Absolutely shameful

I'm really sorry

What is he saying to his wife at night? How much does he practice the cadence of his PM voice in the shower? And what will he be saying on the PR rounds when he's shilling his obligatory Time in Office Memoir?

Fascinated by what is currently happening in the Starmer household. Have it under good authority that he is a normal man usually, cracks jokes, eats sandwiches etc., but there is no trace of this in any way he presents himself

Introducing AIRBORNE Issue #3!

Publishing 6 May.

Pre-order or subscribe today: www.break-down.org/tag/issue-03/ 🔗

Not once in the 80s, 90s or 00s do I recall a politician urging the public to embrace email, mobile phones, texting, two factor authentication, online banking, air fryers, or to replace all their cassette collection with a CD collection.

So forgive me if I smell a rat.

Katie da Cunha Lewin The Writer’s Room: The Hidden Worlds that Shape the Books We Love The Brontës’ study in the parsonage; Virginia Woolf’s garden room; Maya Angelou writing in hotel rooms and Ernest Hemingway in Parisian cafés- What is it that so fascinates us about the spaces w

Chuffed to be at Felixstowe Book Festival on the 27th of June. Would love to see some of you there

Katie da Cunha Lewin The Writer’s Room: The Hidden Worlds that Shape the Books We Love The Brontës’ study in the parsonage; Virginia Woolf’s garden room; Maya Angelou writing in hotel rooms and Ernest Hemingway in Parisian cafés- What is it that so fascinates us about the spaces w

Chuffed to be at Felixstowe Book Festival on the 27th of June. Would love to see some of you there

Marking boycott looms at Goldsmiths over £20m of cuts to staff Staff at Goldsmiths, University of London, have overwhelmingly voted for industrial action in a fight to protect jobs, UCU announced today.

🚨 1 in 4 staff at Goldsmiths to be axed.

All while senior management get eye-watering pay rises and £16m is spent on consultants and lawyers.

This is the reality of Higher Education in the UK.

Our members have voted for industrial action, support them.

www.ucu.org.uk/article/1447...

Hopefully we can find a time! Will be thinking of you tomorrow

Do you or one of your colleagues need an index created for a book in the humanities?

I make beautiful indexes (yes, such a thing does exist!)

I have space to take on 1-2 additional projects in April/May. Get in touch!

absolutely incredible ending to this saga

God I'm so sorry - I had noticed that I hadn't been contacted about my giving a talk with you guys so thought this meant trouble. Sending solidarity your way and I hope you can find a way to fight at least some of it

My uni’s marketing department: we won’t advertise your course. It’s not a ‘hero’ course.
Management: you haven’t recruited. We’re shutting you down.

At the registering provider end, several post-92 universities now have more students subcontracted out than they teach directly - in some cases, 80 per cent or more of their students are at delivery partners. When a university is directly teaching fewer than one in five of its own students, it is reasonable to ask whether its primary function has become registration and quality assurance rather than teaching.

Taken together, these elements are consistent with a commercial logic in which features of the student finance system align with revenue growth. And they are selling HE to a group of people who, on any measure, look like the most "vulnerable consumers" the sector has - with little evidence that the professional diligence duties owed in law to that group are being met.

This (from WonkHE) is my management’s dream: subcontract a few people to write a narrow range of courses; flog them to dodgy franchises; abandon all responsibility for their students; sack our own staff and flog off the property. University as profit centre, nothing more.

This is real Mad King shit. It is an open declaration of sheer evil.

Podcast assessment is SUCH a good one. My students loved doing it

We were lucky enough to partner with the UK's best food publication @vittles.bsky.social for this investigation.

Here's their version of the story: open.substack.com/pub/vittles/...

Andy Long is a liar. Pensions are deferred pay.

THES should be ashamed of itself for the use of ‘encourage’ when ‘force’ is more accurate.

UK job cuts hit English and modern languages staff hardest ‘Vicious cycle’ of course closures means system ‘gradually losing breadth and depth of expertise’

'The number of English language and literature academics fell by 8 per cent to 4,680 – among the largest decrease of all disciplines.

And the number employed in modern languages dropped 7 per cent to 4,890. This is 17 per cent below peak levels in 2015-16.' 1/3

Gareth & Marta's fundraiser for Sands Help Marta Zboralska raise money to support Sands

Hello Bluesky. I haven’t been posting much because it’s been a difficult few months. My husband and I are fundraising for Sands, the baby loss charity. Any donations will be very gratefully received:
justgiving.com/page/gandmfu...

Management consultants are ruining UK universities Relentless off-the-peg commercial rewiring has undermined British higher education

Very well and closely read over the weekend from @gsoh31.bsky.social www.ft.com/content/5032...

I hate to bring up this word but looking for recommendations for scholarship on 'employability' *I know I know*

Perfect! Thanks so much Catherine

I hate to bring up this word but looking for recommendations for scholarship on 'employability' *I know I know*

The Profession That Does Not Exist | Baffler Symposium A partial history of the hidden labor that makes possible the poems, stories, essays, and books you read.

People in the publishing industry are weirdly quiet about money. But as Wes Enzinna points out, every literary career is underwritten by some sort of capital, be it from a wealthy family member, a fellowship, or a dubious side gig.

Oh my god you got me

‘The Writer’s Room’ Review: Where the Words Come From Marcel Proust wrote in bed; Dalton Trumbo in a bath; Agatha Christie only needed ‘a steady table and a typewriter.’

“A sprightly account of writers’ rooms on both sides of the Atlantic.” Read the @wsj.com’s review of The Writer’s Room by @kdclewin.bsky.social:

‘The Writer’s Room’ Review: Where the Words Come From Marcel Proust wrote in bed; Dalton Trumbo in a bath; Agatha Christie only needed “a steady table and a typewriter.”

Chuffed to bits that my book got a lovely write up in the Wall Street Journal

Revisiting publishing revenues for a chapter on public history and I'm reminded of the astonishing statistic that UK consumer publishing has annual revenues of £2.5 billion while academic publishing, the bit aimed at the tiny percentage of us working in research, earns £3.5 billion.