📣BROADSIDE BALLAD USERS!📣 If you use online databases of early modern English broadside ballads for any sort of research, please fill out my dissertation survey: forms.cloud.microsoft/e/TQrAhSLXkK I’m looking at the databases people use and the impact of Bodleian Ballads Online closing - thanks!

If you're involved with a society or group (not listed on the @royalhistsoc.org's list) with members who may be ECRs who've completed a PhD in a History related subject, or a GLAM org who support / connect with ECRs regularly - could you email Kerry. Love@northampton.ac.uk saying hello?

Please share: I am working on the History Lab + & History UK ECR Survey with @kerrymlove.bsky.social . We collating contacts to disseminate the survey to later this year. The survey examines support received by ECRs post-PhD in history or related subjects (such as archaeology and art history). (1/3)

the ideal academic life is being an eccentric Victorian lord. Invent a stamp licking machine at 22. Get elected to the Royal Academy for counting the beetles on your estate. Die in an arsenic explosion. The perfect life.

Professor Whittle is one of four colleagues in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Faculty at the University of Exeter elected to Fellowship of the British Academy this year. 🗃️ ALL FOUR of these outstanding scholars were placed at risk of redundancy last month. Here's their statement:

🥳 Enormous congratulations to my outstanding colleague & friend Prof. Jane Whittle, on her election to the Fellowship of the British Academy. Jane is a world renowned scholar of the history of work & gender in preindustrial Europe. She currently leads The Material Culture of Wills project. 🗃️

"my little astrolibre where my name is graven" 📀🕰️🪐 From the 1552 will of William Bukley, a schoolmaster in Greenwich. I've tripped and fallen into the V&A's catalogue again, this time looking at all the beautiful examples of astronomic instruments!

Feels a bit weird to post book history when the world (literally) and academia (metaphorically) are on fire, but here are some some nice shiny coated fore-edge tabs from a set of sixteenth-century music part books. British Library K.3.c.2., Heinrich Isaac, Coralis Constantini (Nuremberg, 1550+).

We've been a bit quiet recently whilst we've been busy cataloguing all the wonderful 12th May diaries we received! We're pleased to say we've finished cataloguing all 287 diaries that were submitted via our online form 😅 If you're interested in viewing them, drop us an email! 💻

Herman Melville got so many of his (whale) facts wrong but on this count I can't argue with him, there are some fascinating sailors wills out there

Moby Dick@mobydickatsea.bsky.social · 3w ago

It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at their last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world more fond of that diversion.

We have the following 3 calls for research funding for RHS Fellows & Members: bit.ly/4wwSMGu > 'Open Research Grants', for mid & later career historians > 'Early Career Fellowship Grants', for postdocs > Martin Lynn Scholarship', for PhD research in African history Closing 4 September #Skystorians

Calls for research funding from the Royal Historical Society: September 2026 deadlines - RHS

The Society invites applications for the following three schemes — open to historians at a range of career stages — with closing dates of 4 September 2026. Early Career Fellowship Grants, 2026-27* off...

bit.ly

Utter confusion exists among the historians

‼️ The deadline to apply for the @srsrensoc.bsky.social Society for Renaissance Studies Scholars of Colour MA Scholarship is fast approaching. Applications must be submitted by 15 July 2026.   Full details and the application portal can be found on our website: rensoc.org.uk/apply/schola...

Live, Laugh, @imc-leeds.bsky.social! If you see a confused looking early modernist with a yellow backpack bumbling around that's me! Come and say hi

#shs2026 was brilliant (as usual). Wonderful conversations, people, dancing, research, ideas, snacks, talks, and connections. All the important things!

As always the @socialhistsoc.bsky.social conference has been the most welcoming and engaging discussion of a wonderful variety of topics. If you do social history do think about joining and getting involved!

How is it, then, with the whale?

If you’re a PGR at this year’s @socialhistsoc.bsky.social please do consider coming to our lunch-time meet-up today! #SHS2026

I am very glad to see how widely covered the insanity at Exeter is, but please I beg everyone, understand this is happening EVERYWHERE in UK universities. If people care about anything valuable that this sector does or contributes too, they need to get loud, now.

George Monbiot@georgemonbiot.bsky.social · last mo.

Something deeply troubling & shocking is happening at Exeter University*, where a mass cull of staff is planned, even though it's in surplus. No good justifications given. @jamesgdyke.info provides the details: www.technosphere.earth/the-bonfire-... *Disclosure: I have a Visiting Fellowship here. +🧵

We are dismayed to learn about further proposed HE cuts, this time at the University of Hertfordshire and the University of Exeter. In solidarity, please join us by signing and sharing the two urgent petitions below. 🚨🖊️ 1/3

📣We're so excited to welcome you to our 50th anniversary conference today!✨ Check out our fabulous programme here: socialhistory.org.uk/wp-content/u...

📢ALBUM ANNOUNCEMENT: A TIME OF MINDING📢 Chris Hoban has been recording all the music he composed as a fellow on the @leverhulme.ac.uk project The Material Culture of Wills! Sign up here to be notified when the album is released: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... Photo: Tom Hurley #EarlyModern 🗃️

As we close out Pride Month, we recommend "Medieval Futurity: Essays for the Future of a Queer Medieval Studies" edited by Will Rogers and Christopher Michael Roman. While Pride Month may be ending, queer medieval studies continues all year, and this title is an excellent foundation for that work.

Putting the finishing touches to my paper for @socialhistsoc.bsky.social conference later this week, excited to be talking as part of this great panel on women's networks and communities! Thursday Panel 3 11:15-12:45 if you're around and about and keen to talk bedding

Huge congratulations to The Box Plymouth, which has been named Museum of the Year 2026 🎉🏆 And congratulations to the other wonderful finalists: Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery, National Gallery, Fitzwilliam Museum and V&A East Storehouse. Read our coverage in Museums Journal Online 🔗

‘Pride and connection’: The Box Plymouth named Museum of the Year 2026 - Museums Association

Venue scoops £120,000 prize after impressing judges with welcoming, community-focused approach

museumsassociation.org

Started my two week trip today with 3 books brought with me from home, and have already collected a 4th (loan from the friend I'm staying with this weekend). I already know I'm dropping into the incredible oxfam bookshop in farnham so lets see how ridiculous this gets

Can you spot a very tiny seafarer in this 16th century map of Gloucestershire from our Saxton Atlas? The #DayOfTheSeafarer highlights the essential role of seafarers, as well as the many risks of a life at sea - though hopefully with fewer sea monsters around these days! 📷 Rare books B 1590/SAX/XX

A petition has now been created by Exeter UCU against these measures. Sign it here: c.org/LF57sK7YfR This careless obliteration of HASS subjects is needless and so cruel to the fantastic staff at Exeter, and the wider devaluing of humanities & arts subjects within UKHE must be stopped.

Sign the Petition

Stop Redundancies at the University of Exeter

c.org

Ben Phillips@benphillips1989.bsky.social · last mo.

A statement from Exeter UCU branch @ucu.org.uk - please share far and wide.

Union fears this places 500 staff (14% of academic staff) at risk of redundancy: "These proposals represent both a stunning failure of leadership on the part of the university's senior management and governance...and a reckless attack on an institution... critical to the...regional economy." 3/4