Sonali Dhanpal
@sonalidhanpal.bsky.social
Historian of modern architecture and urbanism and a fellow at the Buell/ SOF Heyman at Columbia
My brilliant book designer, Cristian Ordonez, just did a photoshoot for my beautiful child. I'm going to share one a day on here and remind you all to Preorder it soon! CUP: cup.columbia.edu/book/buildin... Indie Bookshops: bookshop.org/beta-search?... Ama*on: a.co/d/0hnib2jU
'Academics fear they are being “set up to fail” after several institutions finished the academic year by announcing fresh job cuts, casting doubt over who will return after the summer break, and what courses they will be teaching.' 1/3
Summer of ‘chaos’ predicted as mass job cuts close academic year
‘Impossible to plan’ for research and teaching, say staff, as threat of redundancy looms large over summer breaks
timeshighereducation.com
We (faculty at USC) took on an institutional behemoth with all the money and clout on earth, and we WON. We won our union. We're the biggest private-university faculty union in US history. Trying to make people care about this, challenge level IMPOSSIBLE
Another way to put this: most institutions, including most research universities, believe that research support in the way of time is something that faculty must largely buy extramurally based on merit, even if research quality is their most important metric in assessing faculty performance.
Asheesh Kapur Siddique@asheeshks.org · last mo.All of this. This is why the vanishing of material support for reading and thinking is such a massive crisis for the historical profession. 🗃️
every time trump is president you gotta wash your groceries
What is happening to UKHE is a wanton decimation of a sector that was both thriving to one in an existential decline. Solidarity with all faculty especially early career staff navigating this awful landscape
Hetan Shah@hetanshah.bsky.social · 3w agoIn perhaps our most devastating briefing we find early career staff in the humanities as a whole have declined by 20% since 2016/17. Between 23/24 and 24/25 early career staff across all SHAPE subject areas fell by 6%, (from 52,795 to 49,410 FPE). That is the pipeline for our disciplines
We’ve crunched the data and it shows teaching only staff in social science, humanities and arts went from 34% in 2012/13 to 42% by 24/25 and that this has been concentrated at early and mid career level www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/policy-and-r...
‘Thousands of university job cuts in humanities and social sciences are creating widespread cold spots for languages, classics and theology degrees, the British Academy has warned’ www.theguardian.com/education/20...
Humanities among degrees being ‘extinguished’ by hard-up universities
Exclusive: Experts fear rise in education ‘cold spots’ and social immobility as 4,000 academic posts lost in one year
theguardian.com
The police having to constantly remind everyone that the suspect is white so that vast sections of the population, the media and more the political establishment, don't immediately initiate and condone a deranged pogrom is a depressing new stage.
Politics UK@politicsuk.com · 3w ago🚨 UPDATE: The white British man arrested over the suspected murder of Ann Widdecombe has been re-arrested on suspicion of preparing or instigating acts of terrorism
looking forward to returning to my favourite millennials are killing capitalism‘s imperial ‘80s tomorrow to discuss ‘who framed roger rabbit’ www.patreon.com/imperial80s/...
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? | Dubravka Sekulić & Samantha Youssef | The Imperial '80s Episode 48 | The Imperial 80s
Monday at 10 AM EDT As you've already seen throughout this series, the 1980s were a weird time to be a kid. But we haven't talked about the
patreon.com
"Pizza is mid." - Karl Marx, Capital Vol 1., chapter 6
Scott Lemieux@lemieuxlgm.bsky.social · 4w agoRupert Murdoch's C-tier having a very normal one
@gfearn.bsky.social on the bus man and Manchesterism tribunemag.co.uk/2026/07/the-...
Towards the Productive State
Andy Burnham’s plans for economic reform will undoubtedly face resistance from entrenched interests. The politician must act defiantly, and rebuild relations with the constituencies Starmer ostracised...
tribunemag.co.uk
“Universities are incentivized by the promise of better credit scores to not only suppress labor wages but also labor power. From the vantage of credit rating agencies, tenure systems, strong labor protections, and legislative control of tuition are not democratic treasures but red-flag liabilities”
John Warner@biblioracle.bsky.social · last mo.I'm pretty well informed on the dynamics that threaten higher ed and academic freedom, but I did not wholly appreciate the role "debt" plays, and not just student loan debt. An eye opening convo with Jason Wozniak of @debtcollective.bsky.social. academicfreedomontheline.substack.com/p/debt-an-un...
Historian pals- can I get some help? :))) Will treat you to a beer :)
Sonali Dhanpal@sonalidhanpal.bsky.social · 2mo agoHi! Can I please ask for some pdfs? "Towards a History of the Present: Southern Perspectives on the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries" David Washbrook, 2007 in an edited volume, From the Colonial to the Postcolonial: India and Pakistan in Transition
Hi! Can I please ask for some pdfs? "Towards a History of the Present: Southern Perspectives on the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries" David Washbrook, 2007 in an edited volume, From the Colonial to the Postcolonial: India and Pakistan in Transition
Carlo Ginzburg est mort, annonce la presse italienne. Immense historien, il a su construire une oeuvre originale entre micro-histoire et anthropologie historique qui a considérablement renouvelé la discipline. www.repubblica.it/cultura/2026...
Carlo Ginzburg è morto, addio al grande storico italiano
Aveva 87 anni. Era famoso in tutto il mondo per le sue ricerche sulla stregoneria e le credenze popolari
repubblica.it
I wrote a piece a few years ago as a sort of primer that tries to historicize and contextualize the current counterrevolutionary war in Sudan. It’s basic and is meant to give folks who haven’t been following closely a sense of what and why it is happening.
Critical Times@criticaltimes1.bsky.social · 2mo agoFrom our new issue: "Sudan's Counterrevolutionary War" by @nisrinelamin.bsky.social traces key elements of the political economy of Sudan's war and situates it within a longer history of state violence. Freely available here: read.dukeupress.edu/critical-tim...
wow, just…wow This reminds me of that scene in The Big Short when Steve Eisman asks, “Why are they confessing?” and Vinny Daniel says, “They’re not. They’re bragging.”
Is a New Report About the Humanities ‘Diabolically Evil’? We Questioned Its Authors.
K. Anthony Appiah, Paul Boghossian, Katherine Fleming, and Sean Wilentz on what’s gone wrong in the humanities.
chronicle.com
Q for scholars of the Dutch empire & decolonization: a friend's father spent the 1950s in Papua New Guinea where he recorded the last stages of Dutch rule. Would any institutions or scholars be interested in several hours of film footage, once digitized? Looking for a good home for these materials.
On June 11, 2:30pm AEST // 10am IST, @specksofthings.bsky.social and I are hosting an Online Office Hour during #IAW2026, the theme of which is #ArchivesForJustice. Access the meeting link here (thejustarchivescollaboratory.hcommons.org) and join us to learn about the project or say hi over a cuppa.
Cannot wait to read the latest by Jonas - this will set off a nuclear bomb beneath a discourse on class in Britain that has been desperately provincial, nakedly partial and unimaginative for too long.
meanwhile (and also from the FT), it's hard to see this as anything other than catastrophic:
So with some pretty fucking extreme racism in the mainstream now in UK politics im sure nothing untoward will come from the fact the EHRC just opened the door to “being uncomfortable with sharing a space with certain people” being a fine reason to segregate people
Durham County Council, run by Reform, pulled £2,500 from Durham Pride. But the Durham Miners Association, mindful of the support from LGBT communities during the miners strike, stepped in and, along with other Unions made contributions to make this year’s Durham Pride bigger than ever before. 🏳️🌈💪❤️
‘Bigger and better than ever’: how Durham Pride beat Reform’s funding axe with help from the miners
Solidarity between LGBTQ+ people and unions has saved an event denied ‘a single penny’ of council money
theguardian.com
Regressive policies aimed at discouraging international students from choosing the UK have led to a funding crisis for universities, and devastating job losses are now in prospect. Our world-class institutions should not be losing world-class staff like this. Govt must welcome students again.
Chris Havergal@chrishavergal.bsky.social · 2mo agoUniversity of Sussex planning to cut ~200 more jobs, with 500 having already taken voluntary redundancy www.timeshighereducation.com/news/sussex-... via @julietterowsell.bsky.social
That well known socialist rag, <checks notes> the @economist.com makes the case for partial nationalisation of AI companies 👀 economist.com/leaders/2026...
hell freezes over, the FT opens the door to nationalization
In other news, Manchester economy in chaos after being forced to accommodate 40,000 interns with zero forward planning
Times Higher Education (THE)@timeshighered.bsky.social · 2mo agoUniversities must provide more of the types of experiences that would once have been gained during first graduate job, says Manchester vice-chancellor
