We’re looking forward to tomorrow’s webinar on the history of American Freethought. Get in touch if you’re not an ISHASH member and would like to join us 📕

The BAVS/Rosemary Mitchell Prize for a Second Monograph 2026 is now open! If you published your second scholarly monograph in Victorian studies between 17 February 2025 and 17 February 2026, please do consider submitting! You can find more information here: bavs.ac.uk/book-prize-2/

It looks fab! Congratulations - I know how long in the making this has been 😄

The new @bavs-uk.bsky.social newsletter is here and it is ✨stunning ✨

This refresh has been a long time in the making, with lots of work behind the scenes from me and @ireadoldbooks.bsky.social - we hope you love it as much as we do!

Read the spring issue here: bavs.ac.uk/wp-content/u...

Grey and red poster with book cover of David C. Hoffman’s book American Freethought: The History of a Social Movement, 1794-1948. Poster gives details of ISHASH webinar - see link in post

Join us next Thursday (9 April) to hear from David C. Hoffman about his new book ‘American Freethought: The History of a Social Movement, 1794-1948.’ Full details here: atheismsecularismhumanism.wordpress.com/seminars/

Defend degrees, defend jobs These cuts wipe out courses, programmes, shared knowledge, teaching and research excellence and a whole learning community, which has been decades in the making Talk to your tutors, lecturers, and professors Demand the Schools, Faculties, and University end these cuts Join upcoming meetings, letters, and petitions

These cuts and how they have been implemented undo what it means to do university. The academic community should own the courses, not some external consultant.

Students & Staff need to have a meaningful participation for a university to be a university. #SaveHE #UKHE

295 modules cut in the School of the Arts Race and Racism in Performance Performing Illness and Disability Performance and Visual Culture in South Asia Queer Borderlands Iraqi Literature in English / English Translation Transgender Perspectives and Interventions Refugee Writing Indian Cinema Slavery, Colonialism and Postcolonialism Language and Ethnicity Multilingualism and Bilingualism Cinema and Disability Intersectional Feminist Writing Reading South Asia: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh Plus cuts to Arabic, Bengali, Catalan, French, German, Japanese Mandarin Chinese and Russian! Management is cutting The research-led modules that make QMUL QMUL

Management paid nearly a quarter million to the external consultancy NOUS, whose generic 'framework' is now used to turn QMUL into a Cookie Cutter University.

These modules make QMUL. They bring students in contact with the cutting-edge research & widen the scope of academia. #UKHE

Our Associate Director Barathy M.G. will be giving what’s sure to be a fascinating talk about global networks of freethought. Full details of the free webinar linked below.

Teaching Resources This webpage collects syllabi, module outlines, seminar plans, assignment ideas, and classroom activities related to histories of atheism, secularism, and humanism. Materials are from a variety of …

Thanks to generosity of our members, @ishash.bsky.social now hosts a page of teaching resources that bring histories of freethought into cultural and intellectual history, literature and religious studies courses. Check it out! atheismsecularismhumanism.wordpress.com/teaching-res...

Teaching Resources This webpage collects syllabi, module outlines, seminar plans, assignment ideas, and classroom activities related to histories of atheism, secularism, and humanism. Materials are from a variety of …

Thanks to generosity of our members, @ishash.bsky.social now hosts a page of teaching resources that bring histories of freethought into cultural and intellectual history, literature and religious studies courses. Check it out! atheismsecularismhumanism.wordpress.com/teaching-res...

Thanks to @rs4vp.org for the inspiration to put this together!

Most international academic networks and cooperations are about research, not teaching. Therefore I am very happy that our network now has published a page with teaching resources. Examples from many different contexts.

Thanks Anton - it really was a pleasure to get the insights into how our members’ research and teaching intersect (once I’d found the time to work on it!)

Teaching Resources This webpage collects syllabi, module outlines, seminar plans, assignment ideas, and classroom activities related to histories of atheism, secularism, and humanism. Materials are from a variety of …

Our collection of resources for teaching histories of atheism, secularism, and humanism spans Europe, North America, and Brazil - ranging across intellectual and social history, literature, and religious studies. Check it out and be inspired!
atheismsecularismhumanism.wordpress.com/teaching-res...

Huge thanks to everyone who generously shared their teaching materials! We‘d love to keep building this resource so please get in touch by email if you have materials you’d like to share 📚

ISHASH TEACHING RESOURCES This webpage collects syllabi, module outlines, seminar plans, assignment ideas, and classroom activities related to histories of atheism, secularism, and humanism. Materials are from a variety of teaching contexts, disciplines, and countries. We hope that browsing this page inspires others to introduce aspects of these histories into their teaching. Many thanks to the ISHASH members who have generously shared their teaching materials. These

Introducing our new Teaching Resources page! Check out the syllabi, reading lists, and assignment ideas shared by ISHASH members. We hope this inspires others to bring the histories of atheism, secularism & humanism into their teaching.

Former Leverhulme Early Career Fellow @claregs.bsky.social @qmul.bsky.social on how investing in networks and seeking connections can set you up for success.

Tune into episode 3 of #ConfessionsOfAnECR on networking and mentors in academia.
🎬 youtu.be/AdtU1Q1TOdo?...

teaching histories of atheism, secularism, and humanism. speakers Tina Block (Thompson Rivers University, Canada), Katharina Neef (University of Leipzig, Germany), and Atko Remmel (University of Tartu, Estonia). February 18th, 10.00 PT, 13.00 ET, 18.00 GMT, and 19.00 CET To sign up for the webinar and get the zoom link email ishashmail@gmail.com

Our first webinar of 2026 will be a chance to reflect on, discuss, and share experiences of teaching histories of atheism, secularism, and humanism. Join us on Wed 18 February - just get in touch to register, all welcome! atheismsecularismhumanism.wordpress.com/seminars/

Fellowship Opportunity | Fellowship Program for Humanist Thought - American Humanist Association Applications are being considered by the Fellowship Program for Humanist Thought, an American Humanist Association and Institute for Humanist Studies program, new in 2026. Fellows are researchers havi...

Check out the new Fellowship Program for Humanist Thought @americanhumanist.bsky.social for early career researchers working in any discipline on the humanist-secularist-nonreligious spectrum! Deadline 20 March 2026. Details here: americanhumanist.org/about/opport...

Thank you for introducing her work to me! I’m fascinated by it

Jane Graverol I’ve always loved Jane Graverol’s work...

Happy Friday, have a newsletter:
sabinastent.substack.com/p/jane-grave...

The grade inflation mutant algorithm, 2026 Grade inflation is falling, but OfS still thinks too many are getting good degrees. David Kernohan asks what it would take to know what is really going on

A voice of informed reason in a weltering wilderness of wild claims.

Big thanks for all the suggestions! I spent my morning coffee break compiling them into a Google map for other hungry and thirsty scholars: maps.app.goo.gl/dTmWWY2jDhhE...

How the financial problem is described is not neutral. It reflects and reinforces a particular way of understanding what a university is and how it should function. If the financial situation is framed as a classic demand-and-cost problem (i.e., demand is insufficient, prices are constrained, and unit costs are too high), then the university is, implicitly, being treated as a ‘service provider’ operating in a competitive international education market where students are customers. In that frame, the obvious actions are to emphasise tight cost controls and to strengthen output-focused performance metrics, targets and incentives such as promotions based on publications in highly rated journals, income generation or teaching satisfaction scores. If the same financial situation is framed instead as a system-level shock that threatens the conditions under which teaching, research and public service can flourish, then a different picture of the university comes into view: a ‘living knowledge ecosystem’ serving a public mission and facing financial constraints partly beyond its control. Within that frame, the responses appears quite different. Attention turns to protecting core capacities, reducing harm to the most vulnerable parts of the system and working with others to share risks and resources. In both cases, the numbers in the spreadsheets are the same. What differs is the story told about the problem, and the underlying image of the university that story presupposes. At present, the former factory-like framing is the most common. With it, the danger is that, under a narrative of financial constraints, universities take actions that emphasise governance practices that reshape behaviour so deeply that, over time, what remains may still be called a ‘university’, but no longer acts like one.

Three short paragraphs, and you've got the whole mind-bending mess that is #UKHE finance & governance neatly laid out.

This is why it's all so exhausting: our managers declare there's only one static frame, while we know their framing is part of the issue.

💡 www.hepi.ac.uk/2026/01/10/w...

This started with the tearing down of Palestinian flags. That in itself is dreadful -- and we tried to oppose that intimidation. Astonishing just how quickly that has moved to the censorship of all possible organising and solidarity.

'Cloud Dancer': A Measured Response Regarding Pantone's decision, and so on, and so forth

sorry I'm late! I have at last broken my silence on Pantone's Color of the Year johnpaulbrammer.substack.com/p/cloud-danc...

This was such a joy-filled event! @conwayhall.bsky.social at its best - bringing communities, histories, and ethical culture together! Wishing @francesmlynch.bsky.social and all other the singers a very merry Yuletide!

I was part of the fantastic team that developed and wrote this report and evidence papers. If you’re interested in place-based and/or environmental policy making, do check it out!

The front cover of the British Academy's report: A place-sensitive approach for environmental sustainability

Today, the Academy publishes a report setting out findings from our Where We Live Next programme on place-led approaches to environmental sustainability. www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/publications...

I used actual 15th-century dog names from Scott-McNab’s edition of “Names of All Manners of Hounds” for this print using some of the dog letterpress blocks I’ve collected. “Beste-of-all” uses the tol Maple (my “good freend”) I lasercut, of course. + #DHmakes