Happy Michaelmas! One of the four quarter days on which debts and rents were often paid, including over the font in the palace chapel at Westminster, and also the saint's day for the warrior angel, Michael the Archangel, dedicatee of Mont-St-Michel and many other high-up abbeys.

😬 The Historic England archives are wonderful and already hard to access. This bankruptcy of a vendor makes it even more difficult, particularly since once digitised, items are often embargoed from physical access.

Construction History Society@constructionhist.bsky.social · yesterday

Well, this looks pretty disastrous for researchers into English structures. How on earth could this have happened so suddenly that #HisttoricEngland had no warning?? Their risk register and risk management must be pretty weak. www.sarsen.org/2026/09/hist...

Prof. Sue Powell, chair of the Harlaxton Medieval Symposium, has written a tribute to the memory of Prof. Julia Boffey, a much missed friend of the Symposium and long-standing member of the steering committee (among many other things). It can be read here: harlaxtonmedievalsymposium.org

Research Seminar- 19 Oct, 4pm Speaker: Brendan Smith, Professor of Medieval History, Department of History, Uni of Bristol. Title: 'Pale Reflections: English Enclaves in the Plantagenet Empire'. Open to all! Please join using the QR code or email us for the link (mapping-the-march@bristol.ac.uk).

I went to Jersey and took about a million archive photos but also ate specular food, walked along empty beaches at sunset and finished up with a visit to La Hougue Bie, a Neolithic site with a twelfth- century chapel.

For international dog day, old photos of the hooligans being cuddly, since I’m away today and miss them.

THEY GOT TO 2000 SUPPORTERS! Now in need of 3000 more in just under a year. LETS GO! #earlymodern #bookhistory #skystorians

Elizabeth Biggs@elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Hi #EarlyModern Bluesky - did you know that someone brilliant has built working printing presses using Lego and they are trying to get enough supporters so that Lego will release it as a kit? They look so cool! beta.ideas.lego.com/product-idea...

NEW JOB! We are pleased to share news from our friends at VCH Hampshire who are advertising for a contributing editor to edit, research, and write work towards the county's first #BigRedBook for over a century. Applications close 1 October. #Skystorians #LocalHistory

Contributing Editor at Victoria County History Hampshire

Recruiting now: Contributing Editor on jobs.ac.uk. Click for details and explore more academic job opportunities on the top job board

jobs.ac.uk

I did not realise that Southern History covered the Channel Islands! That choice puts them in a long line of attempts to harmonise the Channel Islands with England. I've so far found Jersey being included with Hampshire, Dorset and my personal favourite, Cornwall, in the sixteenth century.

Jonn Elledge@jonnelledge.bsky.social · 3w ago

genuinely fascinating definition going on here

Anyone got any recommendations for decent historical work on scrying in the early modern period? #EarlyModern

The family sofas belong to the dogs (I don’t make the rules)

The BBC is covering the opening of the Bayeux Tapestry exhibition live. The king has just used the very Irish phrase "these islands", which is a nice gesture to the impact of the conquest beyond England. He's also denied that he is duke of Normandy. The Channel Islands might like a word about that.

I need a historian of parliament! When a bill was committed in Elizabeth's reign, is there any reason to read into the person leading the committee - were they someone trusted by the House, by both 'sides' if there were sides to the issue? Or could it even be influenced by the Q?

I’m back from my ten days in New England with family- walking, biking and swimming. Highlights included getting up early to see the sunrise on the beach, birds over the sea and splashing through the waves with the dogs.

Le roi, notre duc! - the formal toast of the Channel Islands. The nineteenth-century constitutional law cases over who should fund and run the Jersey prison are genuinely amazing (and preserve some medieval documents then destroyed in ww2).

John Bull@garius.bsky.social · last mo.

Fun fact: technically the Duchy of Normandy kinda does and doesn't exist now. TLDR: The Channel Islands are fucking weird, have always been weird, and have a habit of pointing out they are technically still the Duchy. Both Britain and France have a long habit of ignoring this to avoid an argument.

I'm on leave this week and there's rain forecast so I'm planning to bake. So far I have honey cake, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate/peanut butter cookies. What would you put on the list? Holiday cottage so equipment and tins will be very minimal. Allergies not relevant here.

Happy Black Cat Appreciation Day to all the ghoulies celebrating! Illustration from a 13th-century Bestiary, now @bodleian.ox.ac.uk MS Bodl. 533, f. 13r 🐈‍⬛🖤

Reposting in case I know anyone who can help with this type of printing (US government context). I know bits about the UK equivalents so was ready to comment and then realised that I would be talking about the wrong side of the Atlantic when I scrolled down.

m. r. sauter@oddletters.bsky.social · last mo.

if anyone hashtag on here knows a lot about the Government Printing Office, pseudo-governmental publications, the distribution networks of same in the 1970s, and archival classifcations of things kind of are but kind of arent fugitive documents, can you hit me up? i have a weird question

It may be the hottest day of the year, but I’m choosing to look ahead to when a warm cabled sweater will be useful.

One of the best parts of being a historian? Changing my mind. Sometimes one letter or one newspaper article sends me back to rethink everything I thought I knew. That's not failure. That's good history. 🗃️

I've worked on creating a historical dataset from my freely-online translations of structured sources. Structuring it for machine analysis was hard, as @mikej1971.bsky.social can attest. There's a tension between the needs of a good edition and creating a good dataset. Two very different things.

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

Are we ready for machine written history? When given access to a well structured large historical dataset, Claude’s Fable 5 can identify a topic, complete the research and write a strong and original draft research paper. This has the potential to break peer review, graduate school, & job searches.

This is a lovely site which helps remind us of much of what we take for granted in material progress ordinaryabundance.com (HT @aveek18.bsky.social)

Ordinary Abundance

A walk through a modern apartment, through the eyes of the people for whom everything in it was new.

ordinaryabundance.com

Baking adventures continue with double chocolate courgette bread to try to use up the courgette glut in the garden. There are still four in the fridge.

Postdoc job alert! Early medieval charters, monastic economics and XML-TEI, starting January 2027. Come join a lovely department @livunihss.bsky.social, brilliant project team with @unituebingen.bsky.social and awesome city! #medievalsky #digitalhumanities www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSO571/p...

Postdoctoral Research Associate at University of Liverpool

An opportunity for an academic position as a Postdoctoral Research Associate is available, as advertised on jobs.ac.uk. Apply now and explore other academic job openings.

jobs.ac.uk

TALK KLAXON: 21 October 2026, 5.30pm at the London Archives, Farringdon. I will be talking about: 'Witchcraft, Necromancy, and Politics: The 'Eleanor Cobham’ trial of 1441' £10 for tickts. Hope to see you there! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/evening-ta...

Evening Talk: Witchcraft, Necromancy, Politics -Eleanor Cobham’s 1441 Trial

Eleanor Cobham faced trial in 1441 for plotting against Henry VI with occult methods. Explore the crime, the people and the places.

eventbrite.co.uk

My research subject ‘in person’! In my latest article, Agnes de Valance is a major figure and here she is at the right of the reconstructed 1280 supper at Pembroke Castle.

The Society will write up a summary for History for next week. Key points at this stage include: > 11% decline (-440 FPE) across all History staff between 2018/19 and 2024/25, compared with a 7% decline across all humanities > loss of 140 FPE History roles 2022/23 to 2024/25 #Skystorians 1/3

To the inevitable cries of “just digitize everything, then;” not an answer. Making digital facsimiles accessible requires huge investment: staff, metadata, preservation. Orgs are currently not funded to meet these needs. While digital objects are great, they’ll never replace looking at originals.

Amalia S. Levi, PhD@amaliasl.bsky.social · 3mo ago

📢 Once more for the people in the back: - Most [more than 95%] of archives have not been digitized. - Most of humanity's knowledge and memory is *not* reachable by LLMs. - Believing that AI can provid you with comprehensive, definitive, "intelligent" results is folly.

Loved being at #IMC2026, but snuck off this afternoon to see the brilliant Genghis Khan exhibition at the Royal Armouries before heading home. Because I’m a serious historian, I had to try the replica wooden saddle. I definitely would not have lasted long in the Mongol horde!

I’ve been at #IMC2026 for three hours and have already picked up some books I’ve been looking for, run into people and been to Bundobust for Indian food. Already an excellent conference and it’s not even started officially.