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Liesbeth Corens @onslies.bsky.social · 6d

REALLY appreciating Lucy Noakes's clear connecting of the dots between the announcement of maintenance grants for 'priority courses' and the Cold Spots mapping by the @britishacademy.bsky.social.

You can't ensure access in a system that ties disciplinary coverage to competition.

On the ground, this fall in total enrolments is sharply exacerbated by changing recruitment practices, as previous high-tariff institutions revise their offers to secure larger undergraduate intakes. Those bearing the brunt are, of course, the institutions which currently serve the most disadvantaged and least mobile students. The risk is now of a worsening spiral of decline—driven by a failed policy of institutional competition and marketisation—which results in options for the most in-need aspirant history students being, quite literally, closed down. Without this core provision, any lingering question over which subjects might qualify for maintenance grants becomes obsolete.

If, as the Education Secretary claimed this week, the government is serious about choice, social mobility and access to education it needs to appreciate that the provision of local universities and courses is now at considerable risk given the financial turmoil affecting UK higher education. What’s clear is that our current situation and trajectory is not a route to greater choice and accessibility. Rather, it is a potential channelling of resources and students into an ever narrowing range of options deemed by policy makers as being in the country’s best interests for the future.

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Nic Wilson @nicwilson.bsky.social · 1d

A landscape with a toxic past gives wildlife a chance to thrive in today's @theguardian.com country diary.

#countrydiary #naturewriting

Country diary: The unlikely success of wildlife in lead country | Mark Cocker

Bonsall, Derbyshire: It was, in fact, the poison in the ground that prevented this patch from becoming cattle country – then nature took care of itself

www.theguardian.com

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Alan Lester @alanlester.bsky.social · 1d

Follow the money

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

Asylum hotel provider makes £180m profit despite claims of inedible food and rationed loo paper

Asylum seekers and charities tell BBC of

www.bbc.co.uk

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Robert Hutton @roberthutton.co.uk · 2d

Politician struggling with Britain's intractable problems? This one neat trick will enable you to see easy solutions for everything: simply lose the election! My SKETCH of Tory conference.
thecritic.co.uk/supe...

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Clare Hickman @drhick.bsky.social · 2d

Looks absolutely fabulous 🤩

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Dolly Jørgensen @dollyjorgensen.bsky.social · 2d

It’s real!!
I just got my first copy of Ghosts Behind Glass and it is beautiful. You all really need to order your copies. You will not regret it. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Double page spread with a photo of diorama

Chapter 3 Cursed treasures on left, lion on right

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Sooz Kempner @soozuk.bsky.social · 2d

RIP JILLY COOPER! A queen who wrote THE most readable books in existence. People saw my thread of epic Jilly quotes and decided I was saying the books are shite. You COULDN'T be more wrong. Go and watch Rivals today.

Sooz Kempner @soozuk.bsky.social · Oct 18

🧵Some real Jilly Cooper quotes from her Rutshire Chronicles, the series of books that Rivals is from.

1) "Her breasts swayed like party balloons when the front door opens"

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Clare Hickman @drhick.bsky.social · 2d

Lucky me!! ☺️

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Clare Hickman @drhick.bsky.social · 2d

Exciting post just arrived! 🤩 Can’t wait to read this @dudleymarianna.bsky.social

Cover of Electric Wind: An Energy History of Modern Britain by Marianna Dudley

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Clare Hickman @drhick.bsky.social · 2d

Great lecture topic! Sadly I’ll be teaching tho 😭

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Vanessa is the name of the Doctor! @hpsvanessa.bsky.social · 2d

Reminder to the #histSTM #skystorian crowd that there's an online, free seminar this pm UK time which feels like it might speak to a lot of contemporary interests (including #EnvHist - see you there!

Rebecca Wynter @rebeccawynter.bsky.social · 3d

Planning your week? How you fixed tomorrow, 6 Oct, 4-5:30pm BST?

Come along to @sshmedicine.bsky.social's AGM, followed by The SSHM Lecture 2025: Prof. Jeremy Greene, 'Wasted medicines & medical wastes: Notes from the trash-heap of medical history'

Free registration 👇

#histmed #histSTM #matcult

SSHM AGM & The SSHM Lecture 2025

Monday 6 October [Online] 4:00 – 5:30pm (UK time) As required, the Society gives notice to members that the Annual General Meeting to formally accept the accounts for 2024 and for…

sshm.org

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Citizen.Coping @propcazhpm.bsky.social · 4d

Gibson's Facade Commision was inspired by Jacques Derrida’s book "The Animal That Therefore I Am", which examines the violence inherent in human domination of animals. #ArtSky

"The Animal That Therefore I Am"
Jeffrey Gibson (member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent)

Four photos of giant sculptures outside a museum. They are each wearing unique clothing and accessories.
Each 10-foot bronze sculpture takes the form of a regional animal: a hawk, a squirrel, a coyote, and a deer. Using cast elements such as wood, beads, and cloth to build texture, Gibson embraces a new process that expands his sculptural vocabulary. From these reproduced wood supports emerge referential animal forms, with each sculpture formally fusing the animate and the inanimate.

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Charlotte Lydia Riley @lottelydia.bsky.social · 4d

“So I leant over, tapped her on the cleavage with a pastry fork, I said my mother gave birth to twins in an unheated wash house and then got straight back up and finished the mangling, so think on.” RIP, Patricia Routledge.

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Clare Hickman @drhick.bsky.social · 4d

Love an ice house!

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North East Heritage Library @neheritagelib.bsky.social · 4d

Just a quick one this evening, as I really wanted to share this little ice house on the grounds of Close House - now a golf resort but once the estate of the Bewicke family who featured fairly high ranking politicians of the county and nearby town of Newcastle.

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Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist @nameshiv.bsky.social · 4d

The Ig Nobel is incredible , one year an Indian guy won it for calculating the average surface area of an elephant and during his acceptance they had an elephant hold up a sign with the surface area of the scientist on it, they do showbiz better than the Oscars

Jeffrey J. Hall @mrjeffu.bsky.social · 19d

Video: a Japanese scientist was attacked by flies while giving the acceptance speech for his Ig Nobel Prize-winning research paper that proved painting Zebra-like stripes on cows led to a decrease in biting fly attacks.

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Nicole Kearney @nicolekearney.bsky.social · 27d

I've been managing BHL's #Bluesky account for 4 months now. It's an honour to share such beautiful & significant content, particularly at this critical time. BHL's future is uncertain, but hopeful. Follow along @biodivlibrary.bsky.social & on the #BHLblog: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/tag/transition

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Jo (unfunded hobbyist) 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @hagenilda.bsky.social · 4d

#MedievalSky #EarlyModernists you may not be aware that I offer several services: transcription (no hand too tricky), archival visits and more. I’m happiest in the period 1200-1700 but will consider anything. Get in touch via my website!

joanneedge.co.uk/freelance-wo...

Freelance Work

Transcription, scholarly editing, archival visits Joanne is available for freelance work: transcriptions and editions of late medieval and early modern Latin, English and Anglo-Norman manuscript te…

joanneedge.co.uk

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EASLCE @easlce.bsky.social · 21d

#newbook: "Non-Western Approaches in Environmental Humanities" ed. Gabriela Jarzębowska-Lipińska, Aleksandra Ross & Krzysztof Skonieczny (Brill)

Open access: www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com/themen-entde...

#envhum #envhist #openaccess #ecocriticism #ecolit #environment

Non-Western Approaches in Environmental Humanities

The book examines non-Western frameworks in environmental humanities, critiquing dominant paradigms and advancing discourse on diverse human-environment relationships in global contexts.

www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 5d

Very sad to hear of the death of Patricia Routledge, although I’m now laughing at the memory of first moving in with my boyfriend, and finding out that he owned a copy of Hyacinth Bucket’s Book of Etiquette: For the Socially Less Fortunate 💜

A copy of Hyacinth Bucket’s Book of Etiquette: For the Socially Less Fortunate

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planthums-uk.bsky.social @planthums-uk.bsky.social · 4d

#PLANTATION #SCIENCE & #EMPIRE in the 20TH CENTURY: 3.5 yrs funded PhD @LSE & @rbgkew.bsky.social supervised by Kasia Kaprocki & @marknesbitt.bsky.social Details: lse.ac.uk/study-at-lse...

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Clare Hickman @drhick.bsky.social · 5d

Oh congratulations! That’s brilliant news and it sounds like a very exciting project! 🙌

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John Grindrod @grindrod.bsky.social · 5d

New Substack post on the deaths of Jonathan Main and Terry Farrell, and the notion of creating places that bring people together johngrindrod.substack.com/p/sharing-co...

Sharing common interests

Farewell to Terry Farrell and Jonathan Main, and introducing three fascinating new books

johngrindrod.substack.com

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Christos Lynteris @visualplague.bsky.social · 5d

Introducing the Decolonising Plant Knowledge research network @crasshlive.bsky.social with a Q&A on its aims and approach to plant agency and decolonisation www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/blog/qa-with...

Meet the research network – Q&A with the Decolonising Plant Knowledge - CRASSH

‘Decolonising’ means critically examining subjugated plant knowledges, past and present, in the light of the histories of cosmopolitan science

www.crassh.cam.ac.uk

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Association for the Study of Literature and Environment @asle-us.bsky.social · 6d

We've extended the deadline for submission to the 2026 ASLE Spotlight series on the #envhum to October 6! Read details and get your application in (it only take a few minutes) at www.asle.org/stay-informe...

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