@ejpcollins.bsky.social
Historian of science in the Spanish & Portuguese empires at @ucddublin.bsky.social. Nautical science & technology, history of animals and creepy crawlies. Opinion-haver, sci-fi-enjoyer, cat-botherer.
This reflects a fundamental underestimation of the socioeconomic value of unpaid labour – most especially women's labour – throughout history. @jwhittle.bsky.social and her team at Exeter have done wonderful work on addressing this in regards to early modern history 🗃️
March sees the return of bumblebee queens as they emerge from hibernation – here are some of the common species you can spot this month 👀
Have you spotted your first bumblebee of 2026?
🔎 Brush up on your bumblebee identification skills: https://ow.ly/af3U50Yi2iq
Just in time for St Patrick's Day, a little piece I wrote about Ireland's Italian chippers. italysegreta.com/how-italians...
What’s all this ‘we’ business
That’s terrible news!
Me again!
Us Irish are obsessed with the weather ... for good reasons!
☔
“History teaches, but it has no pupils.”
—Antonio Gramsci
As we welcome in the New Year 🎉 and things to look forward to in 2026……
A reminder of the deadline for proposals for #SSHM2026 (University of Leeds, 30 June- 3 July 2026)
Deadline for abstracts: 11 January
Fucking blood-thirsty Barbarians.
‘I’m not out to kill foxes. But if we chase and torture them and some end up dead, oopsie!’
www.irishtimes.com/environment/...
Also, as you are a historian of early modern Navarre, Jose Manuel Fradejas Rueda is an outstanding source on birds of prey in the early modern Iberian peninsula.
This is a good primer on birds of prey, not just falconry as the title suggests: books.google.ie/books/about/... If you can’t find it let me know. I have a scanned version in pdf.
Academic scam/spam emails are getting weirder
Cruelty is anhedonic. It rarely delivers the euphoria promised because, in the abstract, what feels righteous and joyful inevitably reveals itself to be sordid and small. Then it's "No not like that". "No not enough". "No the real battle, the forever war to make this feel good starts now". Forever.
You’ll always be Fiftystatesians to me.
‘Thanks for pointing that out. Feedback like yours helps me provide better responses. Let me restate: it is, in fact, not easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. The point was exaggeration, but thank you for calling me out on it.’
It's been a pleasure being on the great organising team at York and Northumbria for next year's NEHN meeting - a collaborative worksop on the many histories of 'unwanted life'. Do see the CFP below, and send in a submission if it appeals!
RIP Mani
The Iberian Colonial Repository is my own an initiative to facilitate the access to primary sources from the Iberian world to MA and PhD students. Traveling is difficult and expensive. An old source can put someone on a research journey. Please consider sharing them.
Will do this week!
Reminds me I need to get my ass in gear to upload some more stuff to the archive!
I have a copy of this! Got it a few years ago for a short description of aletos and wasn’t disappointed! I think I digitised it too but obviously forgot to upload it to the online archive….
If you believe either that Franklin discovered the double helix, and / or Watson and Crick stole her data, ask yourself how you know this. Then take a read of this article.
It is possible to recognise that Watson's treatment of Franklin was despicable and at the same time to acknowledge that Matthew is right.
Guadalupe Pinzón Ríos, professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and member of Geopam, just published her book "Introducción a la historia marítima de Nueva España". Congratulations!
Epistemic Practices and Plant Classification in Premodern European Botanical Knowledge: An Interdisciplinary Treatment
Edited By @fabribald.bsky.social
is now available in the new warehouse -
www.routledge.com/Epistemic-Pr...
The ebook is on sale for US $42.74
Join us in Rome or online for a seminar on plant illustrations on 6 November! 🪴🌻🌿
Through images of mandrakes and ferns, @fabribald.bsky.social and I will be discussing issues in the role of images in early modern botany.
www.biblhertz.it/events/43483...
Introducing The Dark Frontier.
The deep sea is one of humanity's last frontiers. For most of our history it has been a remote realm shrouded in obscurity. Marine microbiologist and deep-sea explorer Jeffrey Marlow plunges us into the ocean's depths. Out April 2026. linktr.ee/TheDarkFrontier
