Very excited to be working with @racheljwillie.bsky.social et al and our rather STELLAR editorial board (if I don't say so myself).

Ah Hester this is so delightful to hear! I hope he enjoys!

A really lovely review of my book Duet: An Artful History of Music in @wsj.com! US readers, you can now get your hands on this gorgeous and very cat-endorsed art history through music!

A really lovely review of my book Duet: An Artful History of Music in @wsj.com! US readers, you can now get your hands on this gorgeous and very cat-endorsed art history through music!

2/ Increasingly our research funding is driven by what policy makers decide as the country’s priorities. Research shouldn’t be only about how to effectively implement policy that is already decided.

1/ This pause is obviously concerning to researchers & universities & I’d like to specifically register the point that if the reason of ‘aligning with national priorities’ means more policy-driven & less free ideas-driven research then this move is of even more concern.
www.msn.com/en-in/politi...

BBC Radio 3 - Sunday Feature, The Eglantine Table at Hardwick Hall Ellie Chan visits Hardwick Hall in search of a fascinating relic of Tudor musical culture.

Agonising over what to listen to over your haggis this evening? Never fear! I’m on Radio 3 tonight talking about one of the most incredible musical-visual relics of the Tudor era (complete with singing and top banter with @spparkle.bsky.social and Liz Waring)! www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

On a more serious note, it means a lot to hear that you both liked it! x

BBC Radio 3 - Sunday Feature, The Great Egyptian Music Mystery Ellie Chan traces the story of a set of unique and puzzling manuscripts

I saw these enigmatic so-called ‘Music of the Spheres’ MSS at Edinburgh’s Blackie House Library & Museum. Their tantalising history of ancient Coptic-Egyptian music, hermetic interpretation, & likely fraud is painstakingly reconstructed here BBCRadio3
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Stop it, Laurie, you’re making me blush!

The cover of a book. Text reads Textile Shakespeare. The lower part of the image is ink printed on linen and embroidery, black on white, with some silver thread, with flowers, fruit, insects, and animals. it is discoloured with age.

TEXTILE SHAKESPEARE is official-publication-date-minus-2-weeks (11 November) which is a LOT👀 (I can't remember feeling this wound up about other books, I have the concentration of a gnat at the moment🙄) but seems to be live as an e-book already so, available to your Kindle right now, apparently...

🎶📚 FREE EVENT @goldsmithsuol.bsky.social 🎶📚

Join me & @elliechan.bsky.social for 'Music, life-writing & how to write about what you can’t hear.'

📅 15 Oct | 🕔 5–6pm | 📍 Goldsmiths (Richard Hoggart Building)


More info 👉 www.gold.ac.uk/calendar/?id...

@goldsmithsenglish.bsky.social

Cover designs for 'Duet: An Artful History of Music', 'Diary of a Wicked Witch' and 'Afterthoughts' against a pink background.

New books from Catz alumni include 'Duet: An Artful History of Music' by @elliechan.bsky.social (2009, English), 'Diary of a Wicked Witch' by Ben Miller (1985, Natural Sciences) and 'Afterthoughts' by Richard Ayoade (1995, Law). 1/2

One whole week of Duet! It’s been an absolute whirlwind of incredibly enriching conversations with @petroc.bsky.social @elizabethalker.bsky.social and @drkkennedy.bsky.social and SUCH a delight to see this whimsical little book out into the world. Available now in all good bookshops!

Explored how we see music - instruments as art, sound as colour. We could have talked for hours @ @wolfsonoxford.bsky.social. @elliechan.bsky.social @oxmusicfaculty.bsky.social @duckworthbooks.bsky.social @headofzeus.bsky.social @oxfordlifewriting.bsky.social

This Monday, with @elliechan.bsky.social and @drkkennedy.bsky.social

Details: www.musicatoxford.com/whats-on/boo...

Book Launch: Dr Eleanor Chan's 'Duet' | Music at Oxford To celebrate the launch of her book ‘Duet’ Dr Eleanor Chan will be in conversation with Dr Kate Kennedy.

Just announced!

To celebrate the launch of her book ‘Duet’ Dr Eleanor Chan will be in conversation with Dr Kate Kennedy (author of 'Cello') on Monday 22 September.

Tickets are just £6.50.

Details: www.musicatoxford.com/whats-on/boo...

LLMs’ “simulated reasoning” abilities are a “brittle mirage,” researchers find Chain-of-thought AI “degrades significantly” when asked to generalize beyond training.

"LLMs are not principled reasoners but rather sophisticated simulators of reasoning-like text"

Elma! 💖💖💖 Majestic as always

Tonight!!! Exploring how Beethoven was used during World War II, featuring the only interview Elly Ney's family have given to English language media 😱 this was such a fascinating doc to make

"Letterlocking: The Hidden History of the Letter" on a white background. The cover is black featuring an image of an unsealed locked letter. Text denotes the authors are Jana Dambrogio and Daniel Starza Smith with the Unlocking History Research Group.

Before the invention of the gummed envelope in the 1830s, almost all letter writers had to use letterlocking. "Letterlocking" provides an archival history of the practice, including sources so readers can learn how to make locked letters for their own correspondence: mitpress.mit.edu/978026204927...

Here's an idea for Microsoft: ditch the stupid AI BS and improve the software.

just imagine working at microsofft and thinking “let’s spend billions, steal a load of intellectual property, and destroy the planet to make an interface to write bad essays” rather than “let’s update MS Word so users can comment on footnotes”

Duet A groundbreaking history of the way music has threaded through human history, by a brilliant young historian and BBC Next Generation Thinker

Preorders available here blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/pro... or here www.waterstones.com/book/duet/dr... (or from the evil website)

Team, exciting news! Duet: An Artful History of music not only has a cover, it is also available to preorder!

It’s a visual history of music 35,000BCE-present day, but also about failing to become a musician; about second chances; and about learning to look and listen.

We are characters in Act III Scene IV of a longer story and it’s just basic self-respect to want to know how we got here. Everyone deserves a chance to ask.

Two quotations from statement in gold on burgandy background: 'Where we start our story shapes what we see. Reducing our chronological scope to the modern period risks creating a shared assumption that the world as it was in 1800 was normal and normative." "The arts and humanities in all their rich and expansive variety enable the creative impulses that underpin all human invention and achievement. They also provide the skills in creativity, innovation and critical thinking required in assessing information – skills that are particularly vital at a time when AI and disinformation are pervasive." Phoenix logo beneath and image of engraving by Marco Dente after Francesco Salviatito the right, depicting an 'assembly of male and female scholars gathered around an open book, in the middle ground a man holds aloft an armillary sphere, another group of scholars in the background', c. 1515–27. Met Collection Accession Number: 17.50.16-105.

The premodern world held possibilities and imagined futures: the physical and metaphysical systems that were actively built and contested then continue to inform the world in the present.

Read our statement on the value of Renaissance & Premodern Studies:

www.rensoc.org.uk/statement-on...

Take that, Picasso: the frenzied work by Faith Ringgold that took MoMA by storm The artist, who has died aged 93, spent her life battling white male dominance, in the gallery and beyond. Her work foregrounded Black American experience with a raw and unforgettable power

Take that, Picasso: the frenzied work by Faith Ringgold that took MoMA by storm
by Hettie Judah for The Guardian
www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Queen Elizabeth I died #OTD in 1603. This volume of sermons by John Udall (London, 1596) luxuriously bound in velvet & with silver thread may have been made for presentation to the Queen, carrying her arms on both covers. Cambridge UL SSS.24.32.

The Book of Common Prayer (1692) As we have previously noted, the Book of Common Prayer is one of the books most likely to have been owned by a woman. As of the writing of this post, eight other examples have been featured here. A co...

Fascinating post today by Sarah Lindenbaum on a delightful copy of the book of common prayer, with multiple early modern female owners buff.ly/3x7ASkk #HerBook #EarlyModern #18C