I've written about Neets for the LRB. It is odd listening to recent debates about this completely ignore the overwhelming fact of this current crisis, that it is one of inactivity, disability, mental ill-health and neurodevelopmental disorders (as I discuss) www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

William Davies · Young People Are Different: What do Neets need?

The majority of Neets are not looking for work, but living outside of the labour market and the education system,...

lrb.co.uk

A 🧵with an update on the wills project: #EarlyModern 🗃️

The Material Culture of Wills Project@materialwills.bsky.social · 11h ago

📢PROJECT UPDATE📢 You may have seen the news that the University of Exeter, home of the wills project, has placed 500 academics at risk of redundancy. The project leader Prof. Jane Whittle & project co-investigator Dr Laura Sangha are both at risk, alongside almost all of the History department. 1/

Very short notice (deadline 18 August) but we're advertising a 0.5fte lectureship in public history for next year. Covers my 3rd year undergraduate course on public history of Rome (ancient to modern) plus some MA public history teaching.

It's not natural that we have high vaccination rates. That was built. Through massive state intervention and public buy-in. Nice things (in this case - living in a nation without vaccine preventable diseases) cost money and time. They also require *trust*.

my unfinished paper draft watching me start a new paper

It's a commonly misunderstood book with definite problems, but the basic thesis is pretty powerful: we assume market organizations should work to maximize efficiency and profits but in practice they often sacrifice these (and our mental health) for the aggrandisement of an insular leadership class..

I never thought that I would have to write this piece about my university. But after weeks of demonstrating privately to senior managers that their case is based on a false prospectus, that their data are inaccurate and their claims misleading, there was little choice. substack.com/@lucasamin/n...

Inside Britain's university crisis

As teaching staff face job loss, their bosses have netted pay rises and bought advice from a “vampiric” management consultancy, writes Prof. John Heathershaw of the University of Exeter

substack.com

You might like my recent article with my colleague Iain Smith then, which mentions this and other medical and literary cases - I love this public battle too! 2025 - Addiction - Wiley Online Library share.google/08PlJQfWtAL4...

How did investigations into spontaneous human combustion influence alcohol medicine? An examination of the medical and literary discussions that brought the two together

Background and Aims The presence of sections or chapters on spontaneous human combustion in more than half of the key texts in English on the action of alcohol on the body and mind in the first half...

share.google

The Greenhouse #envhum book talks start up again this month! Episode 199: Sara Pritchard @sarabpritchard.bsky.social on Transforming Night: The History and Science of Light Pollution (@uwapress.uw.edu, 2026), Monday 24 August 2026, 4pm Central European / 10am Eastern. newnatures.org/greenhouse/e...

Do you know what would help us avoid “harms” to children from future lockdowns? Not having an education system that treated itself as a race. ”Getting shoved out the end with as many GCSEs as possible” is not actually an ethos.

So a whole lot of my talented Humanities colleagues are now unemployed as of today. A lot of understandable concern over Exeter. But for over two decades my Hums colleagues were in the top quartile for their research contribution to society. History top 10. Now gone with only a national whisper.

Deeply concerning. Exeter University one of many in the UK firing many faculty, especially in the humanities. It’s not only the impact on the faculty and students in often-popular programs. We are dismantling knowledge structures that took dozens— even hundreds of years to build.

Owen Davies@odavies9.bsky.social · 4d ago

So a whole lot of my talented Humanities colleagues are now unemployed as of today. A lot of understandable concern over Exeter. But for over two decades my Hums colleagues were in the top quartile for their research contribution to society. History top 10. Now gone with only a national whisper.

I did a thread on paleontologists contributing to eugenics & fascism. What about the opposite end of political spectrum?🧵 Ernst Untermann (1864–1956) palaeontologist by trade, painted murals for the Dinosaur National Monument. A prolific socialist, first in US to translate Das Kapital into English.

Everyone's comparing Nolan's Odyssey to Homer, but I think there's much more richness The ancient Greeks adapted the Odyssey into ART While these images might appear static to us, I want to walk through how an ancient Greek saw art: AS DYNAMIC STORYTELLING like our films 1/13

www.voice-online.co.uk/opinion/comm...

When Black excellence becomes a target for suspicion - Voice Online

Black excellence should be celebrated, not treated with suspicion. As Jason Arday's supporters argue, his case raises questions about race

voice-online.co.uk

Also a really nice mention in the local newspaper. For me the grant feels especially important in this particular moment to show the power of the humanities as history degrees are being glossed as superfluous www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-e...

£1.3m Tyneside project that could 'improve the night shift' for NHS workers

A historian has been awarded £1.29m for a research project

chroniclelive.co.uk

Anyway, palaeography is essential to medieval studies, as is Latin, and if we lose these from our unis we leave medieval studies to the privately-educated and independently wealthy. Medieval studies is important: everyone deserves to spend their time on this floating rock doing what they love ❤️ /FIN

This is just to say I have OCRed the text thet was in tne arch:ve and whicb yov were prabaldy seamhing for "breahtast" Fargme ms fheg mem debo:w5 sb ?mccf mmb 5c oc1b

More than 800 civilians were killed on Oct 7 1200 Israeli soldiers have been killed since Netanayhu attended two funerals in total Two out of 2,000 casulties But he flew to DC for Lindsey Graham

I am not a lawyer, but I do not believe seeking asylum is illegal, and is in fact an act protected by international law, but perhaps I do not understand the intricacies of UK law

Colin Yeo@colinyeo.bsky.social · last wk.

New: Over 1,000 people seeking sanctuary convicted of illegal arrival in the UK — by Victoria Taylor

Pagan underwear store called The Great God Pants

I'm absolutely devastated for colleagues at Jodrell Bank who found out this morning that funding for the UK's e-MERLIN radio telescope array will be terminated. This is a short-sighted move, to save a tiny fraction of the overall UK science budget. #SaveJodrellBank 🔭🧪 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Jodrell Bank's Lovell telescope faces axe in science cuts, BBC understands

Astronomers warn it would tear the heart out of UK science, and leave a generation untrained.

bbc.co.uk

Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans@astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 3w ago

“What will the Lovell Telescope discover/enable 20 yrs from now? I can’t tell you, and that’s the point. It will either be something extraordinary that none of us can yet predict, or we will defund it and leave Cheshire with a rusting monument to unfulfilled potential and discoveries never made.” 🔭🧪

We treat direct action as terrorism and we treat terrorism as legitimate speech and action. If you don’t believe the second part is true, may I just point you to the pogroms in the north of Ireland continuously referred to as “disorder” and never leading to a single terrorism charge (1/2)

Dr. Sandra Duffy Golden@sandraduffy.bsky.social · last wk.

My role in movements has never been direct action, but I am intensely anti- the culture of 'treat direct action [ sometimes involving property] as terrorism.' Not only is it unnecessary carcerality from the state but it limits speech acts through the indirect chilling effect of fear.

Me 20 years ago: Freud is reductive psuedo science. Everything isn't penis Me now: everyday we explore new frontiers in penis

The political project of Israel's government is the elimination of Palestinians from Gaza (and eventually between the river and sea). Their actions and words all point in that direction, and that has remained unchanged. Beyond the question of how you call it, we need to recognise it for what it is.

there’s an entire essay in how ‘historically accurate’ and ‘nostalgia’ are just weaponised to mean ‘the world bigots wished they lived in’ and not something that has actually ever existed but i haven’t had enough coffee to write it yet

CE (Catie) Murphy@cemurphy.bsky.social · 2w ago

no no you don't understand madeline it would be the kind of historically accurate that *doesn't* have Black people in it 👀

A twelve thousand percent increase in articles about "the trans probem" in a decade. Manufacturing "the trans problem" out of thin air and bile.

elia ayoub@ayoub.bsky.social · 2w ago

Worth adding some numbers to this. The British press decided to make trans rights into an issue. It just wasn’t an issue before. This was a top-down decision. shado-mag.com/articles/opi...

2010/2014-ass final

What happens if we place the UK university crisis in the Humanities (and some Social Sciences) within the context of students with known disabilities? We know that regional cold spots increasingly limit HE choices for many disadvantaged students. What do the stats suggest for disability? A 🧵 1/5

David Turner@profdavidturner.bsky.social · 2mo ago

My 500 year history of disabled people's political activism is out now! Thanks to The Independent for making it their non-fiction book of the month! www.penguin.co.uk/books/455782... #disabilityhistory

The anatomy of an AI-supported academic article is becoming more apparent. I desk reviewed ~70 manuscripts this week for our journal. Reckon 20ish had significant AI assistance. On top of hundreds of others recently I'm starting to see patterns. Are other editors are seeing the same or similar? 1/