Adrian Streete

Front cover of ‘Music and Emotion on the Caroline Stage’ by Shirley Bell.

Delighted to announce that my first monograph, ‘Music and Emotion on the Caroline Stage’ will be published by Palgrave on 5 May!! 🥳🎉📕

Students begin Covid compensation claim against 36 more universities It comes after University College London settled a claim from students there over lost learning in the pandemic.

This is emblematic of the consumer culture that fees have engendered.

What the hell did the students expect? It was a ONCE IN A CENTURY PANDEMIC. There were LAWS against congregating in public. Staff worked themselves to the bone to get online delivery working.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Women, Gender and Sexuality in Premodern Literature and Culture Welcome to Cambridge Core

Delighted to be series editor for Cambridge Elements in Women, Gender and Sexuality in Premodern Literature and Culture. If you have something cool and interesting you’d like to work with us on please get in touch (micrograph 20-30k)

www.cambridge.org/core/publica...

When Musk said the "cumulative sum of human knowledge has been exhausted" for training AI, what he was really saying is that he would not pay for digitisation, and had reached the limits of useful data he could scrape for free. The GenAI house is built on sand.

OUP Books

OUP haul - looking forward to reading these.

I’m very proud of my two PhD students - Liz Leemann and Vivienne Belton - for passing their vivas recently. Two fantastic theses on the body and soul in early modern literary depictions of motherhood, and on Roman Catholicism and the senses in early modern drama. Look out for their work.

Haggis

It’s time - happy Burns Night.

'Priceless' medieval Shrewsbury school text found to be unique The 14th Century manuscript has been found to be the only complete copy of Richard Rolle's text.

How exciting! I remember reading Richard Rolle’s ‘Incendium amoris’ as an undergraduate and being bowled over by his stylistic verve and theological sensitivity. What a boon for medievalists to have a complete text too.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Call for Royal Historical Society PhD funding with text: The Royal Historical Society offers two annual PhD Fellowships for postgraduate historians in their third year of research at a university in the UK or overseas in order to complete a doctorate. The Fellowships comprise: Two RHS Centenary Fellowships: each Centenary Fellowship runs for 6-months and is worth £8,500 for final-year PhD students to complete their dissertations and to develop their research career. All Fellowships are open to candidates without regard to nationality or academic affiliation. They are jointly held with the Institute of Historical Research (IHR), University of London, where Fellows are based.

PhD funding for early career historians completing a doctorate.

Applications are invited for the Society's Centenary PhD Fellowships for the academic year 2026-27 bit.ly/49MzqmT.

Two awards of £8500 per student, held jointly with @ihr.bsky.social. Closing date: 31 January 2026 #Skystorians

Society launches call for new Applied History Fellowships, with the Institute of Historical Research and DC Thomson - RHS In November 2025, the Society joins with partners the Institute of Historical Research (IHR) and publisher DC Thomson to launch a new Applied History Fellowship programme to support recent post-doctor...

Closing date 31 January: applications are now invited for the Society's new Applied History Fellowships with
@ihr.bsky.social & DC Thomson: bit.ly/4ijiuII

Fellowships support recent post-doc historians and demonstrate the appeal of historical skills for employers. £12,000 for 6 months #Skystorians

17th c manuscript

Spending some time in the seventeenth century this afternoon which - in comparison to the present - seems an oasis of calm and reason.

This is a stunning resource, beautifully presented - congratulations to Ros Smith Kathy Acheson and their team emwmlibrary.com

Tibby the indignant cat.

His nibs is not amused with this back to work nonsense.

Predramatic Theatre This co-authored book offers a new and contemporary approach to pre-modern drama texts and performance practice.

Happy New Year and a pretty stupendous start to 2026 from my perspective as Predramatic Theatre -my co-authored book with @gregmw4.bsky.social - was published by Palgrave on Friday!

link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

Very kindly, our reader said of the book :-

Midwinter light in trees.

Midwinter light in trees.

Midwinter light.

Edinburgh

Clearing the head on Boxing Day.

Part of my reason for writing anything is to improve my understanding of the topic. That means learning about new or half-known sub-fields, which means familiarising myself with the secondary literature. That’s axiomatic. It’s the lack of curiosity here, as much as the dishonesty, that I don’t get.

Glasgow Presbytery records.

Yum.

Through his life and extraordinary talent, the immigrant and refugee child Tomáš Sträussler who became known to us all as Tom Stoppard made British theatre and this country a better place to be.

You might even argue that he helped redefine Englishness through his astonishing legacy of work.

Some monsters and prodigies to end the week (from Paré’s ‘Opera’, 1582).

Some monsters and prodigies to end the week (from Paré’s ‘Opera’, 1582).

Some monsters and prodigies to end the week (from Paré’s ‘Opera’, 1582).

Some monsters and prodigies to end the week (from Paré’s ‘Opera’, 1582).

Some monsters and prodigies to end the week (from Paré’s ‘Opera’, 1582).

Good news, but awful that you and your colleagues are being treated like this.

Library and old book.

The best kind of Fridays.

Mitchell Library

Spending today and tomorrow at the Mitchell Library - love this place.

Here’s another fully funded 4-year PhD position at Leiden within the ERC project LangPro led by Dr Alisa van de Haar, and co-supervised by yours truly, on guilds and associations supporting early modern language professionals bit.ly/49rsLA3

Apply by 15 Feb. 2026; starting date 1 Aug. 2026

📢Here's a fully funded 4-year PhD position at Leiden within the ERC project LangPro led by Dr Alisa van de Haar, and co-supervised by yours truly, on professional opportunities for women in the early modern language sector bit.ly/47Y3hYI

Apply by 15 Feb. 2026; starting date 1 Aug. 2026

The British library is in crisis: why does nobody care? The widespread indifference to the British Library's crippling cyberattack demonstrates a perilous failure to value the knowledge infrastructure vital for national prosperity

I’ve written a piece on the curious lack of media and political interest in the issues faced by our national @britishlibrary.bsky.social. This is strange given we live in a world where ideas, knowledge and research are a long-term source of innovation and insight
www.cityam.com/the-british-...

Please consider applying - ASC at the University of Glasgow is a treasure house, especially in medieval and early modern manuscripts and books.

ON STRIKE AGAIN BECAUSE THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH REFUSES TO RULE OUT COMPULSORY REDUNDANCIES!

We're HIRING: “The Dept of English at UMass Amherst invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor, beginning fall 2026, specializing in 20th- and 21st-century British literature, with an emphasis on literatures of the diaspora." See below for description, and please share the news.

Promotional banner inviting applications for Visiting Fellowships at the Bodleian Libraries for 2026-27, featuring an interior view of the library.

VISITING FELLOWSHIPS: Applications are now open for 2026-27!

The deadline for applications is Friday 28 November 2025.

For more information on how to apply: https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/csb/fellowships/bodleian-visiting-fellowships