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.
Congratulations! 🥳
Ha! There may be a follow-up-- I will(ie) loop you in if so...
Last day to apply!
Just a few more days to apply to this year’s Take Your Research Public course - an introduction to public writing, social media, podcasting and more for academics new to this work. Guests include @drsurekhadavies.bsky.social and @estelleprnq.bsky.social. Free, online, over four Tuesdays in June.
This Sunday, 19:15, on BBC Radio 4: Andy Mycock leads a troop of us with 'unfortunate' (BBC term) surnames in 'Named, Unashamed'.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...
This Thursday evening!
Still a few places available
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/patchwork-...
long stretch of worked roman stone on Hadrian's Wall.
If you ask someone today to name the builder of Hadrian's Wall, they would give you a funny look. But historical memory is odd, and right up to the 1800s we forgot who built it.
Until in 1840 John Hodgson, an obscure Northumbrian clergyman, published the LONGEST footnote in history... 1/22
Detail of the provenance mark reading: Catrina Leoners hoort dit bouck toe, die het vindt die doet haer weer om een appel of een peer die het en doet
First page in the manuscript with a decorated letter A in blue and red and border decoration in green and red
Finder’s fee: seasonal fruit.
Early modern provenance mark on the flyleaf in a 16th-century illuminated manuscript: ‘This book belongs to Catrina Leoners. Whoever finds it should return it to her for an apple or a pear…’
#rarebooks #earlymodern #bookhistory 💙📚📜
The temptation to use this wildly ahistorically when talking to students about intersections of oral, manuscript, and print culture.
🔊Aberystwyth & mid Wales folk - this Saturday afternoon in the National Library of Wales 🛩️
I listened to one recently where the non-Australian author was reading their own book and repeatedly mispronouncing an Australian town name. Just looked fun on the map, I guess?
Photo of the double spread of an open book of printed music, over which have been trodden cat-sized paw prints in ink. Reference: Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, F. 1756 A LP, "Tomus secundus psalmorum selectorum" (Nürnberg, 1539).
Attention #earlyModern #bookHistory and #earlyMusic types!
You have to the end of the week to register for the @dormeme16.bsky.social conference Marking Music: The Use of Music Books in Early Modern Europe, at KCL. Registration and the brilliant programme are at www.tickettailor.com/events/aheve...
#CfP 📢 "Evident Tongues, Evident Bodies", eds. Mary Katherine Newman and Rana Banna
Seeking chapter proposals on how language and the senses shaped evidence in the #earlymodern world (c.1492–1700).
⏰ Deadline for abstracts: 12 April 2026
🔗 www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of...
#HistoryOfKnowledge
Fun fact: my wife & I were *supposed* to meet there after a Prof who knew we would be overlapping introduced us by email. But she changed her dates, so instead of meeting in a bucolic Hampshire idyll, it was the 1960s drab of a Cardiff Uni building. BUT! There was still a (fake) sheep in the office🐑
Many moons ago I had the pleasure of an early career fellowship at @chawtonhouse.bsky.social, and now you can too! If you're a PhD student or ECA working on women's writing in the long 18thC, act quickly.
chawtonhouse.org/the-library/...
10 grants available (up to €300) for travel and expenses to join us in Trento, Italy, 16-18 September, for postgrads and ECRs working on a topic related to 'Circulating Faith: Christian Missions in a Global Perspective (1500–2000)' deadline 30 April isig.fbk.eu/it/news/deta... #earlymodern 🗃️
Ha! Might work!
I've tried to make myself feel in control by writing down all of my work deadlines until September and... Nope, much worse.
Antarctica: actually rather large.
Related: happy to receive any tips for baby-friendly activities in Lisbon
Woop woop! Happy ALCS day to me 🥳🍾
If you haven't signed up yet but have written/edited published creative or academic work, get on it!
One off joining fee of £36 - but I have recouped that many times over in last few years.
Thanks @alcs.co.uk ☺️
Happy ALCS day to all who celebrate! We are on holiday this week so it's perfect timing for a little treat money 🥳
Great to see that the video of Imogen Peck's recent talk @long18thsem.bsky.social on 'Family Archives in England, 1650-1838' is now available online. www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...
Congratulations! 💐
Today is publication day for ‘Fairies: A History’ - so I’ve written a special free post over on ‘All Old Strange Things’ to celebrate 📚🧚 open.substack.com/pub/drfranci...
Chuffed to have been selected as a judge for Cardiff University's Three Minute Thesis competion this year! It's a great exercise in succinctly framing your research for a wider audience.
But I would say that, because I won a giant novelty cheque in 2012 www.facebook.com/uniofadelaid...
It was a usefully fresh way of reading the book, to the extent that I wished I had done a rough version sooner because it highlighted things I hadn't noticed before & by the proof stage were too late to change (I assumed). It also allows you to plant little "Notice This!" flags for index-skimmers
By popular demand, here is the full, glorious message from Aberystwyth University Library, on their blog:
wordpress.aber.ac.uk/librarian/?p...
Hat tip to @walkyouhome.bsky.social for prompting me to realise it was a blog post, and thus available to you all ❤️
A Frenchman in London gets brought into Bridewell having been "taken in women’s apparel", but they let him go after his mistress and neighbours swear "that he did it upon a merriment to fetch oysters and without any other cause".