Join us for our upcoming birthday celebrations! We are marking 21 years of providing courses with a webinar week, free short talks and a free prize draw. Find out more here: www.pharostutors.com/webinars

Pilgrimage, by Joe Saunders. In addition to all of its spiritual and physical benefits, pilgrimage is a useful and enjoyable way of connecting with history. how-to-history.com/2026/07/29/p...

Pilgrimage

Joe Saunders During the medieval period in Europe pilgrimage was a key feature of religious life. Many people went on pilgrimage at least once in their lives.[1] These were visits to locations of s…

how-to-history.com

Want to join IHN? You can now sign up as a member for just £10 a year! You'll get our newsletter, access to free online events with experts, invites to our meet-ups and access to online resources. The more of us, the better! Do join up! membermojo.co.uk/independenth...

Huge few days for us at @britishacademy.bsky.social as we’ve brought issues of the humanities into the public eye with different stories in the Times, Guardian and FT. Well done to all my colleagues for the hard work that makes this happen

Come join me to learn about burglary in the eighteenth century! NOT how to carry out burglary today, (although my students signed my end of term card, 'thank you for teaching us about how to do crime', make of that what you will)!

The London Archives @thelondonarchives.bsky.social · 2w ago

Join us in this talk to explore the category of theft alongside the life and death of the infamous early eighteenth-century burglar and escape artist, Jack Sheppard. 📆 Wednesday 5th August 2026 🕒️ 5.30pm 📍 The London Archives Follow the link in our bio to book your place!

Great piece from @hetanshah.bsky.social in @financialtimes.com on the future of the Humanities. Hope the new Cabinet will read this! giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

We need humanities more than ever in the age of AI

Subjects like literature, languages and history are vital to a thoughtful and prosperous society

giftarticle.ft.com

#Football was fashioning national & local identities well before the #Worldcup & modern game. ⚽️ 🏉 My new blogpost for the manyheademonster explores how #earlymodern & #medieval football forged a sense of place & home. #history manyheadedmonster.com/2026/07/17/b...

Becoming Home: Football and Geographic Identity in Early Modern Britain

This summer’s football World Cup has prompted lots of talk of ‘historic’ matches and rivalries that have played out over decades, but the game’s history – and its conn…

manyheadedmonster.com

Vice-Chancellor of University of Bristol (salary £312,251): “I take a really personal view on this. My oldest daughter is the only child in my family who really is making a very significant amount of money.”

Elspeth Van Veeren@evanveeren.bsky.social · 3w ago

Another excellent example of just how incurious and limited the UK press has been about this crisis. Not one mention of the cuts to humanities that Bristol’s own VC is trying to push through at the moment in this article about her position on the cuts 🤔🙄. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Research survey exploring if and how professional historians in the UK use artificial intelligence (AI) in their work, by Dr Alexandra Ortolja-Baird at the University of Sheffield. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Survey on AI use by historians

You are invited to participate in a research survey exploring how historians in the UK use artificial intelligence (AI) in their work. This study is being conducted by researchers at the University o...

docs.google.com

You might be wondering how this decline in the number of people entering academic disciplines in the humanities affects something like a project devoted to researching, writing, and publishing histories of place (or local histories)? These early career researchers are essential to our work. 🗃️ 1/5

Hetan Shah@hetanshah.bsky.social · 3w ago

In perhaps our most devastating briefing we find early career staff in the humanities as a whole have declined by 20% since 2016/17. Between 23/24 and 24/25 early career staff across all SHAPE subject areas fell by 6%, (from 52,795 to 49,410 FPE). That is the pipeline for our disciplines

If words could accurately capture how hard this data has been to wrangle, they would be NSFW. Coming tomorrow is 10+ years of SHAPE staff data tracking number, contract & employment type, seniority etc to finally give an accurate picture of the cost of closures www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Humanities among degrees being ‘extinguished’ by hard-up universities

Exclusive: Experts fear rise in education ‘cold spots’ and social immobility as 4,000 academic posts lost in one year

theguardian.com

Why are service charges suddenly being applied to everything? How did US-style automatic tipping come to London? It’s a sign of an unwell hospitality industry promoting a mass outbreak of entirely legal tax avoidance. www.londoncentric.media/p/how-us-sty...

How US-style tipping culture came to London

Plus: Andy Burnham's copy-and-paste pledge to the capital • Dawn Butler's mayoral fundraiser • The ongoing hunt for a luxury children's meal.

londoncentric.media

Sad but unsurprising to hear such detail about the Covid PPE VIP lane. Historians will judge but we can have our say now, as I had a go at at the time. historyandpolicy.org/opinion-arti...

Good Law Project@goodlawproject.org · 3w ago

The Covid inquiry has concluded that the Tory govenrment wasted £10bn on PPE. So when will the ministers who set up these VIP lane deals with their cronies face consequences? https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/14/boris-johnson-government-wasted-vast-sums-on-ppe-covid-inquiry-finds

I'm now running a series of historic walking tours in London via how-to-history.com/events/. Tickets are currently at a preview price while I trial them. So join me for a few hours to explore the City, its hidden gems, & the things I love. I've had great feedback so far; more is always welcome.

Events and Tours

Tours Historic London Pubs Tour London, England Tickets Great Fire of London Walking Tour London, England Tickets London’s Lost Execution Sites London, England Tickets London’s Food His…

how-to-history.com

Live reporting of England's football #WorldCup preparations, or, 'Severall Young men playng at foote-ball'. [Divine examples of God's severe judgments upon Sabbath-breakers (London: 1671)]. 🗃️

EThOS platform restored! 'Following restoration work, all metadata records previously available on EThOS have now been restored, along with an additional 14,000 records added since the service was taken offline' - more to come https://www.bl.uk/stories/news/ethos-records-restored

EThOS records restored

We are pleased to share that EThOS (E-Theses Online Service) is now available again following restoration work after the cyber-attack.

bl.uk

How-to History explains events, concepts, sources and shares thoughts on researching, writing and teaching history. Each ‘How-to’ is a short guide which directs you to further resources. how-to-history.com

A fantastic organisation. Historians together strong. 🗃️

Royal Historical Society@royalhistsoc.org · 4w ago

We warmly welcome applications to join the Fellowship of the Society. Next closing dates: 27 July and 5 October. Fellowship is open to those who have made a scholarly research contribution to #history in all sectors (within & beyond higher education) in the UK/worldwide bit.ly/4iOu51g #Skystorians

Excellent local history of print pop-up exhibition on the Strand, London.

Student membership in the EHS including subscription to the Economic History Review is open to full and part time students, including postgraduates at higher education institutions in the UK and other EC countries.

NEW from me... On 25 Sept I'll be giving a @royalhistsoc.org public lecture at the Institute of Historical Research in London. It'll be about rights of way and access to the countryside since the 1940s - all welcome, do come and have a listen! Booking below. 👇 www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/rhs-lectur...

RHS Lecture: 'In All Our Footsteps?' with Professor Glen O'Hara IN PERSON

'In All Our Footsteps? Rights of Way and the Battle for the Land after the 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act' at the IHR

eventbrite.co.uk

Our July webinar week runs 13th-17th July 2026. See Joe Saunders talking about Social Network Analysis. Booking now at www.pharostutors.com/webinars

🗃️ www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-crisis...

The Crisis in UK HE: the Future for History

An open meeting for historians in UK higher education on what is needed to best support and protect the profession and discipline.

eventbrite.co.uk

Keen to hear from any British-based historians looking for freelance research work. Happy to hear from all backgrounds and experiences.

Here’s the latest article I contributed to in The Guardian, @theguardian.com concerning baptisms of the enslaved in England during the 18th and 19th centuries. www.theguardian.com/news/2026/ju... #MalikAlNasir #ChrisOsuh #Guardian #Slavery #Baptism #ManchesterCathederal #IndianaMundi #Enslavement

Baptism record at Manchester Cathedral offers insight into Black Mancunian life in Georgian-era England

A parish entry reveals an argument that proved pivotal to the abolitionist cause, at a time when an estimated 20,000 Black people were living in the country

theguardian.com

the @rsaorg.bsky.social has announced the recipients of its 2025 Renaissance Studies Article Prize on the theme of ‘Renaissance Ecologies,’ and we couldn’t be happier that an article published in /postmedieval/ won first prize!!

Towards a history of the hammock: An Indigenous technology in the Atlantic world - postmedieval

When Europeans arrived in the Western Hemisphere beginning in the fifteenth century, they learned that Indigenous groups across the Caribbean and South America valued few technologies as much as the h...

link.springer.com

Roll up, roll up, sign this pretition for Humanities At Hertfordshire! Signing to support them is supporting the #Humanities - it might be them now, and whilst for many it's also us now, if it isn't already, it'll be you next. Sign!! #Skystorians 🗃

Sign the Petition

Save the Humanities at the University of Hertfordshire

c.org

Markets, by Joe Saunders. Markets have historically fulfilled a key role in the economic life of Britain with most towns prior to the nineteenth-century existing as market centres. how-to-history.com/2026/06/24/m...

Markets

Joe Saunders Markets have historically fulfilled a key role in the economic life of Britain with most towns prior to the nineteenth-century existing as market centres. These markets provided regula…

how-to-history.com

What a wonderful project here at Cambridge aiming to understand John Ray’s garden. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Cambridge experts recreate 336-year-old garden to commemorate ‘father of natural history’

John Ray, 17th-century botanist who coined words petal and pollen, was a tutor at Cambridge when he created his first garden

theguardian.com

Leading a food history tour tomorrow - tell your friends if anyone is at a loose end, they are most welcome to join. Can take payment on the day too; just let me know.

London's Food History: From the Tudors to the Georgians

Join Dr Anna Cusack of How-to History for this walking tour of the city of London exploring its culinary past.

eventbrite.co.uk