'This book will change the way we think about the history of modern Britain' @emilybaughan.bsky.social #Liverpool by @samwetherell.bsky.social a story of rise and decline Pre-order now: https://geni.us/LiverPBorgsoc
Emily Baughan
@emilybaughan.bsky.social
historian, writing about childcare, work, and love (sometimes here https://emilybaughan.substack.com/)
I'm looking for scholars/ students working on infancy / motherhood in c.19th Prussia/ Germany. Any suggestions, lmk! Thank you!
The book is finally finished. It comes out 25th April 2026. It’s about historians’ “personal experiences”, how these might relate (critically and analytically) to their histories. It is called _The Politics of Personal Experience: Writing a History of Munchausen Syndromes_
this incredible 1907 film, La Grève des Nourrices. wetnurses strike, toddlers counterprotest, "down with nurses, bottles for everyone". a street fight ensues www.youtube.com/watch?v=goiF...
La Grève des nourrices (1907) Nurses' Strike (Pathé)
YouTube video by Films by the Year
youtube.com
Such a great paper—rich comparative analysis of “baby farms” in Britain, France, and the USA (late 19th–early 20th c.), showing how labor and care were reconfigured differently despite similar feminist arguments. Can’t wait for the book @emilybaughan.bsky.social! (also check out this wild image)
Very much looking forward to hearing @emilybaughan.bsky.social talk about her current work on the politics of childcare this Thursday. Come if you're in town!
Tehila Sasson@tsasson.bsky.social · 7mo agoWe’ve got a stellar lineup for this term’s Modern British History Seminar in Oxford. Do come along if you’re around! talks.ox.ac.uk/talks/series...
this saturday! I haven't heard it yet, but there's not only interviews with Carolyn Steedman and Miriam Stoppard, but also live audio of me attempting to get my kids out the door for school in the mornings www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...
BBC Radio 4 - Archive on 4, Landscape For A Good Infant
How has the state shaped different generations’ experience of infancy?
bbc.co.uk
Looking forward to this week’s @qubhistory.bsky.social seminar with @emilybaughan.bsky.social (chaired by @kieranconnell.bsky.social). Snacks and drinks provided as usual. All welcome! www.eventbrite.com/e/qub-histor...
While today’s waged care worker might be doubly burdened—caring within the home and beyond it—this means that unlike her housewife foremother she is not isolated. Within a workplace, there is the possibility of organizing and collective bargaining. @emilybaughan.bsky.social on Wages for Housework:
The Care Factory - Boston Review
In the decades since the Wages for Housework movement, care work has become a site of profit in ways its leaders could never have predicted.
bostonreview.net
I wrote about care, capitalism and going on strike
Boston Review@bostonreview.bsky.social · 9mo ago“The wish that women’s care work be waged seems to have come true, albeit in funhouse-mirror form: legions of women now work to care for other peoples’ families, while the vast majority still take care of their own families for free.” @emilybaughan.bsky.social on Wages for Housework’s legacy:
the Duncan Tanner prize not only showcases the very best of early career scholarship in modern British history year after year, but the committee also give every entrant considered and generous feedback on their scholarship. it's win/win - do enter your work! academic.oup.com/tcbh/pages/e...
Duncan Tanner Prize 2025
The Duncan Tanner Prize recognizes outstanding scholarship amongst postgraduate research students in Britain and abroad. Entrants submit an article manuscript.
academic.oup.com
anarchist anti-creche, la bonne lousie, founded in Paris in 1909 (a city which had the highest concentrated of state subsidised childcare in the world at the time) bc existing creches were too catholic & social control-y. explicitly invited illegitimate children, usually excluded from trad creches
—@emilybaughan.bsky.social on the broken care economy, reviewing books by Emily Callaci, Gabriel Winant, and Premilla Nadasen —@eric-reinhart.com on the elite rhetoric of “political violence“ —Honora Spicer on the history of Fort Bliss, the site of a massive new immigration detention center
“As humanities departments shrink and streamline, Patricia Owens reminds us that erasure impoverishes us all” Wonderful to see @whitproject.bsky.social reviewed by @emilybaughan.bsky.social in @thetls.bsky.social. Read more here- (£) www.the-tls.co.uk/history/twen...
Empire builders
Margery Perham was six feet tall. She was the first woman and youngest lecturer in the history department at the University of Sheffield after the First
the-tls.co.uk
asked my kid's bougie forest school if they could kindly stop sending him home with a half dozen sticks each day. yesterday he brought home: two fishing rods, three magic wands, and a 'bit of tree'
So many liberals who pretend to be shocked about Starmer’s wilful destruction of our universities were of course tireless opponents of his predecessor as Labour leader, who actually prioritised defending higher ed
To understand this government, look at who it bailed out – and the flailing UK sector it didn’t | Gaby Hinsliff
Universities, a key plank of our economy, face a bonfire of jobs. But are they the jobs Starmer wants to be seen to be saving, asks Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff
theguardian.com
still admin-ing the closure of playschool. we owe money to a company that provided supply teachers which is owned by a PLC headquartered in the cayman islands. feel like so much care infrastructure now is for-profit and based off shore -- has anyone written about this in the UK context??
if you were listening to Stravinsky last night on Radio 3 then you might have landed abruptly into me discussing placentas, diazepam, and the labour of neonatal care www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
The Essay - New Generation Thinkers 2024 - Birth Stories - BBC Sounds
From 'lying in' to bedside cots: Emily Baughan traces childbirth changes.
bbc.co.uk
This incredible long review of my book by @emilybaughan.bsky.social in the @bostonreview.bsky.social expresses my argument more beautifully than I ever could and pushes it even further. www.bostonreview.net/articles/los...
so special to get to come 'home' to Bristol for a seminar, huge thanks to @uobrishistory.bsky.social
went to talk to my 5 year old's class about 'children in the past'. asked for questions at the end and hands shot up. teacher said: now children, sometimes we struggle to remember what's a question and what's a comment. questions start with 'why, how, where or who' panel chairing goals 🎯
obsessed with this campaign, and the rule it opposes: that you can't receive govt funding *as a registered childcare professional* for a child in your care that is related to you. such a tell for the principle that love cancels labour; it's not care-work, if you actually care
our beloved playschool closes for good today. I've spent the last several weeks issuing redundancy notices, battling with the local authority and watching in awe as our treasurer does the most depressing sums www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Closing Sheffield nursery warns of looming 'childcare crisis'
Hunter's Bar Playschool opened in 1975 and is having to close as staff say government funding is too low.
bbc.co.uk
The full list of authors on this piece is (deep breath!); me, @teadevotee.bsky.social , @emilybaughan.bsky.social, Laura Beers, Jade Burnett, Frankie Chappell, @ruthdav.bsky.social, @emmaelinor.bsky.social, Mary Clare Martin, Anna Muggeridge, Emma Peplow, Priscila Pivatto and Jessica White
It’s out!!!! Huge huge gratitude to all of our co-authors, whose brilliant contributions you can read here, and especially to my wonderful co-editor @teadevotee.bsky.social without whom this literally would still be a series of notes in my email inbox.
Royal Historical Society@royalhistsoc.org · 2y ago'Labour Pains: Mothers and Motherhood on the British Left in the Twentieth Century', bit.ly/4js1vE4 with lead authors @lottelydia.bsky.social and @teadevotee.bsky.social New Roundtable article now available, Open Access, in 'Transactions of the Royal Historical Society' #Skystorians 1/2
Read this and then read everything else that @emilybaughan.bsky.social has written on her substack, about care and domestic labour and children's lives.
Emily Baughan@emilybaughan.bsky.social · 2y agoI wrote here about playgroups, and the playschool I chair as the last remaining hold out of an anarchic, feminist moment from the 1970s which has lasted til the present day emilybaughan.substack.com/p/of-church-... but the early years funding crisis has come for us too and we look set to close 💔
I wrote here about playgroups, and the playschool I chair as the last remaining hold out of an anarchic, feminist moment from the 1970s which has lasted til the present day emilybaughan.substack.com/p/of-church-... but the early years funding crisis has come for us too and we look set to close 💔
Of church halls and custard creams
or, the strange disappearance of community playgroups
emilybaughan.substack.com