Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Dr. Erika Graham-Goering @jeanneologist.bsky.social · 1d

While unis should obviously ensure sufficient teaching and library space, what the humanities fundamentally needs isn't buildings, it's humans—it's in the name for goodness' sake. Fund jobs, not construction.

David Veevers @davidveevers.bsky.social · 1d

All I think about when reading this is how many jobs the money spent on that pile of brick and glass could have saved in smaller humanities departments - my own colleagues. It’s like building a monument of gold in a landscape of wrack and ruin.

Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 1d

'The gleaming palace to the humanities – the single largest building project ever undertaken by the University of Oxford made possible by the largest philanthropic gift it has ever received – stands in stark contrast to the beleaguered, shrinking state of the rest of the sector.'

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Reposted by Dr. Erika Graham-Goering

Rob Hawkes @robbhawkes.bsky.social · 6d

As more of my valued colleagues face the threat of redundancy, here’s a quick reminder that it takes years and years of public investment to train an academic. Cutting someone with this wealth of experience loose isn’t “saving” anything. It is a massive waste of our collective resources.

UK Universities in Crisis? Time to Transform Higher Ed Finance

by Rob Hawkes and Scott Ferguson Universities in the UK are in crisis. Job cuts in the sector are reaching ‘cataclysmic’ levels, with an estimated 10,000 already lost and many more at risk. Just da…

moneyontheleft.org

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Dr. Erika Graham-Goering @jeanneologist.bsky.social · 4d

you can bet your boots that this wouldn't have been seen as a minor inconvenience. But my bike *is* my car—just because it has 2 wheels instead of 4 doesn't make it any less integral to my logistics.

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Dr. Erika Graham-Goering @jeanneologist.bsky.social · 4d

I've complained about this several times in the last few weeks, but nothing's been done. Why rant about it here? Well, aside from relieving my feelings, it's worth pointing out the discrepancy with how we treat cars. If a problem with the garage meant drivers were randomly locked out without warning

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Dr. Erika Graham-Goering @jeanneologist.bsky.social · 4d

Sunday morning, and not only do I have to go to Norwegian class (it's fun once I'm there!), but the damn lock on the cycle shed was dead... again. So now I'm running way late, dealing with slow bus schedules, losing precious time out of my weekend and dropping a chunk o' change on the fare to boot.

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Dr. Erika Graham-Goering @jeanneologist.bsky.social · 10d

It's Michaelmas, so it's also the anniversary of the battle of Auray (1364), which marked the beginning of the end of the Breton War of Succession begun 23 years earlier. And you know what? Let's mark it with a 🚨BOOK GIVEAWAY🚨 this time! (Charles de Blois has never had a stranger memorial...)

photo of two book covers, one called "Princely Power in Late Medieval France: Jeanne de Penthièvre and the War for Brittany", and one called "Gendered Reputations and Aristocratic Partnership: Re-Presenting the Breton Civil War from the Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries", both by Erika Graham-Goering. Princely Power has a green cover with a picture of a medieval document and green wax seal, while Gendered Reputations has a grey cover with a medieval drawing of a crowd of people raising their hands to a man and woman couple.

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Dr. Erika Graham-Goering @jeanneologist.bsky.social · 6d

::the medieval discourse on the inalienability of the domain has entered the chat::

(Also, it's never a good sign when yet another aspect of my research on fourteenth-century politics becomes suddenly relevant...)

US archivist ousted after refusing to let Trump give Eisenhower’s sword to King Charles – reports

The Trump administration ultimately gave the King a replica sword on the president’s recent state visit

www.theguardian.com

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Dr. Erika Graham-Goering @jeanneologist.bsky.social · 7d

Hahaha 😂 I would very much like to use my official authority to implement this rule!

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Dr. Erika Graham-Goering @jeanneologist.bsky.social · 7d

What useful role can AI possibly play on a publishing platform, and how can you "responsibly" justify the environmental costs?

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Sam Ottewill-Soulsby @samottewillsoulsby.bsky.social · 8d

I absolutely adore the 404 page for the @financialtimes.com

Amusing 404 page explaining why the intended page wasn’t found using various economic concepts.

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Dr. Erika Graham-Goering @jeanneologist.bsky.social · 8d

Hecking moment to be prepping for a course on research ethics...

Screenshot reading
"1A.3 Academic freedom
“In principle, academic freedom entails the right to conduct research freely, to freely choose research topics and methods, and to publish the results freely. This is a norm-grounding right for all persons conducting research. Realizing academic freedom in practice requires that both the individual institution and the individual employee are provided with the opportunities and the working conditions required for the fulfilment of their task in a manner that ensures quality and legitimacy."
(Text comes from from ‘Action plan Follow-up of internal auditing of consent-based health research projects at the University of Oslo, 9 November 2021, Chapter 3.2’)

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Dr. Erika Graham-Goering @jeanneologist.bsky.social · 8d

A very valid question 😂

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Dr. Erika Graham-Goering @jeanneologist.bsky.social · 9d

Funnily enough, today Wikipedia has chosen another battle, from the start of the civil war, as their featured article!

Screencap from Wikipedia, with header "From today's featured article" and a picture of a bearded man in ermine-covered armor captioned "Charles of Blois, the French commander". The preview text of the article reads, "The battle of Morlaix was fought in Brittany on 30 September 1342 between an Anglo-Breton army under William, Earl of Northampton, and a far larger Franco-Breton force led by Charles of Blois (pictured). England and France, fighting the Hundred Years' War since 1337, had each sided with a faction in the Breton Civil War. The English had prepared a defensive position and when the first of three French divisions advanced it was shot to pieces by English archers using longbows. The second division, of men-at-arms, attacked but their charge was halted when they fell into a camouflaged ditch. Presented with a large, close-range target the English archers inflicted many casualties. The English then withdrew into a wood to their rear, which the French besieged, possibly for several days, before Northampton broke out with a night attack. This was the first major land battle of the Hundred Years' War and the tactics used foreshadowed those of both the French and the English for the rest of the 1340s. (Full article...)"

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Dr. Erika Graham-Goering @jeanneologist.bsky.social · 9d

I expected that reading my students' gameplay journals would be fun, but I did not ever expect to find the phrase "My player character is dead (mauled by bear)" in a pile of grading 😂

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Dr. Erika Graham-Goering @jeanneologist.bsky.social · 9d

No! I have been so pleased to see better sleeper train networks develop in the last few years, and now this?? Why the hell do we keep subsidizing air transport when what we want and need are trains, the best form of transport devised by humans to date?

Ben Sanderson @benmsanderson.bsky.social · 9d

Paris-Berlin sleeper: low carbon, 2 years old, constantly full, but currently losing SNCF a few million EUR/yr

Intl Jet fuel tax exemptions are 80 years old and cost the EU 22 million EUR/yr for the Paris-Berlin route alone.

And you're cutting... the sleeper?

www.theguardian.com/travel/2025/...

It’s goodnight Vienna as Paris sleeper train to Austria and Berlin hit by cuts

Some Nightjet services suspended from mid-December after French withdrawal amid public budget crisis

www.theguardian.com

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Dr. Erika Graham-Goering @jeanneologist.bsky.social · 10d

I want to send *both* books to someone who'd find my work useful! (PP in paperback, GR in hardback—note it's also available as a free PDF! library.oapen.org/handle/20.50...) If that's you, just *quote-post* this thread, and I'll pick a recipient next week 😊 (To share without entering, just repost!)

Photo of two books lying stacked on a shelf. Top spine reads 'Gendered Reputations and Aristocratic Partnership', bottom spine reads 'Princely Power in Late Medieval France'. Behind is a miniature gothic pillar in reddish stone.

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Dr. Erika Graham-Goering @jeanneologist.bsky.social · 10d

My new book, Gendered Reputations and Aristocratic Partnership, looks at how positive and negative models of (military) leadership were used in tandem to reframe the reputations of both halves of a ruling couple, creating new understandings of a political crisis to suit different contexts over time.

Gendered Reputations and Aristocratic Partnership - Arc Humanities Press

Medieval rulership is increasingly understood as the exercise of shared power, and nowhere was this partnership more evident than between married couples. Th...

www.arc-humanities.org

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Dr. Erika Graham-Goering @jeanneologist.bsky.social · 10d

I want to send a copy of *both* these books to someone who would find my scholarship useful! (PP in paperback, GR in hardback—though remember that it's also available as a free PDF! library.oapen.org/handle/20.50...) If that's you, just re-post this thread, and I'll pick a recipient next week 😊

Dr. Erika Graham-Goering @jeanneologist.bsky.social · 10d

Princely Power in Late Medieval France uses the career of Duchess Jeanne of Brittany to think about how charting a flexible course between different norms surrounding status, gender, and shared power was essential to asserting authority at the levels of the highest aristocracy.

Princely Power in Late Medieval France | Cambridge University Press & Assessment

www.cambridge.org

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Dr. Erika Graham-Goering @jeanneologist.bsky.social · 10d

It's Michaelmas, so it's also the anniversary of the battle of Auray (1364), which marked the beginning of the end of the Breton War of Succession begun 23 years earlier. And you know what? Let's mark it with a 🚨BOOK GIVEAWAY🚨 this time! (Charles de Blois has never had a stranger memorial...)

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Dr. Erika Graham-Goering @jeanneologist.bsky.social · 10d

Pentiment is one of the games we're teaching in our course on historical video games this semester, and the students are really enjoying it!

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Reposted by Dr. Erika Graham-Goering

Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 11d

“AI” isn’t a tool or technology or even a cluster of technologies with a misleading name. It’s the infrastructure at the foundation of a form of capitalism dependent on data brokering. We should be teaching our students about this and not teaching them about “responsible” use.

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Paul Bernal @paulbernal.bsky.social · 12d

The kids get it.

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Chaucer Doth Tweet @levostregc.bsky.social · 12d

Cheeres to my catte. What a lovelye litel guy.

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David H. Montgomery @dhmontgomery.com · 12d

Of special interest to me and @bretdevereaux.bsky.social, among others, history is middle of the pack — similar shares of Americans say humanity knows most/all of what there is to know about history, and that we know little or nothing.

How views of how much humanity knows about history break down:

A stacked bar chart of YouGov polling data with the headline: "Older adults and those without college degrees are more likely to say humanity already knows most or all about history."

The chart's sub-headline is: "For each of the following fields of study, out of everything possible to be known, how much do you think humanity has already discovered? [History] (% of U.S. adult citizens)."

The chart has the note: "Note: "Most or all" includes responses of "most," "almost all," and "everything." "Some or nothing" includes responses of "some", "almost nothing," and "nothing.""

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