I had my PhD graduation yesterday - I was very lucky to have my family with me and to graduate alongside friends.

Some saying 'he can still vote this way and change the substance' - maybe, but Starmer's problem wasn't that he never did/said anything that progressives liked, it's that he was consistently inconsistent, matching every step left with three to the Right. This sounds like more of the same.

Kevin Schofield@kevinschofied.bsky.social · 3w ago

Scoop: Andy Burnham will vote FOR Shabana Mahmood's immigration crackdown in the Commons tonight. Dozens of Labour MPs had written to him urging him to water down the Immigration and Asylum Bill, warning the party is “losing progressive voters”. Story 👇 www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/andy-b...

Just read this excellent piece in Dispatch on peace walls in Northern Ireland: dispatch-media.com/should-belfa...

Should Belfast tear down its peace walls?

Peace walls have divided neighbours for decades • Some say they're now a barrier to reconciliation • Others aren't so sure

dispatch-media.com

Also working-class autodidacts didn't just read alone - they read in groups, set up libraries and reading rooms, and battled for Mechanics' Institutes (many long ago merged into unis) to teach music, history, and politics. They built the public adult education infrastructure that's being destroyed

Peter Whitewood@pwhitewood.bsky.social · last mo.

This misses the point. Self-education has become more accessible in the last 20 years than at any point in history, though not through ‘amateur reading’. The problem isn’t access to information but learning how to evaluate it critically - and that brings us back to universities (and Humanities)

What are the best things you’ve read on the idea of Englishness? Novels/essays/travel writing/political writing/poems/whatever else

From January to March 2025 I applied for 168 jobs, had 6 interviews and 1 offer. Geoff Dyer has written variously of his time as a ‘dole wallah’, so I wrote about my time as a ‘NEET’ for @newstatesman1913.bsky.social. Read it here: www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

One million Neets are a statistic, but every Neet is a tragedy

To be a Neet is to feel a singular shame and self-loathing, a sense of being apart from everybody else

newstatesman.com

Re-read Raymond Williams' The Volunteers over the weekend for a paper I'm trying to write on the British New Left and experience - plenty to be said about the novel's ambivalent interest in direct action and deferred decisions/power, with a nice description of a Labour MP-as-meritocrat

Bore da i pawb. The morning session I’m in at #awwe26 is childhood, memory and children’s literature. Trust up is Owain Burrell (Warwick U) on the cultural impact of the Grammar/Secondary system after the 1944 Education Act

On this day in 1926, the General Strike began in the UK. The Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) and @brepols.net have published a new reading list to mark the 100th anniversary. Click here to explore the free reading list:

Researching the General Strike (1926) in the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH)

Data derived from the Bibliography of British and Irish History. About the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) The Bibliography of British and Irish History is an essential tool for th…

about.brepolis.net

New 1926 General Strike map online! Using early 20th century Ordnance Survey maps, the online resource shows strike events (through archive sources) in their contemporary landscape. Explore the map, digitised sources and more at warwick.ac.uk/services/lib...

📢Conference Call for Papers📢 An Intelligent Interest: Learning and Education in London Seeking proposals for engaging and accessible talks or presentations on any aspect of education and learning in London’s history. royalhistsoc.org/calendar/an-... #history #historyconference #CFP #education

Registration for the "Queer Lives and Trans* Formations: Reimagining Weimar Germany's LGBTQ+ Histories and Cultures" online conference is now live! Sign up to join us 30 - 31 March (Australia: 31 March - 1 April). With speakers from 6 (!) time zones & keynotes from Jonah Garde & Camilla Smith!

Queer Lives and Trans* Formations Conference Registration

We are looking forward to welcoming you to the Queer Lives and Trans* Formations Conference on 30-31 March, 2026! As the conference will be taking place online, we ask that you register to attend by c...

forms.gle

Appropriately on his 102nd birthday, I've been reading E.P. Thompson's The Poverty of Theory today. One of the very best to ever do it (it being disagreeing with French high theory)

Attention @bacls.bsky.social members. We recently launched the BACLS 'Work in Progress' Group, where members can get collegiate and supportive feedback on academic work. If you have work to submit or want to act as a reader do get in touch! Not yet a member? Visit our website to register bacls.org

🚨🚨CALL FOR PAPERS🚨🚨Fancy contributing to a special issue on Cultural Materialism, Fascism and the Far Right, edited by @elinormtaylor.bsky.social? Look no further... Details, including the deadline, at the link: raymondwilliams.co.uk/2026/01/28/c...

Call for Papers: Cultural Materialism, Fascism and the Far Right, A Special Issue of Key Words: A Journal of Cultural Materialism

Speaking in 1980 amid the New Right upsurge, Raymond Williams noted that ‘cultural struggle is absolutely crucial, because this is the terrain on which the interpretation of the crisis had to be es…

raymondwilliams.co.uk

The most recent episode of Fallout (S2EP6) really hammers home the perpetual '50s ideology of the nuclear technocracy by using a Time and Motion-style production line as the ideal form of management

For the New Statesman I tracked the career of the corporate raiding Thatcherite turned populist tribune, James Goldsmith www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2026/0...

James Goldsmith, godfather of British populism

Unlike Nigel Farage or Rupert Lowe, Goldsmith told the truth

newstatesman.com

I've just finished Stuart Hall's 'Familiar Stranger' and it's an absolutely fantastic (auto)biographical text with a richness of thought that rivals any work or theory - the way he thinks Jamaica and Britain together is masterful

Interested in guest editing a special issue of Key Words: A Journal of Cultural Materialism? We've made it easier than ever to pitch us. Download our special issue proposal form here: raymondwilliams.co.uk/submission-g...

I passed my viva today with no corrections - couldn't and still can't quite believe it! Very grateful to my examiners, Mike Niblett and Nick Bentley, and as always a constant debt of gratitude to my supervisor Michael Gardiner

Owain Burrell@oburrell.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Finally submitted my PhD yesterday - feels very odd to have let it go but pleased to have it in!

Definitely contemplating this. Anyone interested in doing a panel on Scottish SFF. I'm thinking modern modern or contemporary but always open to ideas. #fantasy #sciencefiction #ScottishSFF

Prof. Dimitra Fimi@dimitrafimi.bsky.social · 10mo ago

If you’re working on any area of fantasy and the fantastic, come and join us at Glasgow in June 2026 and do consider presenting or running a workshop! All the info you need and the full CFP is here: fantasy.glasgow.ac.uk/index.php/20... @uofgfantasy.bsky.social @uofgartshums.bsky.social

👻 Preparing for my book launch on Friday (Hallowe'en!) 1pm UK - if you'd like to join online drop me an email! You can read and access LIVING WITH GHOSTS here link.springer.com/book/10.1007... with institutional access 👻

Finally submitted my PhD yesterday - feels very odd to have let it go but pleased to have it in!

Thrilled that Fionnula and myself have been granted generous funding by @ucdhumanities.bsky.social to run this conference. Anyone interested in women's lit/mental health/disability studies keep your eyes peeled for CfP!

UCD Humanities Institute@ucdhumanities.bsky.social · 12mo ago

'Bad Feelings: Sadness and Gender in Contemporary Culture' - @darlingorlaith.bsky.social and Fionnula Simpson 'Craft: Activism, Literature, Labour' - Katherine Fama and Benjamin Anderson 'Energy, Creativity, Sustainability' - Derval Conroy, Jane Grogan, and Jeanne Riou

Just under two weeks to send in abstracts for this special issue!

Raymond Williams Society@r-williams-soc.bsky.social · last yr.

🚨🚨Call for contributors to next year's issue of Key Words, a special issue on 'Foreclosure,' guest edited by Chloe Ashbridge and Owain Burrell🚨🚨 Deadline for abstracts is July 18th, 2025. Read more here: raymondwilliams.co.uk/2025/06/09/c... Please share widely.

Had a great time at the Dis/Trusting the Institutions of Literature conference at UCD - a brilliant series of panels and papers across themes of sociology and literature. Here I am chatting away about the grammar school, disciplinary English Literature, and the British constitution.

🚨🚨Call for contributors to next year's issue of Key Words, a special issue on 'Foreclosure,' guest edited by Chloe Ashbridge and Owain Burrell🚨🚨 Deadline for abstracts is July 18th, 2025. Read more here: raymondwilliams.co.uk/2025/06/09/c... Please share widely.

Call for Contributors: Foreclosure, a Special Issue of Key Words: A Journal of Cultural Materialism

British cultural production has a long history of foreclosure. Understood as a premature abandonment, or an abortive failure, of radical political projects, foreclosure has an imaginative and mater…

raymondwilliams.co.uk

Pleased to say that mine and Michael Gardiner's paper on meritocracy and its discontents in Textual Practice is now open access www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The satire of the meritocracy: foreclosed futures in Michael Young, Raymond Williams, and Muriel Spark

The high summer of the post-war British consensus is often seen as a period of social promise, in which the opportunity for social mobility was made available to all through the technocratic basis ...

tandfonline.com

I've been learning Welsh for two years now with mixed success - very grateful to my Welsh colleague who will talk to me about books in Welsh! I think I'll have to start trying to slowly read something on my own, but that's probably a post-PhD project