Lucy Whelan

Thanks Marta, I was OK but livid that this could happen to someone who didn't have the support I had!

Hope that all helps someone! 🤷‍♀️

6. Finally, you might not know at the point of application that you'll be needing maternity leave (I didn't). But if it is your plan, know that by starting and then quitting you will lose months - yes, months - in the stressful admin vortex of visas, social security etc, especially post-Brexit

5. If you are pregnant during the first months of your MSCA, while your social security still isn't set up, you won't have any paid-for healthcare during your pregnancy - this is pretty terrifying!

4. On an MSCA, you are an employee of the University, who is reimbursed by the European commission. So it's your university's terms you are on. Different universities may differ. That's what to check before applying! I didn't 🙃

3.... And it might well be zero! As a recent arrivee, you've no accrued privileges with your employer, the university, or the state. And you may have no social security to get government pay either

2. The Marie Curie appear to have a scheme for paid maternity leave. However, in their formula, your pay is a multiple of whatever pay you are getting from your university. If that is zero, you are paid zero

1. In the UK, 12 months unpaid leave is a right. Not so in most other countries! If you're a recent arrivee, you may just have the legal minimum. In France that's just 10 weeks after birth! (you can lengthen this by suspending the fellowship but only for a limited no of months)

In case leaving a post here can help inform someone on MSCA postdocs and maternity leave, here's what to know: 🧵

Apparently the European commission, a bureaucratic behemoth, do not collect any data on the postdocs who leave before the end of their fellowships. In the world where this sort of data is collected even by my local gym, that seems pretty remiss #pregnantthenscrewed

I have spent much of my Marie Curie postdoc getting my head around the fact that Europe's premier fellowship scheme - which requires its applicants to wax about gender equality - has an average age of 36 and basically no provision for paid maternity leave. Just astonishing.

I also have covid which is making me grumpy 👍

Talking of nudging the ladder downwards, sitting on the sofa trapped under a baby somehow feels like a very good time to send an FOI request to the European commission about how many women vs men quit their MSCA fellowships...

Yes my emails largely went unanswered, and I'm not sure the bursars I badgered really gave a damn - but hope in the dark, and all that. My way of nudging the ladder down for other ECRs

Apparently the application process for research fellowships at Cambridge has FINALLY been streamlined between colleges, and it's no longer a dozen separate websites. And I am absolutely going to fantasize that this is partly because of my attempts while I was there. A celebratory cup of tea for me.

“Know how to make this work for you.”

This is the last set of posts from the French History Network ECR in 2025*

We asked what advice ECRs would give to other ECRs or PG students.

🗃️

frenchhistorysociety.co.uk/6695/

“Cataclysmically bad”

This new series of ECR blog posts on the French History Network makes for grim reading, perhaps grimmer even than some in UK #FrenchHistory might have realised.

1st post, anon ECRs in French History on what it’s like right now out there:

frenchhistorysociety.co.uk/6691/

🗃️

Mass starvation spreading across Gaza, aid agencies warn, as Israeli government says it is not responsible – Middle East crisis live More than 100 aid agencies, including Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children and Oxfam, say ‘our colleagues and those we serve are wasting away’

www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the I.D.F. as a soldier and officer and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one. This is not just my conclusion. A growing number of experts in genocide studies and international law have concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza can only be defined as genocide.

"I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one."

Omar Bartov, professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University.

archive.ph/0dpn2

Includes discussion of Surrealists and their variable attitudes to the sexualisation of adolescents too. In case anyone was wondering, there are next to no images in this article on principle, and no money paid to Balthus's estate for rights. Dirty work but somebody had to do it, etc.

You'd think feminist scholars already had Balthus covered but, apart from a short plea from Linda Nochlin, it turns out they mostly didn't. So, contrary to all plans, I found myself writing an article, and it's here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Photo of proof stage, assistant included.

It is an obscenity that this has happened and continues to happen. Starvation as a weapon of war, and murdering people queueing for food! Obscene and savage, and continuing with the collusion of countries like the UK and US.

We found that AI tools - both general like #ChatGPT and research-specific like #Elicit - lack the reliability, relevancy and accuracy to summarise research for teachers. This is important because we have been sold the idea that AI will make research more accessible.

Dozens of Palestinians killed after Israeli forces open fire near aid delivery point, says Gaza civil defence agency – Middle East crisis live Israeli forces opened fire on people heading towards aid distribution site run by Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, say witnesses

HOW HOW HOW HOW HOW HOW HOW HOW HOW IS THIS ALLOWED TO HAPPEN????????

www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

Academia in 2025: For weeks I’ve been working through botched copy-edits of my monograph, outsourced by the publisher to a company I’d never heard of, until it finally dawned on me the terrible job might be AI. A quick search confirmed the company recently launched new AI software, which now means..

BBC returns to Gaza baby left hungry by Israeli blockade Malnourished five-month-old baby Siwar is now out of hospital in Gaza - but as we found, she and her family are struggling.

The use of starvation of the civilian population as a method of warfare is prohibited by the 1949 Geneva Conventions. And yet, with US govt support, this war crime by Israel’s govt continues.

'Situation is dire' - BBC returns to Gaza baby left hungry by Israeli blockade www.bbc.com/news/article...

Sign the Petition Protect authors’ livelihoods from the unlicensed use of their work in AI training

Writers, if your books have been illegally used to train LLMs sign this. chng.it/YQbkcbXW6N

Cardiff: University confirms plans to cut 400 jobs Vice-chancellor Wendy Larner says

This is a national scandal. When will the government wake up and realise they are presiding over the rapid implosion of the UK's world-renowned university sector?

It's just once again wild how academic institutions (and sometimes individuals in them), can keep on pretending that an ECR is someone who, for a short period, lacks the adequate experience for a permanent post. It's belittling, and pins a structural problem on the individual ECRs.

"This programme provides support for outstanding early-career researchers to make a first step towards developing an independent research career"

This fellowship, supporting a 'first step towards independence' (aww), is actually for ECRs who have been postdocs for - checks notes- up to 7 years🫠

Yes, I'm sure the reason your applicants don't have permanent posts is that we have not gained any independence in 7 years of fighting for our lives.