It's on the website now, so: I'm Co-I on a new AHRC Curiosity Award, The Many Lives of Cardboard, with Antonia Thomas (Highlands and Islands) and Lucy Razzall (National Archives). Please consider this permission to send me any and all cardboard trivia gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref...

My first week in Oxford as a visiting fellow is underway! Coming from one of the ‘have-not’ universities, the disparity in UK higher ed feels pretty overwhelmingly stark. I just wish the former polytechnics and the post-92s could resource care for students and researchers like they can here.

An opportunity next Tuesday at 5:30pm to enjoy some palaeography without moving from the comfort of your own chair:

'The British Library...has taken years to recover from a major cyberattack that disrupted its services and restricted access to its collections. The walkout is set to take from 27 October to 9 November, coinciding with the two-year anniversary of the cyberattack.'

A close-up image of a handwritten note in a sixteenth-century book. The note reads: 'Spenser repor / teth otherwise / [o]f this Knight / [D]ialogue of Ire- / [la]nd / [p]. 76.

a tiny bit of good news is that we have secured funding to digitize john milton's copy of holinshed's CHRONICLES (1587).

the images will form part of MILTON'S LIBRARY, an open-access site featuring the 10 books positively identified as milton's w/ transcriptions/translations of his marginal notes.

Next Tuesday the Medieval Manuscripts Seminar is online. Kate Gerry will be sharing her work on the Guthlac Roll. Book 👇 ies.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

Today's the 959th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, so obviously I'm reposting my scenes from the Bayeux Tapestry in Playmobil.

What’s a break?

Only THREE places remaining!

Anyone know what Kzoo attendance numbers are these days, roughly? I know they're down from pre-pandemic/renovations but I'm trying to get a sense of how much and can't find reports to document.

Come and work with us! We have a two-year, half-time postdoctoral research associate position working on the @storymachine-ht.bsky.social project www.jobs.london.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai.... If you’re interested in #DigitalHumanities and/or folklore, we’d love to hear from you. Closing date 27 October.

A Jewish Military Collection, 1914–1918

The first Book Collecting Seminar of the year is tomorrow! @ies-sas.bsky.social - in person at University of London 👇 ies.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

Beyond Punishment: Speech Difference, Sin and Disability in Byzantine Thought, c. 1000-1200 Earlier Middle Ages Seminar- Session 2

This week we're back at the IHR on Weds 15 October, where we welcome Maroula Perisanidi (Leeds), speaking on "Beyond Punishment: Speech Difference, Sin and Disability in Byzantine Thought, c. 1000-1200". All welcome, please sign up here! www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

Still from the Simpsons episode "A Star Is Burns" (1995). A decrepit Mr. Burns, having just screened his self-aggrandizing original film, sits in the theatre seat turned slightly toward his dorky younger assistant and yes-man, Smithers, who is gesturing nervously with his hands. The caption reads: Smithers, are they booing me? No, they're saying Boo-urns In this post, the last line goes as follows: "No, they're saying Boo-K History"

"... they're saying boo-k history". #bookhistory

Medieval Manuscripts at WashU - WashU Libraries Tens of thousands of medieval manuscripts and documents have made their way from Europe to collections across North America. The Peripheral Manuscripts Project (2020-present) seeks to advance the stud...

Excited to be giving a talk about the Peripheral Manuscripts Project @peripheralmss.bsky.social at WashU later in the month! WashU is a round 2 partner, and we are thrilled to have them on board! library.washu.edu/events/medie...

BJRL Goes Open Access: Professor Carsten Timmermann on Manchester's Medical History - Manchester University Press BJRL 87:1 is now Open Access on Manchesterhive.

Bulletin of the John Rylands Library goes #OpenAccess

manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/blog/2025/10...

#History 🗃️

The response to this nonsense needs to be: prove it. Show me a degree that you think isn’t providing students with value for money. Education has lots of benefits, and these can’t be and aren’t just measured in salaries.

Reminder that basing funding on graduate income incentivises unis to close courses like nursing (too poorly paid), and to discriminate against female students and most minority ethnic groups (whose earnings on graduation are lower than white men).

All I think about when reading this is how many jobs the money spent on that pile of brick and glass could have saved in smaller humanities departments - my own colleagues. It’s like building a monument of gold in a landscape of wrack and ruin.

A messy desk strewn with books and notes, with a rare book in a cradle in the center.

Sometimes bibliography looks like this, and by extension, rare book cataloging. 4 OCLC records, 3 secondary sources, flashlight for watermarks, etc: all to determine that our copy of “Cryes of London” is from 1689, from the fifth edition, first impression: 📜 #bookhistory #booksky #libsky #rarebooks

This fragment from book 3 of Aristotle's Metaphysica in the Latin translation by Michael Scot is one of the new items in version 6.7 of my Supplementa tertia to Aristoteles Latinus Codices that was released today! (Copenhagen, KB, Fragm. 1258)
www5.kb.dk/manus/vmanus...

Book Launch: Local Priests in the Latin West, 900-1050 Earlier Middle Ages Seminar- Session 3

Should anyone find themselves in central London on Weds 19 November, consider yourself invited to a book launch! @earliermiddleages.bsky.social www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

Love the fact that Dunstan’s Classbook is the header

Link doesn’t seem to work:

Read. Read widely, randomly, for fun. Be led by your curiosity. Read fiction. Recommend your favourite books to your loved ones. Re-read the books from your childhood. Books are a uniquely portable kind of magic. Carry a book or three with you wherever you go. Never. Stop. Reading.

Headline from the Times: "Bestselling novelist Jilly Cooper dies in fall aged 88", illustrated with a rather famous black and white picture of Virginia Woolf

Epic; no notes

Coffee with a Codex On The Road: Bat Book at the Rosenbach An informal lunch or coffee time to meet virtually with Kislak curators and talk about one of the manuscripts from Penn's collections. Each week we'll feature a different...

Oh boy, on Oct 16, @leoba.bsky.social is showing Rosenbach Museum & Library MS 1004/29, a mid-14thC physician's belt w/ calendar, tables of solar & lunar eclipses, anatomical phlebotomy diagram, & urine wheel. A 🦇 book, b/c it unfolds like a pair of 🦇 wings. libcal.library.upenn.edu/event/14872116

Any thoughts about this object? A bone seal matrix which appears to have a chi-rho on one side and a naked, standing figure wearing a tunic on the other. Recently found and recorded @findsorguk.bsky.social. Byzantine? Medieval? Modern? finds.org.uk/database/art...

By October 15, apply for a fellowship to fund your visit to HMML in Collegeville, Minnesota, for research residencies to be completed between January 1 and June 30, 2026.

Learn more: hmml.org/research/fellowships
Application deadline: October 15