Research funding for historians: the Society currently invites applications for 5 grant programmes: to support individual and project-based research by historians across a range of career stages bit.ly/4vzzNeB.
Closing dates for eligible applicants fall between 8 May and 5 June 2026 #Skystorians
Opening page to the RHS guide to becoming a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. With full abstract: :Fellowship is one of several ways to join and belong to the Royal Historical Society. Fellows are elected to this position by the Society in recognition of their work for the historical discipline and profession. There are many different routes to Fellowship, just as there are different kinds of contributions and careers within the discipline of history. Today’s RHS Fellows are history practitioners from a very wide range of backgrounds (within and beyond higher education) who have contributed to historical understanding and knowledge through a body of work. These contributions take many forms: from academic publications of different formats, to editorial and curatorial work, history programming and public history. This post addresses common questions asked by those considering applying to join the Fellowship of the Royal Historical Society. If you are interested in making an application, we hope this helps."
The Society's Fellowship is a UK / worldwide gathering of historians who've contributed to historical understanding and knowledge through a body of work.
If you're interested in joining them, we've a brief guide to the many activities of RHS Fellows and how to apply bit.ly/3OzhoxK #Skystorians 1/2
Submissions sought for the Robert Silver Prize 2026, for an essay from a student or early-career writer on the impact of Jewry on 20th century Britain. Deadline 1 May 2026.
www.hist.cam.ac.uk/news/robert-...
If you or your students research any aspect of British, Irish or British colonial/imperial history (Roman empire to today) and need a tool that will never hallucinate sources, check out the BBIH. It develops research skills rather than repressing them. Instit. & indiv. subscriptions available.
"Brittania oceani insula, cui quondam Albion nomen fuit..."
BL Cotton MS Tiberius C II; Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum; late 8th-early 9th century; England, S.; f.5v
@blmedieval.bsky.social
…which lead to all sorts of perverse consequences which I guarantee you wouldn’t like either!
Where in the above do you see any ‘rejection of grades’? I’m talking about systems that *start with* grades and have other criteria (as US HE does). And there’s a difference between ‘grades’ - hard to standardize or only broad bands - and finely calibrated rank-order exams…
OK but then you’re essentially recurring to a one-dimensional definition of merit (and one ‘test’ of it: which will tend to distort the whole educational process back into secondary ed). I actually do think more complex and flexible formulae better.
See the new issue of History of Social Science, just published! Half the articles are free, including @brad.bolman.com’s account of Bruno Latour’s blocked appointment at the Institute for Advanced Study and Chas Camic’s short bio of Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class muse.jhu.edu/issue/56614
Also because some students perform better on some criteria than others. So it's not just about 'merit' vs 'values' - as your responses indicate, judgements of what are merits and what merits count are always also about values.
As I say, in our system we have a mix of 'transparent and objective' measures (e.g. national school exam results) and those you would deem opaque, subjective, unfair and unjust - because it seems desirable to have a mix of students and thus a mix of criteria. (1/2)
I don't know the Japanese system, but I am guessing it leads to similar results in other countries with a 'refreshingly clear-cut' single rank order based on exam: cramming. (As your illustrations suggest!)
In my (UK) university we have a high bar based on national school exams, but we still have to choose between lots of candidates who pass that high bar - on a variety of criteria which require value-judgements.
So 'merit' has only one dimension? And can be judged on purely 'objective' standards? If not, judgements and values are always going to sneak in.
You can have a 'highly objective' system as many countries do - e.g. a national exam with a single rank order - but that leads to pretty absurd outcomes too (cramming etc.). Is the US system of 'making a class' out of diverse but inevitably less predictable elements worse?
Meanwhile, many UK universities continue to require X number or Y£k value of submissions p.a./staff member to stay on a T&R contract, thereby driving this system closer to the brink at pace, from the perspective of applicants, reviewers and funders (not to mention science, in the European sense)..
Pete Hegseth quoted a fake Bible verse from the Tarantino movie Pulp Fiction yesterday during a Pentagon prayer service
Interesting to see Yale piloting device-free intensive classrooms. One of the casualties of the current hoovering-up-of-students mode of staying solvent has been attrition of just such teaching and a reluctance to expect (much less require) students consistently to attend and engage in person.
Since the ACLS and NHC meetings have been cancelled, I have some travel funds I need to use. If you would like a speaker for your campus on the state of the humanities and/or career outcomes for humanities majors, get in touch.
Are you a historian of the 1926 General Strike? If so, we need your help updating the strike's bibliography to mark its centenary. sslh.org.uk/2026/04/02/h...
Grade II listing details: Houses. 1900 by Sir Edwin Lutyens for the second Earl of Lytton. A block of four houses forming an open court. Whitewashed brick. Machine tile roof with 6 red brick chimney stacks. 2 storeys. 3- and 4-light glazing bar casements, those on gable ends set in corners. Arched through passage in centre of block. Diamond date panel above. Plank doors with simple flat hoods
Grade II lisitng details: Semi-detached pair of houses. 1903 by Sir Edwin Lutyens for the Earl of Lytton. M-fronted house. 2 storeys. 2 weatherboarded gable ends, the rest of the house in red brick. Plain tile steeply pitched roofs with a central red brick chimney stack. 3- light glazing bar casements. Tiled eaves.
Old Knebworth, Hertfordshire: houses on Park Lane designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens for his in-law the second Earl of Lytton. Left, Mulberry Cottages (1900) and, right, 188-190 Park Lane (1903).
The V&A agreed to pull a map it wanted to use for catalogue to a 2021 exhibition Fabergé: Romance to Revolution. It also removed a photograph of Lenin from the book because the Chinese printers said Lenin could be deemed “sensitive” by the Chinese censorship body
www.theguardian.com/culture/2026...
Among other things evidence of a slack and stale writing style (or systematic discouragement of vivid prose) in the house.
Okay, fine, I was wrong on the vibecession.
Instead of using economic data to understand how people are doing, we should use their lived experiences. We should go around and ask as many people as possible what their experience is - how much money they have, etc. - and set policy based on that.
In Oxford today I cycled past two lots of morris dancers to get to the drum & bass bike (no crossover party..) next to outdoor seating for pubs and cafes. 10 years ago this would be impossible: beautiful Broad Street was a thru road and used as a big car park. We don't always have to put cars first.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=5LBn...
Trump's entire life has been a series of failures that someone else saved him from.
That's why he was angry at NATO allies for not saving him, because in his mind, that's the rule of the universe: He fucks up, and someone else fixes it and/or takes the blame.
www.mediaite.com/media/news/t...
Does Oxford University have a problem with Sticky Toffee Pudding?
Learned societies and academies, and their journals, need to take a stand. We need to make it clear that we expect our authors to be able to read (the references they cite) and write (the articles they claim to have authored).
