Today’s the day! 🎉 We're in Sam Alex SG.16 4–5pm for an EACW research seminar 'The Sweet Taste of Empire' - @profkfh.bsky.social in conversation with @fredschurink.bsky.social on sugar, empire and race. Join us!

Coal Country - University of London Press The flooding and subsequent closure of Scotland’s last deep coal mine in 2002 brought a centuries long saga to an end. Villages and towns across the densely populated Central Belt owe their existence ...

My book, Coal Country: The Meaning and Memory of Deindustrialization in Postwar Scotland is the first book-length account of the end of coal mining in Scotland through the memories of miners and their families. It is available to download for free on this link, or you can also buy paper copies.

Transnational Working-Class Literatures This book addresses an urgent need for a study which brings together the national, transnational and international dimensions of working-class literatures.

Please forgive the shameless self-publicity, but a collection of essays on transnational working-class literature which I helped to co-edit (and also contributed to) has been published today! See the link below for details & ask your library to order a copy!
link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

Digital Victorian Poetry Project Update – RSVP Digital Victorian Poetry Project is delighted to announce a suite of brand-new updates! Highlights of what's new here.

The Digital Victorian Poetry Project is pleased to announce some exciting updates on their work to digitize #19thC poetry, including over 3,000 new poems. Thanks for #SharingYourNews!

#OtD 18 Mar 1834 the Tolpuddle Martyrs, members of Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers (which was like a union) in Britain, were convicted and sentenced to 7 years penal labour in Australia for their involvement in that organisation stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/9...

We're delighted to announce that applications for the 2025-26 BARS/BAVS Nineteenth-Century Matters Fellowship are now open!

Deadline for applications: Monday 12 May 2025.

Corinne Fowler: Our Island Stories - Canterbury Festival Discover a new story of rural Britain and its colonial past as told through a series of country walks with public historian Corinne Fowler, author of the 2020 National Trust report. Island Stories is ...

Coming up soon: 6 April @CanterburyFest at 1pm, a talk focused on Southern England
canterburyfestival.co.uk/whats-on/cor...

View Free Open Access Issues Issue 1 – (1998): Download Key Words 1 Issue 2 – ‘Ecocriticism’ (1999): Download Key Words 2 Issue 3 – ‘Futures’ (2000): Download Key Words 3 Issue 4 &#821…

In case you missed it Key Words 19, and Key Words 20, guest edited by @danieljhartley.bsky.social, are now both freely available online. All past issues are available here: raymondwilliams.co.uk/view-issues/

Closing on Monday 10 March 👇

Now available online, too: raymondwilliams.co.uk/wp-content/u...

Now available online! 🎉🧐

My article "'Wessex and the Border': Thomas Hardy and the Imperial World-System" appeared in the 2022 Key Words special issue on Raymond Williams and World Literature. Edited by Daniel Hartley. Includes other fab essays!

#ThomasHardy

raymondwilliams.co.uk/wp-content/u...

Cover of special issue of Key Words journal on Raymond Williams and World Literature. Green background.

Two years since my special issue on Raymond Williams and world literature came out.

NEW PhD Studentship on Irish MPs available The University of Sheffield and the History of Parliament are offering a fully-paid PhD studentship on Irish MPs in the Victorian Commons. Deadline for applications: 12 noon 5 March 2025. Full deta…

A reminder that the application deadline for a fully-funded PhD studentship on Irish MPs in the 19th century - working with the University of Sheffield and the History of Parliament - is 12 noon on 5 March. Full details in the links here: victoriancommons.wordpress.com/2025/02/04/n...

British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS) 25th Anniversary Conference

CALL FOR PAPERS: The Oxford Faculties of English & History are delighted to host the 25th anniversary conference of the British Association for #Victorian Studies on 23–25 July.

Papers on any aspect of long-nineteenth-century studies are welcome (submit by 17 March). #BAVS #Victorianstudies #19thC

Empire, the West Country and Thomas Hardy | Corinne Fowler and Rena Jackson – Dorset Museum & Art Gallery This joint talk explores the British Empire’s impact on the West Country, examining Dorset’s colonial connections, imperial wealth, and literary responses, including Thomas Hardy’s portrayal of global...

A joint talk I am giving with Rena Jackson about #ThomasHardy and the British Empire as well as the colonial history of the West Country @DorsetMuseums
www.dorsetmuseum.org/whats-on/emp... 4 July 2025

The Sally Mitchell Dissertation Prize – RSVP The Sally Mitchell Dissertation Prize is awarded annually to the best Ph.D. dissertation, defended in the previous calendar year, that explores the British periodical press of the long nineteenth cent...

Did you defend your dissertation in 2024? Did it enhance our knowledge of #19thC periodicals? You may be eligible for our Sally Mitchell Dissertation Prize! Submissions are open now through March 1 - a scant two weeks away! More details can be found on our website:
rs4vp.org/awards/mitch...

#OtD 5 Feb 1885 King Leopold of Belgium declared his new colony the Congo Free State. What followed was one of the most horrific examples of European colonialism, with 8 to 10 million killed. More on colonialism in the Congo here: shop.workingclasshistory.com/...

Colonialism shaped the British countryside, but this history still remains hidden I walked through rural Britain and revealed deep ties to the empire that profoundly changed the landscape and its people

Colonialism shaped the British countryside, but this history still remains hidden - Hyphen hyphenonline.com/2024/07/30/c...

English Heritage plans up to 200 redundancies and winter closures of some sites Exclusive: At least 7% of workforce could be affected with curators targeted as part of charity’s restructuring

#Culture in the UK is in serious trouble. Underfunded, relying on the goodwill of #underpaid staff and volunteers to function on a basic level.

Its not that people don't want to do the work, it's that we can't afford to.

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

Labour & Empire keynote: Frederick Cooper "Colonization, Decolonization, and Labor"

Online seminar: Labour & Empire Working Group of the European Labour History Network. Dr Frederick Cooper on “Decolonization, and Labour” plus 45-minute discussion. Wednesday 15 January, 4pm GMT. Register online www.eventbrite.com/e/labour-emp...

🥁 Announcing the Public Domain Image Archive! 🥁

We are v excited to share our new sister-project, the Public Domain Image Archive (PDIA), a curated collection of 10k+ out-of-copyright historical images, all free to explore and reuse: pdimagearchive.org @pdimagearchive

Here's a list of journals, scholarly societies, and book series devoted to 19th-c. Britain. If you're aware of others that should be added, please let me know.
www.victorianresearch.org/journals.htm...

Extremely excited to read this new book by @lendavis.bsky.social - can already see it articulates the problems of reading & writing poverty afresh.

For the Bluesky crowd: my article 'A Common Countryside: Rewriting the English Rural in Common People' which was published last year 🧵

Here's the beginnings of a starter pack of people working on, working in, thinking about, working-class literature. Writers and critics and allies and groups - please send me more names of accounts on Bluesky & I'll add them of course.
go.bsky.app/UQVX5Lb

One in an occasional series of the less-mentioned pleasures of teaching - seeing one of your former students publish their work. If you teach #ThomasHardy on your #VictorianLit course, order a copy for your library. It’s an excellent piece of work. Well done @drrenajackson.bsky.social 👏👏👏

Thank you, Mike! Couldn't have done it without my most excellent teachers! One of those copies is for you! 😊

Seeing some familiar faces on here (and finding out about new people) so made this Postcolonial / Indigenous Studies #starterpack

go.bsky.app/AiSoFL4

First #bluesky post!

My new book arrived in the post today! 🎉📚🎈

The Imperial World-System and Cultures of Dissent in Thomas Hardy's Fiction
#empire #class #gender #Wessex #ThomasHardy

Available to order at New Comparisons in World Literature #PalgraveMacmillan

link.springer.com/book/10.1007...