Laura Kelly

Thanks @ciaranon.bsky.social - it was such an honour to write this with Carole and Roisin, two scholars and friends I’ve learned so much from. Thanks to @irishhistsoc.bsky.social, in particular @elainefarrell.bsky.social & @clodaghtait.bsky.social

Interactive AIDS Quilt The National AIDS Memorial, through a partnership with the AIDS Quilt Touch team, presents all 48,000 panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt in an interactive experience People around the world can experie...

“The National AIDS Memorial, through a partnership with the AIDS Quilt Touch team, presents all 50,000 panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt in an interactive experience so people around the world can experience the beauty of the Quilt and witness the love and stories stitched into each panel.”

Drawing of a human head in wax resist charcoal and paint, the head is greyish pink, bald with black and orange eye and an ambiguous expression floating amongst blue and purple lines the word grief is written abov, below the date 17367 and the initials JW

Grief created by Joan Wisdom, November 1967, in the art therapy studio at Netherne hospital, Surrey where she was compelled to live.
Her surviving works express distress & critique the psychiatric system which held power over her & the dehumanisation she experienced within it

Cassie Ramone singing on stage with a guitar.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart band on stage.

Cassie Ramone and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart in Glasgow tonight. This would have been a dream gig for me in 2009 but I don’t think either played Ireland then. So good to see them both tonight ❤️

Responsible Pleasure: The Brook Advisory Centres and Youth Sexuality in Postwar Britain Abstract. This book is a sociocultural history of young people’s sexuality in Britain from the 1960s to the 1990s, using the Brook Advisory Centre (Brook)

academic.oup.com/book/56382

‘The Doctor Made Clear His Utter Contempt of Me, and I Can Remember It Still’1: Unmarried Women’s Experiences of Accessing the Pill in Scotland c. 1968–1980 Summary. In 1968, the barrier of marital status was removed from oral contraception. This meant that for the first time, unmarried women could legally acce

academic.oup.com/shm/article/...

8. ‘The Pill for an unmarried girl is hardly going to improve her character’: The impact of changing sexual behaviours on the construction of adulthood in Scotland, c.1968–80 | Adulthood in Britain an... Transforming scholarly publications into living digital works.

read.uolpress.co.uk/read/adultho...

We're discussing youth sexuality in my 'Sex, medicine and society' tutorial tomorrow so wanted to flag these brilliant publications by @kristinwh0.bsky.social on unmarried women & contraception in Scotland and @carorusterholz.bsky.social's fantastic book on the Brook Centres! Links below (all OA).

Was really struck by what a lovely inspiring exercise this is, like a primary school version of Mary Oliver’s Instructions for living a life
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it

Learning From The Neighbours: Multiculturalism in Ireland and the UK | Office in Dublin | European Parliament

This discussion on multiculturalism in Ireland and Britain is happening *tonight* in Europe House in Dublin

Hopefully see any Dubs I follow there

dublin.europarl.europa.eu/en/events/le...

May McGee was such a courageous woman and had a huge impact. Ní bheidh a leithéid arís ann. RIP.

As we await a verdict in the trial of Soldier F, another reminder that in 2010 the Bloody Sunday inquiry found

- the killings were unjustified
- none of the 14 dead (7 of whom were children) had guns
- no warnings were given
- no soldiers were under threat
- the troops were the first to open fire

"Q. Now, as you were lying on the ground did you come to see any of the soldiers or any soldier? A. I seen one walking across the square from the entrance where they came in walking towards, diagonally across the square towards where we were lying. Q. .. could you tell whether it was the first soldier? A. It was the first soldier came in. The thing that suit out the must was his rect of em a emerent pattern, ... more like a smock, a smock combat jacket and it was ... Q. And what happened when he approached? A. He walked past me and Mr McKinney and before he did come across I heard a voice, a woman calling 'Lie still, pretend you're dead. I must have moved, I didn't know I was shot at the time, I still thought it was a rubber bullet for I was going to try and get up and run and I lay and let on I was dead. And he walked, he walked past us ... Mr Wray moved and as he approached Mr Wray he fired two shots into him ... (then) went under the walkway and I don't know where he went then ... he came back ... leaned against the wall and took the helmet off and rubbed the back of his, rubbed his forehead with his hand. (And said). 'I've got another one Dave.' ... (He had) blond hair ... there was a lot of shouting behind me 'We're pulling out Dave.'"

This is the evidence given by Joseph Mahon at the trial of Soldier F who wa found not guilty today. He was 16 when he was shot on Bloody Sunday, read it and digest the reality of British Justice when the victims aren’t classed as fully human

Join us on Wednesday afternoon next week for the @cshhh.bsky.social 20th anniversary! We have two fantastic public lectures from Tracey Loughran & @joannabourke.bsky.social! Tell your friends, tell your students and come along! #HistSex #HistMed

'GLINTS: Glasgow Lab for Intersex, Non-Binary & Trans Studies' printed in coral on a lavender background

A reminder that if you're in the area it is not too late to join us at the Glasgow Lab for Intersex, Non-Binary and Trans Studies launch event tomorrow afternoon! Register here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/glints-lau...

What's happening to my colleague Mark Bray is disgusting. Him and his family are being doxed and getting death threats by right wing supposed "free speech" advocates bc wrote a book about anti fascism. You can't make this shit up! Our universities must fight back.

Please acknowledge what is happening to American professors right now.

We do not deserve this.

Please consider emailing your government’s department of foreign affairs to demand the release of activists aboard the Freedom Flotilla Coalition ships.

🇮🇪 Irish friends: it takes two mins to email Tánaiste/Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Simon Harris at Simon.harris@oireachtas.ie

Greta Thunberg speaks to the press after being released from illegal detainment in Israel: "I could talk for a very, very long time about our mistreatment and abuses in our imprisonment. Trust me, but that is not the story.”

Even back in the 70s and 80s when I could be hassled by the police for walking while trans, no one ever tried to stop me pissing in the Ladies or tried to make me change into my swimsuit among men.

There is no dignity or respect involved in taking away rights I have exercised freely for forty years

The emblem of modern Ireland? Not fiddles and Guinness but a soulless shopping plaza | Emer McHugh The singer CMAT dances around a retail centre in a video for her new album. It is the elegy those of us who grew up in the post-Celtic tiger recession have been craving, says Irish writer Emer McHugh

me on @cmatbaby.bsky.social’s EURO-COUNTRY and why it gives voice to a distressingly normalised post-recession malaise. i hope you read!

Great piece, Emer!

Such an important piece. Thank you, @larafreidenfelds.bsky.social.

Miscarriage is a Crime Again In 1650, a young, single English servant named Anne Greene miscarried into the privy and did not tell anyone. We know her story because she was arrested for infanticide, convicted despite exonerati…

This week @larafreidenfelds.bsky.social argues that in a post Roe vs Wade world “Women who lose pregnancies, even before viability, are targeted in ways that strongly resemble early modern infanticide investigations.” nursingclio.org/2025/08/20/m...

I have a new article in Modern Italy on mothers, children in 1970s Italian feminist magazine Effe - a lot familiar in their discussions of emotions, expectations and experience of mothering although I especially like their ideas about the radical potential of maternal love

doi.org/10.1017/mit....

Nothing made slavery’s toxicity more obvious to Union troops than its effect on the fundamental unit of society, the family. For one thing, slave sales separated families. In the Upper South, where many Union soldiers were stationed in 1861, about one in three first marriages was broken by sale, and about half of all slave children were separated from at least one parent. 129 With their own eyes, soldiers saw slavery snap bonds between parents and children. The men of the Seventh Wisconsin were awakened by gunshots one November night. The following day, soldiers “learned, and saw the cause of the alarm in the form of two negro women—a mother and a daughter.” The pair had fled to Union lines to avoid the proposed sale of the “goodlooking” daughter into the so-called fancy trade, which soldiers viewed as a form of concubinage. Outraged by the plight and moved by the vulnerability of the mother and daughter, “every private in the ranks” cursed “that system which tramples on the honor of man, and makes merchandise of the virtue of women,” according to one member of the regiment. 130 When an Iowan encountered a young child about to be sold by her own father, who was also her master, he vowed, “By G–d I’ll fight till hell freezes over and then I’ll cut the ice and fight on.” 131

from chandra manning's wonderful book "what this cruel war was over"

much easier to understand the sheer bloody intensity of the civil war when you have a good grasp on just how terrible slavery was.

If you want to put back statues and memorials and names of Confederate traitors while tearing down museum exhibitions on slavery because they don't show the greatness of the nation... the nation whose history you're celebrating is whiteness. The kind of nationalist you are is a white nationalist.