Chiara Bonacchi

Here the bsky of the new project I’ve just started working on with @chiara-bonacchi.bsky.social, @zachhorne.bsky.social, and @johnmartindale.bsky.social at the University of Edinburgh! We will investigate, from a cultural evolution perspective, the spread of heritage-based hostility on social media.

📢📣Both the website and social media accounts for our new @leverhulme.ac.uk project @weaponisedpasts.bsky.social are now live! Give it a follow! 👆

Congratulations to the team!

We are thankful to our Advisory Group and Edinburgh colleagues for the really interesting discussion and, especially, to Richard Hingley, @alexmesoudi.com,
@lorenzspreen.bsky.social,
@electricarchaeo.scholar.social.ap.brid.gy,
@ahbailey.bsky.social and
@r-c-jackson.bsky.social

To tackle this research problem, we will use an approach that brings together public archaeology and heritage (myself), cultural evolution theory (@acerbialberto.com) and psychological theories (@zachhorne.bsky.social
and @johnmartindale.bsky.social).

Over the next three years, the project will examine the evolution of heritage-based hostility on social media to understand how and why content-related and context-related features of archaeological communication lead to the antagonisation of others online.

This week, it was exciting to host @acerbialberto.com at @hcaatedinburgh.bsky.social @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social to launch our @leverhulme.ac.uk-funded *Weaponised Pasts* research project, through three days of teamwork, followed by a kick-off event at @edfuturesinstitute.bsky.social

Network power: the humanities and data science in collaboration

So @theturing.bsky.social has decided they no longer need Humanities (!) - so the The Alan Turing Institute’s Humanities and Data Science Interest Group are having one final event: "Network power: the humanities and data science in collaboration" In person and online, Oxford, 25th Sept. Pls share!

Thank you, Sarah!

Findings show a preference for dominant, capitalist, and government-aligned perspectives, often reinforced by far-right rhetoric, particularly in Spanish language.

Using a least-to-most prompting model and a Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), we analysed responses in both Spanish and English about three key memorial sites: the Valley of the Fallen (Spain), the ESMA Museum and Site of Memory (Argentina), and the Monument to Salvador Allende (Chile).

ChatGPT’s interpretation of contested memoryscapes favours the voice of current governments, capitalism and the far-right This study examines political biases in ChatGPT-4o’s interpretations of memoryscapes linked to dictatorial regimes in Spanish-speaking countries. Using a least-to-most prompting model and a Discour...

'ChatGPT’s interpretation of contested memoryscapes favours the voice of current governments, capitalism and the far-right'. Our new article, led by Tania Gonzáles Cantera, is out. It is an outcome of Tania's visit to the #HeritageMindsLab @hcaatedinburgh.bsky.social last yr doi.org/10.1080/1352...

The British university mess is so clearly what happens when the incentives of the people administering and consulting on the system bear no relation to those of anyone actually working in it

Icy blasts from the north have inspired French artists, writers and scientists For holidaymakers, the Mediterranean evokes sun, sea and sand. But, for those who live there, these clichés are tempered by a climatic phenomenon rarely

I wrote something for the @thetls.bsky.social about the most famous wind in France - the mistral - and an excellent little book that tries to tell a "windswept" history of modern France. www.the-tls.com/world/travel...

Pleasure to listen to the great presentation of my brilliant colleague @andreakocsis.bsky.social @memstudiesassoc.bsky.social
on the sensationalised representations and limited documentary evidence at Hungary’s WW1 exhibition. 👏🏻

A very packed room at Karolinum, in Prague, for the opening of the 9th conference of the @memorystudies.bsky.social Association, with Astrid Erll’s talk on collective memory in our world of 2025! #msa

Leverhulme Trust invests £100m in ‘challenged’ research sector - Research Professional News Trust to fund blue skies and interdisciplinary research, career development and inclusion initiatives

Leverhulme Trust invests £100m in ‘challenged’ research sector.

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-c...

Great to be back in my hometown #Pistoia, yesterday, giving a public talk in the beautiful space of Palazzo dei Vescovi on what public archaeology and heritage are and why they are important. I look forward to following up with www.pistoiamusei.it to discuss future collaborations

The tennis ball 🎾 is back!

A Companion to the Global Early Middle Ages. Edited by Erik Hermans. Arc Humanities Press Companions. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 2020. x + 563 pp. €189. ISBN 978 1 942 40175 9. Click on the article title to read more.

For historians of Eurasia, a useful book review by Roy Flechner (open access) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

After a session on the politics of the past, we are now hearing from the @hcaatedinburgh.bsky.social #history and #games lab team!

Featuring several colleagues from @hcaatedinburgh.bsky.social #history and @edinburgharchaeo.bsky.social !❤️

We are off to a great start with our @uoe-cahss.bsky.social #heritage mini-symposium! If you are in Edinburgh, come and join us for a really interesting line up of talks! Info: blogs.ed.ac.uk/heritagesymp...

😂

A bit Henri Rousseau of the north… the storm isn’t tropical here!

mounting evidence

About to start reading @acerbialberto.com's new book on Techno-panic and looking forward to seeing it in English too very soon!

It was a pleasure to give a seminar on Heritage-based hostility on social media at the University of Trento, today. Thank you for inviting me @acerbialberto.com!

'Prehistoric Policies' research project secures British Academy funding archaeologyorkney.com/2025/05/08/p...

The URL in the screenshot is
swcarpentry.github.io/shell-novice/