Sophie Cooper

Useless in general. Dangerous in specific contexts.

Very long stalk of rhubarb on a glass outdoor table

A bowl with rhubarb and apple crumble in it with a spoon

I had been sticking (reluctantly) to the no picking rhubarb during its first year, but as yesterday's storm damaged this stalk, I thought it was only polite to make some lunchtime rhubarb and apple crumble (with very early apples off the tree)

Sessions:

- ECR coffee morning with HL+
- Lunchtime seminar with Dr Sophie Cooper (QUB)
- Curator tours of Ulster Museum
- History open mic night with Dr Maurice Casey (QUB) and special guests @ The Pavillion Pub.

All welcome, all free, but booking is required. See the link above for more details.

HL+ Network Northern Ireland 2025

Event announcement! 📣

HL+ Network Northern Ireland 2025 🤝

Join HL+ and friends for a day of social opportunities and academic and public history sessions that will bring the ECR community together in Belfast.

Thursday 25th September - 11:15am to 9pm.

www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

Four per cent. Four.

And yet the country is once again being pulled apart by intimidating demonstrations, stirred up by disingenuous and dangerous politicians and commentators.

They are getting exactly what they want.

Can't fault the clarity of Labour's message on protest. There are BAD protesters who must be punished (Irish musicians, anti-genocide vicars) and there are GOOD protesters whose views deserve respect (masked thugs with petrol bombs trying to start a pogrom)

Post-Doctoral Research Associate - LSTM Decolonial History Project | Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) is seeking a Post-Doctoral Research Associate (PDRA) to support the delivery of a two-year, independent academic research project to develop a rigorous...

A 2 year postdoc research assistant job to work on the early institutional history of Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, leading to the writing of a report to contribute to broader decolonising and reparative efforts. Around 40k, deadline 5 Sept 25.

app.vacancy-filler.co.uk/salescrm/Car...

Lecturer (Education) in Modern European History at Queen's University Belfast Apply now for the Lecturer (Education) in Modern European History role on jobs.ac.uk - the leading job board for higher education jobs. View details.

A proper 12-month replacement post with decent salary (for UKHE, at least) in modern European history. Belfast is a decent place to live - relatively affordable apart from extortionate pint prices - and I can personally vouch for what a great & friendly School we have.
www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOE451/l...

Irish folk (and others who were living here at the time), what events/stories/incidents would you include in an essential guide to the Celtic Tiger if you were trying to describe it for those who didn't experience it? It's for a (possible) thing 😀 #speirgorm

Bunting from Croagh to Canada Limerick's Life Podcast · Episode

The latest episode of the Limerick's Life history podcast is available now, where you get your podcasts. Follow the link to listen now. Peter and I (Sharon) put a lot of work into creating these shows each month. Enjoy.
open.spotify.com/episode/4R7w...

For our Ireland-based followers or any followers lucky enough to be in/near Dublin over the summer, don't miss the fantastic Words on the Waves exhibition at @nmireland.bsky.social!

The government will listen to a few hundred fascists threatening refugees but will totally ignore 100,000 peaceful demonstrators for trans people’s human rights at Trans Pride London.

hate the world we live in! hate it!

“The ‘grown women’ of Ireland remember very well what erasure and control and lack of bodily autonomy feel like and it’s for this very reason that we stand so passionately with the trans community today”

#TransRightsAreHumanRights @independent.ie

Booker prize longlist 2025: our critic’s verdict A quietly strong list includes novels by Claire Adam, Kiran Desai, Ben Markovits, Andrew Miller and David Szalay

Thirteen novels, eleven publishers, nine nationalities, seven women, six men, five Brits, four books under 200 pages, three Fabers, two debutants ... and one dud.

My rundown of a quietly solid Booker Prize 2025 longlist:

I don't know much about the Superman comics but everything I do know was reflected in the film (even the punch tooth flying scene) - I loved it!

I loved the Christopher Reeve Superman movies as a kid and not until the James Gunn film have I ever felt motivated to actually read the comics (I’ve historically been a Marvel reader)

That really says something to me about the way the Gunn film screams “comics!!!!!”

‘Richard Osman made £10m, but I  got £250 last year’: How much money novelists really make The big hitters of the literary world draw headlines for their book deals. But the reality of writing fiction for a living is an altogether less lucrative existence

It really is an industry that doesn’t serve its most valuable people (authors) at all. What future does that have? inews.co.uk/culture/book...

The materiality of borders 👍

To be honest, it's quite lopsided so the pictured side has loads of apples and the other side very few - but I still had apples coming out of my ears last year! I must get more inventive than apple crumbles and stewing them for the freezer this year...

View up the garden. There's an apple tree, rhubarb and sweet peas growing. There's washing drying on the line and the lawnmower is still out.

A cucumber growing on the vine

Interspersing gardening with reading Olivia Laing's The Garden Against Time is a lovely way to spend a Saturday afternoon, I must say. Especially as the temperature has risen slightly and we're having moments of sunshine (unlike the rest of the week).

Akhras, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, lost his home to an Israeli strike, in early 2024. He and his family have been displaced multiple times, living in tents where the canvas sweats from too many bodies pressed into too little space. He no longer sits in a white-walled office or wears a badge. But he continues to work, seeing some fifty patients a day, most of them children. One of his regular patients is a young girl, no older than fourteen, who survived a strike that killed her entire family. She woke up in an I.C.U., alone, unable to understand where everyone had gone. Now she sits in front of Akhras in silence, until she asks, again and again, if he can bring them back. He has no answer, only a pencil stub and a coloring book, which he hopes she can use to express and process her emotions.

Read this passage, please, about trying to provide therapy for trauma in Gaza, even though it should make you feel like you are stabbing needles into your eyes.

www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

The question is which 3 Irish Historical figures are you having for lunch? Conor firstly outlines his considerations - are they all from the same time, if not, that could slow conversation down. He answers by saying he'd go back to 1911-13 and have lunch with Helena Moloney, Thomas MacDonagh, and Joseph Mary Plunkett

"I am not fielding questions on food from a time traveling Fenian."
Enjoying Conor Mulvagh's laying down of caveats in his interview with the Irish Literary Supplement (all the interviews are great!)

My students liked to hate on AI, and tended toward food-based metaphors in their critiques: AI prose was generally “flavorless” or “bland” compared to human writing. They began to notice its tendency to hallucinate quotes and sources, as well as its telltale signs, such as the weird prevalence of em-dashes, which my students never use, and sentences that always include exactly three examples. These tics quickly became running jokes, which made class fun: flexing their powers of discernment proved to be a form of entertainment. Without realizing it, my students had become close readers.

'Without realizing it, my students had become close readers.'
lithub.com/what-happene...

Harewood House reveals portrait of unique Jane Austen character Sanditon's Miss Lambe is the only Austen character 'explicitly of African descent'.

Thrilled that the story of Lela Harris’s stunning portrait of Miss Lambe from #Sanditon has made it to the BBC news. You can read more about her incredible work and how my research on the Lady’s Magazine, fashion plates and Austen intersect with it here: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Friends, my book HOTEL LUX is currently available for £0.99 on the Kindle Store. An intimate view of the revolution that changed the world, based on 7 years of research in archives across the globe.

Please do check it out! www.amazon.co.uk/Hotel-Lux-In...

Such a great night!

First time for everything. Tonight I had a delicious Boundary beer pared with my reading as part of a fantastic spoken word event at Eastside Arts Festival. Thanks to Adam for coordinating the mayhem

I dont think Americans get to use "banana republic" as an epithet/insult any more, or ever even