Not sure what to do on a particularly rainy Friday in Bristol? ☔️ We’ve got you covered! Old English Reading Group runs at 3pm in Hattie’s office, no experience or prep required! Email harriet.soper@bristol.ac.uk for more info! ☺️ *Old Norse isn't running today but will be back next week!*

This came out earlier this week! Thank you so much to Yale University Press for all their efforts getting it to publication.

Pls sign and share this open letter to the Bristol VC, against the School of Humanities's decision to withdraw the BA in English Literature and Community Engagement (ELCE): the only part-time, flexible undergraduate degree programme available at the University forms.gle/SbyhXPSJgQTc...

Save our pioneering widening participation undergraduate degree in English Literature and Community Engagement at the University of Bristol

19 August 2025 Dear Evelyn Welch (Vice-Chancellor) cc Judith Squires (Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost), Tansy Jessop (Pro Vice-Chancellor for Education and Students) The School of Humanities has ...

forms.gle

WE ARE HIRING!! Creative Writing (fiction) Pathway 3 lecturer 0.5 in the Department of English at the University of Bristol's thriving School of Humanities. It's a 3/2 teaching load with plenty of support and mentorship from meeeeeee (others are available)! www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...

Rosemary Sweet and I have written a book about #18thc British travellers to Spain and Portugal, and I'm really happy it's now free to download here: uclpress.co.uk/book/no-coun... (hard copies also available!) #skystorians #c18th

No Country for Travellers?

No Country for Travellers? explores the rise and nature of British travel to Spain and Portugal between 1760 and 1820, across a region that is conventionally overlooked in studies of British travel to...

uclpress.co.uk

I'm relaunching my website, Set Yet Speaking, which will host my translations of medieval literature. In this first post, I discuss why I'm giving this another go, why translation matters, and how a short extract from Beowulf inspired the name of the site. nikolasgunn.wordpress.com/2025/08/12/w...

Welcome to Set Yet Speaking (plus a translation of Beowulf lines 1687-98a)

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Set Yet Speaking. It’s been a while. The last time I properly updated this website, I was still lecturing. Things have changed a bit since then. I realised an …

nikolasgunn.wordpress.com

how your email finds me

When I pointed out King’s will lose 90% of its AHRC student-led places under the new scheme, I got piled on by the AHRC Chair claiming I was wrong and scaremongering. It wasn’t quite 90%. This year King’s students got 27 AHRC student-led scholarships. Next year they’re giving us 3. So 89% then.

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · last yr.

'The number of student-initiated PhD scholarships funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) is set to fall by 60 per cent when new doctoral training arrangements come into effect next year, new figures show.' 1/3

New week, Old English! Today our featured new book is "The Life Course in Old English #Poetry" by @hattiesoper.bsky.social who examines the linear & unruly paths thru human, nonhuman & more-than-human lives in #OldEnglish poems #LiteraryStudies #AgeingStudies #AgeStudies #EnglishPoetry #MiddleAges

A HUGE well done to the CMS' own Dr Hattie Soper for being awarded the University English Book Prize 2024! 🎉🎉🎉 What an amazing and well-deserved award; we're so thrilled for you Hattie! 🥰 You can read the announcement here: universityenglish.ac.uk/announced-un... #medievalsky #skystorians

Today at #isseme25!

Do you like: magic? women? magic women? history? romance? biblical poems with dodgy rhymes? Then please come to @imc-leeds.bsky.social session 837, magical learning in history and literature, Tues at 4.30pm, with @magicnotwitches.bsky.social, Harry Lewis and me, chaired by @hattiesoper.bsky.social

Look at this beautiful book cover. That shiny lady? That’s Saint Æthelthryth. Heck yes I named my cat after her.

Devastated that the Centre for Lifelong Learning @york.ac.uk is being closed after 40 years. What a loss to education in the region. Feel for students and staff. Being a tutor has been joy, doing what universities should be doing by sharing knowledge widely with our communities.

I like how “nitpicking” must date from a time when picking nits out of someone’s hair was considered needlessly pedantic

♦️ Job opportunity at UCC! ♦️ 5-year Lecturer in Old English position, commencing in September. This will be a great opportunity for someone to join a thriving department, and to really put their own mark on the discipline. Please share widely! www.ucc.ie/en/future-hu...

Lecturer in Old English | University College Cork

UCC wishes to appoint a scholar with a proven commitment to excellence in teaching and research to the role of Lecturer in Old English.

ucc.ie

A new article by our own Dr Abs S. Ashley has been published in a special issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly ('Toward a Trans[]Crip Theory'): 'Neurotrans Affect: Choreography, Cocreation, and Coalitional Resistance'! @ainokash.bsky.social read.dukeupress.edu/tsq/article-...

3D-print your own medieval toy! Thanks to my amazing collaborators Beth Kimber and @noreenmasud.bsky.social www.instructables.com/Buzz-Bones-t...

Buzz Bones - the Original Fidget Spinner

Buzz Bones - the Original Fidget Spinner: For as long as there have been children, there have been toys which make irritating noises. Originally made from the foot bones of a pig, Buzz Bones make a hu...

instructables.com

June is the time for hay making in the golden sunlight. #Medievalcalendar BnF MS Latin 1156B; Horae ad usum romanum; 15th century; f.6r @gallicabnf.bsky.social

this is very beautiful and the 3D print is a masterpiece and even the bone purist in me admits that being spattered with juice from a real pig bone is not necessarily for everyone

Harriet Soper@hattiesoper.bsky.social · last yr.

3D-print your own medieval toy! Thanks to my amazing collaborators Beth Kimber and @noreenmasud.bsky.social www.instructables.com/Buzz-Bones-t...

3D-print your own medieval toy! Thanks to my amazing collaborators Beth Kimber and @noreenmasud.bsky.social www.instructables.com/Buzz-Bones-t...

Buzz Bones - the Original Fidget Spinner

Buzz Bones - the Original Fidget Spinner: For as long as there have been children, there have been toys which make irritating noises. Originally made from the foot bones of a pig, Buzz Bones make a hu...

instructables.com

No fewer than three members of Bristol’s English Department have found their monographs shortlisted for the University English Book Prize for Outstanding First Manuscript, across the 2023 and 2024 competitions! universityenglish.ac.uk/book-prize/

We have landed on Bluesky!

let’s go girls x

Join us in Bristol this summer for the Environmental Humanities Summer School! You will be taught be leading experts at the University's world-renowned Centre for Environmental Humanities (1/3)

I continue to be amazed by what the arts & humanities contribute with so little, and disappointed by the ongoing under investment in knowledge of human societies and cultures at a time of such fragmentation.

Christopher Smith@christophersmith.bsky.social · last yr.

and yes those are the figures - with those three little boxes at bottom left we support research into everything humans have ever thought, said, designed or performed; what it is to be human, and the conditions that allow us to flourish or falter.

My thruppence on the current crisis across the UK university sector: THREE cheap easy wins that the government could implement to solve the short term issue, thereby helping us discuss the long term ones. tacity.co.uk/2025/03/26/t...

Three Immediate, Cost-Free Interventions to Avert Collapse in UK Higher Education

UK higher education (HE) is undergoing a profound and deeply unsettling crisis. Universities across the country including Newcastle, Cardiff, UEA, Dundee and many others (seemingly by the day) are …

tacity.co.uk

this was probably Bad Luck