Tim Hitchcock

British History in the Long 18th Century Supported by Mark Storey and Carey Karmel, in memory of Arthur Burns

Really pleased to see the Autumn programme for @long18thsem.bsky.social is now available @ihrlibrary.bsky.social All welcome - but please do register. www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

Seeing as I'm always such an Eeyore, what are the big public policy success we can learn from?
*Channel Tunnel
*Seatbelts in cars
*Plastic bag charge
*Teaching people to swim
*Smoking ban
*CFCs and the Montreal Protocol
*Banning lead in petrol
*Minimum Wage
*Covid vaccine
*Lottery sports funding

Slavery, Big Data, and the Cultures of Caribbean Ancestral Histories Royal Historical Society public lecture at the University of Aberdeen

If you're in Aberdeen on 17 September don't miss my colleague Professor Matt Smith's lecture on 'Twice Removed: Slavery, Big Data, and the Cultures of Caribbean Ancestral Histories'.

Digital history both opens up new vistas and obscures 'the knotted histories of empire'. #Skystorians

British Academy SHAPE Observatory

And for the implications of the decline of formal language study for higher education in the UK, a key report and maps that allow this impact to be traced across the 4 nations, visit the British Academy's SHAPE Observatory. 2/2

A tsunami warning may seem routine now—but it's the result of decades of investment in seismic monitoring, ocean sensors, real-time modeling, and scientific expertise. We shouldn't take it for granted

Congrats! A rally interesting gig.

personal update =]

Death certificate of William Cuffay, black leader of London Chartism in 1848. Died Hobart 29th July 1870 age 82

The ‘Society, Culture and Belief, 1500-1800’ seminar at the Institute for Historical Research would like to appoint a doctoral student as a stipendiary postgraduate seminar convenor for 2025/26. You would be an active member of our lively, friendly seminar. Your main responsibilities would be to contribute to our social media presence, encourage other postgrads to attend the seminar, and occasionally assist with minor administrative tasks to help the seminar run smoothly. The expectation would be that you would come to the seminar as often as possible. We normally host nine seminar talks over the course of the academic year. In 2024/25, we hosted talks by Rachel Winchcombe (Manchester), Fara Dabhoiwala (Princeton), Will Tullet (York), Tiéphaine Thomason (Cambridge), Nikki Clarke (Birkbeck), and Juliet Atkinson (Leeds). The Institute will provide you with a stipend of £300 (£100/term) and will cover the cost of your meals if you attend post-seminar dinners. The current convenors are Holly Fletcher (UCL), Laura Gowing (KCL), Kate Hodgkin (East London), Eva Johanna Holmberg (Queen Mary), Tiéphaine Thomason (Cambridge), Emily Vine (Exeter), Brodie Waddell (Birkbeck) and Roisin Watson (Open University). To apply, please send a cover letter (max one page) indicating why this opportunity is of interest and a CV (1-2 pages) to b.waddell@bbk.ac.uk by September 1st.

#EarlyModern history PhD students around London: the 'Society, Culture and Belief, 1500-1800' seminar
@ihrscb.bsky.social at @ihr.bsky.social is looking for a postgrad convenor for 2025/26. Stipend of £300/yr and a chance to get involved in a great seminar!

The IHR is saddened by the death of Peter (P.J.) Marshall, historian of the British Empire, and a long-standing member of King's College London's History department. As a long-time friend, supporter, and Fellow of the IHR, he will be greatly missed and remembered for his kindness and courtesy.

How great was Tom Lehrer? In 2020, he moved his entire catalog into the public domain because he felt he'd made more than enough money off of it.

Enjoy every Tom Lehrer album:

tomlehrersongs.com

Tom Lehrer, Musical Satirist With a Dark Streak, Dies at 97

Farewell to the brilliant Tom Lehrer. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/a...

All this is true - and you are right. But with VERY few exceptions researchers did not develop those high level skills. They just let the old ones atrophy and took the lazy way through.

Google explicitly rejected traditional intellectual hierarchies in favour of an algorithm based solely on traffic of whatever kind. Wikipedia is pre Google and reproduces a library's hierarchy - which is part of the reason it is trusted.

And in the process one forgets how and why knowledge is ordered. Like AI a vital component of the research journey was automated.

Maybe, but the lack of critical awareness in the face of technological change is consistent; and Google replaced a system designed around a known model of information with a popularity contest, all 'good enough'.

The weird thing is that people have been outsourcing their research and thinking to Google for 25 years without a qualm.

SF-Based Internet Archive Is Now a Federal Depository Library. What Does That Mean? | KQED The Internet Archive, thanks to its designation by California Sen. Alex Padilla, joins a network of over 1,100 libraries that make government documents accessible to the public.

The San Francisco-based Internet Archive now has federal depository status, joining a network of over 1,100 libraries that archive government documents & make them accessible to the public — even as ongoing legal challenges pose an existential threat to the organization www.kqed.org/news/1204942...

Promotional poster for Episode #5 of the podcast “Future Knowledge,” titled “Averting the Digital Dark Age.” The design features a retro-futuristic aesthetic with grainy textures and a collage of images, including three speakers: Ian Milligan, Brewster Kahle, and Takara Small. Their photos appear above bold text reading “FUTURE KNOWLEDGE.” In the background are stylized digital and classical elements like a vintage computer labeled “NEW,” the Space Needle, a Roman statue, and abstract shapes.

Ian Millian's book Averting the Digital Dark Age: How Archivists, Librarians, and Technologists Built the Web a Memory set against a field of static.

In this episode of the Future Knowledge #podcast: historian IAN MILLIGAN in conversation with BREWSTER KAHLE on AVERTING THE DIGITAL DARK AGE & Canada’s role in preserving born-digital history. Moderated by TAKARA SMALL.

🎧 Listen & subscribe ⤵️
futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes

Sabra and Shatila massacre - Wikipedia

The 1982 massacres at Sabra and Shatila, authorized by Sharon, fundamentally changed my view of Israel. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_a...

. That for most Israelis — and I’m not talking about the right wing — for most Israelis, the idea that Palestinians should have the same rights as us and the same dignity and the same equality, doesn’t at all rise to people’s consciousness.

"People got used to the occupation. That’s one reason I would say why they were so appalled by Oct. 7, because suddenly those people broke out of their cage and attacked us."

You are either in favor of gender equality or you are not, and if so, you work in that direction as best you can. Nobody gets it right all the time.

Institute of Historical Research The Institute of Historical Research is the UK's national centre for history

(If you're a UK based historian, or just History-curious, and don't know about the IHR, you are missing a treat). Over 50 fortnightly seminars (most also available online) during the academic year, and much more. Visit the Institute and its library if you're in London. And it's free. 2/2

I've lived in London for 30 years.

It's safer, cleaner, more at ease with itself by far now than it was when I came here and the only people who believe otherwise have either never set foot in the place or have a massive chaos agenda.

Check out homicide figures in that time 1/2

This

Some very good news for academics chasing permissions & high res images.

It was once called a library, and critiqued as leading to ill-digested auto didacticism.

LLMs probably will tempt people to overestimate their competence in fields they don't understand. I bet the Internet did too—and hell, "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" goes way back. But we lack antibodies to this particular temptation at the moment

The very idea that promotion was a thing. My first book was published in 1987 and produced using hot metal. It was a very different world.

Pretty please? 🥺 May we have a little End Of OfS & start of a meaningful commission that keeps the full extent of #UKHE in play, and which hasn’t failed so dramatically to catch the issues that Parliament said it wasn’t fit for purpose? As a treat? 🥺 committees.parliament.uk/publications...