I'm pleased to announce I'm a founding co-editor of the new @manchesterup.bsky.social book series, Radical Histories.
Do let me know if you have a proposal for a book that fits our inclusive remit on radical histories.
manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/series/radic...
Sint-Nicolaaskapel, Nijmegen, probably built around 1000 on the site of the Carolingian palace and inspired by the palatial chapel in Aachen. One of the Netherlands’ oldest extant buildings. Very cool!
Chuffed to see this out. Very grateful to Jonathan Lyon and Simon MacLean for the opportunity to take part in this volume. Rightly dedicated to a scholar who, a decade ago, sat in the Ship and Castle patiently listening to me both enthuse and rant about the very text translated here
Social class remains, I think, the element most often missing from academic conversations about intersectionality - perhaps because it is the 'characteristic' that we most readily can (and that working-class academics quickly learn that they should) try to erase.
An exciting find, and a really important essay! I've argued before - and will shortly do so again, in a forthcoming piece - that the medieval English monarchy's iconographic debt to (eastern and western) imperial models has been underrated.
Exciting times for the study 11thC England: the 'lost' seal of Edward the Confessor has been rediscovered in the Archives nationales de France! #SkyStorians #MedievalSky
Always exciting to see the Avignon Papacy in the news
Sehr gelacht.
Absolutely thrilled to have a piece on medieval German identity in the latest issue of ZEITGeschichte. Thank you @zeit.de for the superb production!
Was ist rechter #Geschichtsrevisionismus, wozu dient er und von wem wird er verbreitet? Dazu habe ich für die @bpb.de folgenden aktuellen Text geschrieben:
www.bpb.de/themen/recht...
Let's start off with a banger: Our call is now live! What do you want to contribute to intersectionality and medieval studies? cims.hypotheses.org/412 Please share widely and send us your abstract until 31.08.2026.
National(ist) memory politics at their most tangled and enduring.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
'There is good news for humanists in the arrival of AI. According to [link], unemployment for computer science graduates sits at 6.1%, .. for art history majors [at] 3%. Thinking, creating, understanding – these cannot be replaced by artificial intelligence.'
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Latest! A new store opens specialising in Rudolf of Habsburg memorabilia.
"And if AI sucks up all the minor writing jobs and opportunities, then emerging authors are deskilled before they get the chance to create their really significant works.” (Via @eicathomefinn.bsky.social)
In other words, the old, Luddite skills of hand-crafting a text, doing it again, and painfully finding (warts and all) an authorial voice have never mattered more - and nor has the need to inculcate the value of that discipline in our students.
Universities: you must complete a risk assessment and ethical review for this perfectly safe activity.
Also universities: please embrace this energy-hungry water-guzzling plagiarism machine that is frequently wrong. Also, it makes you thick and may encourage you to kill yourself.
The IHR's guide to its Monumenta Germaniae Historica collections (@monumenta.bsky.social) is a superb introduction for students of medieval German and European history. #medievalsky
Abandoned medieval town (perhaps founded by the margraves of Brandenburg) found in Polish forest.
www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-...
News to me (admittedly I'm on research leave and not currently marking) - and I suspect to many of my colleagues!
Don’t miss next week’s exciting session in our “Euro-Mediterranean Entanglements” seminar series!
Participate online: t1p.de/entanglement...
@maxweberstiftung.de @dhi-paris.fr
#medievalsky #medievalstudies #adriatic #skytorians
#entanglements #mediterranean
Serious history for me is less a body of expertise than a teachable approach: relentless *scepticism*. Serious history rubs against the grain of the very human desire to make a story and questions our need for that story, in that form. Scepticism isn't 'elitist'; but it is today urgently needed.
'Death the Emperor / Kaiser'. Interesting story, inc. that it caused a stir: the universal 'reign' of Death is hardly a surprising theme. Also the delicate matter of iconography. (The imperial crown, though in Vienna, was widely 'memed' in Hohenzollern Germany.)
www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...
The bones of Otto I and Henry II have been dna-authenticated. The Magdeburg AfD want to celebrate Otto as a founder of the 'German Reich'. They are not the first to have this idea.
www.faz.net/aktuell/feui...
Early spring finally comes to Durham. It's felt like a long, dark winter.
Das @dhi-paris.fr gratuliert Lyndal Roper herzlich zu dieser grossartigen Auszeichnung!
We live in a world of fakes. And there's no better preparation for spotting fakes than a rigorous historical training. Society needs historians more than ever.
