Author | Lightnews

James Fisher

@jamdanfish.bsky.social

1.4K followers 420 following 68 posts

Historian of work, knowledge and capitalism (C16-18th) | Lecturer at Uni of Exeter | Author of THE ENCLOSURE OF KNOWLEDGE (CUP, 2022)

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

James Fisher @jamdanfish.bsky.social · Jun 13

My 2nd article on the serfdom-like compulsory child labour schemes in C18th southwest England is now available (open access) doi.org/10.1017/S026...

It was distinctive not merely as a type of unfree labour, but as a centralised method for allocating servants to farmers

1 6 7

James Fisher @jamdanfish.bsky.social · 4d

This is heart breaking. Such a wonderful and generous chess teacher, absolutely loved his videos.

The New York Times @nytimes.com · 4d

Daniel Naroditsky, a chess grandmaster, the highest title given to competitors by the International Chess Federation, and a former Junior World Champion, has died at 29.

Daniel Naroditsky, Chess Grandmaster, Dies at 29

He earned the highest title in the chess world as he built a career as an accomplished chess teacher, commentator and author.

nyti.ms

Reposted by James Fisher

Tim Hitchcock @timhitchcock.bsky.social · 5d

Very much looking forward to Polly Lowe @polly-lowe.bsky.social speaking this Wednesday on bound labour and Scottish miners in the 18th c. @long18thsem.bsky.social @ihrlibrary.bsky.social Everyone welcome - either in person or hybrid, but please register at www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

Bound Labour, Narratives of Nationhood, and the Rhetoric of Slavery: Liberty, Identity, and Scottish Coal-Miners in the Long Eighteenth Century

www.history.ac.uk

3 8

Reposted by James Fisher

Taylor Aucoin @aucointaylor.bsky.social · Sep 22

Delighted to share that my first book The Experience of Work in Early Modern England (co-written with the fantastic @jwhittle.bsky.social, @markhailwood.bsky.social, and Hannah Robb) has been published and is available free and Open Access! doi.org/10.1017/9781...

#earlymodern #economic #history

The Experience of Work in Early Modern England

Cambridge Core - Economic History - The Experience of Work in Early Modern England

doi.org

7 66 140

Reposted by James Fisher

RedPen/BlackPen @redpenblackpen.bsky.social · 10d

What's in yer basement?

1 17 71

James Fisher @jamdanfish.bsky.social · 9d

Again please Mark, but ruffle the pages more and read the title in a whispery voice

2 8

Reposted by James Fisher

Brodie Waddell @brodiewaddell.bsky.social · 23d

Who did what in early modern England?

New #OpenAccess book, 'The Experience of Work in Early Modern England' by @jwhittle.bsky.social, @markhailwood.bsky.social, @hkrobb.bsky.social & @aucointaylor.bsky.social, based on thousands of #EarlyModern court depositions 🗃️

Read it: doi.org/10.1017/9781...

This book applies the innovative work-task approach to the history of work, which captures the contribution of all workers and types of work to the early modern economy. Drawing on tens of thousands of court depositions, the authors analyse the individual tasks that made up everyday work for women and men, shedding new light on the gender division of labour, and the ways in which time, space, age and marital status shaped sixteenth and seventeenth-century working life. Combining qualitative and quantitative analysis, the book deepens our understanding of the preindustrial economy, and calls for us to rethink not only who did what, but also the implications of these findings for major debates about structural change, the nature and extent of paid work, and what has been lost as well as gained over the past three centuries of economic development. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Cover of Whittle, Jane, Mark Hailwood, Hannah Robb, and Taylor Aucoin. The Experience of Work in Early Modern England. of Cambridge Studies in Economic History - Second Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025.

1 71 140

Reposted by James Fisher

Warwick History Post-Doc Club @post-doc-club.bsky.social · 26d

Great news!
JSTOR now have a free account with an Independent Researcher category. You can access 100 documents per month

www.jstor.org/action/showL...

40 1.6K 2.6K

Reposted by James Fisher

The Verge @theverge.com · Sep 12

Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer scratched bullets with a Helldivers combo and a furry sex meme

The suspected shooter left a hodgepodge of extremely online taunts.

buff.ly

31 180 550

Reposted by James Fisher

Brodie Waddell @brodiewaddell.bsky.social · Sep 12

What can petitions to magistrates from London apprentices tell us about gendered violence in #EarlyModern England?

New addition from Hilary Taylor to the #PowerOfPetitioning annotated bibliography:
petitioning.history.ac.uk/2019/05/13/p...

Screenshot of the first page of Hilary Taylor, 'The gendered dynamics of violence in English apprenticeship: apprentices’ petitions to the Middlesex and Westminster Sessions, c. 1690–1830'

Abstract: This article offers the first systematic analysis of the role that violence played in the management of apprentices, and the gendered dynamics of violence in English apprenticeship more broadly. It does so through an examination of 195 petitions that apprentices or their supporters submitted to the Middlesex and Westminster Sessions, which sought the cancellation of their indentures on grounds of ‘immoderate correction’. It offers a quantitative overview of the surviving petitions, examining the proportion that featured allegations of violence, the terms and level of detail in which violence was described, and its relationship to apprentices’ other stated grievances. It moves on to reconstruct the factors that could prompt masters and mistresses to mete out correction (as well as their commentaries on their perceived right to do so) and the tactics that petitioners used in crafting their complaints to legal authorities. Although female apprentices complained about violence at a disproportionate rate to their male peers, the material considered here suggests that their petitions did so in comparatively formulaic and restricted terms. The final section considers what implications this might have for our understandings of violence, gender and apprenticeship, and a genre of document – the petition – that provides access to these issues.

16 48

James Fisher @jamdanfish.bsky.social · Aug 18

Cheers I'll check it out

James Fisher @jamdanfish.bsky.social · Aug 18

A clarifying summary of different ways of thinking about AI and culture >

I hadn't come across the final 'role play' framing, which is very useful

Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · Aug 18

www.programmablemutter.com/p/large-lang... Gopnikism, interactionism, structuralism and role play.

Large language models are cultural technologies. What might that mean?

Four different perspectives

www.programmablemutter.com

1 1

Reposted by James Fisher

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · Aug 12

Instead of regurgitating the bromide that LLMs are just "autocomplete on steroids" (even by people who know better), maybe we can actually engage in some public education. The problem with genAI is better expressed through a classic computer science concept, known as SYMBOL GROUNDING. 🧵

33 280 820

Reposted by James Fisher

David Wearing @davidwearing.bsky.social · Aug 12

It is inherently absurd to proscribe a group as terrorists based on acts the public doesn't know about. Terrorism *by definition* involves violence intended to intimidate a civilian population. How can the target population be terrorised by acts they know nothing about?

www.bbc.com/news/article...

Yvette Cooper: Some 'don't know the full nature' of Palestine Action

Defending the group's proscription under terror law, she said the organisation was "not a non-violent organisation".

www.bbc.com

33 230 620

Reposted by James Fisher

John Warner @biblioracle.bsky.social · Aug 8

I certainly share all the worries about students outsourcing their writing and thinking to generative AI models, but the core question for me is "Why do they see this as a good thing to do?" We have to meet the challenge of that question and the challenge dates back to long before ChatGPT showed up.

1 2 20

James Fisher @jamdanfish.bsky.social · Aug 8

Of course its seductive, but partly illusory. Chatbots can mimic PhD-like text on almost every topic. But I don't know how you get around the problem that it requires expertise to distinguish between useful and nonsensical outputs

1 3

James Fisher @jamdanfish.bsky.social · Aug 8

The revealing phrase here is "feels like", because what matters is how the product feels to its user, not it's actual capabilities

"GPT-5 is the first time that it really feels like talking to an expert in any topic, like a PhD-level expert."

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

OpenAI claims new GPT-5 model boosts ChatGPT to ‘PhD level’

GPT-5's release comes as tech firms continue to compete in an effort to claim the world's most advanced AI.

www.bbc.co.uk

1 4 18

James Fisher @jamdanfish.bsky.social · Aug 7

I highly recommend this free online course on AI, which neatly distils the most pressing cultural concerns and generally strikes the right note in terms of critical engagement

thebullshitmachines.com

Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines: Introduction

A free online humanities course about how to learn and work and thrive in an AI world.

thebullshitmachines.com

1 3

James Fisher @jamdanfish.bsky.social · Aug 7

"OpenAI has come for education on all fronts, through the students, through the teachers, through the institutions, through the government.... OpenAI is now presenting itself as the saviour of the problems that it caused in the first place."

leonfurze.com/2025/07/31/o...

OpenAI Has Come for Education

OpenAI's recent partnership with Instructure's Canvas Learning Management System furthers its aggressive entry into education. While claiming to support students and teachers, I'm worried about the ef...

leonfurze.com

James Fisher @jamdanfish.bsky.social · Aug 7

Congrats Emily! Massive achievement.

1 1

Reposted by James Fisher

Emily Vine @emilymayvine.bsky.social · Aug 7

Delighted that the print copies of my first book 'Birth, Death, and Domestic Religion in early modern London', just published with @universitypress.cambridge.org, have arrived! 📚📚📚

A photo of the author holding up a copy of her book, which has a red cover.

27 35 260

James Fisher @jamdanfish.bsky.social · Aug 6

I don't know what the psychological impact will be of reading and marking endless textual equivalents of "glossy but with 13 fingers" will be, but it can't be good

Reposted by James Fisher

Caitlin G. DeAngelis @caitlindeangelis.bsky.social · Aug 5

I’m staring at the sentence about using “generative AI to produce a historical image.”

What does the word “historical” mean in this sentence? Vibes?

American Historical Association @historians.org · Aug 5

The AHA has published Guiding Principles for Artificial Intelligence in History Education, offering a disciplinary approach to AI that focuses on the specific needs and challenges of history educators. 🗃️

Guiding Principles for Artificial Intelligence in History Education

These 14 foundational principles are meant to assist educators and administrators in crafting AI policies suited to local circumstances and the specific needs of students.

www.historians.org

21 58 310

Reposted by James Fisher

BSECS @bsecs.bsky.social · Jul 28

***CALL FOR PROPOSALS***
Routledge Studies in #18thC Cultures & Societies (eds. @profelainechalus.bsky.social & Deborah Simonton) seeks proposals for book-length studies on aspects of British, European, or transnational culture and society c.1680-1850. Full details: www.bsecs.org.uk/news-and-eve...

New History Book Series Call for Proposals: Routledge Studies in Eighteenth- Century Cultures and Societies - BSECS

Series Editors: Elaine Chalus, University of Liverpool, UK and Deborah Simonton, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark Routledge Editor: Max Novick The long eighteenth century sits as a pivotal poin...

www.bsecs.org.uk

2 66 69

Reposted by James Fisher

Charlotte Lydia Riley @lottelydia.bsky.social · Jul 24

All famines are man-made, all famines are political. Historians of empire and humanitarianism have known this forever. Gaza is not starving, Gaza is being starved, by Israel, and this starvation is enabled by our government and by every other government that does not step in to force food and aid.

34 1K 2.2K

Reposted by James Fisher

Owen Jones @owenjones.bsky.social · Jul 22

A tipping point has been reached.

Gaza is now starving to death in front of the whole world.

Those who facilitated and justified this abomination were given ample warning for 21 months.

You have no excuses, and nowhere to hide: you will be held to account for what you've done.

Gaza health ministry says 33 people dead from malnutrition in last 48 hours

New figures from the Hamas-run ministry include 12 children who have died, as the UN says Israel must allow aid into Gaza.

www.bbc.com

37 430 780