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.
Sitting here crying while after getting WhatsApped the photo on the right, so let me tell you a little story about how we got here from the photo on the left and why repatriation research matters!
Tell the truth and get fired.
Happy 1926 Irish census day! This is an amazing resource, huge undertaking by the NAI. Managed to find all eight of my great-grandparents. Interestingly, my great-grandmother’s father had filled their form in Irish so took a bit longer to locate them. nationalarchives.ie/collections/...
I guarantee that in today's political and media environment, and with the current Italian government, this event would hardly register and would provoke no more than a shrug of the shoulders.
our planetary predicament in a nutshell:
The AfricaMuseum in Tervuren houses 3-4 million documents from Belgium’s colonial adventure, including tons of geological data on Congolese minerals.
Kobold, a US mining upstart, wants access, using “no fair” argument; it signed agreements w/ RDC, so it
Dream positions: 3 (!!) PhD placements at the Prize Papers with emphasis on finding students with the following language skills: French, Spanish, Dutch, and Scandinavian languages. (Of course, I emphasize the Dutch language!)
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/professional...
Remembering that declassified files from the UK National Archives showed that 10 Downing Street expected email to be a passing fad when it first arrived in 1994, but encouraged John Major to be internet-savvy.
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018...
We waited 3 years for this moment. 🥹
Scriptorium: Master of Manuscripts is OUT NOW on Steam! 🎉
Play now:
👉 s.team/a/3119540
Please repost & help us spread the word 🙏
New online, @kayagenc.bsky.social on Leylâ Erbil’s experimental novel “What Remains,” and his path toward understanding her challenge to Turkish literature and politics:
This is a great listen.
Though I always wish I could punch William The C and his murderous bully mates square in their stupid evil faces (and ideally all the others like them worldwide before or since) when I'm reminded of the Norman Conquest bullshit
This is actually sick
A remarkably bold poster. The background is white. The dominant colours ate black and orange, with touches of blue. At top right a stylised orange electricity plant. To its left a fast moving wheel. Extending down from that is a hugely powerfully arm and fist. This seems to be pushing a lever composed of 3 grey lightning bolts. This runs down to the text - “Underground” - at the bottom of the piece. It all celebrates how electricity transformed the underground trains of the period.
“Power, The Nerve Centre of London's Underground", by Edward McKnight Kauffer, 1931.
Looking forward to reading this study of a leather wallet with 144 coins, buried in Frisia in the 880s.
Displays in Belarusian folk museums can't hurt you.
Displays in Belarusian folk museums:
It has arrived! The 200th volume in the Manchester University Press Studies in Imperialism series. A landmark study of the afterlives of Caribbean slavery in Australia. Come and help us celebrate while discussing imperialism, past, present & future?
www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...
Love this. The exception might be cuneiform…almost everything you read has not felt the light of day for thousands of years.
Every ancient letter, receipt, star map, math problem, or fragment of a poem is new again. It adds to our knowledge and remembrance. It absolutely is thrilling 🧡
A terracotta olla sitting in a cardboard box full of grey, unprocessed sheep’s wool.
Couple of ollas for the garden have just arrived. They’re packed in wool! Such a neat idea - wool is compostable, and there’s a crazy surplus of it in the UK right now (farmers are burning a lot of it because export is so effed up here at the moment).
"When Badin died, he left behind diaries, a vast book collection, private letters and an autobiography offering a window into his life in 18th- and 19th-century Stockholm." New Black Europe exhibition at the Swedish National Museum #earlymodern 🗃️
Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon, looking handsome and bearded before a ruined castle. After a painting by Steven van der Meulen, whose day is today.
Big news in the restitution/museum world. Nine long years after 'that' Macron speech in Ouagadougou, France has passed a new framework law for the deaccessioning of colonial cultural loot.
www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/04/14/f...
Lecturer and group of students in front of the Westminster statue of Robert Clive
Just thought I'd bust a culture war myth. This is me teaching Sussex students on a field trip. I'm talking about what Robert Clive did, how its been interpreted over time & why his statue was put here in 1916. Contrary to what you might read in certain places I'm not inciting them to pull it down!
Fully-funded AHRC PhD scholarship at Swansea University in conjunction with Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales, examining the imperial and colonial associations of their natural sciences collections.
Please share widely, and get in touch if you want to know more. Closing date 22 May.
A colour photograph of a large grass covered mound. In the centre there is a view of the stone cist revealed when the barrow was robbed.
The Rillaton Barrow near Minions on Bodmin Moor. #TombTuesday The Rillaton gold cup was discovered with a burial in the cist here in 1837, now in the British Museum and a copy in the Truro Museum. It should be the other way around!
On 14 April 1471, a crucial battle in the Wars of the Roses was fought in Barnet.
Find out more about the battle and its impact via Dr Simon Payling's article for #HistParl.
Two women stand smiling in front of a brick wall. Between them on the wall is the purple plaque to James Murrell.
One of our Grant winners was the Hadleigh and Thundersley Community Archive, who created some new Purple Plaques!
Find out more: www.balh.org.uk/news-creatin...
#WeAreLocalHistory #LocalHistoryForAll
Five shells. Big and small. Bright and dark. Smooth and rough. Simple and not. Painted in 1696 by Adriaen Coorte, whose day is today.
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
Oh, and NB: the seal will be featured in the British Museum's upcoming Bayeux Tapestry exhibition, so there will soon be an opportunity to see it on these shores!
