Luke O’Sullivan

RQ 77.4!! 🎉🥳

Read about brazen, desirous, grim lady knights; women in early humanist circles; Indigenous authority in the 16th-century Andes; the rhetoric of precarity in early modern politics; & the story of a disabled Roman woman who self-advocated to write her own will.

Go check it out!! 😍

A few years ago, I found this manuscript which changed the course of my research. Delighted my article on early modern precarity and how 'précaire' went from being an obscure bit of jargon to a contentious buzzword has now been published in Renaissance Quarterly.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

A fringe group of bigoted weirdos have dragged British media, government, and law into their hateful obsession with trans people. Grim, depressing, and dangerous. Everyone with power in the UK who's played along should be ashamed of themselves.

Wow. it must feel terrible when someone takes something you made and uses it without permission or payment

To be modern is to know what is no longer possible

'How did this happen?' asks The Times, which has run thousands of pieces inciting hatred of trans people.

Guardian headline: bloodletting recommended after PFAS contamination

Quote from article explaining benefits of bloodletting.

2025
OUT: microplastics and forever chemicals

IN: Galenic medicine

Small ceramic tile depicting a black cat

A black cat looking admiringly at his portrait

Also recently put up this portrait of hector brought back from Mexico by a friend 🐈‍⬛

A discarded microwave covered in frost with a handwritten sign saying ‘it works correctly’

Psyching myself up for the start of term

Tiny French town left €10m fortune by a man who had never been there Thiberville in Normandy receives windfall worth five times annual budget from a Paris resident who was named after it

A guy from Paris, Roger Thiberville, left his fortune to a town called Thiberville. The mayor, Guy Paris, thanks this guy from Paris, Thiberville, for supporting his town, Thiberville. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Tiny French town left €10m fortune by a man who had never been there Thiberville in Normandy receives windfall worth five times annual budget from a Paris resident who was named after it

A guy from Paris, Roger Thiberville, left his fortune to a town called Thiberville. The mayor, Guy Paris, thanks this guy from Paris, Thiberville, for supporting his town, Thiberville. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

We had a thriving, even competitive HE system without "market exit", because we were competing a) internationally and b) for knowledge. We don't need to compete against each other for student numbers, or funding, or drive other universities to bankruptcy to be competitive. Academia is collaborative.

Yes please!

A host of cats looking at a book with mice on the pages with an owl perched atop

An owl teaching a cat the art of hunting mice, c. 1700

Que sera sera

I’ve spent the summer writing about precarity and violence, often contra Butler. But keep thinking of this in light of talk of ‘her right’ etc etc

No, no, and no!

This guy has literally never had a good idea about anything. Impressive!

Went to Scotland.

Le poète Joachim Du Bellay identifié dans un cercueil retrouvé à Notre-Dame de Paris La résolution de ce « cold case » constitue le point le plus spectaculaire du bilan des fouilles archéologiques réalisées sous la cathédrale, présenté mardi 17 septembre.

😮

#Team16e

www.lemonde.fr/culture/arti...

Me, Lucy, and Lucy’s Infected Thumb going on our holidays

Actually… Decided to Google and see what he actually looks like. And he does kinda look like he could have been a wrestler???

Emmanuel Carrere looks way more like a pro wrestler than I would have expected…

Having said that, here's some complaints about precarity (sort of...) at the Université de Paris, 1616

He was there in spirit but we agreed he would have absolutely hated being there in person :( It was his birthday last week — he’s only interested in parties where he is centre of attention.

3) not academic but I’m on a roll: I got married last month :)

I feel very lucky to be able to continue this work in such supportive conditions (and recognise the irony of how things have lined up). I’m so grateful to Helen, the Senior Tutor, and the GB at Hilda’s!