Tom Hulme

Officers of the UCU at QUB branch proudly displaying bright pink flags emblazoned with the slogan “We are the university”

What a beautiful day on campus for a trial run of our new flags! 😍🌸🌞 #WeAreTheUniversity

it's confusing how different places use the payscale but also makes a bit of a mockery of the ideal (and results) of 'national' pay negotiations

I was out by six years, even though I was living in Leicester at the time! Oops

The devil is going to be in the detail with Ireland's disregard scheme. Past queer scenes were clandestine, which means arrests for sex in semi-public places (i.e. toilets). In UK legislation these cannot be pardoned, because they remain crimes (if under different laws than those originally used).

Even so, there's no doubt the rate of arrests in Ireland for consensual sex went up significantly in the postwar period and remained high until the mid 1970s, due to increased policing (including stings). There were a couple of flare ups in Northern Ireland but the rate was nowhere near as high.

A great article/overview, but those 1950 to 1993 statistics - 941 men convicted - should be treated cautiously: the same laws were used for consensual and non-consensual acts between adults and also for offences towards minors. That's 1 problem of disregard schemes; very hard to 'blanket pardon'.

Opinion: A garda sergeant spied on two adult men having sex. But he wasn’t prosecuted - they were Almost 1,000 men were convicted under anti-gay laws, and 1,700 were prosecuted. Their wait for justice is nearly over

Featuring research by @aearls.bsky.social, whose book - "Love in the Lav: A Social Biography of Same-Sex Desire in Ireland, 1922-1972" - was published last year

www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026...

these beasts will outlive democracy

how is he this fucking useless 😭

are you sure this is real? I want to believe - hope - it’s not… but we do live in mad times

Book cover: Tales of the Suburbs: LGBTQ+ Lives Behind Net Curtains by John Grindrod. It has an orange border with text in black and yellowy orange and features a black and white photograph of two men embracing each other as they stand in a kitchen.

Front cover of I Will Not Abandon You: Queer Women in Nazi Germany by Samuel Clowes Huneke

A book cover, showing the title 'Belfastmen: An Intimate History of Life before Gay Liberation' by Tom Hulme. It is lavender coloured with yellow text, and shows two men sat on a bench, c. 1935.

Book cover: My Bad: A Personal History of the Queer Nineties and Beyond by Hugh Ryan. The bright yellow cover features a marble stature of two men suggestively wrestling, on top of which sits an unspooling mix tape.

LGBTQ+ History Month (UK) is almost over, but #queerhistory is being made all year round! 🌈📚🗃️

Here are just a few fab-looking books that will be published in the coming months by wonderful authors @grindrod.bsky.social, @schuneke.bsky.social, @tomhulme.bsky.social, @hughryan.bsky.social . . . 1/2

Rent and food costs are so high that many of my students are basically working full time during the semester. Pedagogically, judging their assignments is increasingly difficult; how can you criticise an essay for not having enough depth when a student has so little time to read?

Cost of living: Students praise 'essential' food bank service Queen's University Belfast says there were more than 10,500 visits by students to its food bank in the students' union.

Shocking. When I was an undergrad around 20 years ago, a decent summer job & the maintenance loan saw me (carefully) thru a whole year in a provincial city. The cost of living is now so insane that hundreds, maybe thousands, of students in Belfast are using food banks. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

First time I've seen this postcard of the Somali village at the 1907 Dublin Exhibition in Herbert Park. #dublin

One of the difficult things with essay marking now is knowing whether a seeming increase in a particular rhetorical/stylistic writing device is due to generative AI or just a broader trend. One I am noticing a lot: "X is not just evidence of Y, but also of Z." Could be innocuous... but...

Friends and colleagues in Irish academia! The wonderful Dr Mary McGill has asked me to circulate her @researchireland.ie - funded survey on Exploring experiences of gender-based online abuse among female academics in Ireland - please do share! forms.office.com/pages/respon...

absolutely stunning!

These portraits are beautiful - of their moment yet speaking in such powerful ways to our times.

"John Prescott would be loving this"

👀👀👀

Humiliated in the media, denied healthcare, attacked by the human rights watchdog, shut out by the Supreme Court, bullied by social services and the police, disadvantaged in the jobs market, death figures covered up by the State, harassment de facto legalised, and attackers deified by Ministers.

Race on Screen | Cambridge University Press & Assessment

Congratulations to @christinegrandy.bsky.social for the publication of Race on Screen: Audience Racism in Twentieth-Century Britain, the latest title in our Cambridge Modern British Histories series. Paperback a snip at £28. #Skystorians

"I am the farm worker going home at evening": gender fluidity, rural landscapes, and the Women's Land Army Archivist Lottie Wood explores gender and landscapes in E. M. Barraud's reflections on her time in the Women's Land Army.

A common fictional narrative shows people with nonconforming identities finding self-acceptance in towns and cities.

This #LGBTQHistoryMonth, archivist Lottie Wood explores how author E. M. Barraud found the opposite, through rural work and the Women’s Land Army.

merl.reading.ac.uk/news-and-vie...

And Colin Johnson’s “just queer folks” too. There’s some really compelling evidence of similar cultures in rural Ireland

Belfast Floral Hall - David Wright Boyd, 1935-36. B1 Listed. Image © spatialpan - Flickr

Belfast Floral Hall - David Wright Boyd, 1935-36. B1 Listed. Image © Belfast Zoo

Good news Friday: Belfast's Art Deco Floral Hall is to receive £500k funding from the City Council, to install a new roof and make the decaying structure watertight.

Designed 1935-36 by David Wright Boyd and located at Belfast Zoo, the B1 listed building has been closed to the public since 1972.

shocking it has been left to get so bad. It’s fondly remembered as being one of the best dancehalls and a relatively non sectarian space. It’s also in the middle of the zoo!

The book is out! Race on Screen: Audience Racism in Twentieth Century Britain is on the shelves. Get yourself a 20% discount and use code GRANDY26 at www.cambridge.org/9781009650939

Okay, this is quite outstanding from Bedford Council.

@caitbeaumont.bsky.social’s monograph on housewives and citizens would be my first port of call!

The gamble: take the VS now or risk being booted out with only statutory redundancy pay a year or two down the line. A horrible choice.