Antara Datta

Apparently my copy is on the way! Congratulations @kalathmika.bsky.social!

In NICUs we generally don’t stay overnight. We could visit any time we wanted though in the two hospitals we were in. Funnily enough he’s now 8 (and absolutely fine- all hail modern medicine) and still hates bed sharing…🤣

You have to stay and sleep with your child in the general paeds wards and despite the generally excellent care, it is usually hell. (Not to mention that you have a sick child…).

Yes so again pumps are available but we often have to rent hospital grade ones (I did). And yes there are chairs but sitting in those for hours is impossible. I’ll be honest and say I have found the NICUs to be relatively better equipped than the paeds wards.

As a former NICU mum of a 26 weeker, a lot of the money we raise provides for what I suppose are deemed extras- incubator blankets, parents’ coffee rooms, nicer reclining chairs for breastfeeding etc.

New on advance access: "Air Travel, Statelessness, and the Rights Claims of Ugandan Asians, c.1973"

by @riakapoor.bsky.social (@qmul.bsky.social)

#OpenAccess

doi.org/10.1093/past...

And also helped me think through something I am writing about repatriation at the end of WW2 and thinking through the state’s intransigence versus the refugees’ creative use of their circumstances.

I read it yesterday and really enjoyed it. Particularly the contrast between the state’s pejorative view of queue jumpers and ‘shuttlecocking’ versus how the displaced saw these as opportunities.

Race Reports In July 2025, the University of Edinburgh published a wide-ranging ‘Review of Race and History’ that attempts to confront its legacies of enslavement and colonialism. Four months earlier, the Universi...

UK universities claim to be reckoning with their imperial and colonial pasts, but refuse to see their implication in the genocidal settler colonialism of the present – so how serious are these exercises? wrote about this for @versobooks.bsky.social blog

www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/...

🚨Hiring a fully funded (3.5 years) PhD for the @ldnsocmedobs.bsky.social to research social media and politics. Candidates should have quantitative/computational skills and/or be interested in content curation/moderation. UK home candidates only unfortunately. www.royalholloway.ac.uk/media/hquftp...

A superb special issue on caste and Indian diplomacy. Well done @kalathmika.bsky.social and the other editors! brill.com/view/journal...

I have. I did a single seminar for PhD students. For organisation I showed them what my practice was in a very granular step by step way. And took suggestions from them (younger, technically more competent?) about what I could do better. Or how they would improve my practice.

Congratulations to my lovely colleague Andreu @andreucasas.bsky.social on his fellowship- keep an eye on all the stuff he’s going to be doing!

Helen Charman | Of Flags and Families The new home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, said in May (in an interview with Michael Gove for the Spectator) that she has...

‘The conditions in the hotels are very bad: most residents share rooms with complete strangers, have no laundry or cooking facilities, no choice about when or what they eat, with any visits strictly policed by security.’

Helen Charman on ‘our girls’ vs asylum hotels: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/se...

Come to our lovely campus to hear about how @danielalai.bsky.social, Will Jones, Ibrahim Halawi and Mohammad Kalantari and I have been re-designing our ‘intro to IR’ class over the last five years.

I once got asked for it by an officious bus driver when my younger one wasn’t even six. She kept saying: how do I know he isn’t 11? Because he’s half the size of his brother who is 10????! But to be fair that was the only time…

I think when they get closer to 11 it’s a way of showing that they can still travel for free/proof of age. My younger one who takes the Tube to school uses his everyday because it means we can go through the barriers separately and not wait for the wide gate to go through with me.

Many congratulations!

This is the kind of thing that’s harder after the first book/big project slump. Also learning what to say no to is discipline specific but again a steep learning curve (I am especially bad at this…).

True. And I would find it hard to mentor someone who only worked in a lab/group. But within social sciences/humanities I think you can mentor more generally- eg how to block out writing time in the week. I got some top notch advice from @thomstubbs.bsky.social on this btw!

Which leads to the more helpful question I think which is how do we support junior faculty through that tricky post first book/big tranche of publications phase?

Also: maternity leave and a gap for those with caring responsibilities (esp women)? Also it’s not just monographs, typically in the humanities we do big projects that take time to mature so once you have the material for tenure published it’s going to take time to build up to the next one?

Amjad Iraqi | Walking Corpses Israel’s allies are still buying time for Israel to change course or come to a deal with Hamas over how many trucks to...

‘Israel’s allies are still buying time for Israel to change course or come to a deal with Hamas over how many trucks to allow in, as though food were a legitimate bargaining chip. Gazans cannot afford to wait for either.’

Amjad Iraqi on the blog: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ju...

Re-stating the obvious for any one still in doubt.

I am working on 'The Asian Mother and Baby Campaign' which ran from 1984-1986. I would love to interview any linkworkers who were employed by the campaign or any women who were supported by linkworkers. Please spread the word or get in touch if this is you! My email is saima.nasar@bristol.ac.uk

📣 If you’re in London on 7 July, join us at our mini workshop on Global South Politics! The programme is below. If interested, please email me!

For historians this was true pre pandemic but with access to many archives shut for several years, those with fingers in more than one pie benefitted. Also, my one ‘big’ project actually splintered in 2/3 one of which is a book, but the others are articles.

Read @uttara.bsky.social’s excellent new paper on exit control!

Wait, Why Is Israel Allowed To Have Nukes? According to our elected leaders, we should be very scared of the possibility that Iran could get a nuclear bomb. But Israel already has them, and its government is increasingly unstable and belligere...

[And since we're finally asking questions, why is Israel allowed to commit genocide?]