Prof. Liz Oakley-Brown

Great to see our project written up in today's Guardian. Follow the link inside to our digital edition - more than one thousand pages of Thornton's writings transcribed and modernised. @kingsdigitallab.bsky.social @hcaatedinburgh.bsky.social #EarlyModern 📜 🗃️

A Warning to the Curious - A Romancing the Gothic Conference Celebrating 100 years of M R James' A Warning to the Curious

Have you bought your tickets for the M R James online conference yet?

We've got so much amazing stuff going on, including a performance from ROBERT LLOYD PARRY of 'A Warning to the Curious'

Check out the website and get your tickets

awarningtothecuriousconference.wordpress.com

A hostile environment: language, race, surveillance and the media A hostile environment: language, race, surveillance and the media is the second of two reports analysing parliamentary and media debates from 2010-2024, and shows how large sections of these debates encouraged widespread hostility to migrants.

Our government and media are complicit in enabling racist violence, our latest report shows.

One year since the racist riots broke out across the UK, violence which has continued since, those in power cannot continue to deny their enabling role.

Read the report here 👉 www.runnymedetrust.o...

YouTube video by On Ice Perspectives "A Change Is Gonna Come" Emmanuel Savary skates to Leslie Odom Jr. at ITNY's Fall Frolic

Let's have some more
Emmanuel Savary
in our timeliness

youtu.be/dkzL4eNCk-I?...

I am so sick of tech giants trying to gaslight us into thinking that AI will make the world into some sort of utopia, as if we're not seeing its devastating consequences of it right before our eyes. It's like standing on the beach as they insist the giant wave we're seeing isn't going to drown us.

A new start after 60: I became a dancer at 68 – and will perform my first solo show at 82 Christine Thynne was nervous about going to her first dance class. But at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe she will be on stage alone, doing all the ‘things I shouldn’t be doing’

A new start after 60: I became a dancer at 68 – and will perform my first solo show at 82

This was entirely predictable in an environment where there is little to no spare cash in universities to cover research expenses.

✊️❣️

✊️❣️

Sign the Petition Stop Mass Redundancies at Lancaster University – Hold Senior Management Accountable

1 in 4
employees at Lancaster University will be made redundant by August 2026

But we haven't seen financial evidence

Please sign the petition to
hold our Senior Management to account

👇📝

chng.it/xfCHcwXKDH

✊️❣️

Mission under way to save 'world's most beautiful' snails Researchers in Cuba and the UK are working together to reveal the biological secrets of the beautiful but endangered Polymita snail.

"Mission under way to save 'world's most beautiful' snails"

#AdoreSnails

share.google/MzhBdWLF3HDg...

Come Back and Work on Campus! - Lancaster University Did you know that we have work space availability on campus? Why not come and remind yourself of our great facilities and workspaces and find the perfect location to inspire your next project. We also...

Well...advertised on 1st August 2025 👇

Meanwhile, I have until 24th August to vacate my campus office

share.google/FGjUxA7VjAOh...

The takeup of gen AI in academia symptomises an obsession with speed and productivity over research and critical thinking. We're continually given crazy and arbitrary deadlines to mark work/return proofs/review articles/submit publications/respond to grant reviews. It's corrosive and unnecessary.

Saw this and immediately thought of @wendycaitlin.bsky.social

I voted for @zackpolanski.bsky.social as Leader @greenparty.org.uk

I voted for @greenantoinette.bsky.social as Deputy Leader @greenparty.org.uk

A before and after collage of a street in central London. The before is an asphalt-dominated three-lane thoroughfare. The after a lush green pedestrian zone with seating.

We shouldn’t have to escape the city for a daily dose of nature, no matter how short or small.

By challenging the privilege of the car on our streets, we create new opportunities for re-greening them; thus boosting our physical, mental, and social well-being.

Strand Aldwych, London. 2021 vs. 2025.

So chuffed to have a paper in this, co-written with Chloe Turner & @dawnlyon.bsky.social and to be in such esteemed company. Especially brilliant to read articles by @mbherbert.bsky.social & Tom Wadsworth, Zoe Walsh & Beth Bramich.

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

SI of Journal of Sociology on Future/Tense: A Sociology of Temporal Dis/Order just published. Includes article by Corine van Emmerik, @dawnlyon.bsky.social and me on a minor sociology of shifting futures during COVID pandemic journals.sagepub.com/toc/JOS/curr...

YouTube video by Balsam Bashing Conservation Conversation - Prof. Corinne Fowler (Our Island Stories)

Great chat with film maker and environmentalist John Tween in Moseley Bog, a place associated with Tolkein & much loved by the poet Benjamin Zephaniah
m.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxeo...

“O, it is excellent…” 🥹
#MeasureForMeasure
#ShakespeareSunday
#PurpleRain
#Prince
#Prince4Ever
💜🎶🕊️☔️

What a fantastic skate! 👏

Glen is so so right about this.

Inside the relentless race for AI capacity The quest for superintelligence is spurring a data centre boom — but critics question the cost, environmental impact and whether it is all needed

"To suddenly start building data centres which are so much denser in terms of power use, for which the chips cost 10 times as much...[&] there is unproven demand and which eat up all available grid power and suitable real estate--all that is an extraordinary challenge and a gamble." A. Lawrence 1/3

Tuition fees in England and Wales rise to £9,535 Maintenance loans have also gone up, meaning students can borrow more to help with living costs.

Please don't...
- Call them tuition fees
- Raise them (for students).

There needs to be a sensible conversation about funding HE before it's too late. Although it arguably already is.

BBC News - Tuition fees in England and Wales rise to £9,535 - BBC News
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A Poster advertising public libraries Painting: Harvey Dunn. 1923.
#Libraries #Art

Margaret Boden obituary Cognitive scientist who explored how consciousness arises from biochemical interactions within the brain

In her 1977 book Artificial Intelligence and Natural Man ‘she discussed the philosophical issues raised by advances in AI, and pondered on the potential societal significance of the increased use of AI technologies in application areas’

Obit of Margaret Boden FBA
www.theguardian.com/education/20...

a group of women sit at tables in a restaurant Alt: a group of 3 women - characters from the "Sex and the City" TV show - sit at tables in a restaurant A other woman wearing sunglasses- the character Carrie Bradshaw - taps on the window and waves to them while smiling broadly

This afternoon:

visiting friends to celebrate a birthday with homemade pavlova 🍥 and cocktails 🍸

Feeling very "Carrie Bradshaw" 🤣

There's a "Close Reading" podcast?

#WordsMatter