This also made my week!! The emoji selection really sent me.

Screenshot from the website of Yale University Press showing praise for my book, Darwin and the Queer Origins of Life. It reads: “Evolution from an intersex ancestor? What a wondrous Darwinian idea! In this electrifying book, Ross Books helps us see the canon of natural history as queer from the very beginning. Sharp, clever, and as replete with evolutionary diversity as a history of biology could possibly be.”—Alison Bashford, author of An Intimate History of Evolution “Darwin and the Queer Origins of Life is an invigorating read pulsing with queer life. As politically essential as it is compelling, it's a rich counterhistory of biology which shows us how scientists always knew queerness was natural and nature was queer.”—Kit Heyam, author of Before We Were Trans “Ross Brooks’ smart new book is as fun to read as it is useful for rebutting all the bad takes on sexuality and gender that clog contemporary discourse. He has a delightfully ‘queer eye for the hermaphrodite guys’ of life’s evolutionary history, and more than a few arch words for Darwin and other biologists who’ve straightjacketed an abundance of animate forms into an unnatural binary.”—Susan Stryker, author of Changing Gender “Everything you need to know about sex and evolution, but were too indoctrinated by the cisheteropatriarchy to know to ask.”—Subhadra Das, author of Uncivilised “From Linnaeus to Darwin, Brooks brilliantly shows us how biology always has, and will always be, delightfully queer. A much-needed account of the queer history of natural history.”—Josh Luke Davis, author of A Little Gay Natural History “Few know of Darwin’s fascination with the queer biology of sex. This compelling, insightful, and original narrative illustrates Darwin’s (and others’) contributions and hesitancies in the enabling and restricting of queer evolutionary analyses.”—Agustín Fuentes, author of Sex is a Spectrum

Jacket design for Darwin and the Queer Origins of Life: A History of Sex and Science by Ross Brooks. It features a historical, drawn image of a gynandromorph gypsy moth, with distinctive female patterning on its left side and male on its right. Against a black background, the image and text (title and author's name) are brightly rendered in a spectrum of colours resonant of the Progress Pride Flag.

I'm bowled over by the first endorsements my forthcoming book has received. Such brilliant authors - WOW!

You will love it too . . . 🐟🌈📚

UK: yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300... @yalebooks.bsky.social

US: yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300... @yalepress.bsky.social

#booksky #histsci #queerhistory 🗃️

The problem when I graduated was that there were 200 modern British history PhDs putting in applications for every job, you had to apply for like 50 jobs to get one, and a fair few people left academia before they did. That was unpleasant in its own way, but it wasn’t a death spiral like it is now.

More on the state of British academia.

Such cruelty and brutalisation effected through these processes that are dismantling disciplines and universities in the face of governmental indifference

There are currently 6 permanent full time history jobs in the whole UK. 500+ PhDs being produced a year - not all of whom will want to pursue an academic year but likely most, and of course years will stack up onto each other. What a sector.

Faculty Defect From Texas Publics, Citing Censorship Fed up with the state’s censoring of Plato, Joan of Arc and Romeo and Juliet, humanities professors are leaving Texas public institutions in pursuit of academic freedom.

'Texas A&M philosophy professor Martin Peterson is leaving the university after administrators told him in January that he couldn’t teach Plato’s Symposium in his philosophy class; they said the ancient Greek philosopher’s work violated the system’s restrictions on gender and sexuality content.' 1/3

Modern British Studies Conference 2026 - University of Birmingham Conference information

Registration for MBS2026 is now open! Registration link and the conference programme can be found here: www.birmingham.ac.uk/events/moder...

Tyranny at Texas Tech Academic freedom and the First Amendment must protect the right of anyone to disagree with the government.

Censorship regime at Texas Tech is too extreme for (checks notes) the American Enterprise Institute. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

I would also still love more academic-journal reviews, if there's anyone who has read it and fancies pitching a review.... And I'm always happy to write or speak about the book. You can find links to some previous podcast appearances on my website here: samuelrutherford.com/book/

Teaching Gender: The British University and the Rise of Heterosexuality, 1860–1939 Abstract. Teaching Gender explains the construction of the male/female and hetero/homo binaries in early-twentieth-century Britain through the improbable b

Today is the one-year anniversary of the publication of my book, Teaching Gender! It's been fab to hear from people who have read, & taught, it in the last year. If you have institutional access, you can read it here: academic.oup.com/book/59787 - or ask your library to acquire a copy!

Students in the Texas Tech system (64k, give or take) are now PROHIBITED from researching or writing anything "centered on" sexual orientation or gender identity as part of an undergrad honors or graduate thesis. Not faculty, mind you. Students.

In a blatant 1st Amendment violation, students in the Texas Tech University system are completely banned from researching or writing anything related to sexual orientation or gender identity as part of their thesis.

All the demeaning ways Home Office expects LGBTQ+ migrants to 'prove' themselves With comments suggesting LGBTQ+ asylum seekers are pretending to be gay, how do you successfully prove your sexuality to the UK Home Office?

In light of the BBC claiming that asylum seekers are falsely claiming to be gay in order to gain asylum, here is an article about the difficulties and humiliations LGBT asylum seekers have experienced trying to prove their identities.

www.bigissue.com/news/politic...

When you want to know how deep our current crisis is, understand that it's literally cutting millions of people's lives short, and reversing several centuries of gains.

DC! On Thurs. April 30, I'm doing an event on the past and future of immigration detention with the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights. It's free and open to the public!
@princetonupress.bsky.social

The book cover for Belfastmen: An Intimate History of Life before Gay Liberation. It shows two men sat on a bench in the 1930s.

"Belfastmen: An Intimate History of Life before Gay Liberation" is published TODAY by @cornellupress.bsky.social! I tell the story of how queer men didn't just exist in Belfast but could be accepted by friends, family & colleagues... at least until a moral panic about homosexuality in the 1950s. 🧵

Legal advisers help migrants pose as gay to get asylum, undercover BBC investigation finds The BBC exposes a shadow industry charging migrants thousands of pounds to help them cheat the asylum system.

This "investigation" is straight-up incitement against people seking asylum, especially LGBTQ+ people.

No acknowledgement that LGB asylum claims are LESS LIKELY to succeed than other claims. No acknowlegement that the dodgy lawyers are CLEARLY scamming their clients

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Idaho Is Ground Zero of Republicans’ Escalating War on Trans People Ten years ago, bathroom bans inspired boycotts and celebrity opposition. Where’s the national outrage now?

Idaho has the most punitive anti-trans bathroom ban in the country, with up to five years in prison for a second offense. I spoke to the folks pushing back—over what just a few years ago led to calls for boycotts, the state legislature shamed on the national stage—on how they fight.

• Delivering single-sex spaces on the basis of biological sex, in NHS wards, schools, sport and everyday life by upholding the Equality Act and delivering clear instructions to public services on how to comply with their legal obligations to women and to trans people. • Keeping women's prisons for women, instructing the Scottish Prison Service to remove all biologically male prisoners from women's prisons within days of the election. • Recommit the NHS to delivering single sex wards on the basis of biological sex, and ensuring patients can request same sex provision wherever possible.

Scottish Labour manifesto is out, don’t vote for them

The wonderful Lavender Menace in Edinburgh are doing a fundraiser to support their operating costs! They've been able to do so much as a staffed organisation - it will be so good for queer life in Scotland if they can keep going: www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/save-laven...

Friendly reminder to my fellow immigrants that everyone over 16 who has leave to enter or remain in the UK and lives in Scotland, regardless of citizenship, can vote in the Scottish elections! The deadline to register is 20 April!

Happy belated birthday to Paul Robeson, one of my heroes! Here he is in my local park in 1960! www.greatergovanhill.com/latest/when-...

Almost 6 million people are supervised by the nation’s vast network of prisons, jails, probation, and parole.

Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma have the highest imprisonment rates in the country.

New report by @sentencingproject.bsky.social: www.sentencingproject.org/reports/mass...

This looks rad

Glasgow colleagues affiliated with GLINTS are organising a workshop on 18 June with the title 'Trans studies at a crossroad: decolonisation, anti-gender politics and the future'. It looks like it will be fab! The CFP is here: www.gla.ac.uk/media/Media_... and the deadline for abstracts is 3 May.

My university is one of those who invite arms companies such as BAE Systems, Leonardo, Thales and Rolls-Royce to sit on university advisory committees

Can't wait to read and teach this - Alma Igra's forthcoming book The Lion's Share on how science of nutrition emerged out of turn-of-the-century British imperial management. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

And I'm v grateful to the editors for coming up to do an event at Category Is Books in Glasgow on 14 May - come through for a chat if you're in the area!

This is a wonderful resource for teaching and also really fun to browse as a general reader - would highly recommend especially to those (historians and not) who are newer to this material! It has never been easier to include queer & trans perspectives in your teaching of modern British history!

We didn't deserve this day.

Unite calls 24-hour strike at three Scottish universities Cleaners, security guards and technicians to walk out after unions reject below-inflation pay rise

Unite on strike on 10 April at Glasgow, Strathclyde and Edinburgh Napier.