📢PROJECT UPDATE📢 You may have seen the news that the University of Exeter, home of the wills project, has placed 500 academics at risk of redundancy. The project leader Prof. Jane Whittle & project co-investigator Dr Laura Sangha are both at risk, alongside almost all of the History department. 1/

Don’t tempt me with a good time…

Ayo@darrylayo.bsky.social · 20h ago

Guys like this don’t realize that they are the freak

Leaders of flag-raising group Raise the Colours Oxfordshire placed trackers on highway workers’ cars to find out their home addresses, the High Court has heard. RTC then attempted to intimidate the highway staff into no longer removing flags by repeating their addresses to them.

Has anyone written about the implications for the history of sexuality of our increasingly forced use of AI as a research tool? Historians of sexuality can't really access a lot of AI tools because of content prohibitions. What does that mean for the field, if anything?

In the UK at least, I feel like we can confidently date the moment we abandoned credibility and expertise to Michael Gove's 2016 comment: 'I think the people of this country have had enough of experts'.

the Mountain Goats@themountaingoats.bsky.social · 5d ago

can we sometimes be asking "what qualifies this guy to speak on this subject?" or has that ship sailed

The 1919 Housing Act - the Addison Act - received the royal assent on this day in 1919. 176,000 council homes were built under its terms and its standard of high quality housing set a benchmark for decades to come. A 1917 photo of Addison and housing from Newcastle, Lancaster and Winchester.

The first truly global biography of a revolutionary thinker. How well do you know Eric Hobsbawm? Discover our conversation with biographer and historian Emile Chabal: bit.ly/3RZrUjK Coming August 18.

We always knew that the IHR was harbouring hidden superpowers...now it's official!

"I don’t often see myself as an environmental historian...partly this is cowardice: I’m not sure how environmental historians bear it. Although the fires are a ‘natural’ disaster, their human causes in this region have been apparent for a century and a half. And here we are, again. 💔

will pooley@willpooley.bsky.social · 6d ago

Some historical background to the fires in southwestern France, drawing on reading I did for my 2019 book about the moorlands, and lamenting the deeply depressing reality that we have known many of the causes of this ecological disaster for 150years 🗃️ williamgpooley.wordpress.com/2026/07/30/u...

The sec of state who has seen at least 15000 academics lose their jobs just said this. Out loud. Mercy me. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

‘It hurts to lose a job you love’: Starmer loyalist Bridget Phillipson fights on despite cabinet demotion

Exclusive: The former education secretary on her new role as Labour chair and continuing as the minister for women and equalities

theguardian.com

I was not expecting the @ihr.bsky.social to feature so prominently in the new Spider-Man movie, but happy for this cross-over of interests

#CfP 📢 Edited Volume: "Music, Sound, and Domestic Spaces", eds. Emily Eubanks & Sarah Koval Seeking contributions on music, sound, and domestic spaces across regions and historical periods. ⏰ 1 August 2026 🔗 rensoc.org.uk/announcement... #MusicHistory #SoundStudies #EarlyModern

Full of despair today. Massive lay offs in social sciences and humanities across the country, Burnham puts out a video saying 'AI can write an essay', and my university is busy integrating co-pilot into all staff and student computers. We are being told we're defunct and there's no resistance.

I can guarantee that AI can’t, in fact, write a (good) essay

Rachel Coldicutt@rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · last wk.

So one of the problems of announcing policies via social video is that you end up saying stuff like this

Call for Chapters!! @historywill.bsky.social and I are looking for chapters on visual displays of monarchy for our edited volume! Please circulate widely!

These are the most recent in the distressing series of cuts to History and the Humanities at other institutions including to our friends and colleagues at Oxford Brookes, QMUL, Goldsmiths, Nottingham, Wolverhampton, Kent which we also deplore & we extend our solidarity to all those affected.

Today, Filippo de Vivo, Martin Conway, @faridahzaman.bsky.social and I, along with 30 other members of the Faculty of History at the University of Oxford have written to the leadership of the University of Exeter to express our deep concern about the proposed cuts to Humanities and Social Sciences

the other thing the ‘let businesses determine what education people get’ misses is that there are loads of amazing, niche, non-geographically-specific industries that are completely underserved by the education system and would continue to be so under this plan. Perfumery, for example, comes to mind

One of the things I find odd about UK skills and jobs policies over the last 10 years is the idea that - for young people - place is destiny. It's like we've taken the Brexit memo and double stamped it into meaning you need to stay put to be a success. The geographical footprint of the UK is *tiny*

This week's task: working through the meticulous copy-editor comments on my book MS Alongside the thoughtful copy-editor comments, the integrated MS Copilot keeps stumbling arrogantly in and thinks it can offer these edits to this thing I have spent c. 14 years on Auto. Rewrite. Could you imagine?

To every trans Londoner: this city is yours too. Today we celebrate London Trans+ Pride and reaffirm a simple truth: you should be free to live as yourself, without fear or prejudice. You are loved. You are wanted. You belong here.

Probably this one for me - it combines archaeology and historical analysis, is about a topic that is memorable (cannibalism) and is about one particular case study so is easy for students to digest (apologies for the pun 🤣). www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The Limits of Disgust: Eating the Inedible During Jamestown’s Starving Time

This article reexamines the dietary choices made by English colonists during the notorious Starving Time of 1609–10. During moments of crisis, like the Starving Time, attitudes toward foods normall...

tandfonline.com

If I may, this 'Notes and Documents' one I did for William and Mary Quarterly on this 1701 South Carolina 'slave law' that I found @bodleian.ox.ac.uk that, inter alia, prescribes 'gelding' for repeat 'runaways' 😑 www.jstor.org/stable/44916...

I think mine is The Temple of History, about the sometimes problematic ways in which historians talk about archives. It prompts discussion about methods and how we write (and think) about what we do doi.org/10.1080/1449...

The temple of history: historians and the sacralisation of archival work

Archives have long been considered central to the work of historians, from nineteenth-century Europe to contemporary Australian practice. Rarely remarked upon is the recurring tendency for some his...

doi.org

What a great question! From feedback I've gotten, I'd say it's easily my 2020 "Four Black Deaths." Did it get a boost from COVID? No doubt, b/c people were in need of pandemic explanations. But card analogy has proved memorable to explain "biological archive." academic.oup.com/ahr/article/...

The Four Black Deaths

Abstract. The Black Death, often called the largest pandemic in human history, is conventionally defined as the massive plague outbreak of 1346 to 1353 c.e

academic.oup.com

I'd be tempted to say this one. It covers the portrayal of his/war in modern media, different approaches and interpretations of historiography, popular culture, and the value of historians. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

War collaborators: documentary and historical sources in First World War computer games

With the emergence of computer games focused on the First World War, representations of the conflict have begun to reach brand new audiences in ways it has been unable to before. The portrayal of t...

tandfonline.com

I haven’t really taught my own stuff, but I know that others have used this article in teaching about the use of surveillance files and social movement history www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

When the Personal Became Too Political: ASIO and the Monitoring of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Australia

In the official history of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), there is only one mention of the women’s liberation movement, amongst a collection of other social movements tha...

tandfonline.com

It’s on the longish side but I think for me it would be my article on British footballers’ autobiographies, as a lot of the first half is about setting out a template for analysing post-war British culture, which I think can be applied to a range of other cultural products and texts.

For club, country, and capitalism? Footballers’ autobiographies and the political and moral economies of post-war Britain

This article examines the emergent cultural format of the British footballer’s autobiography between the 1940s and 1960s, as a case study into how tensions in the post-war settlement evolved and we...

tandfonline.com

For me, it's a piece co-authored with @brodiewaddell.bsky.social in the @enghistrev.bsky.social, "Riches and Poverty in English Protestant Culture", which I hope teaches really well in long reformation classes and when thinking about connections between religious sentiment and social conditions.

Volume 139 Issue 600 | The English Historical Review | Oxford Academic

The oldest journal of historical scholarship in the English-speaking world. Publishes original and exciting research relating to all parts of the world and all forms of historical inquiry from the Cla...

academic.oup.com

My fellow historians, which single academic article of yours do you think 'teaches best', i.e. for both staff and students it's doing work that leads to a strong class discussion + students remember it? I am interested in how people see their own work. I'll go first. Hit reply and link your pick!