Mary Laven

We Can Make an Impact. Stop the removal of Modern Languages courses at the University of Nottingham!

c.org/T5FKn56YzK Terrible decision to shut down Languages at Nottingham. Part of a wave of closures in the Humanities here and elsewhere in the UK. PLEASE SIGN!

An important piece taking stock of EDI @camhistory.bsky.social

Last week, I published a piece in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) critically assessing current attempts by political and scientific actors to counter the rise of right-wing parties in East Germany through new ‘lighthouse’ projects. Will this really help after years of neglect?

Esther Elizabeth Adaire. Neo-Nazi Postmodern: Right-Wing Terror Tactics, the Intellectual New Right, and the Destabilization of Memory in Germany since 1989 Imagine a young neo-Nazi in the early 1990s—likely with shaved hair and wearing a bomber jacket, maybe sitting on an overturned beer crate in a depressing

Happy to share my review of this timely book, just published in the AHR.

Esther Elizabeth Adaire. Neo-Nazi Postmodern: Right-Wing Terror Tactics, the Intellectual New Right, and the Destabilization of Memory in Germany since 1989 url: academic.oup.com/ahr/article-...

Congratulations to Professor Lucy Delap, appointed new Chair of Cambridge's History Faculty, to succeed Professor Mary Laven on 1 October 2025.

Lucy is Professor of Modern British & Gender History at @cam.ac.uk and a Fellow of Murray Edwards College.

@lucydelap.bsky.social @marylaven.bsky.social

Image of the eight titles shortlisted for the Royal Historical Society's First Book Prize for early career historians, 2025. Royal Justice and the Making of the Tudor Commonwealth, 1485-1547, by Laura Flannigan (Cambridge University Press) Intimate Subjects: Touch and Tangibility in Britain’s Cerebral Age, by Simeon Koole (University of Chicago Press) Female Servants in Early Modern England, by Charmian Mansell (British Academy / Oxford University Press) The Capital Market of Manila and the Pacific Trade, 1668-1838: Institutions and Trade during the First Globalization, by Juan Jose Rivas Moreno (Palgrave MacMillan) Segregated Species: Pests, Knowledge, and Boundaries in South Africa, 1910–1948, by Jules Skotnes-Brown (Johns Hopkins University Press) The Quislings. The Trials of Norwegian Wartime Collaborators, 1941–1964, by Anika Seemann (Cambridge University Press) Pistols in St Paul’s: Science, Music, and Architecture in the Twentieth Century, by Fiona Smyth (Manchester University Press) Desire and Disunity: Christian Communities and Sexual Norms in the Late Antique West, by Ulriika Vihervalli (Liverpool University Press)

The shortlist for the Society's 2025 First Book Prize for early career historians is now available bit.ly/4kkm4lW

Eight titles have been selected, following an open call for submissions of books published in 2024. Two winners of the 2025 prize will be announced in July.

#Skystorians

Guardian front page: Summer likely to be hottest ever in UK By Helena Horton Sarah Butler This summer is expected to be the warmest on record for the UK, the Met Office said yesterday after four heatwaves in the country since June. The mean temperature for summer is tracking at 16.13C (61.03F), which is significantly above the record of 15.76C set in 2018. Many remember 1976 as being a scorching summer with a record heatwave, but this data would relegate that year out of the top five warmest summers since records began in 1884. It would mean all five of the warmest summers on record had occurred since 2000. The Met Office scientist Emily Carlisle said: "Provisional Met Office statistics show that summer 2025 will almost certainly be the warmest summer on record ... Unless temperatures are around four degrees below average for the rest of August, which the forecast does not not suggest.

Bart Simpson: This is the hottest summer of my life Homer Simpson: This is the coldest summer of the rest of your life

Summer likely to be hottest ever in UK

British "debate" on migration is in the gutter, but we should still be shocked that Labour's response yesterday was to criticise Farage for being insufficiently detailed in his plan for mass detention camps.

🔎 New research identifies 19th-century welfare cuts as a major cause of rise in early-childhood mortality.

The findings - from researchers incl. @camhistory.bsky.social's Prof Simon Szreter - reveal a politically-induced cause of the irregular drop in survival rates during this period.

Read more⬇️

In hope and trepidation ...

Tell The Government: Strengthen UK-EU Environmental Cooperation Climate change and environmental problems don't respect borders. The UK and EU must work together to protect our shared environment, tackle the climate crisis, and preserve biodiversity for future gen...

I just signed this petition calling for better cooperation with the EU on the environment. Will you add your name, too? www.europeanmovement.co.uk/uk-eu-enviro...

Bring back the ancient woodlands smothered beneath your timber plantations Ancient woodlands are vanishing – and with them, some of our most loved and endangered wildlife. Forestry England manages over 100,000 acres of land that used to be ancient woodland - that’s bigger th...

🌳 Will you sign the petition to help restore the Ghost Woods and protect our green spaces for future generations? you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/pr...

Just received news that 27 people have been arrested in Parliament Square under the Terrorism Act 2000 for holding signs saying "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action".
This is real police state behaviour.

Open Letter re the Chancellorship of the University of Cambridge The next Chancellor will, we are told, ‘play a vital part in Cambridge’s public-facing activities, fundraising, and in providing advice to senior members of the University’. To do this successfully…

Open letter re Lord Browne's candidacy for Chancellor of the University of Cambridge now at 300 signatures. 🥳

chancellorletter.wordpress.com/2025/07/01/o...

Texas floods reveal limitations of disaster forecasting under climate crisis Texas’s ‘flash flood alley’ could bring even more floods in near future as Trump cuts compound with warming climate

The rainstorm that caused the Texas flooding disaster was of a severity that would occur just once in 1,000 years in a stable climate.

This was a complex, compound tragedy of a type that climate warming is making more frequent.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Open Letter re Chancellorship Open Letter re the Chancellorship of the University of Cambridge The next Chancellor will, we are told, ‘play a vital part in Cambridge’s public-facing activities, fundraising, and in providing advi...

350 signatures! including many plucky fighters from the tuition fee wars of 2010-11.

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Some welcome publicity (in yesterday's Times) for our open letter opposing Lord Browne of Madingley's bid for the Chancellorship of the University of Cambridge -- the letter is at chancellorletter.wordpress.com

My letter in today’s Guardian.

'Global Histories of the Portuguese Revolution' - co-edited by @camhistory.bsky.social's @pramospinto.bsky.social - goes beyond the limits of national history to locate the revolution at the intersection of transnational historical phenomena.

A new global approach to this still understudied event ⬇️

Campaigning for Cam Uni Chancellor to be an ethical force. Focusing on its core purposes, education, research, and caring for all its staff and students. Severing all connections with oil and arms. @mikescialom.bsky.social @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social @owenjones.bsky.social @georgemonbiot.bsky.social

The sea is now the only available conduit to bring essential aid to Palestinians. If Israel attacks these aid flotillas, as it has threatened, it will also set a dangerous long-term precedent of unlawful policing in international waters, which will further entrench its unlawful occupation on land.

And a great chance to hear our brilliant colleagues @julieb534.bsky.social @arthurasseraf.bsky.social and Sujit Sivasundaram speaking about why History matters.

@thomaspiketty.bsky.social
@ehess.fr
@pse.bsky.social
@pramospinto.bsky.social
@historyecon.bsky.social

Many thanks to Emily Betz for a great conversation.

A lovely piece about our wonderful colleague Peter Mandler.

Did you know the UK has the worst record on homelessness in the OECD? Some reflections on both the numbers and the people who lay behind them

Pro-Palestine student activists at Cambridge Uni disrupted graduation in protest saying:

“Cambridge Uni is complicit in genocide in Gaza,” one student protester said, holding a Palestinian flag.

“Over 60k have been killed by Israel, & Cambridge continues to invest in Israeli arms,” she added.

1/2 Vladimir Kara-Murza, Cambridge graduate and Russian opposition politician, presented the 2025 Trevelyan Lecture at Magdalene College on 8 March, chaired by our Regius professor, Christopher Clark...

Busy auditorium, with large screen showing the order of lectures, and T Piketty on the stage.

Great excitement in Cambridge as Thomas Piketty gives the second of his three lectures. I think this is the first time in 15 years that I have seen historians, economists, geographers, and political scientists all in one room.

Urban history from the peripheries In 1908, the Warsaw Politseimeister General Meier got into an argument with the city’s president, Alexander Miller. The proverbial bone of contention was the responsibility for the sanita…

How did the definition of the 'urban' and the 'suburban' affect the lives of residents?

Antoni Porayski-Pomsta (@camhistory.bsky.social) addresses this important question through his research on early twentieth century Warsaw