JD Roberts

Entering the postdoc world has vastly increased my sympathy for those curates in old novels who are desperately seeking a vacant parish where they can become a vicar and earn a living

Perhaps AI needs some kind of scholarly haha, so its view isn't ruined by unpicturesque subjective humans?

A landscape centring on a flooded bridge over a shallow lake. The edges of the bridge are visible, but the middle is completely submerged. An old birch tree leans left towards the left-hand edge of the frame, while the background is the brown-green of bog, and the top of the picture shows a mass of grey clouds over a clearer horizon

Flooded bridge after heavy rain

A mid-sized cricket with dark sides and a green back to the head, thorax and wings, facing left away from the camera and perched in a bush with long but rounded green leaves

Bog bush-cricket (Metrioptera brachyptera) - sat in some bog myrtle (Myrica gale), appropriately enough

A chesnut brown cricket with darker middle of the pronotum 'saddle' and short wings perched on a grass stem facing right

Dark bush-cricket, Pholidoptera griseoaptera. Always nice to get a photo of this one, the adults have such a lovely chesnut colour but also tend to hide in brambles where you can't see them and chirp at you

YouTube video by JD Roberts Wildwoods (MV)

Take a break from doomscrolling, relax and immerse yourself in exploring the Wildwoods...
(I have a new single out)
youtu.be/PeN4k-THfPs

A small dark brown cricket perched on a brown leaf above bright green moss facing left away from the camera

Wood cricket, Nemobius sylvestris. Tiny little animals, but they make the most amazing sound!

A large black beetle with antler-like mandibles and a broad head facing left towards the camera

Lesser stag beetle, Dorcus parallelipipedus. I think this species gets a bit overshadowed by its larger relative, but it's still a very impressive beastie!

Undressed, by AEMC2 11 track album

Very proud to have been part of this awesome project - 11 experimental electronic musicians came together to make an acoustic album, now out for you to listen to!
aemc2.bandcamp.com/album/undres...

Johnny was a patriot
He bedecked the town
With Union Jacks on ev'ry street
All flying upside down

A brown grasshopper with short wings and and orange abdomen facing left away from the camera perched on spike green gorse

Heath grasshopper, Corthippus vagans. Brown and nondescript, but charming nonetheless, with a sandy colour to match the sandy heaths it lives on, as well as stripy legs and an orange abdomen which contrast rather nicely with the green gorse and purple heather

A dark brown, almost blakc, grasshopper with red hindlegs and a red abdomen perched on a light brown grass stem facing left

Woodland grasshopper, Omocestes rufipes - in black and red!

Trevor’s Virtual Cassette Library 112 ///landed.embraced.deaf. Welcome, traveler.
You’ve just tuned into Trevor’s Virtual Cassette Library, Episode 112.
This one’s titled Landed Embraced Deaf—your metaphysical coordinates: ///landed.embraced.deaf.This is a 90-minute sonic transmission.
Built for walking meditations, mental wanderings, and quiet communion with the universe.
No commentary. No interruptions. Just pure signal.At the halfway mark, expect a metaphysical flip.
A shift in the current. Let it carry you.

Trevor’s Virtual Cassette Library 112

///landed.embraced.deaf. Welcome, traveler.
You’ve just tuned into Trevor’s Virtual Cassette Library, Episode 112.
This one’s titled Landed Embraced Deaf—your metaphysical coordinates: ///landed.embraced.deaf.This is a 90-minute sonic transmission.
Built for…

YouTube video by JD Roberts Monotron jam in the New Forest

Sat in the woods with a little synth and an amp. Nice to keep things simple! youtu.be/GudaORtvmCk

A bright green grasshopper sat on a blade of grass

Large marsh grasshopper, Stethophyma grossum. They live in sphagnum bogs, so I got very wet feet photographing them

Against academic monocultures: a(n anti-)workshop series On refinding/rewilding the academic ‘self’ Have you lost your way in the academia? Academic culture can make us feel tired, depleted and exhausted. It is a culture that privileges production (indee…

Heya. I got a bit bored by people asking me how to navigate away from the cycles of exhaustion and exploitation that the academia seems exceptionally well inclined to produce. So I decided to run a workshop on it. An antiwork-antishop, in effect. Sign up below.

janabacevic.net/against-acad...

A bright green grasshopper sat on a bramble leaf facing left

Common green grasshopper, Omocestes viridulus. Poor thing has lost an antenna somewhere along the way, but is still a very handsome shade of green on the thorax which contrasts very nicely with those dark sides to the wings

What's doubly annoying is you can do good history using quantitative methods, but when you do it gets overlooked in favour of bad science with flashy answers

We did some really nice (if I say so myself) epi analysis of historical data with proper context here, for example: doi.org/10.1017/ext....

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed reading - and yeah, absolutely, it's so wonderful we have these places!

Ah yeah, the 'your company' - it is really weird how some of the advertising algorithms seem to have decided I'm a small business owner

I keep getting ads which have the basic message of "are you extremely terrible at your job? Don't worry, our AI tool can do your thinking for you!"
Which definitely says something about how the tech firms view their customers

A mottled pale brown grasshopper sat on a stone facing left towards a patch of short grass

A rather cute mottled grasshopper (Myrmeleotettix maculatus) I met on Peel Hill

A mottled green and pale straw-brown grasshopper sat on a blue-green blade of grass, facing upwards and to the left

A mottled green and straw-brown grasshopper sat in a sunbeam

A tiny green and brown grasshopper hiding among blades of grass

The lesser mottled grasshopper, Stenobothrus stigmaticus. A beautiful little animal which is amazingly well-camoflaged in the grass. The only place in the British Isles where you can reliably find it is on the Isle of Man, where I took these photos

I always struggle with 'how your research speaks to the major questions in the field' because, honestly, I'm not particularly interested in what the big boys are arguing about, and I don't believe for one minute they care what I have to say about it anyway

A blue butterfly with pale brown wings folded upwards sitting on a green leaf, facing left

Common blue, Polyommatus icarus

Jon Roberts – ‘Wild Castles: Medieval Fortifications as Ecological Refuges’ In this blog, Jonathan David Roberts shares his reflections on the changing role of medieval fortifications on natural landscapes following a series of walks in his local area. Leaving the footpath…

"castles such as Watch Hill and Rougemont have become fortifications once more, sheltering not armoured knights but plants and animals. Birds and badgers have taken up residence in the structures built as homes for aristocrats." - me on castles and wildlife nehnetwork.wordpress.com/2025/06/03/j...

Any historians of science or environmental historians on here interested in collaborating on a project about the use of Caribbean plants as microscope dyes in 19th-20th centuries? I have a project outline, but I'd need a collaborator and an institution to help me put together a funding application

Common blue, Polyommatus icarus. The males are bright blue, the females are more subdued, but no less beautiful

Trevor’s Virtual Cassette Library 093 Astral Kitchen Trevor here, transmitting from home base Sollentuna, Sweden. This is your gateway to another immersive expedition through sound—Trevor’s Virtual Cassette Library 093 A 90-minute journey with a metaphysical flip at the halfway mark—perfect for a long walk, a mental wander, or a quiet moment alone with the universe. Today's flight is sponsored by the labels that keep our circuits humming: Moniker Eggplant, Mystery Circles, whitelabrecs, Moolakii Club Audio Interface, Imaginary North, Subexotic Records, Moon Glyph, Castles In Space.

Trevor’s Virtual Cassette Library 093

Astral Kitchen Trevor here, transmitting from home base Sollentuna, Sweden. This is your gateway to another immersive expedition through sound—Trevor’s Virtual Cassette Library 093 A 90-minute journey with a metaphysical flip at the halfway mark—perfect for a…

a green beetle against bright white grit

Green tiger beetle, Cicindela campestris