The Guardian view on universities: Labour needs a clearer plan | Editorial Editorial: Ministers promised a ‘change of approach’, but their new tax could tip weaker institutions over the edge

'Despite all their difficulties, universities remain an enormous and irreplaceable national asset. As well as educating millions of people, they generate about £24bn in export earnings, which is about 1% of GDP – more than aircraft manufacturing and legal services combined'. 1/2

BBC Radio 4 - Drama on 4, The New Real David Edgar’s sharp political drama explores the faultlines threatening modern democracy.

Tomorrow at 3pm: David Edgar's brilliant play, the New Real, airs on Radio 4. It offers an origin story of far right populism set in Eastern Europe.

It was a joy and privelege to play a small part in this project by doing some translation.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Less than Greggs? Public have no idea of value of top universities, study finds Belief that snack chain’s revenues exceed those of Oxford’s one of many misconceptions about UK’s HE sector

"Higher education generated £24bn in export earnings for the UK in 2022-23, far above aircraft manufacturing with £12bn, legal services with £9.5bn and telecoms with £8.8bn."
#HigherEd
www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Sign the Petition Stop the removal of Modern Languages courses at the University of Nottingham!

Universities continue to brand themselves as 'global' and chase international students whose culture and languages they appear uninterested in.

Take a min to save modern langauges at Uni of Nottingham!

www.change.org/p/stop-the-r...

People of Oslo! Come about my book on the invention of the Slavonic alphabet next Wednesday at 4.15pm.

Details here: www.hf.uio.no/iakh/english...

nearly thirty years ago Bill Readings published this prophetic book The University in Ruins. Essential reading today as the sector is on the brink of collapse.

James Meek · Computers that want things For all the fluency and synthetic friendliness of public-facing AI chatbots like ChatGPT, it seems important to remember...

"LLMs don’t learn except by going through a whole new training process. ChatGPT doesn’t learn from any of the millions of exchanges it has with human users. It can’t afford to [...] it is frozen to prevent it being contaminated by any new knowledge.."
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Lea Ypi’s Reckoning With Family and the Legacy of Revolution In her new book, Indignity, Albanian political scientist Lea Ypi discovers that online trolls are accusing her grandmother of having been a communist spy during World War II. To find the truth, she di...

Loved this review of Lea Ypi's new book Indignity by @lilylynch.bsky.social - on class, communism, and family in Albania's twentieth century

jacobin.com/2025/10/lea-...

Legacies of Muslim Rule in Southeastern Europe Managing Pasts This workshop explores how states in southeastern Europe sharing a complex history of Christian and Muslim rule manage layered heritages.

For a full timetable, titles and (free!) registration: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/legacies-o...

With thanks to the @britishacademy.bsky.social Small Grant scheme for the funding!

Istanbul folk - @drvukovich.bsky.social and I will be hosting a workshop on the Byzantine and Ottoman heritage of the Balkans in a few weeks at the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul! Come join us and our amazing speakers!

‘Too hungry to think, too weak to sit upright. Concentration slips away’: the struggle to stay focused as an academic in Gaza It is hard to keep the mind sharp when the body is thin and dehydrated, but solidarity is teaching starving students their thoughts still matter

"To generate knowledge in the context of hunger is to think through pain. To teach students who have not eaten and still tell them their voices matter. To insist, against all odds, that Gaza still thinks, still questions, still creates."

Sign the Petition Stop Mass Redundancies at Lancaster University – Hold Senior Management Accountable

Hello UK friends - please, please could you sign this petition against the job cuts at my place of work - 1 in 4 us will be out of a job by August next year if we don't stop the cuts. And once you've signed it, please share. We need your help! www.change.org/p/stop-mass-...

Excited on route to York for a workshop entitled Multilingual Lives and organised by @emiliekmmurphy.bsky.social and Purba Hossain!

The Soviet plan to reverse Siberia's rivers with 'peaceful nuclear explosions' In the 1970s, the USSR used nuclear devices to try to send water from Siberia's rivers flowing south, instead of its natural route north.

For BBC Future, I wrote a piece for about the Soviet plan (it never happened) to reverse some of the country's great rivers, diverting them south to Central Asia:
www.bbc.co.uk/future/artic...

Intimidating bunting is back at JW! @sheffielducu.bsky.social

📩 A world without grants Plus: Cattle crisis

"the funding freeze has had a devastating effect on civil society in Central and Eastern Europe"

Excellent on the various agencies and media organisations fighting for civil liberties and rights in Eastern Europe which have been shut down by the USAID cuts.

briefeasterneurope.eu/p/march-31-2...

Violent, dark, and dirty: What Americans think about the Middle Ages | YouGov Americans have favorable views of chivalry and castles, but not the Crusades or the Inquisition

Fascinating YouGov poll shows over half of americans 'dislike' the Middle Ages; they like the Renaissance, even more than the Englightenment. Medieval things they do love: castles and chivalry! 16% love the Inquisition. today.yougov.com/entertainmen...

A Decade of Crisis The UK's universities are in crisis. Dave Hitchcock on how the sector became 'broken' and why it must be understood as an interdependent system.

"The flavour of crisis we are experiencing in UK higher education is far less about malice, and far more about political indifference."

www.historyworkshop.org.uk/education/a-...

The UK’s academic recession is in full swing This university crisis is a grim scrabble for numbers

"Increasingly desperate, universities have made things even worse by taking the one-size-fits-all advice of a handful of consultancies to cut services in each department and centralise everything from recruitment to IT."

www.ft.com/content/0ec7...

Seeing the present in the past: Byzantium and the Balkans - New Eastern Europe The legacy of the Byzantine Empire in the Balkans stretches back for centuries. Today’s politics should remember that the idea of Balkan states as homogenous entities is not natural. This is a relativ...

neweasterneurope.eu/2025/02/28/s...

I published a piece in @neweasterneurope.eu on how the history of multiculturalism in the Balkans has been sidelined thanks to nationalism, population exchanges and war.

Essenial reading for historians of nationalism, byzantium and the theory of territory!

Just discovered that @bunyaminanderson.bsky.social and I's open access article on the Politics of Byzantine studies has made it onto the Wiki page for the 'Byzantine Empire'! Thanks to the anonymous editor!

I second this - actually my favourite of the three!

Kalyan Minaret (12c.) in Bukhara. The oldest still standing in Central Asia, it was apparently (acc. to local man) spared by Genghis Khan because his hat fell off when he looked up at it. Also apparently (acc. to British spy) it was used for public executions in the late 19th/early 20thc.

excited to see that @bunyaminanderson.bsky.social and I's aritcle is now in physical print! what is byzantine studies all about?? find out now, open access!

Second BSR/Early Medieval Europe Fellowship - bsr.ac.uk In partnership with the journal Early Medieval Europe, the British School at Rome is pleased to announce the second BSR/EME Fellowship.    Aimed at early career researchers (defined as current PhD stu...

A reminder about the EME/BSR fellowship: a month's stay in Rome for someone doing/recently finished a PhD on early medieval European history. Deadline 31st January.
bsr.ac.uk/second-bsr-e...

The Politics of Byzantine Studies: Between Nations and Empires Byzantine studies is neither the oldest nor the largest of the historical disciplines, but it is among the oddest. Its peculiarities, however, are rarely d

Reflections Article in our 600th Issue: Mirela Ivanova @mirela.bsky.social and Benjamin Anderson @bunyaminanderson.bsky.social on 'The Politics of Byzantine Studies: Between Nations and Empires'

academic.oup.com/ehr/article/...

Sorry to say we're closed today (Tuesday) 😔
Someone has bricked our window, robbed the cash drawer and, bizarrely, the Bluetooth speaker 🎶

All the books are safe! Turns out robbers dont read. If you wanna help out this struggling queer bookshop our website is still open

Merry bloody Christmas 😥

Get us over the line Our quest for a Christmas miracle

Sheffield-area folk who love high quality local journalism: please subscribe to @sheffieldtribune.bsky.social! It's a great paper, and local journalism is more improtant than ever! Plus - an excellent Xmas gift! www.sheffieldtribune.co.uk/get-us-over-...