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Dr Bryony Coombs

@bryonycoombs.bsky.social

8.1K followers 2.3K following 630 posts

Art Historian I Medieval and Early Modern, PhD, FSA Scot, FRHistS Renaissance Teaching Fellow, Edinburgh Uni Franco-Scottish cultural connections: art, architecture and material culture. https://edinburgh.academia.edu/BryonyCoombs https://bryonycoombs.com

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Dr Bryony Coombs @bryonycoombs.bsky.social · Nov 11

✨🎉Hello new BlueSky people 👋
Who am I?
New Book: Visual Arts & the Auld Alliance.
New project: Scotland on Parchment: Scraped, Limned and Bound due 2026. Inaugural book in a new EUP series Visual and Material Cultures of Scotland🎉✨ @edinburghup.bsky.social
New approaches: wp.me/peZVQm-8R

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Reposted by Dr Bryony Coombs

Dr Laura Sangha @lsangha.bsky.social · 2d

Many congratulations to my colleagues in the Forms of Labour project team on the publication of their new monograph! 🗃️👏🎉

Brilliantly, The Experience of Work in #EarlyModern England is available open access:

www.cambridge.org/core/books/e...

news.exeter.ac.uk/faculty-of-h...

A woman’s place was not in the home: New book challenges assumptions about women’s work in early modern history

New research has revealed that women played a fundamental role in the development of England’s national economy before 1700. Far from being the unpaid homemakers and housewives of traditional historic...

news.exeter.ac.uk

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Dr Bryony Coombs @bryonycoombs.bsky.social · 9h

Yes!

Dr Bryony Coombs @bryonycoombs.bsky.social · 20h

Thank you so much for today! It was great :)

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Dr Bryony Coombs @bryonycoombs.bsky.social · 21h

I think my previous post got censored, but I do think you need to see this little guy and his enormous tooth - as he points to where it hurts! 🦷
(From a medical ms - Edinburgh CRC ms 314)

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Dr Bryony Coombs @bryonycoombs.bsky.social · 22h

The first guy has toothache and is holding his tooth and pointing to where it hurts!

Dr Bryony Coombs @bryonycoombs.bsky.social · 22h

Today was fun: medical manuscripts this morning at Edinburgh CRC (ms 314, ms 170; ms 168). Followed by an urban foraging lecture (quite medicine based) and 16th C recipes at the historical reconstruction lab. So interesting!

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Patricia Stoop @dr-patriciastoop.bsky.social · 2d

Great news!! My special issue on Writing for Third Parties: Commercial Manuscript Production in the Late Middle Ages (Queeste, @amsterdamupress.bsky.social) is now available in open access.

Looking much forward to your reactions!

www.aup-online.com/content/jour...

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Reposted by Dr Bryony Coombs

Scottish History Society @scothistorysociety.bsky.social · 2d

We've joined the blue sky! Just as the skies darken for winter too

Please let your followers know that the Scottish History Society has arrived!

Find out more about memberships, the society, and events at our website: scottishhistorysociety.com

The Scottish History Society

scottishhistorysociety.com

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Dr Bryony Coombs @bryonycoombs.bsky.social · 2d

😮😍

Dr Bryony Coombs @bryonycoombs.bsky.social · 6d

💛

Dr Bryony Coombs @bryonycoombs.bsky.social · 6d

Stocking up on mussel shells to hold pigment for some workshops I am running on manuscript illumination... there are some lovely medieval images of shells being used to hold pigments at this time... here are some in use...

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Dr Bryony Coombs @bryonycoombs.bsky.social · 6d

my sympathies...it's exhausting sometimes....

Dr Bryony Coombs @bryonycoombs.bsky.social · 6d

If in doubt (or experiencing existential dread at the state of academia), I can recommend a stormy beach walk collecting pigment shells....

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Reposted by Dr Bryony Coombs

UCU Edinburgh @ucuedinburgh.bsky.social · 7d

In the proud tradition of staff-student solidarity at Edinburgh, a moving call from EUJPS at our 8 Sept. strike rally to stand together against unaccountable and unethical management of University finance
#UCU #WeAreTheUniversity #DivestNow

www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk/blog/ckdj6l6...

Our struggles are connected: from divestment to staff cuts — UCU Edinburgh

‘We stand with you because your fight for fair work is a fight for the soul of this University. We ask you to stand with us because our fight for ethical investment is a fight for its consci...

www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk

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Dr Bryony Coombs @bryonycoombs.bsky.social · 7d

Definitely an endless scream kind of a day....

Endless Screaming @infinitescream.bsky.social · 12d

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH

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Reposted by Dr Bryony Coombs

Francesca Tinti @francescatinti.bsky.social · 8d

At Early Medieval Europe we’re thrilled to team up once again with the BSR to sponsor a fellowship! One doctoral student or ECR will have the chance to carry out a month of research in Rome. More info below

British School at Rome @bsrome.bsky.social · 9d

📣 BSR / Early Medieval Europe Fellowship – Call for Applications!

Are you a PhD student or early career researcher in early medieval European history?
Apply now!

⏳ Deadline: 30 January 2026
More info here: bsr.ac.uk/awards-resid...

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Dr Bryony Coombs @bryonycoombs.bsky.social · 9d

Yes!🤩

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Dr Bryony Coombs @bryonycoombs.bsky.social · 9d

Oh I see, thank you! 😊Yes, Scotland was a very well-connected place. I love it when the material/visual evidence for that, is so clear - this is a fantastic example.

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Dr Bryony Coombs @bryonycoombs.bsky.social · 9d

Doesn't it? Such a brilliant and exciting find!

Dr Bryony Coombs @bryonycoombs.bsky.social · 9d

She is holding a book! 📖
Currently writing a section on visual evidence for book use in medieval Scotland - so this could not be better timed...
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

'Rare' medieval hair accessory uncovered at Eilean Donan Castle

The gravoir was used for neatly parting hair and creating elaborate hairstyles.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Reposted by Dr Bryony Coombs

The Orkney News @theorkneynews.bsky.social · 9d

Revealing Life in a 13thC Scottish Castle theorkneynews.scot/2025/10/02/r...

Revealing Life in a 13thC Scottish Castle

Objects including brooches and dress pins were excavated alongside animal bones and crucibles – small ceramic cups used to melt copper alloy, silver and gold. Traces of precious metals found in the…

theorkneynews.scot

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Reposted by Dr Bryony Coombs

Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 9d

Jane Goodall, ethologist and conservationist, has died. She was 91

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Reposted by Dr Bryony Coombs

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Sep 6

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

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Dr Bryony Coombs @bryonycoombs.bsky.social · 10d

😊

Edinburgh University Press @edinburghup.bsky.social · 11d

We are delighted to share that Visual Arts and the Auld Alliance by @bryonycoombs.bsky.social has been shortlisted for the Walpole Society’s Berger Prize.

Congratulations Bryony! ✨

Discover the book: https://edin.ac/4f1GX2Q

Find out more about the prize: https://edin.ac/42MBWH5

Reposted by Dr Bryony Coombs

Alice Wickenden @awickenden.bsky.social · 14d

every good scholar needs: a desk; some ink; a demon monkey hovering menacingly above, clutching his own book; and a quill

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