Helen Goodman

Get to this if you can! I’m excited to read the book which ‘brings together forgotten scientific and surgical discoveries (including previously untranslated archival material from Berlin) with the politics and social history that galvanised the first stirrings of the trans rights movement.’

SSHM AGM & The SSHM Lecture 2025 Monday 6 October [Online]  4:00 – 5:30pm (UK time)  As required, the Society gives notice to members that the Annual General Meeting to formally accept the accounts for 2024 and for…

Did I mention this?

🚨Online today, 6 Oct, 4-5:30pm BST. Still time for free registration!🚨

For The SSHM Lecture 2025, Prof. Jeremy Greene will be presenting 'Wasted medicines & medical wastes: Notes from the trash-heap of medical history'

#histmed #histSTM #skystorians 🗃

sshm.org/sshm-agm/

Sounds like a fantastic series and delighted that there will be an online option to ease any non-midlander fomo #mentalhealth #healthhums

Mentally ill patients dancing at a ball at Somerset County Asylum. Process print after a lithograph by K. Drake, ca. 1850/1855. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/xswz3swa

CFP: Sensation Fiction and the Health Humanities A VPFA Study Day Loughborough University, 27 March 2026 The Health Humanities and Victorian popular fiction intersect in revealing ways, offering insights into how 19th-century literature shaped and reflected contemporary understandings of health, illness, and the body. Popular narratives not only mirrored anxieties surrounding public health and medical progress but also contributed to shaping public perceptions of health and healing. Health Humanities approaches re-examine these texts to uncover how cultural narratives and literary representations influenced attitudes toward physical and mental well-being, gendered experiences of illness, and the ethics of care in an age of rapid scientific change. Health Humanities is a particularly useful approach to sensation fiction because it illuminates the ways in which these emotionally charged, often morally ambiguous narratives explore and interrogate concepts of the body, illness, and mental health. Sensation fiction, with its focus on secrets, trauma, nervous disorders, and abnormal psychological states, frequently dramatizes the anxieties of Victorian society surrounding health, gender, and identity. By applying the lens of Health Humanities, scholars can uncover how these texts reflect and shape contemporary medical discourse. Interdisciplinary approaches also highlight how sensation fiction critiques institutional medicine, domestic care practices, and the pathologization of women’s experiences. Ultimately, Health Humanities allows us to see sensation fiction not just as entertainment, but as a culturally significant form that negotiates the meanings of illness, morality, and human vulnerability in a rapidly changing world. 20-minute papers are invited on any aspect of the health humanities and sensation fiction. Topics may include, but are not limited to the following: • Madness, Hysteria, and the Sensation Heroine • The Role of Doctors and Medical Authority in Se…

🚨Call for Papers!
❓Sensation Fiction and the Health Humanities: A VPFA Study Day
🗺️Loughborough University
📅27 March 2026
💷 FREE
For full CfP: victorianpopularfiction.org/studyday/for...
Contact the organiser Anne-Marie Beller (@braddonite.bsky.social) at a.m.beller@lboro.ac.uk for more information

‘Controversial’? 😳

Royal Society rules out expelling Elon Musk after rally speech - Research Professional News Society president criticises billionaire’s “language of violence” but says organisation should not “police political opinions”

Royal Society rules out expelling Elon Musk after rally speech.

Society president criticises billionaire’s “language of violence” but says organisation should not “police political opinions”.

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

Pay attention to the language that will be used by much of the media.

The Global Sumud Flotilla never entered Israeli waters.

They are in international waters attempting to reach Palestinian waters.

Israel is once again breaking international law

Royal Historical Society Book and Article Prizes, 2026: submissions now invited - RHS The Royal Historical Society invites applications for its First Book Prize, 2026 and Early Career Article Prize, 2026. The call for submissions opens on Monday 29 September 2025 and runs to Monday 15 ...

RHS First Book and Early Career Article Prizes, 2026.

We invite submissions for the Society's book and article prizes: for eligible titles published in 2025. Further details and how to apply: bit.ly/3KnR47v

Submissions are by self-nomination by an author. Closing date: 15 December #Skystorians

An advertisement for the polio vaccine which reads: "they all got vaccine except dad...don't take a chance...take your polio shots!" It depicts a photo of a family gathered around a father who is in an iron lung.

With science falling under increasing attack, this medical historian is here to remind people of the power of #vaccines. THREAD🧵

Hard-hitting polio advert from 1958. In the first half of the 20th century, polio was the leading cause of death in children and young adults. 1/7

Our call for papers deadline is a week today! #medhums #histmed #histpsych

Royal Parks says there's no evidence to back Farage's claim their swans being eaten by migrants., The Royal Parks have rejected a claim from Nigel Farage that migrants are killing and eating swans from their grounds. The Reform UK leader made the assertion in his LBC interview this morning as he deflected a question about whether Donald Trump was wrong last year when he claimed migrants in Ohio were eating dogs and cats. Trump’s comment was widely dismissed as a racist slur.

Sorry, refuse to live in a timeline where news outlets fact check whether Royal swans are being eaten by migrants. Put Farage in a cupboard with a mic and let him talk to the walls. Leave the rest of us out of it.

This, it seems, is what the BBC had in mind when it drew up plans in March to alter “story selection” to win over Reform voters.

A grotesque display of opulence from the world's elite. Billionaires feast on taxpayer funded banquets while they back a genocide and burn the world.

But sure, migrants are the problem.

An actual quote from the Secretary of State for Business and Trade

Too often people go to university to ‘explore research and knowledge’

Look forward to Wes S saying 'too often people go to hospital to have operations' or Heidi Alexander saying 'too often people go to the station to catch a train'

‘Be more Da Vinci’: @samaspinall.bsky.social of @horizonsinstitute.bsky.social at @britishacademy.bsky.social speaking about the excitement of #InterdisciplinaryResearch. Build in the disciplines as co-design from the beginning for reciprocal benefits. Don’t just get ‘bolt-on’ experts later.

Can you spare a minute to help this campaign? Cancel UK government contracts with Musk-linked companies

Elon Musk publicly called for the dissolution of the UK Parliament & a change of govt with violence. The govt must take a firm stance against such interference & against unethical business practices & potential conflicts of interest by cancelling all contracts with his businesses… chng.it/66xnpYmSwM

Brilliant presentation from @prosperpostdoc.bsky.social at today’s @britishacademy.bsky.social conference - ikigai, wheel of life, spotting transferable skills we have & more. A welcome breath of fresh air & positivity - a change from the doom & gloom that so often dominates these ECR discussions.

The house is brimful of Americans with varying degrees of disagreeableness.

At least one of these people is having a Power Nap. Fair enough.

That’s brilliant, congratulations! I’m hoping to buy one in a fortnight.

Huge congratulations! What a beautiful cover! And I'm so pleased that it's open access. I look forward to reading it 🤩

And if that's not enough for you, then later the same day,
2) 'Objects, Images, and Spaces of Health' roundtable on 2 new books: Tillmann Taape's 'Crafting Medicine' & Jack Hartnell's 'Wound Man' (free, online CHSTM #histmed working group, also meeting 10 Oct & 14 Nov): www.chstm.org/group/object...

Object Stories in Health and Medicine, 1700-1900 - University of Birmingham x9artsandlaw-event,x9history-event,x9historycultures-event,x9clemt-event

Forthcoming events on objects in the history of healthcare #HistMed:
1) 'Object Stories in Health and Medicine, 1700-1900' @unibirmingham.bsky.social (5 Dec, free, online. CFP deadline 6 Oct. Organised by @annafranjam.bsky.social & @rebeccawhiteley.bsky.social): www.birmingham.ac.uk/events/objec...

This model isn't remotely frazzled, just bored.

How much will Donald Trump’s UK state visit cost taxpayers? US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump will arrive in the UK for an “unprecedented” second state visit, hosted by the King on Tuesday (16 September). The Princess of Wales will also pl...

And btw, his 1st state visit cost us £3.9m. www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/trum...

Full itinerary released ahead of Trump’s second state visit to the UK Buckingham Palace has released the schedule for the US President’s two-day visit

Typically, 2nd-term US presidents who have already made a state visit are offered tea/lunch with monarch at Windsor (like GW Bush & Obama). But Trump – 1st convicted felon to become US president – received UNPRECEDENTED invitation to 2nd state visit.

WHY?

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

A reminder that terrorism is defined in the relevant legislation as including threats, as well use, of political violence.

A reminder that Elon Musk is still a Fellow of the Royal Society. Surely THIS is the point at which he is expelled @royalsociety.org

This is such an important thing to watch and digest. He is asking all the right questions and doing it in a respectful way. Maybe instead of being angry all the time I could actually have these conversations and make a difference