Dave Addison

Any #medievalsky members heading to the Leeds International Medieval Congress take care about emails from Global Travel Experts (ops@gtravelhost.com) asking you to 'confirm your booking.' Seems to be an elaborate scam & has targeted other international conferences: www.faops2024.org/gnuboard/bbs...

Really enjoyed writing this piece with @merleeisenberg.bsky.social on the use and abuse of "feudalism" in current political thinking. Thanks v much to @jacobinmag.bsky.social. Free to read here: jacobin.com/2025/05/capi...

Thank you very much!

Peter Brown, Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History - Society Society -

Late to the party, I know. But here's my review of Peter Brown's autobiography, in which, among other things, I ask what the Brownian rethinking of the end of the Roman Empire tells us about thr intellectual history of Britain's own imperial twilight link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Peter Brown, Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History - Society Society -

Late to the party, I know. But here's my review of Peter Brown's autobiography, in which, among other things, I ask what the Brownian rethinking of the end of the Roman Empire tells us about thr intellectual history of Britain's own imperial twilight link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The British media, especially newspapers, is also getting more detached from public opinion as it has an ever decreasing market, the draw of American clicks, and owners who are happy to treat them as loss-making vanity (and power) projects.

Lots of talk of echo chambers and the need for viewpoint diversity. Other interpretations are available!

I met a Times journalist once and they spent the entire time quizzing me on why younger people are refusing to subscribe to the newspaper of record these days. They had this weird sense that they were entitled to people's attention, since the Times was the truly representative centre of Brit media.

Well, and the perception that it's harder for them to transition, whereas for us it would be easy .... Or the perception that precarious academics don't have mortgages, kids, etc ....

My sense, purely anecdotally, is that several senior academics have deeper sympathy for permanent colleagues who are made redundant than for precariously employed academics who have never been permanent. I have no idea if that will affect hiring decisions (it ought not to) but it's a morbid sign.

'Too big to fail'.

Well, I wonder how many would really want to leave those salaries behind when push comes to shove ...

But for premodern disciplines the real danger is they're only really supported at Oxbridge/London and those few jobs go to sustaining people fleeing redbricks/post-92s/the US etc. rather than new voices.

Many such cases already

I suspect that a dynamic we will see a lot more of is shortlists for lecture ships/assoc profs in which half the people are precariously employed people looking for stability and the other half are permanently employed people fleeing redundancy or reduced research support/excessive teaching loads.

Yes, that's definitely true. And the ability to share research has improved enormously, of course. I wouldn't go back if I could.

Not talking about your work, of course! But I'm interested in the structural changes in research I don't feel very Whiggish about them.

Surely the demand to publish very frequently in early career has affected the amount of labour and care that can go into individual works. There's something about works from the twentieth century which have gestated in the mind over decades of teaching that I think we find hard to reproduce now.

This was interesting! I've noticed this with my students, too (and with some well funded text-scraping projects ...). But I think I'm a bit less optimistic than you about the degree to which the incentive structure of contemporary academia tracks onto truth-seeking.

What better way to celebrate Bradford's re-vamped Science & Media Museum (2025) than by closing the university's chemistry, film and television courses?

(From Peter Brown's autobiography)

Apparently Clyde Pharr translated the Theodosian Code to own the libs (a healthier response than many today ...)

From Julia Smith's new piece on J.M. Wallace-Hadrill (among other things) www.cambridge.org/core/journal...:

Agreed, though it's certainly much less discussed.

I take your point, re: Classics. But I think that the tough thing in very middle class, professional spaces is how to have disciplinary solidarity without it degenerating into mere chumminess. There's a vice of excessive mutual protection, too (see: the entire journalism profession).

Yes! I first formed this view when thinking about the UK Labour Party ...

But I think there is a quite distinct subjectivity to people from very elite backgrounds who end up in low paid academic jobs, but have all sorts of contacts outside the academics. And it's different to those who owe a lot to academia, in personal terms. The former are more "burn it down".

I have a pet theory that one of the big divides on the left in academia is between those who are upwardly mobile and those who are downwardly mobile. Not quite sure how to flesh it out.

Yeah, it's an interesting question, but I'm afraid I can't help you with that! Maybe Claudia Rapp's book on "brother-making" touches on similar issues?

The Visigothic Rules tell monastics they can't sleep in the same bed. (They're mainly concerned with sexuality, as far as I can tell, but you could conjecture other motives, too - e.g. the disruptive impact of close friendship on monastic equality).