Simultaneously delighted and annoyed that the German versions of The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings translate Baggins as Beutlin.

It is now two months since my article went into production with a timeline of <2 weeks to publication. 🥲

The Polycrisis? Historical roots and critical perspectives in modern British studies This conference will bring together scholars to discuss the shape of modern British studies in an urgently unstable global context, termed a ‘polycrisis’ (Tooze, 2023). Featuring panels on the environ...

This conference we are supporting in Birmingham in June has an amazing mix of 40 panels - a veritable Choose your Own Adventure through modern British studies. It’s also the inaugural event of the Association of Modern British Studies! Great stuff here
www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/briti...

I'm not a medievalist by any means so might be completely wrong, but my understanding from looking at the longue durée of European thought about Islam is that the majority view was that Muhammad was a heretic, which would make them related by definition.

Contents Introduction Pioneers of Medicine Part I Women Physicians and the Health Geography of the American West 1 Strangers in a Strange Land 2 Lady Doctors and Wanderlusting Medics 3 A Desire to Cure, Not to Punish 4 Suffragist Cities Part II Reproductive Surveillance 5 Quiet and Loud 6 From the Cradle to the Grave 7 The Judge vs. The Lady Physicians Epilogue Pioneers of Medicine, Revisited Appendix Acknowledgments Notes Glossary Bibliography Index

👀👀 Almost done

Petition: Raise Bereavement Support Payment and extend beyond 18 months Reform Bereavement Support Payment so families with and without dependent children receive help beyond 18 months, with annual uprating to reflect cost of living.

We are a very small minority in terms of government funding, which makes the slashing of provision even more gutting. A drop in the overall budget could be life saving to families in more perilous financial conditions than me!

You can sign the petition here - petition.parliament.uk/petitions/75...

Sharing this again since my last post got a bit more engagement than usual – my new book is available to read online now!

This is such a cool initiative!

Students will be SHOCKED and OFFENDED when I DESTROY their favourite Voltaire quote by dedicating my full-year Early Modern history module to proving it was in fact HOLY, ROMAN, and—yes—an EMPIRE

I tried replying to this but it seems not to have gone through (just in case it appears twice for you):

That's such a shame. Honestly small, affordable gigs are the heart of any local scene. Overall, I enjoyed Infall more (it was their pit) but my friends preferred NSI (who were also very good)

I was going to comment that that's also the fiction stand, but thay probably would be the more appropriate place for his nonsense

Infall and Noise Trail Immersion, both local (or at least local-ish). I think Turin benefits from a huge student population, but also the main rock venue is very central and shows are usually <€10 (this was €8, highest I've paid was €20 for Brant Bjork)

There were two young people (like I would guess <20) clearly a bit shy but using the pit as a way to flirt with each other and honestly that like revived my faith in punk, live music, maybe even humanity itself

Homer Simpson at the bottom of Springfield Gorge

Went in the pit at a hardcore gig for c. 30 minutes tonight and have never felt this image so much

It is a wonderful book!

Excited to receive my author copy of this excellent volume today! Thanks @profannasaunders.bsky.social and Caroline Summers for their brilliant work 👏

A Rare 1897 Film Discovered in an Old Trunk in Michigan Features the First On-Screen Appearance of a Robot Filmmaker Georges Méliès employed some of his signature special effects techniques to create comedy in "Gugusse and the Automaton"

Stories like this i love, coz i'd loooove to work and restore archival audio visual material...! What discoveries lie in our first creative endeavours with recording sound and motion pictures?
www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/r...

More than half of Britons support rejoining EU 10 years on from Brexit vote Experts say Labour’s ‘halfway house’ approach risks losing support from progressives and ‘red wall’ voters

I'm very curious about the 18% of Reform voters supposedly keen to rejoin.

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

A flat brown cardboard package shaped like a ginormous raviolo on a pale wooden floor. A pair of legs in mid-blue jeans and thick, deep pink socks stand ready.

My right hand is holding up a paperback copy of HUMANS: A Monstrous History at an angle, in front of a bookcase brimming with brightly coloured books. The cover of HUMANS is mostly crimson, with bright yellow stylized lettering. A large, oval, whitish mirror with an elaborate black frame of SFF characters takes up the centre of the cover.

The back cover of HUMANS; my hand and the bookcase also in evidence.

A back cover detail showing the pull-quotes from published reviews.

The paperback of HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY from @ucpress is now in my hands!
There's new jacket copy! There are review quotations on the back:
💙📚 🧪🗃 #ancient #medieval #earlymodern #18thC #histsci #histmed #politics
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Papal infallibility does not mean all Catholics must agree with the pope on every single issue. Treating Catholics as automatons of Leo XIV is both condescending in itself and means we cannot engage with the diversity within Catholic thought – including those on Leo's left as well as his right.

JD Vance is a war-mongering hypocrite whose religion is an AI-generated Retvrn meme, but we've gotta stop with this whole line of "Catholics can't disagree with the Pope – gotcha!"

Catholics at all levels can and do disagree with the Pope on a host of important moral, political and religious issues

This is astonishing work. Thank you!

Dr David Summers Master of Research (MRes) Studentship in Scottish Literature at Edinburgh Napier University on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - Dr David Summers Master of Research (MRes) Studentship in Scottish Literature at Edinburgh Napier University, listed on FindAPhD.com

Please share this advert for the Dr David Summers Master of Research (MRes) Studentship in Scottish Literature @edinburghnapier.bsky.social. Closing date: 31 May 2026.

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Quite a flex to turn up at the presidential palace, get him to confirm you as prime minister, call him unfit to serve with no moral authority, tell him to resign, and then pose for a picture

Actually, I think my (non-philosopher) take is

1) analytic philosophy offers a lot of ideas I agree with, but which don't really provoke any interesting reflections

2) (so-called) continental philosophy offers a lot of interesting, thought-provoking ideas I furiously disagree with

Thank you!

In print May, but available on Oxford Scholarship Online now!

academic.oup.com/book/62547

I think this might be true for, say, Deleuze and Guattari rather than, say, Habermas and Husserl, much less Arendt (surprised to see her in the original article tbh), but then I'm a Germanist so I would say that, wouldn't I.

Basically, I suspect analytic philosophers would have less of a problem with it if they saw engaging with Continental Philosophy (though I think the concept's pretty fake) less like a boxing match to establish supremacy and more like interdisciplinary work

It's not a perfect analogy at all, but I do think that a lot of what's called Continental Philosophy has its own vocabulary/grammar that *can* be a vehicle for charlatanry and obscurantism (as can others) but which can also be learned in a way that can lead to useful insights