My book on the history of British South Asian political activism is available for pre-order now.

www.waterstones.com/book/come-wh...

Despite its very public pledges of solidarity with Lebanon, Iran went into direct negotiations with the US without a ceasefire in Lebanon.
At the same time, they threaten to overthrow the Lebanese government if it dares touch Hezbollah.

Call for ministers to curb ‘excessive risk-taking’ at universities - Research Professional News Former government adviser says Office for Students should be given “significant new powers”

Broken record here, but we cannot fix, save, improve, renew or whatever English universities if we only attend to taught students, DfE and OfS. Universities are major engines of research, innovation and civic good. Minimally DSIT must also be centrally in the frame.

They're not big schools.

And everyone knows Amnesiac > Kid A anyway, right...

Exactly. Archivists there are always very pleasant but it's frankly absurd how little material is actually made available.

Worse than limited opening hours, it's the withdrawal of 2/3 of the archive for curiosity-driven research that is the real scandal for what is supposed to be a public-service organization.

Nothing that involves The Glow Pt. 2 losing out to Vampire Weekend could ever be funny

NEW: Lebanon is Gaza 2.0. That’s what Israeli ministers are saying in their own words. Believe them.
1/

www.thenerve.news/p/lebanon-wa...

Blood is the Price of Coal: Coal Communities, Health & Welfare in Britain & Beyond from the 19th Century to the Present This free one day conference aims to bring together researchers from higher education, libraries, archives, museums and community and campaign groups to explore the history of health and welfare in Britain’s coal mining industry. Conference programme: Panel 1: Disasters, safety and commemoration Oaks Colliery Disaster, 1866 Paul Darlow, National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and Paul Hardman, former NUM National Executive Officer The Safety Men: the Colliery Deputies union in the British Coal Industry Professor Peter Ackers, Loughborough University (Emeritus) Welcomed to Wrexham Sarah Castagnetti, The National Archives The 1959 Auchengeich Disaster: class, community and commemoration in Scotland’s coalfields Professor Jim Phillips, University of Glasgow Chair: Dr Jörg Arnold, Universität Augsburg Panel 2: Health The Violent Realities and Multiple Temporalities of a Miner’s Life Liv Robinson, Northumbria University ‘A wonderful difference to the home life’: pithead baths, pitwomen, and disability in twentieth-century British coalmining communities Lucy Jameson, Durham University Pneumoconiosis, Environment, and the Politics of Coal Miners' Health in Twentieth Century Britain Dr Andrew Seaton, University of Manchester A Special Case? Miners’ Health, Wage Relativities and the Fall of Heath’s Government Robert Rayner, University of Birmingham Chair: Professor Mathew Thomson, University of Warwick

Panel 3: Welfare “Feeding on the job?” Pit canteens in 1940s Britain Dr Ariane Mak, Université Paris Cité & IUF The Warmth of Home: Concessionary Fuel and Domestic Energy in British Coalfield Communities, 1945-1995 Dr Kathy Davies, Northumbria University Class, Culture and Democracy: the Miners Libraries of South Wales John Pateman, University of Leicester Deindustrialisation and the recreational provision of the nationalised British coalmining industry (1950s-1984) Dr Marion Henry, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne Chair: Dr Quentin Outram, Society for the Study of Labour History Panel 4: Legacies Now The Dust Has Settled James O. Davies, Historic England 'The Big K: The Pit that shaped a community' Its legacy, a decade after closure. Judi Alston, One to One Development Trust Union Poorhouse to Union Leader - Herbert Smith, President of the Miners Federation of Great Britain 1922-1929. Kathryn Stainburn, Castleford Civic Society The Afterlife of Coal in Barnsley: Youth, Community, and Intergenerational Legacies Dr Kat Simpson, The University of Huddersfield Chair: Professor Keith Gildart, University of Wolverhampton Showcase of exhibitions, displays and posters: On Behalf of the People: Work, Community and Class in the British Coal Industry 1947-1994 Professor Keith Gildart, University of Wolverhampton Coal: a record of an industry Gary Winter, Historic England Poster of Mrs Sheila Truman Daniella Law, Historic England Glamorgan’s Blood: Dark Arteries, Old Veins – Exploring the Coal Collections at Glamorgan Archives Rhian Diggins, Glamorgan Archives When Coal was Clean: Soap and Smoke in Nineteenth Century Britain Oliver Marshall Mining Disasters in the Village of Worsbrough Maureen Gennard, Peter Fairham and David Bullock, Worsbrough Library Heritage Group

🚨 Conference booking open 🚨

Blood is the price of coal: Coal communities, health and welfare in Britain from the 19th century to the present

18 June 2026, University of Warwick

Booking form and additional information about the programme available at
warwick.ac.uk/services/lib...

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...

Listen! @christinegrandy.bsky.social talks to @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social about one of the books of the year “Race on Screen: Audience Racism in Twentieth-Century Britain”

newbooksnetwork.com/race-on-screen

At the start of the year our co-founder and Trustee Linton Kwesi Johnson was honoured for his work as a reggae poet and lifelong activist. Goldsmiths University named a lecture theatre in his honour with speakers including journalist Gary Younge. More on our website www.georgepadmoreinstitute.org

This, like previous article, was only possible because of the support of @leverhulme.ac.uk and @uniofreading.bsky.social - but also big thanks to Riccardo Capoferro and Franco Baldasso (neither on bsky so far as I can see...) for putting together the special issue that this article is part of.

“Imperial musicology” at the end of empire: jazz, race, and musical criticism in mid-twentieth century Britain Music, like every other aspect of the indigenous cultures encountered by British colonialists, was subjected to interpretations based on imperial racial hierarchies. Modes of understanding and anal...

My publications are very much like buses. You wait ages for one then two come along at once. Latest is about race, jazz criticism, and afterlives of empire - part of a special issue in Atlantic Studies.

Also great to be publishing new work on April Fools...

www.tandfonline.com/eprint/ZRZUR...

So I was watching the 1993 Finish Made For TV adaptation of The Lord of The Rings, and thought everyone should see the moment where Gollum falls into Mount Doom.

Black Essential Workers, Racialised Citizenship and Community ‘Friendliness’: The British Honduran Forestry Unit in Scotland, 1941–1943 The experiences of roughly 900 Black lumberjacks, serving in the British Honduran Forestry Unit in Scotland, demonstrate that citizenship for Essential Workers was racially constrained in Second Wo...

Just published in @jich.bsky.social, alongside my colleague Jim Phillips

Black Essential Workers, Racialised Citizenship and Community ‘Friendliness’: The British Honduran Forestry Unit in Scotland, 1941–1943

doi.org/10.1080/0308...

The concept of the British middle class is conveniently elastic. On the one hand, it’s used to refer to anyone with a white collar job and a mortgage, on the other it’s defined as families with nannies and kids at private school who can somehow be presented as the national norm.

I have a 'History Department in UKHE' joke but it's been reduced from 250 characters to 50 and is now merged with jokes from across ten other largely-unrelated disciplines while still being expected to be Just As Funny.

INSTITUTE OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH BLACK BRITISH HISTORY SEMINAR THE 'WEST AFRICAN VILLAGE': ROMANCING SCOTTISHNESS AT THE NATIONAL EXHIBITION OF 1911 SEMINARS SPEAKER: DR ROCHELLE ROWE (EDINBURGH) THURSDAY, 19 MARCH 2026, 5:30 PM (IN PERSON & ONLINE) HTTPS://WWW.HISTORY.AC.UK/NEWS-EVENTS/EVENTS/WEST-AFRICAN-VILLAGE-ROMANCING-SCOTTISHNESS-NATIONAL-

Join us next Thursday to hear from Dr Rochelle Rowe: “The 'West African Village': romancing Scottishness at the National Exhibition of 1911”

📍 N304, Third Floor, IHR, Senate House (and online)
📆 Thursday 19th March, 2026
⏰ 17:30
🔗 www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

Sheffield Hallam restricts TPS access to REF academics only Teaching staff at post-92 institution to be employed by subsidiary firm and lose right to access expensive pensions scheme

'Teaching-only staff at Sheffield Hallam University are set to be moved into a subsidiary firm, leaving research intensive scholars the only academics still being employed directly by the institution.'

Utterly inequitable & betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the teaching/research nexus. 1/3

Thanks Ian, glad you enjoyed the piece!

Ok that's around the time period I was thinking of but don't remember that one - gonna have to try and track it down, thanks!

Cheers Dion, hope some of the students find it helpful!

I'm going to have to go in search of the jingles - don't recall them but vaguely remember Virgin banning their DJs from playing rap music for a bit. Guessing it was around same time?

Thanks Christine, hope you like it. Your book arrived the other day so I'm looking forward to getting stuck into that once teaching has quieted down a little!

📢New article in JBS!

📗"I Am Not Anti Black Music But...": Popular Music, the NME, and Race in Late Twentieth-Century Britain by Benjamin Bland @benjamin-bland.bsky.social

Open access here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Will do, thanks Daisy!

A Poster advertising the event, with a QR code leading to the Eventbrite page, an image of the film poster, and details about the event. The event will be held at The Norwegian Study Centre in Quantum House, feature a Q&A, and have representatives from the Geography Society, the Student Co-operative, and the Gardening Society.

It's Sustainability Week here at the University of York, and the NSC has an exciting upcoming event to announce: a screening of Jeanne Bøe's new short film, 'Oxseblod' and a sustainability-themed pop-up from 7pm on March 19th. Visit oxsebloduoy.eventbrite.com to request your free ticket today!

Thanks so much for doing this, really great example for students that I will definitely make use of in teaching!

A big list of resources related to the Empire Exhibition of 1938 I have recently finished a research project about the British Empire Exhibition that was held in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow, in 1938. We produced a large amount of resources ourselves, and I also c…

It took me all day, but I've synthesised all of the resources we used on the Decolonising the British Empire Exhibition of 1938 through Augmented Reality Narratives research project.
Huge list of useful info about #Glasgow #EmpireExhibition 1938:
gamebasedlearninginhe.wordpress.com/2026/03/05/a...