450 redundancies announced at the Ulster University. The impact of this will be devastating to staff, students & the functioning of the North as a whole. From social sciences speaking truth to power, to art giving this place joy - the decision must be reversed.
Can you sign & share this petition?
Handy Guide:
✅ Free Speech: When GCs who had no relation to my University complained to try and get me kicked off my course
❌ Not Free Speech: Exercising one's right to peaceful protest against those advocating your exclusion from society – on the campus you have to live and work in
the second one… wow
Dracula, Bram Stoker, translated into Irish by Seán Ó Cuirrín, Oifig Díolta Foillseacháin Rialtais, 1933. Design: AóM (Austin Molloy). John Moore/Little Museum of Dublin
Dracula 1933 Irish translation cover
Thinking about historical research & the #census26 - machine learning/ OCR has been brilliant for making it available more quickly but we need human curiosity, empathy, questions about unexpected absences & presences, and cop on to make sense of it all - research skills which AI can’t replace
If you or your students research any aspect of British, Irish or British colonial/imperial history (Roman empire to today) and need a tool that will never hallucinate sources, check out the BBIH. It develops research skills rather than repressing them. Instit. & indiv. subscriptions available.
I knew you’d be having fun today, Mary!! 🌈
The article is also online (behind a paywall I am afraid): www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/life/books/n...
A newspaper article in the Belfast telegraph, titled ‘Before the 1960s, this idea of comingohtdid not really exist in Northern Ireland’.
If you’re based in Northern Ireland, I have a piece about my new @cornellupress.bsky.social book in the @belfasttelegraph.co.uk today!
one of my most strongly held opinions is that pretty much every town or city in the UK has enough to make it worth visiting for a day - like interesting/historic buildings, an independent pub and a quirky local museum - if you keep an open mind. and Milton Keynes maybe even for two days ;)
I only have a couple of people to look up at the moment but I’m still so excited!!
final meeting with a dissertation student & I described the 2 weeks before submission as time for "thesismaxxing". student paused, then replied... "please do not ever say that again".
have i just been... mogged?
decade, surely?
The book cover for Belfastmen: An Intimate History of Life before Gay Liberation. It shows two men sat on a bench in the 1930s.
"Belfastmen: An Intimate History of Life before Gay Liberation" is published TODAY by @cornellupress.bsky.social! I tell the story of how queer men didn't just exist in Belfast but could be accepted by friends, family & colleagues... at least until a moral panic about homosexuality in the 1950s. 🧵
the journalists at the Times looked at the flailing, underfunded university sector - despite being one of the truly world-leading British industries - and thought, "yes, what an ideal time for a hit piece"
book cover, it reads: Eleonora Paklons, Kristof Smeyers, Kurt Vanhoutte, Hannah Welslau (eds) PERFORMING MAGNETISM The theatrics of persuasion in the long nineteenth century the cover shows a man in a tuxedo staring straight at you, his skin is green and his eyes are yellow
Good morning all! For those who can't wait any longer: our book PERFORMING MAGNETISM is already available in open access, with huge thanks to @leuvenup.bsky.social
Read it here:
openresearchlibrary.org/content/d7d0...
Or here: www.jstor.org/content/oa_b...
this (but remove 'modest')
thank you James!! and watch this space - i'm co-writing a wider book on queer NI and there might just be a wee bit of Fermanagh in there...
called it months ago 🥲
My hand holding a copy of A Hosting , with cover art from Louis Le Brocquy's The Táin, Army Massing. Interviews with Irish Writers 1991-2026, to be published 16th April 2026.
Just arrived today, (with an excellent cover from Louis le Brocquy no less) is A Hosting from @martindoyle.bsky.social via @lilliputpress.bsky.social - interviews with the cream of Irish writers over 35 years. #speirgorm
omg amazing!!! :D thank you!
These stories - and many, many more - are collected together in Belfastmen.
It is available NOW in affordable paperback (£20.99):
www.waterstones.com/book/belfast...
blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/pro...
A photograph of a statue of Sir Daniel Dixon, in front of Belfast City Hall.
In the grounds of City Hall, there is a statue to Sir Daniel Dixon, the city's first Lord Mayor. In 1904, he was in court defending his private secretary, Richard Lutton, who was discovered having sex with a man in a doorway. When Lutton got off, it caused a public scandal about Unionist corruption.
A mosaic bearing the name John Milligen and Co Ltd, in a doorway.
In 1917, Edgar Milligen was arrested for paying newsboys for sex in local ice cream parlours and his home in Lambeg. In the doorway of the (recently opened and very fancy) Bedford Hotel there is a mosaic of his wealthy industrialist father, who likely intervened to get him off the charge.
There are even faint echoes of some of the individuals who found themselves caught up in the stories of queer Belfastmen...
A photograph of the Albert Clock in Belfast, with empty road in foreground.
A sailor lurks suggestively outside a bar. Image is Queen’s Square, Belfast, with Sailor in War Time Uniform, Horse and Cart, Air Raid Shelter (1943), HOYFM.BT.390, Belfast Telegraph. Courtesy of National Museums NI, Ulster Folk Museum Collection
The Albert Clock still stands in Queen's Square. From at least the time of Roger Casement, this dockside area - and its toilets, boarding houses, and pubs - was a key meeting zone. In 1910, Casement recorded cruising a man here who was “awfully keen” and packing a "huge and curved" penis... 🍆
The author holds a copy of his book in front of the Belfast Entries.
A photograph of a dimly lit Crown Entry. Image from A. R. Hogg, Looking to Ann Street, Showing Cave Bar (1914), BELUM.Y1860. Courtesy of National Museums NI, Ulster Museum Collection.
Nearby are the Belfast's Entries - a series of covered alleyways & urinals that were notorious for cruising from the late-Victorian era. In 1892, a visiting English soldier-cook got himself in trouble for propositioning a policeman down Crown Entry, asking him to "show me the size of yours"! 🤯
A monochrome photograph of David Strain, in his garden, c. 1940s. Courtesy of the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland.
During WWII, David Strain met men there:
"as I reached Woolworths I saw a chap standing... so got a light from him... We chatted... then an airforce youth came along who evidently knew him, so he chatted to him for a little, he then returned to me & asked if he could see me some day next week..."
Dunnes Stores in Belfast - a large 1930s building - pictured today.
A monochrome photograph of Woolworths, the queer hotspot of the 1930s. Image is from A. R. Hogg, F. W. Woolworth and Co. Ltd. (1930), BELUM.Y2397. Courtesy of National Museums NI, Ulster Museum Collection
The other end of Castle Place joins the High Street, with the corner being dominated by Dunnes Store. This building - put up in the early 1930s - used to be Woolworths. In the mid 20th century, it was pretty much Belfast's biggest gay hotspot!
Castle Place, in Belfast City Centre, looking towards the Bank buildings, with pedestrians in foreground.
A monochrome historical photo of High St. to Castle Place, Belfast (1928). Image is from HOYFM.BT.314, Belfast Telegraph. Courtesy of National Museums NI, Ulster Folk Museum Collection.
Castle Place is still one of Belfast's most bustling streets. When I walk towards the famous Bank Buildings, I remember the queer men in the 1920s and 1930s who knew that the shop windows were the perfect place to catch someone's glance before taking a tram somewhere more private...