In an era of speed and volume, there is value in slow research in archives.
Let me start out by clarifying what slow research is and is 𝒏𝒐𝒕:
Slow research is not slow. You can still go through hundreds of pages in one day, even in one hour.
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71% of our planet is ocean, but you wouldn’t know it from traditional maps.
Shift your land-based perspective this Earth Week with a story about the Spilhaus Projection map and the WHOI oceanographer who created it: go.whoi.edu/spilhausmap
A male blackcap (pale bird with a black head) singing on a green branch with a green background of vegetation.
A goldfinch (browny bird with gold wing stripe and red head) on a thistle top.
A kestrel (light brown raptor with a grey head) on a perch looking out over a meadow.
A wren (tiny brown bird with a cocked tail) on a stub of branch with a green background of blurred vegetation.
Here's some of the birds I've seen/heard from my bedroom window that have had a positive effect on my mental health. I'd be so grateful if you could help me gather a group of people together who enjoy watching/hearing birds out of their windows by sharing & adding your #birdingfrombed stories.🧵1/4
Yes, I've noticed how much dogs feel grief. I've seen it with my other dogs through the years, especially when two of mine lost their mother. She was 16, mind, but I still think of her all the time, as well as those two, who are also now gone.
Thanks, Joe. We're lucky she loved us, too.
It's not just us who are missing our golden girl Bridie. Our other dog has become more insecure, and doesn't like either one of us leaving the house, or even being in different rooms since Bridie died. She's lost her barking companion of 10 years. 😭
Happy 100th birthday #Portsmouth City!
Portsmouth was awarded city status on 21 April 1926 - marked by #Portsmouth100 events & activities in 2026.
For more on Portsmouth's #RailwayHistory, have a look at the Portsmouth Area Railway Pasts project:
www.railwayaccidents.port.ac.uk/portsmouth-a...
#CFP Female Networks of Knowledge: Natural History between Private and Public Spaces (Vienna, November 19-20, 2026), due May 30.
Conference explores how women shaped scientific knowledge via networks that crossed the domestic, social, and institutional from early modern to 19th c. #envhist #histstm
I'm so sorry to hear that! He's still so young. I hope you get more time with him than the vets predict.
Also I feel strongly that NEITHER preparing children for exams NOR preparing children for the workplace are / should be the main purpose of education actually!
I'm so sorry! That is so grim.
Earlier this week, I was asked to guest on a science podcast to dicuss the phenomenon of Imposter Syndrome
My immediate thought was "Crap, why are they asking me? I don't know what I'm doing!"
So yeah, I have some relevant insight
Grid of ten labeled photos of common UK crows and other black birds for identification.
Handy ID sheet. Crows and other (mostly) black birds
Forever this
Every reply to this post is a version of Anne Lammott’s classic ‘Shitty First Draft’ (from Bird by Bird). If her version didn’t sing to you the song of writing liberation… see if one of these works better for you ✨📚
Learn more about protecting yourself from the threats of AI at our online event this week. This event is hosted by the Society of Authors Cymru and is free for all, but hurry – there are just a few days left to book your ticket.
buff.ly/fdtNr56
If you or your students research any aspect of British, Irish or British colonial/imperial history (Roman empire to today) and need a tool that will never hallucinate sources, check out the BBIH. It develops research skills rather than repressing them. Instit. & indiv. subscriptions available.
After #EASLCE2026, I think it’s time to update the ecocriticism and envlit list (and starter pack) 🌻
Should you be on it? Please respond to this post and I’ll add you
bsky.app/profile/did:...
'Following the Fish' 🎣
Learn more about the Herring Girls - thousands of women who travelled Britain's coastlines gutting and packing fish across the 19th and 20th centuries.
🔗 https://loom.ly/EHT5XMM
www.widowedandyoung.org.uk/news/bereave... A lot of people assume that I am still in receipt of state benefits following Kieran's death, but in fact nowadays widowed parents receive financial support for only 18 months. This has huge financial implications! Kieran earned 60% of our household income.
Call for papers for Law, race and empire conference: By popular request, we are pleased to offer an extended deadline of Tuesday 28th April for proposals for this exciting event. The law and its authority has always been a contested space. From the adversarial trial and debates on legal reform to discretionary decision making on who was tried, and pleas for clemency, the way people have navigated legal landscapes has always been both fraught and multi-faceted. This complexity is exacerbated in the imperial context, where the law could be both a symbol of the metropole’s control and, conversely, a safeguard against oppression. Over the last half century studies of legal practice, race relations and the maintenance of empires have flourished, deepening our understanding of these aspects of 18th and 19th century life. Yet this was an age where the abolitionist movement ensured that race and the law were a key part of the social agenda. Simultaneously, European militaries engaged in imperial expansion and policing, often forming racialist attitudes in the process which were both adopted, and influenced, by the metropole. Race, law and empire, therefore, should not be considered in isolation. This conference, which forms part of the Leverhulme Trust Funded ‘Sepoys and Slave Soldiers’ Research Fellowship, aims to take a holistic view of the intersections between race, law, armed forces and imperialist projects. In doing so, it seeks to widen our understanding of constructions of race, the rule of law and the operation of empires. This international, hybrid conference welcomes proposals for 20 minute papers, or full panels of three papers, which explore any two of the conference’s three core themes of race, empire and law between 1750 and 1850. 300 word paper proposals, with a 150 word biography and a stated preference for in person or online attendance, should be submitted to Dr Zack White (zack.white@port.ac.uk).
Race, Law and Empire, 1750-1850 Conference
University of Southampton AND online
17th - 18th July 2026
Call for Papers extended by popular request.
Full details below. Please share widely.
Established, emerging researchers are very welcome.
Supported by @leverhulme.ac.uk
Front cover of a recent technical publication from MSDS Heritage & MSDS Marine. The publication title: 'Strategic Review of Physical Dive Trails on Protected Wrecks - Project Report' is displayed in white text against a dark background and below a series of interconnected hexagon shapes, each containing a photograph or illustration from the publication.
New technical publication: UK Dive Trails & Protected Wrecks.
Admit to mainly looking at the charts and pictures (not much spare time today), but will be back for a proper look: historicengland.org.uk/content/docs...
April 19, 1923, the new SS Alaska, flagship for the Alaska Steamship Company, launched at Tacoma. She was scrapped in 1955. #alaskahistory #alaska
When you use AI to do your writing, you are telling your audience: “I deserve your attention, but you do not deserve my effort.”
Photos Jullouville Luc Chatelais and Roberte Nourrigat
Images of stone #fishweirs along the coast of Normandy, France. Its management is run by "Association des Amis de la Pêcherie de la Tranchée", a local community-based association. Whose goal is to maintain this tradition and the sites of community fishing in the region. 1/4 #coastalhistory
0.4m. One of the lowest tides of the year. Huge exposure of the reef between Lancing and Worthing. No sign of the Brooklands Channel deposits but the seabirds like the freshwater outfall across the line of it.
I think this is part of what's driving me potty at the moment. Seeing ostensibly intelligent people exercising zero critical thinking and falling for what is clearly a scam because they've not taken time to do the reading (ha, literally in many cases)
The idea that every social problem needs a technical solution is so myopic. If you're worried about the smarts of the population, why not just fund public education? And if you're worried about Skynet, maybe try regulating the AI industries...
Guernsey born Margaret Ann Neve was raised and educated in Bristol. After she died in 1903 (aged 110) it was discovered that she had been the last person alive who was born in the 18th century and the first person known to have lived in three centuries - having been born in 1792.
