@100days1815.bsky.social
Professor of French Studies, working on the culture of French Revolution and Napoleonic period. Committed to supporting the learning of languages in schools & universities and to public engagement.
A Tudor doorway on the second floor opening out onto a reproduction of the Tudor wall paintings on the floor below
It’s 25 years since I was last in the Charterhouse Coventry and I was very impressed today by how @National Trust have interpreted the site. The Tudor wall paintings are stunning but they’ve made considerable effort with the rest of the building too
07.02.2026 20:05 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
My article about eighteenth-century coffee houses is in the latest Modern History Review. It's featured on the cover!
@hachettelearning.bsky.social
How I imagine the sophistication of my research.
How I present my research.
'The Epstein files reveal a patriarchy in action. This is a world where the men are rich and powerful, and the women are not. The emails showcase the private behaviour of a male ruling class, as they network, joke and trade information.'
07.02.2026 07:52 — 👍 95 🔁 45 💬 4 📌 8Mark Darlow on opera during the French Revolution
06.02.2026 23:09 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition.
Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
"Faire taire le passé"
article très intéressant de Meredith Martin et Hannah Williams sur les dissonances, les écarts entre la recherche universitaire et les musées
histoire coloniale/muséographie/mémoires/histoire
entre-temps.net/faire-taire-...
Explore Hundreds of Exquisite #Botanical #Collages Created by an 18th-Century Septuagenarian #Artist from dyed & hand cut paper #MaryDelany #Plants #art
Link for an interactive archive of Mary's amazing work, more photos & information: www.thisiscolossal.com/2023/02/mary...
Read an excerpt from “The Predatory Sea: Human Trafficking and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean” by @csschmitt.bsky.social. @pennpress.bsky.social www.hnn.us/article/free...
17.09.2025 18:58 — 👍 46 🔁 23 💬 0 📌 1🚨History Job: Assistant Professor in Early Modern British History (Permanent) 🗃️
Come work with us at Warwick! You will join a group of excellent early-modernists and one of the nicest bunches of historians around!
👇👇👇
@uni-of-warwick.bsky.social
warwick-careers.tal.net/vx/lang-en-G...
And an amazing place to put on early 19th-century French melodrama as my research team did in 2017!
04.02.2026 22:28 — 👍 5 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0Editing my book proofs and Acrobat keeps asking if I want the document, which represents more than a decade of work, simplified 🥲🥲🥲
04.02.2026 20:53 — 👍 18 🔁 2 💬 3 📌 0Starting some very interesting research into the Norman Cross records. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some interesting statistics and maybe even a graph or two (and who doesn’t love a good graph?!) 📈
04.02.2026 19:42 — 👍 4 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Escaped enslaved people on St Kitts fled into the rainforest in the interior, making use of a series of trails which connected many of the villages around the island. They would knock on the hollow roots of the Banyan tree (pictured) to give directions to escapees or warn of approaching pursuers.
03.02.2026 20:13 — 👍 51 🔁 10 💬 0 📌 0A nightmare! Access to material via Google books is vital to so many people’s research, mine included. I’ve been accessing 2 or 3 plays a day recently… I’ll have to rethink my book chapter if it lasts long
03.02.2026 15:25 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Vicki Mistacco - Louise de Keralio
Enlightenment Intellectual
À paraître en juin aux Oxford UP
A bird's-eye view of a former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp showing a wide dirt pathway flanked by parallel rows of barbed-wire fences. Groups of visitors walk along the path, surrounded by the remnants of brick structures and barracks, now reduced to foundations. Green grass contrasts with the somber history of the site, as the path leads toward a guard tower in the distance.
Auschwitz was at the end of a process. We must remember that it did not start from gas chambers.
This hatred gradually developed: from ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence... to systematic and industrial murder.
Auschwitz took time.
Firmly believe this would serve multiple needs.
29.01.2026 21:32 — 👍 138 🔁 34 💬 4 📌 2
'Half of English students have noticed an impact from cost-cutting measures at their university, with most saying it was leading to a worse experience than expected.'
Meanwhile, NSS and TEF results proposed as yet another mechanism for disciplining English universities.
Thanks OfS! 1/2
We should have a chat!
29.01.2026 14:12 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0And of course it allows those who can’t climb the stairs to see what the upper floors of the keep look like, and to enjoy the view from the roof!
29.01.2026 14:00 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Delighted to have had this joint article published - even if the keynote it grew out of was almost 3 years ago now! Thank you for being so patient with me @tombhamilton.bsky.social @frenchhistory.bsky.social
29.01.2026 13:57 — 👍 14 🔁 5 💬 1 📌 0
Teachers we worked with on St Vincent asked for a video to help explain Portchester Castle to their pupils. Here is the first video - a walkthrough of the keep. A walkthrough of the outer Bailey where the Caribbean prisoners of war were housed will follow in due course. m.youtube.com/watch?v=8TWU...
29.01.2026 12:33 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 2Physics is under the cosh, Astronomy and Chemistry in peril, Geography is losing territory, English, Modern Languages and History are among the many shrinking UK disciplines.
Surely it's time to have a concerted, structured conversation about universities and the national research base.
CALL FOR PAPERS: PERFORMING EVIL: the mediation and display of diabolic spectres, 1700-2000'. 4 & 5 June 2026, Leuven. This conference explores the tangled histories of supernatural, diabolic evil and all kinds of spectral apparitions in the last three centuries – Walter Scott’s ‘malignant and unhappy beings’. Specifically, it is interested in how and why ghosts, spirits and related apparitional phenomena were framed as diabolic, demonic or malign manifestations from the afterlife. Diabolic connotations of ghosts and spirits did meaningful cultural work. They were mobilised to discredit ghost beliefs and spiritual practices, to delegitimise competing beliefs, or to invest doctrinal arguments with occult authority. They could also function as tools of scepticism and ridicule as well as triggers of wonder, fear and religiosity. Put differently, the nexus of ghosts and evil is deeply historical. And it was often articulated through performative means: in gestures and expressions of (dis)belief, in visual and textual representations, in séance rooms, on the stage and on the page. Emerging from this nexus are theatrical spirits of evil, staged, embodied, and made legible through mediation and display. In this sense, every ghost is a theatrical ghost. Through the focus on the construction and staging of diabolic spirits, this conference aims to develop a methodological framework for studying historical forms of occultism and demonology more broadly in terms of performance.
Exploring how the relationship of spectrality and evil has shifted in shape over time and across different cultures, the conference invites contributions that can consider a wide range of historical actors – clerics, mediums, ghost-hunters, debunkers, necromancers, stage performers, eyewitnesses. This conference aims to study cultural intersections and interactions to arrive at a more granular understanding of discursive, practical and material connections between spirits and evil. At the same time this lens zooms out, making visible broader dynamics of knowledge construction in specific historical moments. How, for instance, did hauntings and possessions shape communities and audiences? How did religious or folkloric ideas about the devil inform spectral encounters? We hope to bring together historians, art historians, theatre and literary scholars, folklorists and anthropologists from every stage in their career around the above questions. We welcome 20-minute papers on topics that include but are by no means limited to: - making spectral evil visible: performance, arts, media, technologies, popular cultures - making spectral evil invisible: popular and occult knowledge circulation - performing (un)belief: practices and rhetoric, summoning and debunking on the stage (from popular stages to the lecture hall and the laboratory) - materiality of spectres: the function of bodies and objects - diabolic spirits and (intellectual, vernacular, theological, folkloric) ideas about morality, mortality and temporality - occult performance and ‘cultural scripts’ of ghost encounters (from necromancy to poltergeists) - affect and emotions: fear, grief, trauma… and hope Send abstracts (c.250 words) and bios (c.100 words) to kristof.smeyers@kuleuven.be before 21 March 2026. Please do get in touch if you have any questions.
Hi everyone, I'm organising a conference in Leuven, 4-5 June, and you're all invited*! It's called 'Performing evil: the mediation and display of diabolic spectres 1700-2000' and here is the call for papers (get in touch if you'd like a pdf!). Please share widely!
*to submit an abstract before 21/3
The cover of The Crown's Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the Americas--out TODAY with Mariner!
Out today: THE CROWN'S SILENCE
I'm delighted to share that my new book is officially out! It traces the British monarchy's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade and colonial slavery over hundreds of years. Please buy a copy, tell your library, & spread the word. bookshop.org/p/books/the-...
Example #897 of Big Tech shoehorning "AI" into somewhere it doesn't need to be.
27.01.2026 10:14 — 👍 14 🔁 6 💬 1 📌 0
La liste des 72 femmes scientifiques qui rejoindront prochainement le premier étage de la Tour Eiffel a été dévoilée hier. C'est l’aboutissement d’un projet de plus de 4 ans porté par l’association Femmes & Sciences qui entend réparer cette invisibilisation. Qui sont les femmes retenues ?
27.01.2026 06:35 — 👍 256 🔁 132 💬 5 📌 12
The Legislation Upon winning a general election, a Reform government under Prime Minister Nigel Farage will: 1) Leave the ECHR 2.) Repeal the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights. 3.) Pass The Illegal Migration (Mass Deportation) Bill: This Bill will: Create a legal duty to remove illegal migrants for the Home Secretary The Bill opens with a blunt obligation for the Home Secretary: "The Secretary of State shall ensure the removal from the United Kingdom of each person who does not have extant leave to remain and is not an Irish citizen or otherwise protected by regulations made under this Act." The following parts of the legislation are introduced on an emergency basis, with an in-built sunset clause after 5 years: Disapply the 1951 Refugee Convention, the UN Convention Against Torture, the Council of Europe Anti-Trafficking Convention (ECAT) Derogation is justified under the Vienna Convention doctrine of state of necessity: Britain faces a national emergency in which uncontrolled illegal migration undermines public order. These treaties will otherwise be used by activist judges to frustrate deportations, even after the repeals of the HRA and ECHR. Create Detention Power Without Hardial Singh Constraints This means illegal migrants can be detained until they are deported. Activist lawyers routinely use Hardial Singh to secure their client's bail, after which the client absconds. If you came to the UK illegally, you are ineligible for asylum. End of story All asylum claims will become inadmissible if made by a person within the Act's scope. If you came to the country illegally, you are ineligible for asylum in the UK. This strips the Home Office, the immigration tribunals and the higher courts of jurisdiction to even consider claims. A claim that cannot be considered cannot suspend removal and therefore, cannot delay a flight. Re-entering after deportation and destroying ID becomes a serious criminal offence Re-entry after deportation will be…
The Operational Plan We will create an enforcement unit called UK Deportation Command, including an Illegal Migrant Identification Centre - harnessing cutting edge data fusion A Reform government will create a cutting edge enforcement data centre to relentlessly identify and detain all illegal migrants in the UK. Using powers granted by the new legislation, it will automatically share data between the Home Office, NHS, HMRC, DVLA, banks and the police. It will power bulk warrants, including mandatory biometric capture during any police encounter. Each power addresses a failure mode observed over the past decade - for example, banks and GP surgeries unaware of a customer's status, or overstayers slipping through because a warrant covered only a single property. Secure Immigration Removal Centres (SIRC) will be built rapidly to detain up to 24,000 Detention capacity for up to 24,000 will be created within 18 months. The Home Office will build Secure Immigration Removal Centres. This will be modular accommodation built in remote parts of the country. Conditions are basic but not punitive: prefabricated two-person rooms, canteen catering, on-site medical suites. Robust perimeters and internal movement controls prevent escapes. This enables detention-on-arrest: no more bail. This capacity would allow for up to 24,000 illegal migrants to be deported per month. Initial Voluntary Return Window A six-month Assisted Voluntary Return window precedes large-scale raids. Illegal migrants will be offered a financial incentive to self-deport. An app will be launched to facilitate this. The Deportation Flights The Home Office will scale up charters to 5 flights per day. To guard against last-minute aircraft unserviceability, the RAF will keep one Voyager aircraft on six-hour 'hot-spare' readiness. If a commercial charter breaks down, detainees can still be flown out that night, preserving operational integrity. The legal reset will mean activist lawyers will no longer be able preven…
The UK version of “Project 2025” by the Reform party includes a British ICE, a concentration camp for 24,000 people, mass surveillance and withdrawing from refugee, anti-torture and anti-trafficking conventions.
It’s on their website. That’s how comfortable fascists are in the UK today.
You know when people ask about your fantasy dinner party? Well the current line up of Reform MPs is the exact opposite of that.
26.01.2026 17:31 — 👍 346 🔁 45 💬 21 📌 4
