🎉 Join us this week for the Think Human Festival 2026! Sign up for one of our free events taking place across the city from 15-18 April.

Use this link to book your ticket today- www.eventbrite.com/cc/think-hum...

For some of the many compelling reasons why we need English as a discipline now more than ever, see universityenglish.ac.uk/englishcreat... and support the @univ.eng.bsky.social campaign and the work of the @englishassociation.bsky.social

“The Fiscal Year (FY) 2027 Budget proposes to eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and provides $38 million to conduct an orderly shutdown of the Agency.” — NEH.gov

The NEH has $207 million for FY2026. War in Iran? 1 billion per day. We go through 4.83 NEHs a day for what?

By Our Selves + Q&A with Toby Jones, Iain Sinclair and Andrew Kötting Toby Jones, Andrew Kötting (as a straw bear) and their merry men revive the wanderings and wonderings of Northamptonshire peasant poet John Clare.

Special screening of the feature film about John Clare, "By Our Selves" (2015), with a Q&A featuring actor Toby Jones, writer Iain Sinclair and director Andrew Kotting, Bristol, 7 April, @wshed.bsky.social:
www.watershed.co.uk/whatson/1376...

How a small change to the English curriculum could cut teacher workload Tweaking the requirement for GCSE students to read a 19th-century novel could add diversity while maintaining rigour and reducing teacher workload, argues Robert Eaglestone

Brilliant piece in tes by @bobeaglestone.bsky.social arguing that a simple tweak to GCSE English Lit could dramatically improve things. Really pleased to see our work with @mariakna.bsky.social on the difficult vocabulary in the spec cited. 👏 www.tes.com/magazine/tea...

@univeng.bsky.social

Call for Applications: Visiting Research Fellowships at the Samuel Beckett Research Centre, University of Reading The Samuel Beckett Research Centre (SBRC) at the University of Reading is pleased to announce that up to 3 SBRC Visiting Research Fellowships are now available to scholars and researchers looking t…

Great opportunity for Samuel Beckett scholars to work on the Beckett archive at Reading samuelbeckettsociety.org/2026/03/10/c...

Yet more great evidence about how important and skilled English graduates are @univeng.bsky.social

I couldn’t agree more, Andrew. It was horrifying and upsetting, and a terrible prelude to the news of yet more deaths.

#EnglishCreates: Futures

Today, Dr JT Welsch (University of York) re-examines the so-called 'death of reading':

'Like most clickbait, these rants rest on a false opposition. There’s no real war between print and digital media.'

universityenglish.ac.uk/death-of-rea...

#EnglishStudies

Such a pleasure to reflect on Middlemarch again. Thanks for the opportunity

Thanks, Susan. That’s really lovely to hear

Fantastic, moving testimony to the power and importance of reading

Such a brilliant resource - and there’s more to come

#EnglishCreates: Futures continues with this post by Francesca Mackenney and Jamie Castell (Cardiff University):

'How do representations of sound in literature shape our awareness of the natural world?'

Read the full post here: universityenglish.ac.uk/englishcreat...

#EnglishStudies
#Ecocriticism

New #EnglishCreates post. @ies-sas.bsky.social @englishassociation.bsky.social

@englishassociation.bsky.social

#EnglishCreates: Futures

Our 'Environments' month continues with Prof Ralph Pite's latest piece on bringing nature into the teaching of English Studies:

'How can you make the natural world an everyday, "natural" presence for students?'

Full post: lnkd.in/ewQk7pDB

#EnglishStudies
#Ecocriticism

Festivals of the Imagination: early editions of novels and poetry by James Joyce  | Special Collections In 2020, Stephen James Joyce, Joyce’s grandson, bequeathed the Solange and Stephen James Joyce Collection to the University of Reading Special...

To mark Joyce's birthday this week and the final chance to see our 'James Joyce: Enigmas and Puzzles' exhibition, Fiona Melhuish, Librarian (museums and collections), introduces some of the early editions of Joyce's publications. Check out the blog post!👇

collections.reading.ac.uk/special-coll...

An illustration of Battersea power station with a view of a boat from the river.

Have you completed a PhD in the last 10 years? Applications are open for our Postdoctoral Visiting Fellowship in Sustainability and Environment. Funding covers an £8000 bursary for part-time (0.5) research over 8 months, plus travel expenses. Apply by Monday 9 February. link.bl.uk/VisitingFellowship

#EnglishCreates:Futures continues w/ Prof Ralph Pite's brilliantly insightful reflections on how English Studies seeks to address contemporary climate crisis: 'THE GRAPHS DON'T WORK'

Full post: universityenglish.ac.uk/englishcreat...

#EnglishCreates #EnglishStudies #HigherEducation #Ecocriticism

#EnglishCreates: Futures continues this week with a focus on the 'Blue Humanities':

'Oceans have always seemed mysterious, vast and invulnerable... Until recently, that is...'

universityenglish.ac.uk/englishcreat...

#EnglishStudies #HigherEducation #Ecocriticism #bluehumanities

#EnglishCreates: Futures delves into the Blue Humanities with a post by Dr Laurence Publicover (University of Bristol):

'The language we use to talk about the ocean floor reveals our (often misplaced) assumptions about it...'
universityenglish.ac.uk/literary-stu...

#EnglishStudies #Ecocriticism

NB
EngLit
#CloseReading

Excellent start to 6 months of showing how and why English Studies matters so much to all of us #EnglishCreates from @univeng.bsky.social and lots of our brilliant colleagues

And when the cars drove on the right

I do think this is true. I'm often guilty myself of underplaying what the work I do looks like or how much time and effort it takes. Research isn't 'just reading' or a question of sucking up summaries others have created. It's knowledge creation.

So let me go through the process with an example 1/

Feels like the right day to repost this brilliant tweet from @lewisgoodall.com

#Trump
#BBC
#EpsteinFiles
#CauseAndDeflect

Philosophy 7.7% unemployed

Physics 8% unemployed

Who is more likely to be unemployed 15 months after graduation the Philosopher or the Physicist? The answer may not be what you think

English lit - 6.4% unemployed

Maths - 7.5% unemployed

So kid, in your heart you want to study humanities but you worry about your job prospects? Let’s play a game.

On the latest data, who is more likely to be unemployed after 15 months after graduation. The English Lit grad or the Maths grad?

WRONG!