'Research from the British Academy shows that graduates in the arts, humanities and social sciences are just as likely to be employed as their STEM counterparts. They are equally resilient during economic downturns and more likely to move between sectors without wage penalties.' 1/3

Why Thousands of UK Students Are Ditching English and History Degrees for Business and AI

British universities are witnessing a decline in humanities enrolments as students opt for career-focused degrees. Rising tuition fees and employment prospects drive this shift, challenging the value ...

ibtimes.co.uk

🚨 Excellent opportunity for grassroot organisations: The €2 million Building Narrative Power funding and learning programme offers grants of up to €150,000 to develop and test narrative strategies around three areas: data centres, jobs and young people’s lives europeanaifund.org/newspublicat...

Call for proposals: New €2m Building Narrative Power funding and learning programme - European AI & Society Fund

For too long the tech industry has dominated our understanding of Artificial Intelligence. To counter this, the European AI & Society Fund is launching the Building Narrative Power programme to help p...

europeanaifund.org

I often say the rise in students coming to our dept with diagnoses of various kinds of neurodivergence has been matched with a corresponding fall of students coming with generalised depression. Because, you know. They're getting a diagnosis of the actual problem rather than feeling they don't fit.

Rosie (she/her)@airfriedrosie.bsky.social · 3w ago

Remember Streeting's review into whether young people are being overdiagnosed with ADHD, autism, and mental health issues? Well, the interim report is out, and there's a reason the media are silent on it (spoiler: it proves what a lot of us have been saying all along)

I wrote a report last year for @openfuture.bsky.social on the issue of the lack of community governance over the roll-out of AI tools in academic publishing. Editorial boards have a great deal of power here, especially if the journal is society-owned. openfuture.eu/publication/...

Governing the scholarly AI Commons – Open Future

New report explores how academic communities can shape AI governance in research and publishing, from regulation to community-led approaches.

openfuture.eu

New Phytologist@newphyt.bsky.social · 3w ago

We're sorry about this Hilary. We weren't given any notice of this being instated and have contacted Wiley to have the problem rectified. If you click the popover, it will open an additional window, which you can then dismiss. We appreciate this is a poor user experience.

'Early career opportunities have rapidly declined in the fields of arts and humanities amid UK job cuts, with teaching-only roles increasingly the only positions available for those just starting out, an analysis by the British Academy has found.' 1/3

Humanities hardest hit as early career opportunities disappear

Analysis of staff data finds skew to teaching-only roles in entry-level positions, with scale of cuts not reflected at more senior levels

timeshighereducation.com

A new resource from @britishacademy.bsky.social, out today, maps changes in UK academic staff numbers and contract types between 2012/13 & 2024/25 for the arts, humanities & social sciences bit.ly/4w47SmP You can search by subject (incl history), provider, region & forms of employment #Skystorians

The Society will write up a summary for History for next week. Key points at this stage include: > 11% decline (-440 FPE) across all History staff between 2018/19 and 2024/25, compared with a 7% decline across all humanities > loss of 140 FPE History roles 2022/23 to 2024/25 #Skystorians 1/3

“Without intervention, we risk narrowing the UK’s research and development knowledge base, reducing opportunity and access to key subjects, particularly in regions already underserved, and weakening the long-term sustainability of the Shape disciplines". (Margot Finn) 1/3

British Academy urges ‘intervention’ over slowing academic pipeline - Research Professional News

Analysis shows decline in early career researchers across Shape disciplines and rise in teaching-only contracts

researchprofessionalnews.com

Feel this so hard. Although of course respondent is right: all we humans just use a minus sign!

Eugene Vinitsky 🍒@eugenevinitsky.bsky.social · 3w ago

Solidarity with my em-dash-loving friends — that models wound up using it so much is proof that you were right all along.

Society for Renaissance Studies: Two scholarships of £4,000 each, to contribute to the costs of postgraduate study. rensoc.org.uk/apply/schola...

still waiting for the “difficult decision” not to fund the latest tech scam

Arts Professional@artsprofessional.co.uk · 4w ago

Performing and creative arts university courses will no longer receive funding from a government teaching grant as part of “difficult decisions” about spending priorities, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has said.

Trying to clear the decks a bit before starting the new job, and finally submitted something I’ve been fiddling with for 10 years - and I’m not rounding up for effect! That makes me feel old…

New chapter out in this OA book, which I co-authored with the inimitable Delfi Neto-Isabel. It’s called ‘Data Feminism, Network Analysis and the Pre-modern Archive’. www.peterlang.com/document/141...

Peter Lang Verlag - Digitalizing the Middle Ages

This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the fast-growing panorama that lies at the crossroads between Digital Humanities and Medieval Studies. ...

peterlang.com

'When Labour took power in 2024, it was braced for a host of problems. One of those it did not anticipate, or perhaps want to deal with, was the financial crisis inherited in the university sector.' Except for universities being specifically named in Sue Gray's Top Ten Problems list, that is.

Jacqui Smith: 'A Million Young People Not Earning Or Learning Is A Moral Outrage'

Skills minister and Labour veteran Baroness Smith talks to Matilda Martin about her party’s leadership troubles then and now, plus what can be lear...

politicshome.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)

Academics all over the country could put their hand up and say they're in the same boat. But when did you last see a big feature on redundancies at a post-92 university?

RHS finds cuts to history courses fall disproportionately on post-92 universities

The Royal Historical Society has warned of ‘an alarming increase’ in the number of university history departments facing cuts to staffing and degree options – even as numbers studying the subject a…

sslh.org.uk

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".

The sub-head is seriously questionable: “how changing student preferences are fundamentally reshaping universities” buys into the university’s narrative that this is driven by falling recruitment leading to deficits. How can that be, when Exeter has been eating other people’s lunch for years?

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · last mo.

'Around 150 full time equivalent jobs are set to go at the south-west England institution, with 115 of them in the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, despite it being internationally renowned.' 1/4

Consider applying! This is an incredibly rewarding role both because of the great and friendly team you work with, the ideas people share with you, and the editorial experience. Also fun!

History Workshop@historyworkshop.org.uk · last mo.

📣 Call for Applications 📣 History Workshop is seeking to appoint one Editorial Fellow in 2026, with specialism in pre-1800 CE history from any part of the globe. This is a part-time, paid role. Application deadline: 7 August 2026. Please share widely!

I mean this in the kindest possible way but 'I thought we were safe' is exactly the wrong way to think at the moment. We are all on a sliding scale of precarity now. No job is permanent. The UK does not have tenure. #UCU #UKHE

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".

I genuinely do not understand why vocational pathways are for working-class youths rather than for youths as a whole. Just as universities are meant to be available for higher education learners, not for middle-class learners or the posherati.

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

Don't miss the June issue of Reviews in Digital Humanities, brought to you by World Cup superfans @jenguiliano.bsky.social & me ! ⚽️ #ReviewsInDH reviewsindh.pubpub.org/v7-n6

Vol. 7, No. 6: June 2026 · Reviews in Digital Humanities

Vol. 7, No. 6 of Reviews in Digital Humanities, a peer-reviewed journal that facilitates scholarly evaluation of digital humanities work and its outputs, edited by Jennifer Guiliano (Indiana Universit...

reviewsindh.pubpub.org

University of Exeter@exeter.ac.uk · 2mo ago

We’re delighted to be able to share some exciting news: We’ve climbed 19 places in the QS World University Rankings 2027, and we’re now ranked 136th globally. This achievement reflects the growing strength of our reputation as one of the world’s top universities. news.exeter.ac.uk/staff-news/e...

'Andy Burnham has set out ambitions to put universities “at the heart of local economies” and to make the UK the world’s leading “innovation nation”, in a speech making those goals central to his “Manchesterism” vision for the UK if he becomes prime minister.' What's left of universities, that is.

Burnham: ‘UK can be world’s leading innovation nation’ - Research Professional News

PM-in-waiting wants universities “at heart of local economies” but pledges education shift beyond “university route”

researchprofessionalnews.com

Nothing tells historians that someone is not a historian more than their belief that manuscripts should be handled with gloved hands.

Chris Slaby@cjslaby.bsky.social · last mo.

I’ve been curious about the new Dante film since I first heard of it. This negative review has not dampened that interest, esp as the reviewer said “I was out the second I saw an ungloved Nick sifting through priceless Italian historical documents. The librarian watching him should have been fired.”

If young people are being taught by society/government messaging/their parents/schools that they won't be able to make a living if they study a humanities subject we are creating a vicious cycle. We must ask who does this messaging serve and why is our society buying into it?

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · last mo.

'About 150 academic roles are set to go at the south-west institution, which said it was targeting areas that are “no longer sustainable” or have seen changes in student demand.' History and English are name-checked. 1/3

the cuts to higher education in the UK are ideological. they are based in a false valuation of the humanities that is entirely founded in erroneous concepts of employability and demand. these cuts are not financially necessary; they are a stripping of the humanities for political reasons.

Humanities, arts and social sciences prop up stem - we cost less to run but are modelled as costing the same. Exeter does not have a financial deficit. This is ideological.

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · last mo.

'About 150 academic roles are set to go at the south-west institution, which said it was targeting areas that are “no longer sustainable” or have seen changes in student demand.' History and English are name-checked. 1/3

ANOTHER opportunity at Cambridge Digital Humanities: 2026/27 Methods Fellowship. Deadline 17 July. More details here: www.cdh.cam.ac.uk/methods/meth...

Methods Fellowships 2026/27 - CDH

cdh.cam.ac.uk

Cambridge Digital Humanities (my new home from Sept!) is inviting proposals for the next round of British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship. Esp in memory studies, semiotics, semantics and AI and emergent literary forms. Details here: www.cdh.cam.ac.uk/about/news/b...

CDH invites proposals for British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowships - CDH

Cambridge Digital Humanities (CDH) at the University of Cambridge is inviting proposals for the next round of British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowships. The British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship offe...

cdh.cam.ac.uk