Brodie Waddell

The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, at Birkbeck, University of London, is looking for a talented researcher to join a project focused on expanding our understanding of non elite writers and writing in seventeenth century England. As Postdoctoral Research Associate you will join 'Written Worlds in Seventeenth-Century England', an exciting Leverhulme Trust–funded project. The role is offered on a 13 month, part time (17.5 hours a week) contract with a salary of £22,124 rising to £25,189 per annum (pro-rated £44,247 to £50,379 per annum). In this role, you will carry out dedicated research on non elite textual production, working closely with the Principal Investigator, Professor Sue Wiseman, and the Co Investigator, Dr Brodie Waddell. You will have the opportunity to work extensively with manuscripts and printed sources, visit archives, investigate datasets, develop the project database, and contribute to shaping the project’s scholarly outputs - and you may also be involved in textual editing. As Research Associate, you will focus on one of two thematic strands: 1. Non elite writing produced in the provinces, or 2. Writing produced by non elite women. Further details via link

We are hiring postdoc researchers to join our #WrittenWorlds project at Birkbeck, with Sue Wiseman, @mdpowelldavies.bsky.social, @richardjansell.bsky.social and I.

0.5FTE, 13 months, focus on women's or provincial non-elite writing #EarlyModern 🗃️
cis7.bbk.ac.uk/vacancy/post...

Years ago I found a note in the parish register of Glenfield in Leicestershire which instantly became one of my favourite Civil War commentaries:

'Churchwardens, not any; because
distractions many; & distructions mightie'.

I've returned to that document, explored other pages nearby, and found...

UK puts emergency brake on study visas for four countries’ nationals Shabana Mahmood says UK’s generosity abused as study visas halted for nationals from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan

I have personally seen the applications of many Afghani students to our gender studies programme: people who have started grassroots LGBT orgs; who have fought for women's education; who want to come to the UK to study to make their country & the world better...

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Ah, very interesting! Thanks for sharing the context.

Written Worlds: Non-Elite Writers in Early Modern England

Just a reminder... Tomorrow, 5 March, 5.30 pm ✨ Sue Wiseman, Brodie Waddell @brodiewaddell.bsky.social ,
and Michael Powell Davies @mdpowelldavies.bsky.social speaking on "Written Worlds: Non-Elite Writers in Early Modern England" Sign-up in person & online: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

BME Small Grants: 2026 Recipients We are delighted to announce the results of the latest round of the BME small grants funding scheme. This scheme is administered by SHS in partnership with the Economic History Society, History UK,…

📣We are delighted to announce the 2026 recipients of the Joint BME Small Grants!

This scheme is supported by @histedsocuk.bsky.social; EHS; History UK; @historyworkshop.org.uk; @royalhistsoc.org; @sslh.bsky.social and @womenshistnet.bsky.social!✨

socialhistory.org.uk/2026/02/17/b...

The story is horrific from a modern perspective, but presumably was meant to be funny at the the time? That final line presents Crisp as a clever (if immoral) schemer and the enslaved people as credulous primitives. The audience would identify with Crisp, not the enslaved. What genre of text was it?

Text on an academic article about "Moving Things: Moving Cartloads of Treasures from Venice to Ethiopia, ca. 1400" pasted into Grammarly in a Browser. It offers to invoke the digital ghosts of David Abulafia, Barry Flood and Chris Wickham to give me "expert feedback".

Using Grammarly for the first time in forever ... WHAT?

As a non-native speaker writing primarily in English, I used to use it to check prepositions, point out too long/convoluted sentences etc.

It now offers to summon colleagues both living and dead to "expert review" the piece???

What?

“My ‘methodology’ was a series of errors”: Gemini generates false records and fake screenshots of TNA website | Who Do You Think You Are Magazine The Gemini LLM generates fake records and screenshots from the UK National Archives, a family historian has revealed

Gemini: 'I deeply regret the time and effort you spent searching for references that I fabricated. My ‘methodology’ was a series of errors and an attempt to cover those errors with more artificial information.'

www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/news/gemini-...

Congratulations Sophie! A huge achievement!

The Body as Property and the Moral Limits of the Market: Attitudes towards the Sex Trade in Eighteenth-Century England This article explores understandings and attitudes surrounding the nature of commercial sex and the moral limits of the market in eighteenth-century England. It examines this contested commodificat...

Hot off the press and available open access. #Skystorians

Here's a 🧵 with some more information about what this chart is based on, and a couple graphs of social breakdowns of the data. [1/n]

Written Worlds: Non-Elite Writers in Early Modern England Who wrote in early modern England? What did they write and why did they write it? How did their writing fit into the wider worlds that they inhabited? In this talk, Sue Wiseman, Brodie Waddell and Michael Powell Davies – all from Birkbeck University of London – will address these questions by introducing their ongoing Leverhulme-funded collaborative project on non-elite writers in England from c.1570 to 1730. Our research explores the writing practices of people below the level of the gentry and clergy, considering their biographical contexts, their motivations and their contributions to written culture. In addition to giving a bird’s eye view of the sorts of writers and texts we are studying, each of the three speakers will discuss a couple of specific examples of particular writers, including the notebooks of a midland villager, the spiritual diary a London wigmaker, and the confessions of a condemned widow.

'Written Worlds: Non-Elite Writers in Early Modern England'

Sue Wiseman, Michael Powell-Davies and I will be introducing our five-year collaborative project at the @ihr.bsky.social on Thursday, March 5th. Hope to see you there!

Register here: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

Fascinating! Like @neilayounger.bsky.social I'm surprised at the high levels of italic already in c.1600, but I think that's because I spend the vast majority of my archive time looking at official or semi-official texts, which are much more secretary.

The graph spans 1580-1719 in 20-year periods. The script categories shown are "Secretary", "Mixed", and "Italic". Secretary script is at nearly 60% in the first period, falls to about 20% by 1620-1639, is below 5% by 1660-1679, and falls to zero by the end of the century. Mixed scripts occur throughout, with their heyday from 1620 to 1679, during which nearly 10% of the letters are written in Mixed hands. Italic starts at about 40%, but is nearly 50% by the second period, and dominates strongly thereafter.

Here's a graph showing the primary script used in early modern English letters plotted over time. This graph is based on 3,489 letters, 22% by women, with decent social coverage although lower ranks are underrepresented.

Public Domain Image Archive Explore our hand-picked collection of out-of-copyright works, free for all to browse, download, and reuse. This is a living database with new images added every week.

Question for #EarlyModern #Skystorians please! 🗃️

What are your favourite online places to search for public domain images?

(free to use, out of copyright, cleared by copyright owner for public use etc)?

Example: Public Domain Image Archive pdimagearchive.org

A plate of various cheeses in front of a PowerPoint slide with the words ‘Tasting History’.

Two presenters in front of a PowerPoint slide.

Man looking pensively at a table of cheese bathed in late winter sunshine.

Yesterday, on the first sunny day of the year, @cheesetastingco.bsky.social and I
ran the Tasting History event at Birkbeck. We tasted cheese, had a conversation with a brilliant audience, and hopefully brought to life the history of the trade and the people who made it happen.

Photo of alasdair mcneill and ned palmer at Tasting History event

It's all kicking off with @cheeseandpeople.bsky.social and Ned Palmer.

Today is the most exciting day on the Birkbeck calendar imho...

Pencil sketch of a figure made from papers with a book for a head

Pencil sketch of a figure in robes with a book and candle on its head.

Important historical query: the 14yo has drawn two new characters and now need to know which one runs @hookland.bsky.social's county record office?

It’s so common to come across the assertion that books were luxury objects exclusively for the elite in the Middle Ages that I want to guest curate a massive exhibition called “Meh-nuscripts: Books for the Many,” which features just workaday or unremarkable objects.

Written Worlds: Non-Elite Writers in Early Modern England Who wrote in early modern England? What did they write and why did they write it? How did their writing fit into the wider worlds that they inhabited? In this talk, Sue Wiseman, Brodie Waddell and Michael Powell Davies – all from Birkbeck University of London – will address these questions by introducing their ongoing Leverhulme-funded collaborative project on non-elite writers in England from c.1570 to 1730. Our research explores the writing practices of people below the level of the gentry and clergy, considering their biographical contexts, their motivations and their contributions to written culture. In addition to giving a bird’s eye view of the sorts of writers and texts we are studying, each of the three speakers will discuss a couple of specific examples of particular writers, including the notebooks of a midland villager, the spiritual diary a London wigmaker, and the confessions of a condemned widow. Hybrid | IHR Wolfson Room NB02, Basement, IHR, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU, or Online-via Zoom. 5 Mar 2026 5:30 pm to 7:00 pm

Slide titled Written World with a seventeenth-century painting of a woman writing in a book.

There might be some Other News happening today, but the really important announcement is that...

Sue Wiseman, Michael Powell-Davies and I will be talking about #WrittenWorlds in early modern England at @ihrscb.bsky.social on Thurs March 5th! 🗃️

Register here:
www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

Elizabethan memorandum in a sprawling illegible hand, with neatly written note underneath acknowledging the problem and providing a transcription. CUL Hengrave MS 89/57

Thoughtful Elizabethan secretary: 'Becaws I suppose this hand of Sergeant Manhood is scant legible . . . I there for write yt again as followeth/ viz: . . .

Tfw you didn't study much medieval history at school

This 1723 Commonplace Book I'm reading--Joshua Green's, a merchant--reads like a Facebook Wall. Interesting factoids, bits taken from lit., and then ten pages of conspiratorial-style musing on the primitive religion from before the Deluge where there was no idolatry but the Seraphim were Lords.

Yes, its a sad loss to Cambridge for us, but we're very glad that we're able to hire a new AncientHistory/Classics lecturer, because there are plenty of places where that wouldn't happen!

Job hunters: don't sleep on Birkbeck! It really is a uniquely special place, and you could literally change lives - Birkbeck lecturers most definitely changed mine! We talk so much about making ancient history accessible to more types of people - Birkbeck is where it *actually happens*

Missed this 3 days ago, but we're thrilled this is out.

@ruthahnert.bsky.social @danielwilson.bsky.social & I wrote this after 6 years of collaboration + discussions about
- what "data" and "digitization" mean [in History]
- what we need to do to ensure data is findable & accessible

Sorry, Krista, I don't know how I missed this reply. Feel free to fire your question at me!

That's lovely to hear. I'm sure @catharineedwards.bsky.social is blushing right now!