I’ll try not to be sad about missing my annual trip “back”. 2026 will just have to be the year of gadding!!

Another thing I personally respect (although alas no longer a local do can only take their word for it!) is the open self-critique and using that to spur themselves on to better interpretation, broadening narratives and intentionally seeking out where their own gaps might be.

You can pre-order Audiofuturism from @fordhampress.bsky.social now!

So… now that the show is over, can I catch up with about 3 weeks of lectures in 5 evenings??? We shall see, we shall see…

I didn’t even feel second hand embarrassment, it was so bad…!!

+ finally,

3. Are there departments/organisations who tend to be more open about partnering on making these kind of assets?

Three questions for U.K. peeps:

1. If you wanted to provide a CPD certificate (or similar) in exchange for participation in projects/events, what are the common challenges/pitfalls?

2. Ditto for providing some form of independent accreditation that would have some credit beyond the program?

And +

Between Thompson and the Global: Reflections on Labour History Today We invite papers for a workshop entitled “Between Thompson and the Global: Rethinking Labour History Today”, to be held at the University of Warwick on 26-27 June 2026. This workshop will seek to bring together historians of labour to collectively reflect on a large historiographical shift that has taken place over the last two decades, from the social history of labour (in national contexts) to global and trans-national labour history. The social history of labour “from below” is a tradition initiated by E.P Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class (1963), and extended over several decades by a robust tradition of politically engaged left-wing historical studies of the working classes: a tradition most powerfully entrenched in British historiography (but with many imprints elsewhere, ranging from the United States to Brazil to South Africa to India). The global history of labour, which revised and questioned many of the features of “Thompsonian” history-writing, has sought to overcome “methodological nationalism” in the writing of labour history, to investigate specific labour histories within a global frame, and to enable trans-national histories of workers and work. It has emerged as an increasingly dominant frame of reference for contemporary studies of labour around the world. This workshop seeks to place these two historiographical traditions in conversation with each other, to examine the stakes of the passage from the older, “Thompsonian” tradition to the “global turn”, and to think about the changed meanings of “doing labour history” today. Participants are urged to explicitly reflect on the methodological and conceptual issues at stake in the practice of labour history.

We would like to invite submissions that address (but are not necessarily limited to) the following themes: 1. To what extent has the global labour history tradition that has flourished over the last 20 years drawn upon or rejected the methodological and conceptual approaches of Thompsonian social/labour history? What other methodologies and concepts have been deployed and proven fruitful? 2. How do we address the burgeoning critique of Thompsonian social/labour history as parochial and Anglocentric (Bressey, 2015; Satia, 2020), and how have historians responded to this challenge and reshaped British labour history accordingly? What can historians of British labour learn from broader global trajectories of workforce formation and labour movements? 3. How might integrating histories of consumption, environment, and reproduction enrich our understanding of labour and its global entanglements? 4. In what ways can collaboration between historians of Britain and the global south generate new analytical frameworks or unsettle established narratives of class, race, and empire? 5. What kinds of politically-engaged global social and labour history can best respond to the contemporary challenges of rising global inequality and the appropriation of class politics by some sections of the populist right? 6. The legitimacy of 'radical' forms of labour-history writing initially arose from politics, from the apparently established centrality of the industrial working class both in society and in projects of social emancipation. That centrality has now been in precipitous decline for a long time. In this context, how might we think about what the ‘politics of doing labour history’ actually implies today? 7. What has been gained and what has been lost in the shift from a labour history dominated by “history from below” to one dominated by global history? Please send abstracts to globalhistory@warwick.ac.uk

#CfP Call for Papers

Organised by Global History and Culture Centre, University of Warwick:

Between Thompson and the Global: Reflections on Labour History Today

Workshop: 26-27 June 2026, University of Warwick

Deadline for abstracts: 30 January 2026

Submit to globalhistory@warwick.ac.uk

20 minutes to go…!

2026 Snappy Opera Festival: empowering children – Big Give The Festival will introduce hundreds of children across England to the thrill of live performance. By partnering with mainstream primary …

So what are you waiting for? Support this brilliant, fun and inclusive #opera-making 🎶 project program for school #children across West Cumbria, Co. Durham, Hull and Lincolnshire and donate!

Deadline is 12pm, Tuesday 9th December.

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#OperaForAll #BigGiveChallenge

Snappy Opera Festival 2026 - The Big Give YouTube video by Mahogany Opera

… In 2026, the Snappy #Opera festival will bring a fun, radical and award-winning programme of music, theatre, making and performance to 1,000 children in state mainstream and special schools.

Want to know more? Check out the amazing work of Snappy Opera here… youtu.be/obnvm-o1LeM

Snappy Opera Festival 2026 - The Big Give YouTube video by Mahogany Opera

One more day to support 🎭🎶 @mahoganyopera.bsky.social ! 🎶 🎭 All donations to their Big Give campaign will be doubled and help raise money for the 2026 Snappy Opera Festival donate.biggive.org/campaign/a05...

The goal? So glad you asked…

#OperaForAll #BigGive #BigGiveChallenge #SupportMusic

The Complete Gormenghast Novels Check out The Complete Gormenghast Novels - <b>"A gorgeous, volcanic eruption . . . a work of extraordinary imagination" (<i>The New Yorker</i>), <i>The Gormenghast Novels</i> collects Mervyn Peake's ...

read gormenghast
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Black and white photograph of a city street on a sunny day two buildings cast large Shadows on the pavement and in between them is a streak of light in between the Shadows there's a person walking across the middle of this streak

Fan Ho

Evidence of prehistoric flint tool-making dating to approximately 4300 BC, and an ornate lead badge in the shape of a flowering heart, a popular 14-15th century romantic symbol, appearing on wedding rings and seals

Archaeological excavations beneath London’s Palace of Westminster have revealed over 6,000 years of the site’s history.

📷 MOLA 2025

www.restorationandrenewal.uk/news/6000-ye...

Someone commented that listening to Patrick Bateman describing Whitney Houston’s album is like reading a ChatGPT generated analysis and I think just can’t #AmericanPsycho

His manifesto is now acceptable political discourse on Sky

The deadline is this Tuesday so please donate and share! #BigGive #SupportTheArts #OperaForThePeople

⭐️There are no better advocates for the work we do that those that have been involved...

“When I was doing Snappy Operas I was set free.” - Year 5 Participant

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ART/ERTE15.GIF

Most discussions about “misinformation” treat the problem as if people simply don’t have good enough critical-thinking skills. It sounds intuitive, but it’s not entirely accurate. The problem isn’t just individual ignorance, it’s the structure of the information environment people are placed into.

FWIW the most talented, smart people I know of any immigration status in any country have one thing in common:

they’re not very well paid or making a lot of money.

Thank you so much! For all my griping, it was fun combining different patterns.

It’s fully adjustable too (drawstring that ties at the back) so if ever there’s a need for extra overskirts, know there’s one here that can be borrowed (and indeed, someone who’s happy to make more).

It was all worth it in the end!!

Had another fantastic time with the Grosvenor Light Opera Company singing the fantastic musical version of A Christmas Carol by Alaric Barrie.

Two performances, one day. Weeks of rehearsals! What a lovely way to start seeing out the year…

Sad to have missed this years #MuseTech25 (not to brag or anything but had a user testing session which turned out to be pretty amazing) but the smattering of posts suggest it was the injection of real-talk inspiration it usually is!

Keeping an eye out for next years theme… 👀👀👀

'And it's like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is, precisely 0.13 percent'

Screenshot of Good Law Project & Just Treatment’s tool, reading: “Is your local NHS trust using Palantir’s software? Enter your postcode”

Is your local NHS trust using Palantir software?

Find out with our easy tool – then tell them what you think about it:
notopalantir.goodlawproject.org/email-to-target/stop-pal...

Nw was going to anyway but alas, I don’t do DMs on social media.

Thank you and yes, totally about the difference it makes. I’m not a belter but still managed to get pretty into it at rehearsals the other day with no strain! 😌😌😌