Dr Katie McKeogh

What on earth is going on at the BL?

Second wave of strikes at British Library announced - Research Professional News Union says lack of stable leadership after chief executive’s departure has “undoubtedly undermined staff confidence”

Breaking: Second wave of strikes at British Library announced

Union says lack of stable leadership after chief executive’s departure has “undoubtedly undermined staff confidence”

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-c...

We built a database of 290,000 English medieval soldiers – here’s what it reveals We created the database in order to challenge assumptions about the lack of professionalism of everyday soldiers.

A blast from my past - the Medieval Soldier database takes nearly 300,000 military service records from 1369-1453 and makes them available as a searchable database.

An invaluable resource for understanding medieval warfare, society and the English medieval state. Learn more in the link. 🗃️

The worst thing to happen to academia was the emergence of a nomadic administrative class like the one in corporations who just move from institution to institution setting fires and walking away.

Say what you will about the flaws of faculty governance, but at least they believe in the mission.

The future of healthcare if assisted suicide becomes legal.

This should surprise no one.

Now that Amazon has my book back in stock at last, it's the best-selling book on opera again. Let's keep it there! 😁

Now available online! www.cambridge.org/core/books/h... 🌿📚💚🪲

University of Nottingham nursing course closure statement | News | Royal College of Nursing RCN expresses deep concern over University of Nottingham's decision

Read our full response to the news from University of Nottingham ⬇️

Protest over future of University of Nottingham language courses

George Torr,East Midlandsand Heidi Booth,Nottingham Heidi Booth/BBC The protest has received letters of support from the Spanish and Cuban ambassadors to the UK Students and lecturers held a protest over the potential future of…

TODAY! I'm looking forward to speaking about my book **Paper and the Making of Early Modern Literature** at 5.15pm GMT - come along online or in person (Queen's College, Ox) @obs1922.bsky.social

Our next @bodleian.ox.ac.uk #maps blog by @stuartackland.bsky.social features the "false" map of #Oxford from 1644. Look at this and be prepared to be confused!
blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/maps/. When is north not north? And who was Anthony Wood? @bcsmaps.bsky.social @ox.ac.uk @bbcoxford.bsky.social

I’m so happy that it’s publication day for my monograph! As I’m on leave atm, there’s no book launch (yet…) but I’m celebrating with my little mascot who says it’s almost as good as their favourite Peekaboo Moon, which is towering praise from this fairly fierce book critic.

You know what we won't need once handwriting recognition software has done its thing? Archivists, curators, conservators, catalogers, codicologists, or paleographers. We won't need archives either. We won't need diplomatics, editorial theory, book or media history, or material culture studies 🗃️🧵

This, from the rooftops.

You think people get a PhD from a university French department off the back of a rigorous test to confirm that they can use the subjunctive and have seen 3 French films?

Are you really claiming that the scholars who people these departments are just people who speak really good French/Czech/German? What do you think they do all day? What do you think they've been doing over the years of research and publication, wider engagement, teaching? ...

Related to my rant about ill-informed music department discussion: 'oh, but learning a language is really important'. Friend: do you really think that people go to university to read French and Russian so they can order coffee confidently on their next mini-break to Paris? ...

who wants to go to evensong they'll happily avail themselves of the free entertainment, as though that exists without the daily services and rehearsals, and the knowledge and training behind the careers of those who provide it.

If you kill the infrastructure, you lose the rest. Strong recollections of Oxbridge college fellows who moan about the choir and chapel (ahem, instituted by the statutes) but when they have a guest for dinner ...

They aren't here to make sure the university does a nice carol concert for you to go and feel warm and fuzzy about, or take your donors to. The fact that the university is able to offer that is because there is an infrastructure comprising the interrelated disciplines of music research...

an ecosystem that includes multi-disciplinary specialism, and you cannot have 1 without the other. Music research includes history, languages, anthropology, technology. You don't get orchestras and choirs without this. Not all scholars in music depts are performers....

One of the most infuriating (amid hot competition) things about discussion of closing music departments is the plea 'oh but we love extra-curricular things like orchestras'. It's a wilfully ignorant reduction of what academic music depts do. High level performance is 1 component within ...

Scholars of book culture, library building, collecting, book trade: roll up roll up!!

All welcome to Dr Marian Kelsey's book launch this Friday!

#theology #bible #biblicalstudies #book

Protest over future of University of Nottingham language courses The University of Nottingham has suspended entry for new students on modern language courses.

"Protest over future of University of Nottingham language courses"

And still nobody cares

More than ever before, we need British diplomats, spies and soldiers to speak the language of our adversaries. We need universities like Nottingham to be pumping out Russian and Mandarin graduates each year, to work across Whitehall. A British Academy report from 2013 on the need for foreign languages in diplomacy and security recommended strengthening the pipeline between academia and government. Practically nothing has been done to advance this agenda in the intervening 12 years, however. My old department, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), has a dreadful track record in training its staff to speak foreign languages. A target recommended in 2018 by the Foreign Affairs Committee for 80 per cent of diplomats who study foreign languages for their jobs to pass their exams, has never been met.

‘More than ever before, we need British diplomats, spies and soldiers to speak the language of our adversaries.’

Stark piece from a former diplomat on how loss of language learning hits our defence & geopolitical capabilities
www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/proc... @timeshighered.bsky.social

7 x 3000+ students + 17 smaller institutions must mean 30,000+ affected students. That’s about the same size as Sheffield uni, which employs 8000ish staff. Why is the government tolerating the impending collapse of up to 24 related employers and 8000+ more lost jobs? Where is the sense of crisis?

Come along to the @ihr.bsky.social on Thursday to hear @nailyas.bsky.social talk about her 'Global Libraries' project!