I don't actually see any evidence of this? As far as I can tell most academics response to the Wilson piece (those who have seen it at all) was "huh, fair enough - I liked the film tho". I'm guessing this isn't registering because low key calm responses aren't flashy or memorable.

Robert Borden Stan Account@bordenstan.bsky.social · 21h ago

If the academy gets pulled into coming out swinging against the biggest adaptation of Homer in probably a couple generations off the back of one prominent scholar deciding to be Reviewer 2 to Nolan's work, it will say, IMO, pretty damning things about academia's ability to foster public engagement.

look, I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up but I think I may have discovered something incredible on worldcat

UCU colleagues - perhaps a useful discussion? Locally (and anecdotally), we have some people in the public sector, many ended up retiring. Some have visiting posts at other universities. Others got admin jobs at other universities.

will pooley@willpooley.bsky.social · 10h ago

does anyone know of any work that’s been done on career trajectories of (UK humanities) academics who have been made redundant? eg information about how many go into school teaching, early retirement, independent research? appreciate this is complex, sensitive and much data is too recent

From my experience in former history dept that went from about 25 to 6, people went on to a mix, not all compulsory. Some to other universities, some late career into writing and researching + semi early retirement, some independent scholars. Those staying in unis, a good number now precarious.

does anyone know of any work that’s been done on career trajectories of (UK humanities) academics who have been made redundant? eg information about how many go into school teaching, early retirement, independent research? appreciate this is complex, sensitive and much data is too recent

Colleagues may wish to know that some UK HEIs provide open staff access to the FT.

(paywalled) the FT coming out in favour of more research funding for science at Uk universities we might want to add more funding for ALL subjects, but actually it would be a net good on many levels for gov to reverse course on the existing real terms funding cuts www.ft.com/content/1419...

Time for Andy Burnham to smile on UK science

Waning support for basic research threatens Britain’s technology ambitions

ft.com

"History involves sorting and organizing hundreds of thousands of facts" I remain astounded by how loud and wrong people are about what history actually is.

If you can’t think of anything nice to say, I believe there’s a vacancy at The Spectator.

This is simply wonderful news for the Migration Museum and its ongoing project to create the UK's first permanent museum exploring migration to and from the UK. The new Museum will be in the City of London, but is already working with collaborators outside London and outside England. 1/3

The Wolfson Foundation commits £600,000 to the UK’s ‘Missing Museum’

The Migration Museum is delighted to announce that The Wolfson Foundation has become a Founding Partner of the UK’s first permanent museum dedicated to exploring how the movement of people to and from...

migrationmuseum.org

"Detail is itself a kind of argument and thus, since beauty and elegance in writing derive from economy, a way of making a point without belabouring it." Hell yes. Great piece, it's going straight into the kit for advanced students and when doing writing training.

Royal Historical Society@royalhistsoc.org · 5d ago

"Details, in their singularity and idiosyncrasy, point to the capaciousness of human experience." New today in the Society's journal 'Transactions': Joe Moran 'On Detail in Historical Writing': bit.ly/44UMi8C Now available OA @joemoransblog.bsky.social @massobsarchive.bsky.social #Skystorians 1/2

We've spent our lives, until very recently, reading predominantly human words, human sentences, human text, poetry. What is it doing to us now, emotionally, to have to wade through so much written material which simply isn't written by a person? If you're a big reader, love words, I think it hurts.

Dr Dave Hitchcock@davehitchcock.bsky.social · yesterday

"If it seems true, we keep reading", and that truth doesn't have to be literal, contained in the sentence itself, but I think it does have to be authorial. This explains to me in no small part why I struggle so hard to even read artificially generated text. To even get through a single sentence.

snap poll: is it worse when you get the feedback and it confirms the weaknesses you already worried about in your writing or when it says nothing about those but suggests ones you’d never thought about?

Creative & performing arts subjects received £16.8 million SPG 2024-25; £12.9 million in 2025-26; £ O million in 2026-27. The University of Creative Arts will thus lose half of its government funding this year; Art University Bournmouth 40.7%, Norwich U of Arts 40.4% and Leeds Arts U 30.3%. 1/2

Arts institutions hit hard as OfS details teaching grant cuts

University for the Creative Arts loses more than half of its funding after support for creative subjects reduced to zero

timeshighereducation.com

“a detail is itself a kind of argument” cracking piece from @joemoransblog.bsky.social on detail in history writing 🗃️

Royal Historical Society@royalhistsoc.org · 5d ago

"Details, in their singularity and idiosyncrasy, point to the capaciousness of human experience." New today in the Society's journal 'Transactions': Joe Moran 'On Detail in Historical Writing': bit.ly/44UMi8C Now available OA @joemoransblog.bsky.social @massobsarchive.bsky.social #Skystorians 1/2

a messy post about a very sharp book. i think what I enjoyed most about Sam Knight’s Premonitions Bureau is that it doesn’t sacrifice the challenging ideas for mass appeal. it wraps them in his acute sense for a good story. wish i had half that talent williamgpooley.wordpress.com/2026/08/04/s...

Story Sense

Sam Knight’s Premonitions Bureau is one of those books that so many people recommended to me that I was beginning to dread reading it. Call it a foreboding. Which goes to show how powerful my…

williamgpooley.wordpress.com

It requires expertise to be able to say, “I do not know the answer to that question, and that is becauae thus far scholarly consensus is that we do not have the knowledge needed at this time to answer that question.” Sometimes “I don’t know” is a far more rigorous answer than people might think.

Today I discovered that a letter attributed to a man was actually written by Ann Bathurst, the 17th-century visionary woman I’m researching. 🤩 Archival work might be slow and painstaking but it’s totally thrilling to be going in search of lost voices from the past and finding them! 📚

In late 2023, the Society spent a day with Hertfordshire’s historians. We saw the quality, creativity and distinctiveness of teaching, research and engagement. We were told by a (now departed) senior manager that History was ‘a portfolio the university will guard very carefully’. bit.ly/4hLediN

Glen O'Hara@gsoh31.bsky.social · 3d ago

So it's farewell to the History subject area at the University of Hertfordshire, not the first nor the last to go. One of the best departments in the country, just extinguished like a snap of the fingers. Think of the waste. (1/2)

odds on the usual suspects doing a Whole Thing about blue sky users celebrating the death of Rod Liddle?

update from my summer side quest: how much of this diary is the guy’s dreams and how much is just his everyday life? yesterday i transcribed a page that seemed more like latter but involved his neighbors seeing him defecating. i have the experiential status of this incident tagged as “ambiguous”

will pooley@willpooley.bsky.social · 3w ago

altho the diary starts strong with a lot of dreams, much of it is (i think) more like a conventional diary, recording what he was doing each day otoh the events he describes sound a bit weird (a beggar suffocating him so he grabbed the beggar by his “chin beard”? something weird about cats?)

Kim Connor@theotherkim.bsky.social · 2d ago

I read this and then a few posts down stumbled onto @ekansa.scholar.social.ap.brid.gy new (OA) article on AI in archaeology which includes discussion of the effect on OA intarch.ac.uk/journal/issu...

on academic publishing. im not the only person to have this thought, right? a few years ago given the choice of open access journal article or paywalled chapter i would *always* opt for OA but LLM scraping now gives me pause (1/3)

Gentle reminder for all that if you have books that are water damaged, crawling with bugs, physically broken, or giving you travel advice for a country that hasn’t existed since the 90s, you can safely throw them away, you don’t need to make them your local thrift store’s problem.

so the thing about this product is that a noob like me lols at the smelly +fails to remark the “SPICY PLUS” -the “smelly” comes mainly from the bamboo and mushroom and green bean mixes -we used 1/5 of chilli oil sachet and I have since had to remove my sweat soaked outfit and wash all my clothes

will pooley@willpooley.bsky.social · 3d ago

smelly AND spicy you say? we are going in!

smelly AND spicy you say? we are going in!

a film centered on the exploits of a dashing hero equipped with an extraordinary automobile to thwart an evil villain: ian fleming’s chitty chitty bond bond

Fascinating argument from Emma Schwak of the EUI. On similar lines, I have been known to describe Marie Anne Lenormand as the first influencer theconversation.com/the-worlds-f...

The world’s first influencers were French and they emerged after the Revolution

Influencer culture is not a thing of the past, and yet the movers and shakers of post-revolutionary France are proof that writing lifestyle columns and trending is a centuries-old pursuit.

theconversation.com

The Ohio State Fair had a poster contest. The winner was awarded $1000. I present to you, the winner: