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
As part of the upcoming Pint of Science festival, I'll be talking smells and cities on 18 May, yeah!
We'll explore factory air and labour, political history and smoke, and smelly waterways at the Taproom, near Piccadilly station in Manchester.
Info:
pintofscience.co.uk/event/smart-...
🌿 Learning botany at home 🔓️
In our latest BJHS issue, Brad Scott explores how the Talbot family studied mosses—by collecting, drawing, and naming—showing how botanical knowledge was shaped in domestic settings and through networks, even without formal structures.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Something extraordinary – yet predictable – has happened over recent days on Facebook.
Fake accounts that usually post anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim content generated using AI to fuel division and hate in UK are now pushing out AI-gen content asking:
"Should the UK produce its own fuel again?"
Just a few more days to apply to this year’s Take Your Research Public course - an introduction to public writing, social media, podcasting and more for academics new to this work. Guests include @drsurekhadavies.bsky.social and @estelleprnq.bsky.social. Free, online, over four Tuesdays in June.
This second edition is essential reading - for everyone. If there’s one book I’d recommend in environmental history, it might be this.
With an introduction by @brdemuth.bsky.social! #EnvHist
The team behind my favorite graph - @ourworldindata.org - is hiring a writer.
If you can explain complicated things in ways that change how people think AND you want that skill pointed at the world's largest problems, consider applying: ourworldindata.org/hiring-writ...
Let's be clear: the destruction of universities is a political choice. It doesn't have to be like this. Sure, there are issues, some serious, but Ireland's universities aren't totally screwed, nor The Netherlands'. The UK government has made a choice - it is demolishing and incinerating education.
⏰The deadline to apply for the 2026 @beinghumanfest.bsky.social is this Thursday 16 April at 5pm.
Funding grants are available to connect your research with local audiences through inspiring public engagement events.
Don't miss your chance to take part:: https://bit.ly/4kuToHO
But the government should be abolishing grammar schools and resourcing all schools to offer the same opportunities for children across the board. What else is a Labour government for? Finish what Crosland started!
How has your scholarship been impacted by a decision not to travel to the United States? Want to write about it for our Tracking the Effects: Environmental History and the Current United States Federal Administration series?
niche-canada.org/2026/02/26/p...
#envhist #envhum #cdnhist
Nearly 1 in 6 UK species are threatened with extinction.
We've lost 97% of our wildflower meadows since the 1930s.
We have 73 million fewer birds than in the 1970s - a decline of almost a third.
And yet some politicians still just see wildlife as a blocker to progress.
Call for Papers – Forecasting the Weather between Divination & Science (Antiquity to the Present)
Submission Deadline: 31 May 2026
Workshop, organised at the University of Oxford, UK, 9 Oct 2026, by @simondolet.bsky.social & Michelle Pfeffer
niche-canada.org/2026/04/06/c...
#envhist #histsci
Frederic Leighton's 1895 painting "Flaming June" with the words "Belonging to the Victorians? Community, Collections, and Care" and "A One Day Conference 4 September 2026" superimposed on it.
CFP: Belonging to the Victorians? Community, Collections, and Care - 4 September 2026 - Keynote Address @janehamlett.bsky.social 🌟This conference examines how the 19th century shaped ideas of belonging through its landscapes, laws and collections, and how its legacies still shape heritage today 1/7
Reposting for attention of #envhist #envhums #STS #HistSTM folks, can anyone help? Amazing story and a vital longitudinal datastream that needs continuity and care
🔔⏰Just over 1 month to go! ⏰🔔
Call for papers: Modern British History and the 'Environmental Turn'
A two-day workshop organised by
@andrewseaton.bsky.social and myself at Lincoln College, Oxford, 16-17 September. Deadline for abstracts is 15 May.
Details in poster below!
JOB ALERT: Two 4.5 year postdoctoral positions to work on my Wellcome-funded project 'Conserving Global Health: Biodiversity Protection and the Prehistory of Planetary Health'. Please share widely!
CLOSING DATE: 23 April (the date on Jobs.ac.uk is apparently incorrect)
This an interesting question. I wonder if @dranniegray.bsky.social knows when this became a thing? I feel like it might be even more recent. I don’t remember bbq smells when I was a kid #old
emperor's tailor pulls out of landmark twelvety-nine bajillion pound deal to establish a "world-leading" clothes emporium
I remember predicting this on Twitter ages ago, where someone promptly accused me of being some kind of eco-doomster predicting the demise of all technology within the decade.
Just under two weeks left to apply for this programme! Please share.
A screenshot of the British Journal of Healthcare Management website with the abstract for the comment piece, 'The multispecies hospital: how the past can inform the future'
Exciting to see this comment piece written by myself and @victoriabates.bsky.social out in the British Journal of Healthcare Management! Unfortunately it is paywalled but hopefully there will be more on this subject coming from us in the future... #MultispeciesHospital
What will happen to the 82 USFS experimental forests around the country? Many sites have decades-long experiments that are tracking how forests are changed by timber harvesting practices and climate change. As I say here, “you can't just pick up an experimental forest site and move it to SLC.”
What a joy to celebrate the county #flower of #Hertfordshire in my @theguardian.com country diary today.
#naturewriting #countrydiary
The Librarians are not the enemy. Great piece on this nightmarish conduct @katiedd.bsky.social. I stocked these books in my school library, issuing them with care/ age restrictions too. The librarian was threatened with disciplinary action, labeled a safeguarding risk & resigned. Follow up below.
Review of The Experience of Work in Early Modern England
by Jane Whittle, Mark Hailwood, Hannah Robb and Taylor Aucoin. Cambridge University Press, 2025, 362 pp. 978 1 316 51994 3.
SUCH an important book. #Skystorians
In her new article Tracey Loughran uses MO to see how
five women narrate their experiences fertility problems prior to development of IVF. It's a fascinating read! Find it here: academic.oup.com/shm/advance-...
Need to escape from the news? Here are a few things we’ve got coming up at the @britishacademy.bsky.social which might help.
This panel in London/online will look at how art, performance and creativity can deepen our understanding of disability
www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/the-a...
Great article by @donnalferguson.bsky.social in today's @theguardian.com about Darwin & Henslow's plant specimens & illustrations and the fab new @cubotanicgarden.bsky.social Certificate in Botany: www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Links for this course & many others here:
bsbi.org/learn/traini...