Bruno M. Shirley

I have lived in Germany for two years now and still whenever I hear small children chatting away in public my first thought is "wow their German is so good, they must study very hard"

New #cfp from the Journal of Transcultural Studies for a special issue on “Transcultural Histories of Monarchy” - abstracts to be sent to jts-editors@hcts.uni-heidelberg.de by 1st Sept!

The essays will explore the ways in which monarchies incorporate “the foreign” into the familiar.

The Women Who Ruled China: Buddhism, Multiculturalism, and Governance in the Sixth Century. By Stephanie Balkwill. University of California Press, 2024. ISBN: 978-0520401815. 272 pp | Royal Studies Jo...

Stephanie Balkwill's The Women Who Ruled China is an incredible book, with methodological takeaways for historians of gender and power in every context. Read my review for @royalstudies.bsky.social here: rsj.winchester.ac.uk/articles/10....

Buddhist Poetics in Medieval Sri Lanka: The Muvadev-dā-vata Reconsidered This article offers a close reading of the twelfth-century Muvadev-dā-vata, one of the earliest Sinhala-language poetic works to model itself on the Sanskrit kāvya. While earlier studies of the Muv…

I've just had an article come out on a poem from medieval Sri Lanka, and what it might tell us about attitudes towards renunciation, religious paths, and the proximate goals of Buddhist practice: pwj.shin-ibs.edu/2025/7164

Auctioning the Buddha's relics is perpetuating colonial violence (RNS) — For the Buddhists who deposited these relics — as for Buddhists today — the gems, bone and ash all belong to the Buddha and shouldn’t just be sold to the highest bidder.

Just days before Vesak, Sotheby's plan to auction off sacred relics of the Buddha—stolen in the colonial destruction of a stūpa, no less—to the highest bidder.
religionnews.com/2025/04/22/a...

I'll be joining the Journal as managing editor for Volume 16 onwards. If you're working on processes of transculturation—in any global or historical context, and from any disciplinary standpoint—then we'd be delighted to hear from you.

heiup.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/tra...

A new issue of the Journal of Transcultural Studies is now available open-access! It features articles by @jaydprosser.bsky.social (Leeds), Alexander Vesey (Tokyo), Ori Sela (Tel Aviv) and Dhruv Raina (New Delhi/Pune).

Great reads all; check them out here:
heiup.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/tra...

The leading AI models are now very good historians Three case studies with GPT-4o, o1, and Claude Sonnet 3.5, and what they mean

This is interesting. "Leading AI Models are now very good historians". It's a total clickbait title as I will expand on below. But several of the challenges put to the models, particularly palaeographical transcription and translation, it seems to perform well. Wills @ Exeter is using it for this.1

If you need a distraction today-- check out my new piece for Aeon!

I say there's no universal definition of fiction b/c how "fiction" is understood depends on a culture's metaphysics. Philosophy of fiction has been taking Greek metaphysics for granted. I say we branch out.

aeon.co/essays/befor...

Happy mapping!

QGIS is a great tool for making these kinds of bespoke maps, which communicate key information with the same clarity and efficiency our prose does. When I have a moment next week, I'll post another short thread on how to create this kind of custom overlay.

With some playing around, you can end up with something like this. This probably seems like a *lot* of steps just to end up with a blank--but now that we've created our canvas, we can start to customise the information WE want it to communicate: landmarks? Travel routes? Historical borders?

screenshot of discrete "scale" and "magnifier" settings

NB: there's a big difference between "scale" (how zoomed-in the map itself is) and "magnification" (how close your face is to the map)! Try to keep the zoom at 100%, and only change the scale, or things will turn out strange. I've made this mistake before...

But unless you want a monochromatic map of the entire globe, it's time to start thinking about the part of the world YOU might want to map. Try increasing the "scale" by rolling your mouse wheel, and navigating around by clicking and dragging, until you find what you're looking for.

Here's what I ended up with: something that looks at least half-polished?

(You may need to hit "apply" after making changes to see what the various sliders are doing to your map. Be creative! Be bold!)

Most of the visuals are controlled in the Symbology tab. You should see that there's a "simple fill" (meaning that all of the land-shapes are filled with a single colour). Play around with the fill colour until you find something you like. I went with a flamboyant grey-white fill!

On the left, you'll see a "Layers" panel, which at the moment should only include a layer called "ne_10m_land." This is the data you just downloaded from Natural Earth. Double click that layer to open up the "layer properties," and let's start to play around with how it looks.

...wow, it's hideous. Or, mine is at least. QGIS now knows what the shape of the world is, but it's randomly selected what colour that world should be. Let's see if we can make this look a little more presentable!

QGIS will ask you to provide a "source" for the vector layer. Use the three little dots next to the "Vector Dataset" to navigate to the land data you just download (either as a zipped folder, or as the .shp file contained within). Then hit "Add" at the bottom of the dialogue box and...

How do we turn this nebulous "land" data into an actual map? At the top of the QGIS window you'll see a "Layers" menu. Use that to add a new "vector" layer. I promise, this will all come together soon...

Screenshot of the "land polygons" download from naturalearthdata.com

There are a lot of options here, but to keep things simple let's stick to downloading their "land" data. It'll download as a zipped folder, which you don't even need to extract: QGIS can read it fine. Remember to move it to your special folder!

A screenshot of naturalearthdata.com's downloads page, calling attention to the large scale data.

Let's start out with some large-scale "physical" data, which means natural features like coastlines, rivers, and so on (rather than "cultural" data, which again is all very modern and so uninteresting to a medievalist like myself).

How do we tell QGIS what to put on our map? We need some "spatial data." I acquire mine at naturalearthdata.com, which is public domain and generally all very nice.

If you open QGIS and create a new project, you'll see... a blank screen. That's because QGIS doesn't know what kind of map you want to make yet. There *is* a default map, but it includes modern national borders--not so good for medievalists like me. We want something bespoke!

Final bit of setup: create a folder somewhere on your computer (not your Downloads!) where you'll be saving all of the material you use to make this map. I labelled my folder "QGIS Tutorial" because I am an original thinker.

Spatial without Compromise · QGIS Web Site

I use @qgis.fosstodon.org.ap.brid.gy to make all of my maps: it's an open source (free! ethical! excellent!) alternative to products like ArcGIS. Download the latest version from qgis.org to get started.

This little thread is a refreshed version of something I posted on the Other Site, which people there found helpful. @mbarcia24.bsky.social found the original thread archived here, which saved me SO MUCH TIME in recreating it: endless thanks en.rattibha.com/thread/14589...

Historian friends, here's a new years resolution for you: no more Google Maps screenshots in your powerpoints! Thanks to Technology™ it's easy and free to make maps from scratch that look professional (or at least professional enough), even with my level of extremely limited technical skills.

Really recontextualises academia. Conferences are now discos. Seminars are dance workshops. The viva is an Irish jig, on lava, while your examiners throw tomatoes at you.