknox.bsky.social

Historian of suicide, emotion & gender Lecturer in early modern history, Exeter https://experts.exeter.ac.uk/45666-imogen-knox

50 Posts430 Follower 424 Folgt

Helena C. Aeberli @helenaaeberli.bsky.social · last mo.

Oh, and my first academic article is now out with @genderandhistory.bsky.social! It’s on the gendered depiction of the eating disorder pica in 17th century medicine and theatre. No idea how to promote these things so any advice welcome.

Gender & History Journal@genderandhistory.bsky.social · last mo.

New #OpenAccess article by @helenaaeberli.bsky.social on pica, a lesser-known eating disorder, and its gendered associations with pregnant women and pubescent girls in early modern England. #EarlyModern #Skystorians #GenderHistory #HistMed onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/CYRU3R...

University of Exeter Special Collections @exeterunispeccoll.bsky.social · 3w ago

Good morning to everyone, but especially to all the sharks, for today is their special day! To celebrate Shark Awareness Day, here are three illustrations of sharks from the book 'Animated Nature Vol. 2' (1821) by Georges-Louis Leclerc. 📷 Reserve 590 BUF #SharkAwarenessDay #SharkDay #RareBooks

Nicole Maceira Cumming @nicolemaceira.bsky.social · 4w ago

🚨 Call for Papers 🚨 @joshuarushton8.bsky.social and I are holding an online colloquium 'Environmental Approaches to the Reformation World' on 30 Sept 2026 🌳 🌊 ⛪ 🐄 Deadline for submissions 1 September.

call for papers text with woodcut image of 1607 flood

EMoDiR @emodir.bsky.social · last mo.

#CfP 📢 Workshop: "Growing Up in the Early Modern World: Children, Institutions and Belonging", Macquarie University 📆27 November 2026 | 🌏Sydney ⏰ Deadline: 15 July 2026 🔗 anzamems.org/cfp-growing-... #EarlyModern #ChildhoodStudies #SocialHistory #EarlyModernHistory

George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · last mo.

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

History Workshop @historyworkshop.org.uk · last mo.

We are dismayed to learn about further proposed HE cuts, this time at the University of Hertfordshire and the University of Exeter. In solidarity, please join us by signing and sharing the two urgent petitions below. 🚨🖊️ 1/3

Exeter UCU @exeterucu.bsky.social · last mo.

Hey Bluesky crowd! You also should be signing our petition opposing the announced redundancies at the University of Exeter. 📢 We're 17k and growing! Redundancies ARE NOT necessary and we must #DefendExeterUni 🩷 c.org/RFqMvrKb6z

Sign the Petition

Stop Redundancies at the University of Exeter

c.org

Scarlett Stevens @scarlettstevens.bsky.social · last mo.

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

History Workshop @historyworkshop.org.uk · last mo.

📣 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

Dr Imogen Knox (she/her)@imogenknox.bsky.social · last mo.

Heartbreaking and infuriating to see this proposed at the institution which I attended as an UG a decade ago (and chose for its stellar research reputation) and recently returned to on a temporary contract.

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

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

Times Higher Education (THE)@timeshighered.bsky.social · last mo.

The University of Exeter has become the latest Russell Group university to announce major job cuts, insisting it “must” take action to reduce financial pressures. Juliette Rowsell reports #highered #jobcuts https://ow.ly/K8bq50ZfYlY

Smell Studies Journal @smellstudies.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Call for Papers for the Smell Studies Journal

CFP: Smell Studies Journal
General Editors: Will Tullett, University of York and Manon Raffard, University of Manchester.
Editorial board: Andrew Kettler, Chanelle Dupuis, Jayanthan Sriram, Ally Louks, Hsuan Hsu, Sandra Barré.

Smell Studies Journal will be the first international peer-reviewed journal devoted to the field of interdisciplinary Smell Studies.

The journal will initially have one issue per year. The journal welcomes contributions from across the humanities and humanistic social sciences, including but not limited to history, cultural history, literary studies, art history, aesthetics, cultural studies, environmental humanities, heritage studies, and curatorial and museum studies. While the journal does not exclude work from the natural or cognitive sciences, submissions from those fields are expected to engage substantively with humanistic frameworks and critical theory.

We are currently planning the first few issues of the journal. These will appear in a prospectus to a leading academic press who have solicited a proposal for consideration with the view to publishing the first issue in early 2028.

We are accepting abstracts for research articles, and ideas for reviews, opinion pieces, creative work, and interviews. Specifically, for research articles please submit a title, 250-word abstract, and either a short biography or a link to where such a biography can be found online. For all other work, or to gauge interest in a research article prior to sending an abstract please e-mail smellstudiesjournal@gmail.com (mailto:smellstudiesjournal@gmail.com).

Initial submissions of abstracts and initial inquiries for the first few issues are requested by the deadline of 1st of August 2026. Completed submissions for the first issue would be requested for January 1 of 2027, with reviews and editing in Spring and Summer of 2027.

Jane Hamlett @janehamlett.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Call for contributions - Decluttering: Past and Present Perspectives - please do get in touch if you would like to join us for our workshop at Royal Holloway in November …

Royal Historical Society @royalhistsoc.org · 2mo ago

How do we enhance the engagement of history students in their degree programmes? A new article - 'Rethinking Engagement: Insights from UK History Departments' - bit.ly/4viEKru, by Sarah Jones and Simon Peplow offers discipline-specific proposals. Latest Open Access article in 'Transactions' 1/2

Front page of Transactions of the Royal Historical Society article: 'Rethinking Engagement: Insights from UK History Departments', by Sarah Jones and Simon Peplow.

Full abstract: 'This comment examines the shifting landscape of student engagement in UK history departments, drawing on research conducted at the universities of Bristol and Warwick. Moving beyond narrow definitions of engagement as attendance, the study explores the complex interplay of workload pressures, relationships and community, and the cultures and environments of learning that shape students’ everyday experiences. Student testimony highlights how financial precarity, mental‑health challenges and competing demands on their time profoundly influence how (and indeed if) they engage. At the same time, factors – ranging from staff/student interactions to seminar atmosphere and assessment design – are powerful determinants of whether students feel able and motivated to participate fully. While acknowledging the broader socio‑economic forces that constrain both staff and students, the comment proposes a set of principled, discipline‑specific approaches centred on reflection, communication, adaptability and compassion. It argues that, although no single solution can resolve the problem of engagement, history departments can meaningfully support students by cultivating inclusive, responsive and relational learning environments.'

Prof Dave O'Brien @drdaveobrien.bsky.social · 2mo ago

This morning the Department for Culture, Media and Sport have published a refreshed and updated list of Areas of Research Interest. These are an important way for researchers to engage with policy, so please do read them! www.gov.uk/government/p...

DCMS Areas of Research Interest

gov.uk

Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at York @cecs-york.bsky.social · 3mo ago

📣 2026/7 MA in Eighteenth Century Studies bursaries 📣 We're delighted to announce that we will be awarding four MA bursaries for the 2026/7 MA in Eighteenth Century Studies cohort. Full details can be found on the CECS website: 🔗 www.york.ac.uk/eighteenth-c... Spread the news!

CECS MA bursaries

The Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies is delighted to be offering bursaries for 2026/7 offer holders.

york.ac.uk

Past and Present @pastpresentsoc.bsky.social · 4mo ago

We're pleased to be supporting the "Death and Bereavement in Early Modern Britain, 1520-1689" Conference @standrewshist.bsky.social on 26 - 27 June 2026 For programme and registration details please see below: pastandpresent.org.uk/programme-an...

Programme and Registriation for the "Death and Bereavement in Early Modern Britain, 1520-1689" Conference - Past and Present

received from Abraham Sullivan (University of St. Andrews) Death and Bereavement in Early Modern Britain, 1520-1689 A two-day conference on the theme ‘Death and Bereavement in Early Modern Britain, 15...

pastandpresent.org.uk

Claire Turner @claireturner.bsky.social · 5mo ago

I'm delighted to finally share details of a workshop series I'm hosting with @thackraymuseum.bsky.social! 'Researchers in Museums' is open to a wide range of early career researchers and offers the opportunity to go 'behind the scenes' in a fantastic medical museum. Please share widely!

Researchers in Museums: Collections and Archives Workshop Series. Thackray Museum of Medicine, Leeds. 13 May; 18 June; 9 July; 1-4pm. I am delighted to be working with Thackray Museum of Medicine to host three workshops for ‘Researchers in Museums’. These interactive workshops offer early career researchers an opportunity to learn about the potential of museum collections to enrich their research. Each workshop will include:

‘Cancer in the Collections’: a unique insight into how one researcher, Dr Claire Turner (Durham University) uses Thackray’s extensive collections and archives to support her own research.
Stores Tour: an exclusive guided tour of Thackray’s stores by its Collections Team, with the opportunity to learn more about the history of the museum and the objects, books, and archival materials it holds.
Research Room Time: a chance to look in greater depth at books, objects and archival materials drawn from the museum’s collections.
Personal Research: option to request and view an object related to your own research.

Each session can accommodate up to 8 attendees, each of whom will receive a £20 bursary towards travel to the workshop.

To be eligible to attend, you must be:
An early career researcher (MA, PhD, or within two years of finishing the PhD)
Working broadly within the field of medical humanities

Expressions of interest should include a short summary of your research, how you meet the workshop criteria, and your preferred workshop date (max 250 words). All EOIs should be submitted to claire.o.turner@durham.ac.uk by 5pm on Friday 17 April.

Dr Imogen Knox (she/her)@imogenknox.bsky.social · 6mo ago

As a big King James Version fan I was inordinately excited to see the tomb of Richard Edes in Worcester Cathedral yesterday

Kristof Smeyers @kristofsmeyers.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Hi everyone, I'm organising a conference in Leuven, 4-5 June, and you're all invited*! It's called 'Performing evil: the mediation and display of diabolic spectres 1700-2000' and here is the call for papers (get in touch if you'd like a pdf!). Please share widely! *to submit an abstract before 21/3

CALL FOR PAPERS: PERFORMING EVIL: the mediation and display of diabolic spectres, 1700-2000'. 4 & 5 June 2026, Leuven.

This conference explores the tangled histories of supernatural, diabolic evil and all kinds of spectral apparitions in the last three centuries – Walter Scott’s ‘malignant and unhappy beings’. Specifically, it is interested in how and why ghosts, spirits and related apparitional phenomena were framed as diabolic, demonic or malign manifestations from the afterlife.

Diabolic connotations of ghosts and spirits did meaningful cultural work. They were mobilised to discredit ghost beliefs and spiritual practices, to delegitimise competing beliefs, or to invest doctrinal arguments with occult authority. They could also function as tools of scepticism and ridicule as well as triggers of wonder, fear and religiosity. Put differently, the nexus of ghosts and evil is deeply historical. And it was often articulated through performative means: in gestures and expressions of (dis)belief, in visual and textual representations, in séance rooms, on the stage and on the page. Emerging from this nexus are theatrical spirits of evil, staged, embodied, and made legible through mediation and display. In this sense, every ghost is a theatrical ghost. Through the focus on the construction and staging of diabolic spirits, this conference aims to develop a methodological framework for studying historical forms of occultism and demonology more broadly in terms of performance.

Exploring how the relationship of spectrality and evil has shifted in shape over time and across different cultures, the conference invites contributions that can consider a wide range of historical actors – clerics, mediums, ghost-hunters, debunkers, necromancers, stage
performers, eyewitnesses.

This conference aims to study cultural intersections and interactions to arrive at a more granular understanding of discursive, practical and material connections between spirits and evil. At the same time this lens zooms out, making visible broader dynamics of knowledge construction in specific historical moments. How, for instance, did hauntings and possessions shape communities and audiences? How did religious or folkloric ideas about the devil inform spectral encounters?

We hope to bring together historians, art historians, theatre and literary scholars, folklorists and anthropologists from every stage in their career around the above questions. We welcome 20-minute papers on topics that include but are by no means limited to:
- making spectral evil visible: performance, arts, media, technologies, popular cultures
- making spectral evil invisible: popular and occult knowledge circulation
- performing (un)belief: practices and rhetoric, summoning and debunking on the stage (from popular stages to the lecture hall and the laboratory)
- materiality of spectres: the function of bodies and objects
- diabolic spirits and (intellectual, vernacular, theological, folkloric) ideas about morality, mortality and temporality
- occult performance and ‘cultural scripts’ of ghost encounters (from necromancy to poltergeists)
- affect and emotions: fear, grief, trauma… and hope

Send abstracts (c.250 words) and bios (c.100 words) to kristof.smeyers@kuleuven.be before 21 March 2026. Please do get in touch if you have any questions.

Dr Imogen Knox (she/her)@imogenknox.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Enjoyed this conversation with @simpep.bsky.social and @callingdrjones.bsky.social for History UK - a great opportunity to reflect on my teaching experiences as a PGR and how they have formed my ECR teaching identity

Simon Peplow@simpep.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Our 1st History in Practice chat with historians teaching in UKHE was with the wonderful @imogenknox.bsky.social! Very interesting reflections on opportunities/challenges of teaching & navigating different identities in early-career. Please share! tinyurl.com/2y7jeuyb #historyeducation #academicsky

Dr Imogen Knox (she/her)@imogenknox.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Back in a rainy Exeter for term 2

Dr Imogen Knox (she/her)@imogenknox.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Term 1 at Exeter done! An absolutely knackering 12 weeks for my first experience of (nearly) full time teaching, but couldn't be doing it at a better place or alongside more welcoming colleagues

Institute of Historical Research @ihr.bsky.social · 8mo ago

The @ihr.bsky.social #London #SummerSchool 2026 is now booking on the theme of 'Sickness & Health'. From the Black Death to Covid-19. Use code HEALTH10 before 24th Jan to get 10% discount! Bursaries available www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

All information on the image is available via the web link.

History Workshop @historyworkshop.org.uk · 9mo ago

Does Artificial Intelligence have the potential to simplify, and ultimately impoverish, our study of the past? Gordon McKelvie @gordonmckelvie.bsky.social considers the recent explosion in A.I. and what it might mean for historians facing the current Higher Education crisis.

Artificial Intelligence: A Warning for History

Does Artificial Intelligence have the potential to simplify, and ultimately impoverish, our study of the past? Gordon McKelvie considers the recent explosion in A.I. and what it might mean for the his...

historyworkshop.org.uk

University of Exeter Special Collections @exeterunispeccoll.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Our University Archive is a rich resource for exploring the lives & experiences of Black people at the University of Exeter & its predecessor institutions. Find out about this archive & more in our online guide to Black History research resources ⬇️ #BlackHistoryMonth #BHM #Archives #RareBooks

LibGuides: Special Collections: Black History Resources: Introduction

libguides.exeter.ac.uk

University of Exeter Special Collections@exeterunispeccoll.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Check out the Exeter Students' Guild's new exhibition for Black History Month on Level 1 of Devonshire House! We were delighted to assist the Guild with this exhibition by researching biographical details and sourcing images from the University Archive. #BlackHistoryMonth #BHM #UniOfExeterArchive

Pop up exhibition of boards on easels. Each easel has an information card and the boards feature archival photographs and newspaper clippings. Each board represents a different time period at the University, beginning with the 1940s. The easel at the front of the exhibition includes the text: 'Black History Month Uncovering Exeter's History of Black Empowerment and Allyship'.

Royal Historical Society @royalhistsoc.org · 11mo ago

New in 'Transactions of the Royal Historical Society' '"your poore distressed suppliant": ‘Madness’, Emotion and the Archive in Early Modern England', by Jonathan Willis bit.ly/4mM49G4 How can perspectives from the history of emotions inform understanding of 'madness' in early modern England? 1/2

Opening page of the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society article: ‘your poore distressed suppliant’: ‘Madness’, Emotion and the Archive in Early Modern England', by Jonathan Willis.

Dr Serin Quinn @serinquinn.bsky.social · last yr.

My latest piece with The Conversation - a short read on the long history of fermenting foods 🥒

The Conversation UK@uk.theconversation.com · last yr.

People have been fermenting food since before the written word.

Dr Imogen Knox (she/her)@imogenknox.bsky.social · last yr.

Delightful break to the journey back from York stopping at Hardwick Hall

Dr Imogen Knox (she/her)@imogenknox.bsky.social · last yr.

In York today for the Cabinet of Curiosities conference. Speaking later on truth and deceit in 17th century witchcraft reporting