Benjamin Thomas White

Happy 50th birthday, HWJ! Being a member of the History Workshop collective has shaped the kind of historian I am (& want to be). I'm so proud to have helped edit this 100th issue of History Workshop Journal, which includes reflections on History Workshop for these turbulent times; on HW's past;...

Front cover image of History Workshop Journal issue 100, with a hand-drawn illustration of a Wollemi pine.

The new issue of History Workshop Journal is out: issue 100, marking 50 years of the journal's existence. It's more necessary than ever.

academic.oup.com/hwj/issue/10...

New AI-Generated Content Derived from Your Work Posted on Academia.Edu “By making any Member Content available through the Site or Services, you hereby grant to Academia.edu a worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free, non-...

"Our AI has turned your thesis about oxygen evolution electrocatalysis into rage bait preloaded with one hundred racist and transphobic comments."
buff.ly/1mFcco3

The deadline for this funded PhD is this Fri 23 Jan, for anyone interested in housing, heritage, and climate change (especially if you're an enthusiast for Scottish tenements!) ⬇️

A good thread on chaotic mismanagement at the University of Edinburgh. Solidarity to my colleagues and friends there.

The signs at Cambridge train station saying 'Home of Anglia Ruskin University' also seem pertinent here.

Perhaps you were wondering about this year's Wolfson History Prize shortlist.

- Cambridge (UG, PGT, PhD), Oxford (postdoc)
- Cambridge (UG, PGT, PhD, JRF, job, 'bye-fellow')
- Birmingham (?, PGT, PhD)
- Lancaster (UG), Nottingham (MA, PhD)
- Cambridge (at least UG)
- Cambridge (UG), Oxford (PhD)

ERC’s new €7m Plus Grants open to researchers at any career stage - Research Professional News European Research Council president describes scheme as part attempt to lure US talent

This is so problematic. Creating big-money grants (7m EUR!) is such a travesty. Instead of funding 1 researcher, why not fund 25 with smaller grants? It would create more ideas, secure more careers, and create so much more innovative knowledge. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-euro...

Obviously the only one who mentions the school they went to went to a private school. The current fees there are a mere £7,290 per term 'Incl VAT' (how they hate that!) but not including lunch, or £17,880 if you're boarding. Per term.

NB One of them also has a PGDip from a post-92 (and there can't have been many of those on historic Wolfson History Prize shortlists). It's not one of the ones who went to Cambridge.

Wolfson Prize CEO says award 'needs to change' following Oxbridge bias claim The chief executive of the Wolfson History Prize has admitted things "need to change" to improve the breadth and diversity of historians it recognises following claims it favours Oxbridge graduates an...

Sigh.

www.thebookseller.com/news/wolfson...

Perhaps you were wondering about this year's Wolfson History Prize shortlist.

- Cambridge (UG, PGT, PhD), Oxford (postdoc)
- Cambridge (UG, PGT, PhD, JRF, job, 'bye-fellow')
- Birmingham (?, PGT, PhD)
- Lancaster (UG), Nottingham (MA, PhD)
- Cambridge (at least UG)
- Cambridge (UG), Oxford (PhD)

📢 We are thrilled to announce the #CfP for the Sixth International Seminar in Historical #Refugee Studies, which will be held at the University of Vienna, Sept 28-Oct 1, 2026! Deadline is December 20, 2026. For more information, see rhs.hypotheses.org and CfP below:

This afternoon an incredibly important principle is being debated in the House of Lords

We know people die at our border & in our asylum system at a horrifying rate, but shockingly the govt does not record how many, who, or how.

@asylummatters.bsky.social are campaigning to #KnowTheirNames

the amount of academic research now using llms in research (synthetic data generation, to classify, annotate, or analyse large scale data, etc) is astounding. remember, just cus use of llms in research is becoming normalised does NOT erase the fact it degrades the research & undermine your results

Screenshot of text: Indeed, most modern states’ militaries would have no difficulty carrying out similar airstrikes on a place like Lebanon, which lacks air defenses, and almost any state could impose an aid blockade and shoot starving people in an occupied enclave such as Gaza. What ultimately prevents other states from doing these things in plain sight, or for such prolonged periods of time and with such intensity, is not a lack of technological prowess, but of weapons, funding, and political will. Looking at matters this way, it becomes clear that Israel’s true “innovation” in this moment is political: the feat of securing unique access to an endless supply of Western weapons, intelligence, and most of all, political backing, all of which have given it a destructive capacity that may truly be unprecedented in modern history.

Rhys Machold in Jewish Currents on the myth of Israeli "security innovation":

jewishcurrents.org/the-myth-of-...

When is a refugee not a refugee? — Refugee History. England’s ‘proud history’ of welcoming refugees is regularly invoked in contemporary debates about refugees in Britain. Public and academic histories of pre-modern migration to England support this no...

New post on refugeehistory.org: were there refugees in 16thC England? Answer: it's complicated - migrants and the state were in the process of negotiating a form of refugee protection, which helps us to complicate notions of Britain's "proud history of welcome": tinyurl.com/bdyevr4d

Vazira Zamindar at Brown is working on a (big) book project on 'archaeology, art history, photography, film, war and the anticolonial struggle on the northwest frontier of British India'; she would certainly know much more about colonial-era air surveys in India than I do!

Directorate of Overseas Surveys The DOS Collection provides a unique historical perspective, recording the changing landscapes of much of the Commonwealth throughout the 20th century.

I did wonder if the Directorate of Overseas Surveys had done anything on India, but its predecessor agency the Directorate of Colonial Surveys was set up just before India and Pakistan became independent and seem not to have commissioned any surveys.

www.ncap.org/image-collec...

Hmm. There's some 1960s satellite photography of India in the CORONA imagery (which I've recently written a wee bit about for the Middle East)—you can access that here:

corona.cast.uark.edu

But it may be too distant a view for the sort of thing you have in mind.

Hello! Are you interested in historic aerial photography that was take for specifically archaeological purposes at the time, or for historic aerial photography (of whatever kind) that might be used for archaeological purposes today?

Amazing resource just in time for dissertations this year.

[HUMS Bicentenary PhD] A reparatory history of the Manchester Royal Exchange in collaboration with the Royal Exchange Theatre at The University of Manchester on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - [HUMS Bicentenary PhD] A reparatory history of the Manchester Royal Exchange in collaboration with the Royal Exchange Theatre at The University of Manchester, listed on FindAPhD.com

This PhD on a reparatory history of the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, exploring the legacies of empire is open for applications. It features a great supervisory team (moi, Kerry Pimblott, and Sadia Habib) and fabulous public history opportunities. Please share.
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Air Travel, Statelessness, and the Rights Claims of Ugandan Asians, c.1973* Abstract. In the aftermath of Idi Amin’s expulsion of Uganda’s South Asians in 1972, some of those made technically stateless arrived in India unsupported

I have a new article out.

TLDR: Actively courting deportation by air is a way to claim rights as a stateless person and even as a refugee.

academic.oup.com/past/advance...

Is there a better way to choose the new UNHCR High Commissioner? — Refugee History. The search to find a new high commissioner for UNHCR happens in a process described as "arcane and Machiavellian." Is there a better way?

📣 New post on RefugeeHistory.org!

As UNHCR prepares to appoint a new High Commissioner, @jfcrisp.bsky.social looks back on how the process played out 25 years ago and asks: has anything changed?

⬇️

refugeehistory.org/blog/2025/10...

17 associations et 200 avocats envoient une lettre de non-recommandation à l’ONU concernant la candidature de Nicole de Moor au poste de Haut-Commissaire aux Réfugiés - Bienvenue sur le site de la Lig... Peut-on défendre les droits des réfugié·es à l’échelle mondiale quand on les a délibérément bafoués à l’échelle nationale ? A priori, la réponse semble évidente. Et pourtant, Nicole de Moor, ancienne ...

Lawyers and NGO's are calling for Nicole de Moor's candidacy for the position of UN High Commissioner for Refugees to be rejected. After having significantly weakened refugee rights in Belgium during her term of office, it is inconceivable to allow her to lead
@unhcr.org

tinyurl.com/yx5jp257

Is there a better way to choose the new UNHCR High Commissioner? — Refugee History. The search to find a new high commissioner for UNHCR happens in a process described as "arcane and Machiavellian." Is there a better way?

📣 New post on RefugeeHistory.org!

As UNHCR prepares to appoint a new High Commissioner, @jfcrisp.bsky.social looks back on how the process played out 25 years ago and asks: has anything changed?

⬇️

refugeehistory.org/blog/2025/10...

Crisp2015-25 Key issues in global refugee policy: analysis, commentary and advocacy 2015 - 2025 Jeff Crisp Refugee Studies Centre University of Oxford September 2025 jefferyfcrisp@gmail.com @jfcrisp @jfcrisp.b...

'Key Isssues in Global Refugee Policy:
Analysis, Commentary and Advocacy, 2015-2025'.
A compilation of e-links to around 80 articles I've published over the past decade, most of them brief and easily readable!
docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Screenshot of original news story headlined 'Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai wins Nobel Literature Prize', with a photo of a mature man quite closely resembling 'Hide the pain Harold' (who is actually a Hungarian man named András Arató), in roughly the same position to the right of the picture.

(Original here.)

Screenshot of news story headlined 'Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai wins Nobel Literature Prize accompanied by an image (closely resembling that on the original story) of 'Hide the pain Harold', an internet personality – a widely circulated stock photo showing a mature man sitting at a laptop, holding a mug, and giving a rather pained smile.

I can't be the only person to have thought of this.