Great news! The first episode of Season 3 of our Talk On podcast is now online. In this episode, Jovan Maud speaks with Anna-Lena Wolf about her book Labor on the Line: Justice at Work on Assam Tea Plantations, published by Cornell University Press in 2025. youtu.be/99rGXkWu1M8

Talk On S3E1 | Labor on the Line w/ Anna-Lena Wolf

YouTube video by Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology

youtu.be

We will- I have no doubt- look back at this as one of the greatest scandals of our time. It he killing of the golden goose for the UK. A destruction of one of the most profitable and successful sectors.Yet, for now all politicians have their head in the sand on this one… A critically important read.

Peter Geoghegan@petergeoghegan.bsky.social · 2d ago

Behind the bewildering transformation of British universities, are management consultants being paid millions Really proud to have this vital piece on our unis are being gutted from the inside by @jheathershaw.bsky.social on Democracy for Sale. Do read democracyforsale.substack.com/p/inside-bri...

the amount of money that universities have given to management consultants is eye-watering. Where does that money come from? Have my son and daughter gone into terrible debt to fund this bullshit?

Peter Geoghegan@petergeoghegan.bsky.social · 2d ago

Behind the bewildering transformation of British universities, are management consultants being paid millions Really proud to have this vital piece on our unis are being gutted from the inside by @jheathershaw.bsky.social on Democracy for Sale. Do read democracyforsale.substack.com/p/inside-bri...

If you’d like a PDF of my Luddites comic, you can get it PLUS 29 other comics by brilliant Scottish creators for just $20 here: itch.io/b/3727/scott... 13% of profits (plus my share) go to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund

Just Work. An all new comic about the gig economy, platform capitalism, delivery riders, and their battle for worker rights. You can read a responsive phone/desktop/tablet friendly online version of it - for FREE - here: tomhumberstone.com/just-work

Just Work | Tom Humberstone

Just Work

tomhumberstone.com

A long read on "Nousferatu" from the University of Exeter academic perspective, but ranging much more widely. Verhoeven & Eltham on "Nousferatu" (2023): www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

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

democracyforsale.substack.com

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

Can't wait to read this novella on Scotland's only trading colony: 'a dream of prosperity [turned] to a nightmare that bankrupted an already impoverished nation and propelled it towards political union with England.' 🗃️ [HT @eicathomefinn.bsky.social]

Association for Scottish Literature@asls.org.uk · last wk.

‘McDermid recalls: “You said, ‘how do we do this?’ and I said, ‘we’ll make it an epistolary novel’, and I had to explain what that was.” (“That’s not true!” interjects Sharp.)’ Val McDermid & Jo Sharp on writing THE DOOR OF THE SEAS together #HistoricalFiction 💙📚 www.theguardian.com/books/2026/j...

if you liked Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey it's because you're an unsophisticated rube with no appreciation for the classics. if you disliked Chris Nolan's The Odyssey it's because you are a snobbish bore who thinks they're too cool to enjoy a thrilling evening at The Movies

I'm enjoying reading about the New York Luddites, and increasingly confused why there isn't a parallel Notts/Yorkshire movement in the historical home of the movement. With that said, there's this exhibition opening in Leeds in August museumsandgalleries.leeds.gov.uk/ludd-in-the-...

Ludd in the Machine at Leeds Industrial Museum

Leeds Industrial Museum | 17 August 2026 - 13 August 2027 | A community exhibition focusing on trade unions and workers rights from 1812 to the time of AI.

museumsandgalleries.leeds.gov.uk

Joseph Cox@josephcox.bsky.social · last wk.

"I first met the Luddites a week earlier in Tompkins Square Park, for a press conference hosted by their official spokesperson: a puppet made of garbage." www.404media.co/luddite-even...

I, a historian, now sit in the School of Science, Psychology, Arts and Humanities, Computing, Engineering and somehow also Sport with the snappy acronym 'SPACES'. I jest not. Even the jokes have now been taken on board by senior management.

Mark Williams@mrfw17thc.bsky.social · 5mo ago

I have a 'History Department in UKHE' joke but it's been reduced from 250 characters to 50 and is now merged with jokes from across ten other largely-unrelated disciplines while still being expected to be Just As Funny.

I have a 'History Department in UKHE' joke but it's been reduced from 250 characters to 50 and is now merged with jokes from across ten other largely-unrelated disciplines while still being expected to be Just As Funny.

One week to apply for the @saw-anthroofwork.bsky.social & AWR Community of Writing Fellows - a developmental editing and mentorship program for grad students and ECRs !

Anthropology of Work Review@anthropologyofwork.bsky.social · 2mo ago

You can apply now for the next round of our SAW [@saw-anthroofwork.bsky.social -AWR @anthropologyofwork.bsky.social Community of Writing Fellows! This is an 8-month writing mentorship program aimed at ECRs and equity-deserving scholars in the field of #anthropology of work and labor. Due August 1.

“To accountants, some courses or departments may be viewed as cost centres. But to lecturers and students, and the places in which they are based, they are cultural resources – repositories of knowledge built up over decades, some of which will have a specific, local character and relevance”

The Guardian view on humanities cuts in universities: academic departments are more than cost centres | Editorial

Editorial: Literature, the arts and social sciences must not be sacrificed as higher education funding is squeezed

theguardian.com

“Print books from the pre-LLM era are structurally guaranteed to be free of this contamination. ...Physical books published before [2022] are structurally clean of modern poisoning tools.” AI companies know **better than anybody else** that knowledge generated without AI is the only real knowledge

Samara Rafert@rafertess.bsky.social · 2w ago

I have definitely noticed an uptick in deep backlist sales from the OSU Press list. It's not the perpetual bestsellers but one-offs from decades ago that even I, after seven years at the press, have barely heard of. www.404media.co/ai-companies...

Please enjoy our latest Special Issue Racialization & The Gig Economy edited by @cptompkins.bsky.social and Shreya Subramani with contributions by Magally Miranda, @hborenstein.bsky.social, Roxanne Kimberly Dobson, & Christien Philmarc Tompkins

Anthropology of Work Review | AAA Labor Studies Journal | Wiley Online Library

Click on the title to browse this issue

anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

If you are at #EASA2026 you can catch one or both of our panels on The Work of Resistance cosponsored w the Anthropology of Labour Network. So many great papers exploring how different polarisations are reconfiguring work and resistance!

P159: The Work of Resistance: Possibilities for Labour in Polarising Worlds [Anthropology of Labour (AoL)]

This panel sponsored by the Anthropology of Labour Network and the journal Anthropology of Work Review will explore how different polarisations in the world

nomadit.co.uk

Last call for this piece ICYMI (gift link here which can be used up to 3 times by non subscribers giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...)

We need humanities more than ever in the age of AI

Subjects like literature, languages and history are vital to a thoughtful and prosperous society

giftarticle.ft.com

Hetan Shah@hetanshah.bsky.social · 3w ago

My heart is heavy that we are making a collective miscalculation in undervaluing the humanities - from my FT piece www.ft.com/content/fbde...

Edinburgh University accused of breaking governance rules Business as usual across UK academia😉 Official line is they “do not recognise” the claims Not denied, not refuted, just a lawyered non-answer Different university, same playbook, every time www.heraldscotland.com/news/2628199...

'Damn the consequences': Ancient university accused of breaching governance rules

Members of the university’s academic Senate did not recommend the changes, a key legal step under the institution's governing legislation.

heraldscotland.com

We are losing vital capability in our world leading humanities research base www.ft.com/content/fbde...

The UK MP special. "Now, children, I know *I* benefited from a university education, but you will surely find more satisfaction as a bricklayer. Or a toolmaker - just think, you could be as famous as Keir Starmer's dad!"

Let’s just hope we can work enough of it out before we lose all our humanities and social sciences departments.

Heidi Colleran@heidicolleran.bsky.social · 3w ago

Prehistory is more interesting than our biases let us see, exhibit #4000

The Luddites loved technology. They owned looms at home and would ‘mod’ them to count threads. Their battle was against worker exploitation. The degradation of their rights, safety and wages. They were against a handful of rich businessmen owning the means of production. Sound familiar?

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 3w ago

George Lucas likens AI sceptics to luddites clinging to horses and carts

Robots fill me with an abundance of empathy and sadness and protective feelings that would be really hard to manage as a child/student. I'm overly responsible/parentified sure, but teachers often helped me not added to the weight of life. Pay teachers.

Mashable@mashable.com · 3w ago

AI company Realbotix is piloting STEM robots for rural schools.

Fund schools, universities, public infrastructure. Pay/fund experts: writers, artists, editors, educators. Don't let Silicon Valley diminish the category of the human: what most people can learn; what experts can do; what people enjoy. Don't enable the worst futures. My latest on this: 2/

The 'I only use AI for...' fallacy

Hallo friends, and welcome, new readers! I hope you’re managing to navigate safely whatever weather challenges may have come your way this year. In today’s...

buttondown.com

Wildfires across southern Europe. Legislators pushing for more data centres & less tech regulation are enabling this & other climate disasters. The general public doesn't need "genAI", better labelled as ecocide-plagiarism-IP-theft-surveillance-psychosis-enslavement-radioactive-waste machines. 1/

Wildfires rage across southern Europe, forcing thousands to flee homes

Tour de France spectator ban as country along with Spain, Portugal and Greece faces ‘powder keg’ after heatwave

theguardian.com

Terrific Michael Clark documentary. I saw Kurious Oranj but the biggest thrill, and the one that felt the most iconoclastic was No Fire Escape From Hell in Manchester. Booing, fuming exits and Laibach playing live through the tiny theatre speakers. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Artworks - Where’s Michael Clark? - BBC Sounds

Nick Grimshaw speaks to innovative dancer and choreographer Michael Clark.

bbc.co.uk

“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

We’ve released the full data maps here looking at changing staffing in social science, humanities and arts (SHAPE) which especially shows how precarious things are for the pipeline of researchers www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/news/loss-of...

Loss of academic staff and "cold spots" for humanities and social science degrees threaten strategically important skills for UK, says British Academy

A new data map released today shows a sharp and widespread decline in opportunities for university staff in the humanities, social sciences and arts subjects in 2024-25. The data shows a precarious la...

thebritishacademy.ac.uk