Lucy Grig

The Importance of Being Gorgeous by Susanna Elm - Paper Scholarship is a powerful tool for changing how people think, plan, and govern. By giving voice to bright minds and bold ideas, we seek to foster understanding and drive progressive change.

A fantastic-and better yet-Open access book by Susanna Elm : www.ucpress.edu/books/the-im...

The Home Office also recognise that this may have an impact on user of care services who are likely to be older people and those with disabilities. The Home Office believes that despite these points the changes are justified for a number of policy reasons including reducing net migration and ending reliance on overseas recruitment.

Home Office Ministers state publicly, on the record, that they are deliberately making life worse for older people and people with disabilities who depend on care services, but it's worth it because it reduces net migration.

They should invent a university that prioritizes teaching and research

Playing 6000-year-old conch shell trumpets for the first time reveals they were effective tools for long-distance communication and may have also been used as musical instruments 🐚

Read the research 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

🏺 #Archaeology

This is a late ancient (5-7th c.?) Greek account of the life of a rich woman who was raised Jewish, converted to Christianity when her parents died, lived for 20 years as a male monk named John, was discovered & made head of a woman's monastery, & was later martyred

No, I love this, the mismatch between 'how the fuck up happened'* and 'the experience of the person they've got to investigate it', it's like if a secondary school hired Arsene Wenger to be a PE teacher.

*They hit 'upload' when they really shouldn't, 9/10.

Sikhs flock to see rare outing of ancient holy book in Edinburgh The Guru Granth Sahib is so fragile it was taken to Edinburgh Gurdwara in a special convoy by curators for just a few hours.

A lovely story of an archivist reaching out for religious community support to fully understand a holy book in the collection, and that community getting a wonderful experience in return.

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

Mahmood had announced an awful lot: powers to stop payments to asylum seekers who have significant resources, plans to tighten the way the European Convention on Human Rights is applied, new legal routes to claim sanctuary and a great deal else besides. But the message was a painfully familiar one: Nigel Farage is right, don’t vote for him. Farage, of course, wasn’t present. He is paid far more than his pittance of an MP’s salary to present an evening TV show on the Reform Party’s emotional support channel, GB News. But he didn’t need to be there. He was cited regularly by MPs to the left of Mahmood who accused her of aping his policies, and those of Tommy Robinson.

Farage doesn't even have to turn up to dominate the House of Commons.

thecritic.co.uk/livi...

This is a good point - even if you are to grant Labour benefit of the doubt on strategy (generous move right now) - last week's strategy was "we are too weak to do thing which annoys some MPs" (break manifesto pledge), this week's is "we must do even more difficult thing which annoys more MPs more"

This weeks sees the 2025 A. G. Leventis Conference - 'Telling Bodies: A Conference on Corporeal Classical Reception'. Find confirmed speakers and details of related events - including the launch of the A.G. Leventis Centre for Greek Studies - at edin.ac/427jxo9

#Classics #HCA #Leventis #Edinburgh

The BBC has consistently platformed Matt Goodwin because of his racist views and the veneer of respectability brought by his past life as an academic.

NEW from me:

Political hostility, high visa fees and (in the case of the UK) stagnant incomes are making the UK and US less attractive destinations for top international talent.

That steep decline in the appeal of moving to the US after 2016 is 👀

Reposting because this ought to get more views.

geo/chrono specialization open, but ad flags "expertise in the Roman Imperial or late antique periods" & notes "preference will be given to scholars whose work engages with the diversity and complexity of the Mediterranean world in such areas as ethnicity, gender, environment, or connectivity"

Congratulations!

This is a lie.

There are many criticisms you might sensibly and truthfully make of the Sentencing Council and the Sentencing Guidelines. I’ve been making them for years.

But this is an outright lie. Pure fabrication. A fraud on the public.

The Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies is hiring three postdoctoral researchers.

We investigate the causes and mechanisms that contribute to the persistence of strong asymmetrical dependencies across historical and contemporary contexts.

Pre-modern perspectives are very welcome!

fuck off fuck off fuck off fuck OFF with this bullshit

We had an entire day of stimulating discussions yesterday at the 'Elite Women and Systems of Dependency in Late Antiquity' workshop organised by Grace Stafford and yours truly. We are grateful to @dependencybonn.de for providing funding and assistance for this event.

Today is the day! Gender Violence in Late Antiquity: Male Fantasies and the Christian Imagination is now widely available. I will be giving my first book talk at the University of Pittsburgh, with a specific focus on domestic violence. press.edu/books/gender-violence-in-late-antiquity/hardcover

This looks like so much fun!

Most humanities research — including the best, most world leading research by people we’ve all heard of — is unfunded, by which they mean produced as part of one’s routine job as a university lecturer, just “not funded by a big competitive external grant”.

This would mean the death of research.

OK, it's not from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com's brilliant oeuvre but it's still absolutely fascinating! From "Bears: Will Be Boys: A data analysis of animal gender in children’s books" pudding.cool/2025/07/kids...

Where now for Britain's Universities? Although the financial crisis facing the United Kingdom's universities is by now well known, the detailed reasons behind it have been less prominent in public and political debate. It is true that fr...

NEW from me today... In case you missed it earlier, I'm in the @politicalquarterly.bsky.social asking 'Where Next For Britain's Universities?' The answer: a very long and grim retreat. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Letter of the day (in the Times)

Calls for a "huge nationwide wave" of protests in last 48 hours saw about 300 people attend one locally-organised protest in Nuneaton (serious charges in local case) + 19 protests range from 6 peoole (Wolverhampton) with about four more reaching 100-200 people (Altrincham,Canary Wharf)

Total < 2000

More disclosure of suspects' immigration status needed, Cooper says The home secretary's comments follow calls for details to be released of two men charged over an alleged rape.

Police must release ethnicity of suspects so racists know whether to burn down hotels or not, says Home Secretary.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

Labour won’t stand up to this stuff, but don’t worry, they have ANOTHER policy to force additional costs onto business to make it up to you. (I am not joking.)