I mean: among other things. (Le cloporte, c'est moi.)

Amazing detail I just learned from a discussion of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ student diaries: he once gave up looking at the sky for Lent

***job klaxon!*** Postdoctoral Research Associate on ERC-funded project TextDiveGlobal at QMUL 12 month post from 1 September 2026 Apply by 28 July: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSG130/p...

Postdoctoral Research Associate - 'TextDiveGlobal' at Queen Mary University of London

Apply now for the Postdoctoral Research Associate - 'TextDiveGlobal' role on jobs.ac.uk - the leading job board for higher education jobs. View details.

jobs.ac.uk

Going to try to make this accidental 'livelihoo' on the OUP website into a thing: capricious quality of life and lifelikeness, essayistic esprit, careless brilliance.

This petition needs as many signatories as the Exeter one. Please sign and share — don’t let Hertfordshire managers get away with this just because a Russell Group one took the spotlight. #UKHE

Joanna Bourke@joannabourke.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Shocking news about redundancies in the Humanities at the University of Hertfordshire, despite their exceptional research activities. I have signed the petition against these actions: it would be great if you would as well: c.org/kDQynZV7J4 @bbkhistorical.bsky.social @bisa-bkk.bsky.social

Change the Higher Education funding model. No other sector of such quality, economic heft & foundational national significance, would be left to rot the way Universities are.

I’m very pleased that the trade press is giving space to the Exeter horror. Next challenge is for them to look a little further down the league tables - Northumbria perhaps, or my own place. We have feelings too.

Andy Brockman@andybrockman.bsky.social · last mo.

"The idea that people will be able to hold it together and deliver a term of teaching before they vanish off into the horizon, is bizarre, spiteful and naive as well.” The Times HE's punchy account of Exeter University's #BonfireOfTheHumanities & what one academic describes as "existential terror".

Devastating & infuriating news from Exeter, & from Glasgow, & from so many universities. The humanities foster critical thought, articulate values, imagine alternative ways of being & acting, create possibility, & curate & revitalize history & culture. Never more needed, never more threatened.

Dr. Niall Allsopp@niallallsopp.bsky.social · last mo.

Please sign & share @exeterucu.bsky.social petition on wholly unjustified, hugely damaging cuts to humanities staff at uni of Exeter (including, potentially, mine). Help us defend the humanities! And stick up for higher ed in the South West! c.org/RFqMvrKb6z

Two-year early modern English job, at Oriel College and the Oxford English Faculty, starting October. Happy to field any questions! my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

Two-year early modern English job, at Oriel College and the Oxford English Faculty, starting October. Happy to field any questions! my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

Why was the 18th century the heyday of prize contests on virtually everything? Many answers in this new book, now available with a discount from @livunipress.bsky.social: mailchi.mp/e854e1290516...

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Queries and quaestiones: Edward Lhwyd between Natural History and Natural Philosophy

This article reads the antiquary and Fellow of the Royal Society Edward Lhwyd’s works with attention to the different forms of questioning which he associated with various forms of natural enquiry....

tandfonline.com

A new piece out on the history of: questionnaires, fossils, university examination, in /Annals of Science/. Q long!

I've had the privilege in the last year of talking to the artist Olivia Plender about c17th literature & medicine, women's health, & extra-institutional care for bodies & minds. Her exhibition, Little Fennel's Complaint, opens at Modern Art Oxf on Saturday: go! modernartoxford.org.uk/whats-on/oli...

For Ascension Day: Kathryn Murphy on deadly serious and upliftingly silly artistic depictions of Christ’s ascent to heaven #fromthearchives

Up, up and away: the art of the Ascension

Depictions of Christ's ascent to heaven often manage to be both deadly serious and upliftingly silly, writes Kathryn Murphy

apollo-magazine.com

It's the Feast of the Ascension! This time last year, I wrote about the flagrant silliness of paintings of disappearing feet in paintings for @apollo-magazine.com, and why their silliness (believe this non-sense if you can!) is the point. apollo-magazine.com/ascension-fe...

Prompted to look up 'obviate' in the dictionary, by hearing a friend misusing it; only to realize that though he is misusing it, my own sense of it deviates (hm) from the OED. What do you think 'obviate' means?

‘This is a book which, though animated by topical urgency (what can art history be, and do, now, in a time of suspension of legal norms), refuses to relinquish its complexity.’ Kathryn Murphy reviews Joseph Leo Koerner’s book about art made in states of emergency

When art becomes an act of last resort

Kathryn Murphy reads Joseph Koerner’s stimulating account of art made in extremis by Hieronymus Bosch, Max Beckmann and William Kentridge

buff.ly

Looking forward to discussing my book tomorrow at the @mfoxford.bsky.social with brilliant colleagues @manymanyplies.bsky.social, @lukeosullivan.bsky.social & Emma Claussen. 12.30-2.00 if you happen to be in Oxford! 💚

This is a great collection, with a brilliant introduction (and afterword, o'course). I commend and recommend!

Adam Smyth@adamwithbooks.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Delighted to have written the Afterword for Katherine Hunt and Dianne Mitchell's fizzing collection on literary and material forms -- available for pre-order now with a discount.

CfA: International Visiting Fellowship Programme in the History of Knowledge (Lund) We invite early career/postdoctoral scholars to join us at LUCK during a period of one week between 2 November and 6 November, 2026. Read more here: newhistoryofknowledge.com/2026/04/13/c...

Looks like I picked a good time to start learning Hungarian.

Finder’s fee: seasonal fruit. Early modern provenance mark on the flyleaf in a 16th-century illuminated manuscript: ‘This book belongs to Catrina Leoners. Whoever finds it should return it to her for an apple or a pear…’ #rarebooks #earlymodern #bookhistory 💙📚📜

Two cabbages, Aert Spiering, c.1600-1620. (British Museum)

We RE-OPEN at 11:00am on the 1st of April! See you here? 📼 Dr Tom Horne

In writing my book about the Anatomy of Melancholy, with which I'm now tinkering for the last pre-proof time, I appear to have assembled two documents of cut bits, one of 41,029 words, one of 22,122. The publisher insists the book itself must be no longer than 70,000 words. All very unBurtonian.

Q: what is the most Tragical TRAGEDY that was ever tragedized by any comical Company of Tragical TRAGEDIANS? A:

In awe of the two women sitting on the Victoria line this morning applying eyeliner -- eyeliner! -- between Highbury & Islington and King's Cross: the shoogliest stretch of this most shoogly line. Their black lines impressively unshoogly.

🚨🚨 Announcing: SUMMA 🚨🚨 Simple spreadsheet software for calculating with Early Modern English currency. gjhilton.github.io/Summa/

I’m pleased to say that we’re advertising for a permanent lectureship in early modern English Literature (grade 7). I’m happy to answer any questions via email. Please circulate. www.jobs.gla.ac.uk/job/lecturer...