A great view of the cathedral from my meeting at Coventry university this afternoon to discuss relaunching the Coventry City of Languages initiative @covlanguages.bsky.social

Si jamais vous êtes de passage à Blois ce week-end...

We’re advertising a PhD studentship for folks with good knowledge of Caribbean culture and society, with background in geography, human geography, humanities or interdisciplinary geosciences as part of our @leverhulme.ac.uk funded ‘volcanic histories’ project

To continue to enjoy the fabulous exhibition currently at the V&A 'Marie Antoinette Style', join me in November.
www.vam.ac.uk/event/d10aOY...

7 octobre 1789. Journée bcp plus tragique. Retour contraint du roi à Paris. Des gardes du corps massacrés. La radicalisation de la Révolution française passe par l’extrême violence de ventres affamés. Vu par les Anglais c’est drôle qd même.

Fairly amusing to go on the news and say the new government may well fall by 4pm only to be undercut by the PM resigning before 10am!

Disadvantaged students ‘more likely to miss out on GCSE foreign languages’

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

Le 2/10/1802, il y a aujourd'hui 223 ans, Marthe-Rose Toto était condamnée à mort. Originaire de Sainte-Lucie, cette femme combattante est une figure emblématique de la lutte contre le rétablissement de l’esclavage en Guadeloupe. Découvrez sa biographie 👉 memoire-esclavage.org/biographies/...

I’m just humbly suggesting that, should the publishing industry want to tackle the crisis in reading for pleasure rates, and we have research suggesting that there’s no crisis in reading for pleasure rates amongst children who read comics, that there’s maybe a relatively simple solution right here.

Giving a boost to our Call for Papers for the 2026 Forum on early modern women and migrancy. Deadline October 15!

For those interested in digital exclusion we did a chunky report on it back in 2022
www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/publications...

Medieval Rabbit Wars:
"A hound riding on a rabbit and a rabbit riding on a snail battle with shields and lances. The Breviary of Renaud de Bar (Winter portion), Metz, France, 1302-03"
#InternationalRabbitDay

ChatGPT doesn't "claim" anything, and it definitely isn't "factoring in" anything either. It is a system designed to output plausible-sounding text, given text as input. It is not answering questions, much less answering questions with respect to some knowledge base.

>>

And this is why it’s being peddled as essential - they need to recoup the cost of making something we don’t need and can’t really be used because it hallucinates - and to top it all something that has cataclysmic environmental costs- we should not be fooled by those wanting profits over planet

💥AUTUMN BOOK TOUR💥

#everymonumentwillfall in Oxford, Brighton, Paris, Cork, Dublin, Belfast, Edinburgh, Durham, Bristol, London (x3), Nottingham

dates throughout Oct-Nov 2025

details/tickets >> danhicks.uk/talks

OBAMA: It's fair to say that 80% of the world's problems involve old men hanging on who are afraid of death and insignificance, and they won't let go. They build pyramids, and they put their names on everything. They get very anxious about it.

Another important blog from @wadehistory.bsky.social on what senior colleagues can do to support ECRs despite the confines of an ever increasing crisis in university funding

#CFP 'Reframing the Enlightenment: intellectual and political disputes today'
Paris, 10-12 June 2026
Please send proposals to [email protected] by the 26 October
Link to the full CFP here: www.bsecs.org.uk/news-and-eve...
#skystorians #18thC 🗃️
@isecs-sieds.bsky.social

WHO statement on autism-related issues

The World Health Organization (WHO) emphasizes that there is currently no conclusive scientific evidence confirming a possible link between #autism and use of acetaminophen (also known as paracetamol) during pregnancy

Full statement bit.ly/47YsgwI

'Research by the group End Sexism in Schools found that women were largely absent from history taught in key stage 3, the first three years of secondary education in England. Monarchs were among only a handful of women mentioned by name alongside...Emmeline Pankhurst and Emily Davison.' 2/2

Please do sign up to join in our online conversation event on 21st November, 12 noon, about the recent report on language education in the UK from the @hepi-news.bsky.social by @meganlbowler.bsky.social, sponsored by #Duolingo Thanks to @ilcs.bsky.social
for hosting ilcs.sas.ac.uk/research-pol...

Since someone else posted my ai statement from my syllabus on the thread, sharing myself as well. Need to push back… bsky.app/profile/nsou...

I also do a version of what @eicathomefinn.bsky.social does for my first year students, combined with a practical exercise on paraphrasing that they can repeat at will:
- paraphrasing: study.histsci.scot/wiki/doku.ph...
- gutting for intro students: study.histsci.scot/wiki/doku.ph...