Dr Amanda McVitty
@dramandamcvitty.bsky.social
Professional historian FRHistS | Social, cultural and legal histories of medieval Europe and modern Aotearoa New Zealand | Writing a book on colonial ghosts #UncannyCountry https://phanza.org.nz/historian/amanda-mcvitty/
The Lost Nightclubs tour "...was created by archivist Nella McNicol - who believes Glasgow's nightlife deserves just as much celebration as its A-listed buildings and Gothic architecture." #DoorsOpenDay #heritage #Glasgow #LocalHistory www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
New heritage trail remembers Glasgow's legendary nightclubs
Archaos, the Arches and the Tunnel all feature in the Lost Nightclubs walking tour.
bbc.co.uk
Asking for New Zealand, too.
Greg Jericho@grogsgamut.bsky.social · 3d ago"Can someone explain why – in an economy in which the central bank has decided we need almost 700,000 people to be unemployed – those people live in such dreadful poverty that it can make you up to 10 times more likely to die in the prime of your life?" www.theguardian.com/business/gro...
#earlymodern ads are never boring! Yesterday's fave - the dragon is so cute... 'A Natural and Medicinal History of Worms bred in Bodies of Men and other Animals', 5s, available a the Green Dragon on Little Britain. London Mercury, Jan. 13, 1722
Saturday afternoon in Parliament and legislation is being passed under urgency that has the potential to adversely affect our protest rights.
Today's research for #UncannyCountry took me on a macabre little side quest to the 1884 Maori Creek murder. Not a ghost story, but backstory of a barrister who later features in the Supreme Court trial of a medium charged with 'pretending to exercise sorcery' and commune with the dead. #amwriting
if you are reviewing an unpublished manuscript and you have the sheer unmitigated audacity, cheek, gall and laziness to upload it into an LLM to generate a review, let me tell you, you should be shunned and tarred and feathered
Woohoo!!! Such great news! 🥳 🎉🎊 LOVED my time as 2024 Children’s Writer in Residence & highly recommend it. C’mon children’s writers - get applying! 🤩 www.otago.ac.nz/news/newsroo...
Otago celebrates return of Children’s Writer in Residence
New Zealand’s longest established residency for children’s writers returns and with it the promise of more stories for, and about, our children and young people.
otago.ac.nz
Stories like this remind me there are still tons of good people in the world, who do things just because they care. Community is our bulwark against the darkness. (Also, cats.🐈⬛)
dave wagner@davewagner.bsky.social · 4d ago
Deadline for applications to this TT job in Medieval and/or Transregional History (7th-15th centuries) at the University of Ottawa is only one month away (16 October). universityaffairs.ca/search-jobs/...
Search Jobs - University Affairs
Explore the latest academic and higher education job opportunities on the University Affairs Jobs board. Updated daily, our job board features hundreds of teaching, research, postdoctoral, administrat...
universityaffairs.ca
Here’s a link to my new article on archives and plague death! I loved being part of this special issue (and huge thanks to editor Daniel Davies and my fellow contributors—go read their essays too!) read.dukeupress.edu/jmems/articl...
Forgetting the Plague: Disease, Social Hierarchy, and the Limits of the Archive in Saint Erkenwald and the Liber albus
During England's fourteenth‐ and fifteenth‐century plague outbreaks, medieval archivists and literary authors alike emphasized the imbrication of archives and death. The London clerk John Carpenter ag...
read.dukeupress.edu
The ATWG Conference program committee is extending the workshop proposal deadline from Sept. 15 to Sept. 30. The information you'll need for this process can be found here: www.ssemwg.org/attending-to.... Let me know if you have any questions! #earlymodern
Attending to EMW 2027 CFP — Society for the Study of Early Modern Women & Gender
ssemwg.org
Next week's PHANZA AGM is being held at the new Archives Reading Room at Te Matapihi te Ao Nui here in Wellington. I hope to see some of my fellow historians there in person!👋
PHANZA Professional Historians of New Zealand / Aotearoa@phanza.bsky.social · 5d ago🪧PHANZA's AGM is coming up next week, by Zoom and in person in Wellington. If you're attending in person, please RSVP to phanza[dot]ea[at]gmail[dot]com by Tuesday 22 Sept. 📆 Thursday 24 September ⏰ 5:30pm 📍Archives Reading Room Te Matapihi te Ao Nui Central Library Victoria Street, Wellington
More on the unintended (🤔) consequences of drastic cuts at Archives NZ and National Library. Among the key points: huge capital investments have been made in infrastructure, incl digitisation and buildings, but operational cuts mean losing the expert staff needed to deliver public benefits from it.
PHANZA Professional Historians of New Zealand / Aotearoa@phanza.bsky.social · 6d agoThe Aotearoa History and Heritage Alliance, including PHANZA, has released an open letter on the deeply damaging and far-reaching impacts of proposed cuts at Archives NZ and the National Library. Read the letter at the link below and please share widely. phanza.org.nz/wp-content/u...
“It is humanities scholarship that will suffer most immediately, as it is more likely to depend upon obscure texts, specific editions, and material books, and it relies on methods of quotation and citation for which LLMs offer no alternative“
Matt Seybold@mattseybold.bsky.social · last wk.Some initial thoughts on the guillotines.
Look familiar #nzpol? We've done this with power generation and retail, prisons, telecommunications, now they're going to do it with water/wastewater and health. Get rid of the right. They will always sell the country down the river, and WE pay the price every. Damn. Time.
Colin Baldy 🇪🇺 🇮🇹 🇬🇧 🌈 🔶#FBPE@maestroc.bsky.social · last wk.We wouldn't be in this situation if the Tories hadn't privatised everything and then failed to invest in infrastructure. It's the same story every time they're in power. They never invest for the future. www.theguardian.com/business/202...
All for the sake of a smidgen of a skerrick of a basis point lower in the Government bond yield and (maybe) mortgage rates.
Dr Amanda McVitty@dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · last wk.If you care about governments being held accountable, then you need to know about disastrous cuts being planned for Archives NZ and the National Library. These cuts don't just make it much harder to do history. They undermine the institutions at the heart of our democracy.
Just did my vote for #BirdOfTheYear and these chaps got my top vote because they are the destructive delights of my garden. Team #kākā all the way! 🦜 It's fun to vote and follow the competition but also confronting to see how many of our precious manu are listed as 'in serious trouble'.
If you care about governments being held accountable, then you need to know about disastrous cuts being planned for Archives NZ and the National Library. These cuts don't just make it much harder to do history. They undermine the institutions at the heart of our democracy.
PHANZA Professional Historians of New Zealand / Aotearoa@phanza.bsky.social · 2w agoNewsroom talked to PHANZA President Matthew Woodbury about further cuts at the National Library and Archives NZ. He says "It’s only when one zooms out that you can see the effect of all of these cuts. These institutions ... are critical cultural infrastructure." newsroom.co.nz/2026/09/07/g...
So thrilled to have been featured on Drafting the Past. If you like hearing about *how* people write and organise their craft (as well as geek out on books), this is the podcast for you
Drafting the Past@draftingthepast.bsky.social · 2w agoNew Zealand archivist and indie historian Jared Davidson @anrchivist.bsky.social joined Kate to talk about his punk ethos, writing around his day job, and how he finds evidence to write about the oppressed and overlooked in his home country, incl in his new book BLOOD & DIRT. buff.ly/k8zhJzw
It’s been a few years since I’ve written anything on prostitution in medieval Europe, so I’m excited to catch up on the latest research. This one’s going straight to the top of my TBR pile! 📚 Love that it’s open access, too.
Royal Historical Society@royalhistsoc.org · 2w agoComing soon: latest title in the Society's 'New Historical Perspectives' book series for early career historians: 'Prostitution, Repentance and Social Welfare in Renaissance Florence', by Gillian Jack bit.ly/4gY9IQ7 Available in print and Open Access from 15 October. #Skystorians 1/2
Astrophotographer Adam (AJ) Smadi caught this image a few hours ago from Washington state. A thin crescent Moon, sunlight illuminating the rugged lunar surface. And 2,400 times farther away—and on the other side of the Sun—mighty Jupiter, and its moons Io (left) and Ganymede (right).
This is where we are. A homeless man has a stroke that damages his speech and mobilty while sleeping ubder a bridge. So Health NZ discharges him in a hospital gown to a charity not funded to support him. What. The. Actual.
RNZ News Feeds@rnzrss.bsky.social · 2w agoHospital discharges homeless man with major health needs in just a gown
Today I'm having fun unraveling the sensational trial of a medium tried for 'pretending an enchantment' (1735 Witchcraft Act, still in force in colonial NZ!) Exhibit A was a 'photograph taken at seance'. You'd better believe I'm hunting out that ghost photo! #amwriting #UncannyCountry #legalhistory
"Codicological genomes". Not a term I expected to hear, but I guess it will become part of the medievalist vocabulary now. Great summary of an intriguing study. (And no, fellow codicologists, you still do not have to wear gloves. The DNA in your books is too degraded to do any damage.) #MedievalSky
Andrew Curry@andrewcurry.com · 2w agoAncient parchments, covered in ancient disease DNA! Researchers led by @ucddublin.bsky.social's @gingerhowley.bsky.social recover the genes of a deadly animal pathogen from medieval manuscripts. @science.org
Remember the Herald was founded in 1863 to support the Waikato invasion that kicked off the Land Wars. Not much has changed honestly since then given the Paul Henry article below
Funksta Uzz@funksta-uzz.bsky.social · 2w agoThe Herald claims Henry's action standing beneath the confederate flag was unintentional. Umm, it makes no difference where he stood. He intentionally visited a pub that has that flag on full display & held court on "the Māori issue" & Greens being "barely people". The bigotry was evident. #nzpol
🚨🚨🚨'increasingly rely on knowledge/generosity of retired experts' is describing a state of emergency. 🚨🚨🚨 This is what decades of under funding followed by outright attacks on public research leads to. And there are almost no jobs for those finishing PhDs. Why not? 🤔 #ResearchIsWork #NZPOl 🇳🇿
Matt Buys@mattbuys.bsky.social · 2w agoWe welcomed Eric McKenzie to the National Forest Fungarium at @bioeconomyscience.bsky.social. BioCollections increasingly rely on the knowledge/generosity of retired experts to keep collection-based science thriving. With Eric is Pam Taylor, NZFRIM Collection's Manager. #Mycology #Biocollections 🧪
Something I keep coming back to re: the gutting of Archives NZ and National Library is we have a shiny new, state-of-the-art $290m building but an ever-dwindling staff to work in it. Archives are nothing without the experts that know and care for them. Remember this? www.rnz.co.nz/news/te-ao-m...
New Archives building outperforms Smithsonian for air-tightness
An independent assessment has found the country's new Archives building achieves air-tightness far beyond national and international archival standards, outperforming even the likes of the Smithsonian...
rnz.co.nz
People keep telling me these technologies can "research and write like a historian" and I have to say I need to understand what your estimation of a historian's abilities are if that is the case. Must read.
King Algamemnon@adamrothman.bsky.social · 2w agoSobering, insightful essay on how chatbots mangle historical primary sources. 🗃 www.hnn.us/article/ai-i...
