For many academics in the UK, there are increasingly narrow career pathways - teaching only contracts or conducting 'strategic' research. In our latest dispatch, Eva Nanopoulos interrogates how the university's two-tier system reinforces precarity 

The Two-Tier University

f.mtr.cool

Looking forward to giving a talk on Catholic architecture in the diocese of Kildare & Leighlin as part of @heritagecouncil.ie Heritage Week on 18 August - free, all welcome! carlowcollege.ie/events/catho...

Heritage Week Lecture – Catholic Churches and Chapels Before and After Emancipation | Carlow College

The Delany Archive welcomes Dr Niamh NicGhabhann Coleman for a lecture on “Catholic Churches and Chapels Before and After Emancipation”, including examples from churches in the Diocese of Kildare & Le...

carlowcollege.ie

teachingfellows.ie

University funding and regulatory bodies must consider the impact course closures are having on research activity across the UK, the vice-chancellor of Royal Holloway, University of London has said. SO good to see this statement from VC Julie Sanders, RHUL. More leadership like this, please. 1/3

Research Professional News@resprofnews.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Public bodies ‘must consider research impacts of course closures’ Royal Holloway vice-chancellor says higher education sector must avoid unintended consequences of financially-driven decisions www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-u...

A cathartic piece I wrote for ICOM Voices: icom.museum/en/news/is-m... You can read or listen to the article in English, French or Spanish. #exploitation #casualisation #care

Is Museum Work a Sustainable Career on the Island of Ireland? Working conditions and the impact of casualisation. icom.museum/en/news/is-m... #globalmuseum #museums #ICOM #Careers #museumjobs

Reminder about this event on August 4th at the Féile with Michael Magee

Stephen O'Neill@oneillsb.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Doing this talk, 'Writing Belfast in the Age of Partition', with my mate Michael Magee at Féile an Phobail on Tuesday 4th August at St Mary's, 5PM. Free and no booking needed. Lifetime ambition achieved!

Doing this talk, 'Writing Belfast in the Age of Partition', with my mate Michael Magee at Féile an Phobail on Tuesday 4th August at St Mary's, 5PM. Free and no booking needed. Lifetime ambition achieved!

Yesterday, as part of the Association of Public Religion and Intellectual Life @april-cc-commons.bsky.social Colloquium, I presented my research on religion, ritual & museums at Judson Church in New York City. I discussed key themes of my research & recieved really generous feedback 🥰!

Solidarity with all the colleagues across the water and up North who are facing the uncertainty and potential devastation of redundancy. The amount of emotional damage wrought by university administrations on scholars and support staff is unconscionable.

Laleh Khalili@lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 3mo ago

The joys of British higher education:

I am once again begging universities to realise that staff - academic, professional services, estates, all of them - are the product they are trying to sell. Without staff there is nothing to sell. No amount of flashy buildings will replace staff in universities. UKHE is in freefall.

A fabulous networking events in October in Limerick -

Niamh NicGhabhann Coleman@niamhroisin.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Calling all curators, librarians, and archivists who work with religious objects or collections associated with prayer! The Prayticipate COST Action will hold a networking event in Limerick on the 1-2 October. Funding available! prayticipate.eu/activities/p...

What's it actually feel like to live through the decline and fall of mass Higher Education in Britain? Today I've written about this from the inside here... Hope you like it, and hope you find it useful. isrf.org/blog/what-do...

What Does It Feel Like to Live Under the Threat of Redundancy?

isrf.org

Delighted that the article based on my Historical Research Lecture (Nov 2025) is now online in the @ihr.bsky.social / @oxfordunipress.bsky.social journal Historical Research. 'Can popular #history be radical?' A real honour: thanks to my colleagues, especially journal editor @saracharles.bsky.social

📣Meet the 2026 APRIL-Summer Colloquium Fellows “Representing Religion in Museums” 20-27 June, NYC Brings together curators, community organizers, academics, and artists to explore the ways religion is represented, reified, and recreated in museums. Link below: www.aprilonline.org/april-summer...

Roger Casement is remembered as a revolutionary & humanitarian, but new research reveals a surprising side to him- a lifelong passion for zoology. He even has a hawkmoth named after him (Gnathothlibus casementi). Dr Aidan O’Hanlon’s new @rtebrainstorm.bsky.social piece www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2...

Great to get hands on the first print copies of our new book, the product of many "notions", edited by @ionaburnellreilly.bsky.social @stephenbaker.bsky.social and yours truly. Official launch 8 May at @qubelfastofficial.bsky.social

It is National Infertility Awareness week - a week to acknowledge the impact of infertility on millions of people around the world. An appropriate time to share the programme for the Locating Loss conference, which will take place @unioflimerick.bsky.social on 27 May

This afternoon Melissa Baird and Michael Kennedy will be talking about the fallout from the failed Sunningdale peace deal in NI in 1974-5

Irish Studies at QUB@irishstudiesqub.bsky.social · 6mo ago

In our next seminar on 20 April, Melissa Baird & Michael Kennedy (DIFP) will speak on: ‘“Agents from the South running around Northern Ireland”: Backchannel talks between loyalists and the DFA in the aftermath of Sunningdale’s collapse’ All welcome! www.ticketsource.com/institute-of...

Belfast launch of Irish Culture and Partition 1920-1955 will be at the Seamus Heaney Centre on May 1, from 5.30pm to 7pm. Bígí Linn

Irish Culture and Partition, 1920-1955 (Stephen O'Neill Book Launch)

Join Stephen O'Neill in conversation with Eamonn Hughes.

eventbrite.co.uk

Curator @brendamalone.bsky.social spoke to @seanmoncrieff.bsky.social about the Catalpa escape. 18–19 April 2026 marks 150 years since the dramatic rescue, The flag will be on display at the National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks, for 2 days only 🎧https://link.goloudplayer.com/s/pGo4FzZmg4du

150th Anniversary of the Catalpa Fenian Rescue Mission

On the 18th and 19th of April, the National Museum of Ireland will host a limited time exhibition at Collins Barracks to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Catalpa rescue mission. The mission involved the rescue of six Irish Fenians from a British penal colony in western Australia in April 1876 by a US whaling ship. After their rescue, the Fenians, who had been transported to Australia on the last convict ship, were brought safely to New York, much to the annoyance of the British who tried to intercept them as they sailed away. To discuss this and the exhibition, Seán is joined by Brenda Malone, Curator of Military History at the National Museum of Ireland. Image: National Museum of Ireland

link.goloudplayer.com

When in the Hague 💁‍♀️

When a male journalist decides to cover a femicide on the line of "why should I feel ashamed for what others have done". I've had it too. @ivehaditpodcast.bsky.social www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/comment/were...

We’re not asking men like Malachi to feel shame over violence against women but we need change

Malachi O’Doherty’s recent article in the Belfast Telegraph, written in response to the murder of Natalie McNally, is an unnecessary intervention.

belfasttelegraph.co.uk

“Immigrants could be found in every corner of the Irish Free State at that time.” Excited for this release - and grateful it’s not paywalled, unlike its UK counterpart www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

‘Such a mix of people’: Ireland of 1926 was not monocultural, release of census shows

Archive is freely available online from 18 April, revealing the lives, occupations and secrets of 2.9m people

theguardian.com

Seeing as we are all sharing our 1916 work, here's my own from ten years ago, about ruin souvenirs and compensation claims www.rte.ie/centuryirela...

As requested: if anyone can’t access and would like a copy of this paper just email me at ucc and i’ll send it on. Essentially it’s a material memory study of McGurks pub bombing through the lens of structural (as well as physical) violence #speirgorm link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Material Dissonances in the Post-Conflict City: Re-Presencing Social Injustice in Belfast, Northern Ireland - Historical Archaeology

The city of Belfast in Northern Ireland has been made and remade through cycles of violence during its 400-year “history.” The most recent manifestation of violent conflict associated with the city wa...

link.springer.com

It's Good Friday which seems as good a day as any to remind you that I wrote a book about stigmata and am still, *still* happy to come talk to you about it

New publication post this morning! Delighted to have an essay in this volume - this essay begins w the town of Emly in Tipperary & the controversial request by the Catholics to buy Church of Ireland cathedral building there. Drop me a DM if you would like to read but can’t get hold of a hard copy.