Just submitted to @wwnorton.com and @pushkinpress.com for June 2027 publication: my biography, the first, of Rudi Gernreich, who was one of the two degrees of separation between Karl Marx and Cher.

🚨CFP🚨 “Visual Cultures of Sexuality in Postwar Europe” (Birmingham City University, 19-20 May, 2027)

New day, new insights from what’s going on at @exeter.ac.uk. It doesn’t cease to amaze me how uni management patronises its workers while deploying the most obscene kind of “caring management” attitude by offering free mental health support to those whose lives it wants to destroy. #DefendExeterUni

Crossings offers an exploration of queer sex and sex cultures, exploring cruising as a mode of thinking with the body and communicating through sexuality 📍Lenbachhaus Garden, Munich 🗓️ 17th July 2026 🔗 buff.ly/LbQM74q @rutgersupress.bsky.social @lizrosenfeld.bsky.social @noisybits.bsky.social

Missed the VC’s speech? Lucky you. Here’s the financial highlights! 1/ Confirmed Exeter uni is STILL IN SURPLUS for 25/26 2/ The top 16 execs at Exeter have a combined pay packet of nearly £4m 3/ The VC has a pay packet of nearly £400k a year 4/ Our cash reserves are going up, year on year [1/2]

I went to the StaBi in Berlin to finally fill the blanks on this little story about the serendipitous transnational connections that forged “The Europe that Gay Porn Built, 1945–2000” (just in case the UK far-right pundits are interested in keeping up with the project they’re so outraged about. ⬇️

I can’t believe I’ve just heard about the University of Exeter campus being built in Egypt while, in Devon, 500+ staff are at risk of redundancy. It’s giving farce this time around.

Fun facts about the University of Exeter: when I accepted my job at Linköping, i was told by senior management of the HASS faculty “you’ve just made a huge hole in our research budget!” That hole, dear reader, was money from a large AHRC grant—my grant!—that would move elsewhere due to my new job.

Poland's Route 666 to Hel makes its first journey www.euronews.com/travel/2026/...

Poland's Route 666 to Hel makes its first journey

The famous 666 bus route to the Polish town of Hel is officially back after being dropped in 2023 over concerns about its satanic associations, delighting curious passengers and tourists.

euronews.com

We just had a meeting with over 700 (!!) of our members and OVERWHELMINGLY voted in favour of a motion to calling for a strike ballot! 🩷 We're doing this together. We are the University! #DefendExeterUni.

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. +🧵

The bonfire of the humanities

150 academic posts at the University of Exeter are to be cut, most in the humanities but also in social sciences, engineering and environmental sciences

technosphere.earth

Delighted to hear @exeterucu.bsky.social has just voted no confidence in the senior management of the faculty of humanities and social sciences. @exeter.ac.uk once again leading in the destruction of UKHE in the most obscene, despicable, and patronising way. “Our university,” “our community” my ass.

Things I hear through the grapevine: The University of Exeter, which has just put most of its HASS academics at risk of redundancy, has just announced that, while no 2026/27 research leaves will be cancelled during consultation, staff on leave may need to be recalled to teach after September. 🤯

Hey Bluesky crowd! You also should be signing our petition opposing the announced redundancies at the University of Exeter. 📢 We're 17k and growing! Redundancies ARE NOT necessary and we must #DefendExeterUni 🩷 c.org/RFqMvrKb6z

Sign the Petition

Stop Redundancies at the University of Exeter

c.org

Back to my postwar gay magazine archive, where dick picks used to share space with political education and consciousness raising.

UK universities: we’re introducing all these digital workload, publication management, and funding application pipeline platforms to make your work easier! Also UK universities: we’re using those platforms to score and rank you, and decide who stays and who’s going to be made redundant.

500 academics are threatened with compulsory redundancy at the University of Exeter, most in Humanities, and also in the Sciences arbitrarily targeting diverse research groups. The university is in a strong financial position. Support us, sign this petition c.org/yKcx6Zr29H

This campaign needs you now

Stop Redundancies at the University of Exeter

c.org

João Florêncio@noisybits.bsky.social · last mo.

Just heard about the 200 redundancies announced by my previous employer, the University of Exeter. 170 of those are in Humanities and Social Sciences. This is what happens in a country with the collapsing HE funding system with VCs-cum-CEOs on £300k salaries+bonuses and corporate governing bodies.

c.org/zGdWtyWgpb

Sign the Petition

Stop Redundancies at the University of Exeter

c.org

I’ve just heard through the grapevine that Exeter UCU has just passed a vote of no confidence in the Vice-Chancellor.

The way in which @exeter.ac.uk is hosting this year’s @forarthistory.org.uk conference having just announced a cull of academics that puts 80% of all its humanities, arts and social sciences staff at risk.

Look Over There

ALT: Look Over There

static.klipy.com

The Green Party is committed to rebalancing the scales of our workplaces and ensuring every student has access to higher education without the burden of debt by restoring maintenance grants and scrapping undergraduate tuition fees. 4/4

Exeter Green Party stands in solidarity with the Exeter University and College Union in condemning the University of Exeter’s announcement of sweeping job cuts. These plans will recklessly imperil the University’s vital contributions to the social, cultural, and economic life of the city. 1/4

These are the people UK universities choose to managed their strategic financial planning. Despicable.

João Florêncio@noisybits.bsky.social · last mo.

Just heard about the 200 redundancies announced by my previous employer, the University of Exeter. 170 of those are in Humanities and Social Sciences. This is what happens in a country with the collapsing HE funding system with VCs-cum-CEOs on £300k salaries+bonuses and corporate governing bodies.

The Chair of the Council at Exeter “spent most of his career as a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company.” You know McKinsey, famed for its role in the 2008 financial crisis, in helping pharma “turbocharge” sales of opioids, leading to the ongoing opioid crisis in the US, corruption, etc.

João Florêncio@noisybits.bsky.social · last mo.

Just heard about the 200 redundancies announced by my previous employer, the University of Exeter. 170 of those are in Humanities and Social Sciences. This is what happens in a country with the collapsing HE funding system with VCs-cum-CEOs on £300k salaries+bonuses and corporate governing bodies.

170 jobs in Humanities and Social Sciences. the VCs-cum-CEOs on £300k+ will be fine though, they'll just have fewer people to lecture about 'innovation.' you can't austerity your way into a knowledge economy — that's not a strategy, it's a contradiction with a PR team

Meanwhile, while the average salary of a university Rektor in Sweden is, converted to GBP, around 113,000 per year (not that much more than a full university professor), UK Vice-Chancellors earn at least twice that amount (and much, OBSCENELY MUCH more than a full professor at a UK university)

João Florêncio@noisybits.bsky.social · last mo.

Solidarity with all colleagues and comrades as the bubble of UKHE bursts, fuelled by consecutive neoliberal governments, institutional horniness for growth, VCs who love dick swinging, and a neo-colonial self-important attitude that thought the whole world would pay to fill UK classrooms.

When, years ago, UK universities started selling “student experience” instead of learning, and hiring a whole gang of bureaucrats to better market luxury accommodation, beautiful campuses, gourmet “world food” halls, we knew what that meant: UK universities were to become a lifestyle industry.

João Florêncio@noisybits.bsky.social · last mo.

Solidarity with all colleagues and comrades as the bubble of UKHE bursts, fuelled by consecutive neoliberal governments, institutional horniness for growth, VCs who love dick swinging, and a neo-colonial self-important attitude that thought the whole world would pay to fill UK classrooms.