The Archive as Activism How can we use oral history to capture the diverse history of the UK environmental movement?

How can we use oral history to capture the diverse history of the UK environmental movement?

Barbara Brayshay (@bbrayshay.bsky.social) and Saskia Papadakis (@sazpaps.bsky.social) introduce the OHEM archive which is now available @britishlibrary.bsky.social

exciting events coming to manchester, oxford and london!

Times report: Allies of Rayner said they believed that Wes Streeting, the health secretary, would be “ruined” by the mass disclosure of all communications with Mandelson in coming months. Streeting and Mandelson were close allies for years.

In these dark days of February, a little something to look forward to.

according to the FT and campaign group Foxglove, the government figure that the AI Growth Zone in South Wales will create 5,000 jobs is sourced from...ChatGPT. they asked AI how many jobs will AI create.

@ucunorthumbria.bsky.social are on strike 12, 13, 17-19 Feb and 2-6 March to stop bosses @northumbriauni.bsky.social slashing pay and pensions forever. Please donate to the branch fighting fund here: Unity Trust Bank, UCU Northumbria Univ NE119, Hardship Fund, SC 608301, AN 20295578

There might be good reasons for Britain to build data centres. Job creation isn’t one of them Estimate*estimate

getting back into finishing my book on the english north-south divide and delving into the government's plans for AI in the north - my friends, it is a bleak task

A graphic showing the title page of Transactions on a read background with TIBG in large letters on the right hand page. On the left hand page are nine tiles sharing 6 papers in a Themed Intervention and 3 standard articles, with the names of papers in the issue. 1) Worlding geography, area studies and the study of area Han Cheng, Deen Sharp 2) Egypt's geographical tradition: The post-independence moment and shifting regional imaginations Aya Nassar 3) Constructing and contesting meta-geographies in Russian area studies debates Vera Smirnova 4) Geography and area studies as critical bedfellows? The view from Singapore Brenda S. A. Yeoh 5) Global China's spatial ambition and area studies with geography Han Cheng 6) Beyond the Limpopo: Geography and the worlding of South(ern) Africa Maano Ramutsindela 7) Unseasonable seasons: Shifting geographies of weather and migration mobilities Kaya Barry 8) Staged ecologies: Aesthetics, nature and infrastructure in the late-modern metropolis Zuhri James 9) Multispecies slavery–environment nexus in resource extraction and animals' ecological politics: Coercive donkey labour in Indian river sand mining Yamini Narayanan

A graphic showing the title page of Transactions on a read background with TIBG in large letters on the right hand page. On the left hand page are nine tiles with standard articles, with the names of papers in the issue. 1) Before it's too late: The extinction script, multi-species reproductive futurism and Extinction Rebellion Amy Robson 2) Infrastructure as archive: Examining the colonial geographies of rivers Austin Read 3) Infra-culture and infrastructures: Relational placemaking at the coast Julian Clark 4) Hotels, refuge, and the rise of carceral hospitality Jonathan Darling, Andrew Burridge 5) On the natural border: A bio-geo-political reading Matteo Proto, Francesco Buscemi 6) Postimperial melancholia and the English North–South divide: Reading the life stories of Northern women of colour in London Saskia Papadakis 7) Theorising legal gaps geographically: Exploring the transition from asylum seeker to refugee in the UK Sarah M. Hughes 8) On the politics of movement: Borderscapes, choreopolicing and choreopolitics Charlotte Veal 9) High-resolution property: Drone enclosures in digital India Thomas Cowan

A graphic showing the title page of Transactions on a read background with TIBG in large letters on the right hand page. On the left hand page are six tiles with 4 standard articles, 1 commentary, and a Themed Intervention with the names of papers in the issue. 1) Post-pandemic geographies of working from home: More of the same for spatial inequalities? David McCollum 2) The place where we live: Children, families, play, neighbourhoods and spaces of care during and after the pandemic Alison Stenning, Wendy Russell 3) Living a ‘shadow life’: The disorientations of losing orientation and agency while waiting through furlough Victoria J. E. Jones 4) What does it mean to be present at work? Negotiating attention, distraction and presence in working from home David Bissell, Elisabetta Crovara, Andrew Gorman-Murray, Elizabeth Straughan 5) Subtractive, ambient and bifurcated attention at work and when working from home: Towards a geography of workplace attention 6) Crisis of imagination/(re)imaginations for a (climate) crisis Ankit Kumar, Chandni Singh, Lauren Hermanus, Lalitha Kamath, Wangui Kimari, Mark Pelling, Harriet Bulkeley

📢December Issue of TIBG📢

Our latest issue gathers papers around 3 broad themes: the more-than-human, borders, and working from home. It also features the third collection in our 'Geography in the World' series.

23/24 papers are #OpenAccess ⬇️
rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14755661...

Queering Twentieth-Century Irish Women’s Writing Queering Twentieth-Century Irish Women’s Writing

My book is coming out soon and you can ask your library to order it! edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-queerin...
If you have loads of money, you can also order it yourself, and use the code NEW30 to get a 30% discount, but I recommend the library route 📚📚

#ERSNew 🐣🔓 What links Ugandan Asian refugees, a US multinational corporation that made its money from imperial warfare, a typewriter factory in Leicester, and a group of black revolutionaries? #1974ImperialTypewritersStrike. Article: doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2025.2539908

Thanks Ben!

Black struggles, black workers? Race Today and the 1974 Imperial Typewriters strike In May 1974, around 500 ‘Ugandan Asian’ workers walked out of Leicester’s Imperial Typewriters factory. For the recently formed Race Today Collective (RTC), which published the radical journal Race...

super happy that my article on Race Today and the Imperial Typewriters strike is out now and open access in @ersjournal.com!

doi.org/10.1080/0141...

Screenshot of a paper abstract in TIBG by Saskia Papadakis (2025) entitled: 'Postimperial melancholia and the English North–South divide: Reading the life stories of Northern women of colour in London' The trope of the English North–South divide has come to frame a plethora of national crises in recent years, with the supposedly white working-class North understood as having been ‘left behind’ by London's ‘metropolitan elite’. Bringing together geographies of England's socio-spatial inequalities, emotional geographies, and postcolonial understandings of Englishness, this paper theorises the contemporary English North–South divide as a form of ‘splitting’, a psycho-spatial strategy born out of postimperial melancholia. In an attempt to contain the contradictory impulses towards helplessness and omnipotence produced through Britain's former global supremacy and its imperial decline, dominant imaginaries of England separate ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings and locate them in either the North or London, with implications for socio-spatial inequalities within the nation. Reading life stories recorded with women of colour from the North of England who are living in London through Avtar Brah's conceptualisation of England as a ‘diaspora space’, this paper destabilises binarised imaginaries of North and South. Contributing to geographies of race, class, and nation, this paper demonstrates that, through an attentiveness to individual biographies, identities, and experiences, the binaries of migrant and native, past and future, North and South, are rendered untenable.

#OpenAccess in Transactions:

'Postimperial melancholia and the English North-South divide: Reading the life stories of Northern women of colour in London' by @sazpaps.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1111/tran... #geosky

Sign the Petition Stop Mass Redundancies at Lancaster University – Hold Senior Management Accountable

Goodbye to the history department at Lancaster University, where the @socialhistsoc.bsky.social was founded 49 years ago. From tomorrow we are
part of a School of Global Affairs. Next year, who knows what will be - please sign our petition against mass redundancies chng.it/PZfTFDjNcr

Great to be interviewed for the @rgsibg.bsky.social Ask the Geographer podcast series! Toby Butler and I chat to Rachel about oral histories and research. It's a lovely resource for A Level students and anyone interested in how oral history can be used in geography!

thank you sol!

University of Lincoln staff vote for strike action Staff at the University of Lincoln have voted to take industrial action in a dispute over plans to threaten nearly 300 staff with redundancy, the University and College Union has announced today.

🚨 Lincoln Uni staff vote to strike after nearly 300 redundancies announced.

🔺 86% backed action
🔺 95% no confidence in management
🔺 220 jobs already lost last year

Send your support and solidarity to @uculincolnbranch.bsky.social

www.ucu.org.uk/article/1404...

North of England lost out on £140bn for transport in ‘decade of deceit’ – study Thinktank calls on ministers to close investment gap after ‘hollow’ promises from previous governments

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

The myth of the white working-class Northern man By Saskia Papadakis, Royal Holloway, University of London In 1999, Prime Minister Tony Blair dismissed the English North-South divide as a ‘myth’. Calling the North-South divide ‘simplistic’, he po…

with reports that the north of england has missed out on £140bn of transport spending over the past 10 years, i've written about how the imagined white working class northern man is linked to infrastructural violence and the north-south divide
blog.geographydirections.com/2025/06/03/t...

The myth of the white working-class Northern man By Saskia Papadakis, Royal Holloway, University of London In 1999, Prime Minister Tony Blair dismissed the English North-South divide as a ‘myth’. Calling the North-South divide ‘simplistic’, he po…

new blog! on why everyone is obsessed with the idea of the white working-class northern man!
this continues to be depressingly relevant with reform in the ascendant, starmer's 'island of strangers' and blue labour's attacks on EDI 🙃🙃🙃
blog.geographydirections.com/2025/06/03/t...

Sign the Petition End unnecessary redundancies at Newcastle University

Sign the petition against redundancies at @newcastleuni.bsky.social! Totally unnecessary and hugely damaging to staff, students, the uni, and to geography and other affected disciplines. All solidarity with @newcastleucu.bsky.social
www.change.org/p/end-unnece...

🎉 New Journal Article Alert

rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... by @sazpaps.bsky.social

#RHULGeogResearch #royalholloway #royalhollowayuniversity #rgs_ibg

An Open Letter from the Disability Studies Community Regarding Proposed Redundancies at Liverpool Hope University An Open Letter from the Disability Studies Community Regarding Proposed Redundancies at Liverpool Hope University To the Leadership of Liverpool Hope University, We, members of the international Disab...

Please show your solidarity for Disability Studies colleagues at Liverpool Hope, who've recently been informed of plans to cut their team by half.

Open letter to sign:

docs.google.com/document/d/1... [docs.google.com]

Ah thanks Jack, that's very sweet of you! Go hard or go home, that's what I say 😂 Glad you're enjoying the article 💖

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers | RGS Journal | Wiley Online Library The trope of the English North–South divide has come to frame a plethora of national crises in recent years, with the supposedly white working-class North understood as having been ‘left behind’ by L...

last week i published a journal article for the first time and i fainted for the first time! a week of firsts. luckily the journal article will have the more lasting impact! read it now on @tibg.bsky.social
rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

We're bringing a legal challenge to the EHRC’s ‘Interim Update’ A number of trans and intersex individuals have today begun a legal challenge to the EHRC’s ‘Interim Update’ following the For Women, Scotland decision

🚨 NEW 🚨

We don't believe the EHRC's 'interim update' on trans people's rights is lawful.

So we’re bringing a legal challenge

Thanks Oli!

Massive thanks to @kbrickell.bsky.social, Beth Greenhough, @benrogaly.bsky.social, @sashaengelmann.bsky.social and @naoisemurphy.bsky.social who helped make this happen! And to the British government and press for continuing to make this project depressingly relevant by constantly hating on migrants

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers | RGS Journal | Wiley Online Library The trope of the English North–South divide has come to frame a plethora of national crises in recent years, with the supposedly white working-class North understood as having been ‘left behind’ by L...

It's out! It's here! My first ever journal article 'Postimperial melancholia and the English North–South divide: Reading the life stories of Northern women of colour in London' is out today with @tibg.bsky.social 🤩
rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

NEWS!!! If you're in #Glasgow in June and want to hear about the history Scottish environmental movement, we've assembled a 'witness seminar' of activists and policy makers, and the event is public - get your free ticket here:

www.tickettailor.com/events/oralh...

Exploring Young Trans and Non-binary People’s Strategies and Spaces for Navigating Marginality in the United Kingdom: A Novel Resilience, Resistance, and Restoration Framework Amid recent, unprecedented sociopolitical scrutiny and hypervisibility of young trans people in the United Kingdom, this article considers how trans youth develop individual and collective mechanis...

Amidst the bleakness, I've just published an article exploring how young trans people are dealing with life in the UK @geographers.bsky.social. Do read to understand more about how trans youth are navigating & thriving in these times. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....