Kate Holmes

Having the opportunity to gift your learning is something special. Today, I went out for lunch with my gym coach & talked to him about how to be organised about his reading & how to engage deeply/consolidate what he reads. I may not be a lecturer anymore, but I love giving people learning tools.

Just waiting to see my second Circus City show. Bristol is so lucky to have this festival!

‘I was killed in virtually every film’: how trailblazing Chinese-American star Anna May Wong upended cinema A retrospective at the BFI celebrates how Wong – whether typecast in orientalist fantasies or breaking taboos with a kiss – could always steal the show

On Anna May Wong for the Guardian www.theguardian.com/film/2025/se...

Sounds right up my street. I feel that we should think about where we publish as a political act. The most obvious element being that publishing Open Access is decolonial. (Remembering that uploading to repositories do that without a publisher fee, where possible).

Ppl, they promised you Brexit would solve everything, and it was a piece of shit. They’re telling you leaving the ECHR will solve everything. It will also be a piece of shit.

Stop believing them. They talk self-serving bollocks.

I'm trying to make sense of only just learning my wonderful trapeze instructor, Mike Wright, died in April. Mike nurtured my love of aerial &, through that, inspired me to write academically about it. I so wanted to train with him again. I hope you're playing somewhere Mike, & cracking bad jokes.

Definitely my sort of thing! It feels like the sort of book, any of us really fascinated by embodiment & gender, should read.

Sometimes I'm so British it hurts. Yes, I'll complain when it's cold &, yes, I'm complaining now when 'it's too hot'. I am a Goldilocks; 21-23°C is just right.

Tonight was the programme launch and it was so good to see a few folks I hadn't seen for a while!

Circus City 2025: Bodies of Care Bodies of Care invites audiences to explore circus work that embeds practices of care into the way it is made and performed, and speaks to this important facet of human experience.

It's a good year because it's a #Circus City year & this year's programme looks really exciting! If you don't know what 'contemporary circus' is, then you can't go wrong with checking out what's on.

A PLACE TO GATHER 53 community of Chinese, Turkish, Latino, Jewish, and African American patrons had formed. "I like the way the program brings people together," Andrew explained. "But that's not all. The other reason I like it is because Tea Time is one of the best ways that the library can express faith in people. There's a term you don't hear these days, one you used to hear all the time when the Carnegie branches opened: Palaces for the People. The library really is a palace. It bestows nobility on people who can't otherwise afford a shred of it. People need to have nobility and dignity in their lives. And, you know, they need other people to recognize it in them too. Serving tea doesn't seem like that big a deal, but the truth is it's one of the most important things I do."

This part from the chapter on libraries in Palaces for the People made me cry especially as book banning and budget cuts threaten our libraries

One of my favorite quotes from academia I first read in a book by Stephen Fry, who attributes it to a don at Cambridge speaking, if I remember right, to students:

"Don't try to be clever. We're all clever here. Just try to be kind. A little kind."

Seems like it has great and wide utility.

This thing about having “an open and honest conversation about immigration” - the problem is that too many white English people treat non-white people as fundamentally inhuman. It’s simply as that. When people like that say “immigration” they mean “infection”.

UK now ranking alongside Russia and Hungary - tremendous work by the Labour party.

The amount of fairly established artists over the past few months revealing they're having to step back from creative work and look for work in non-art fields instead is disheartening. A career path in skilled work where it was possible to at least make ends meet now feels less and less possible.

Intelligent folks using ChatGPT to learn about aspects of Black culture, thinking it is an accurate source, accurate enough to then inform others, grieves my soul.

There are so many expert resources, books, articles, videos, websites — even human beings to learn from globally (it's beyond US).

I used to get one from my professional body & never read it. Sadly, they got junked in the end. I know a few people in my field were the same. I don't think academics tend to have time to read as widely as that anymore. They read to feed the writing of the next thing which means individual articles.

Interested in knowing what Open Access can mean for your career and how it can be more equitable? Sigh up for this great event from the University of Sheffield.

Cultural groups across U.S. told that federal humanities grants are terminated Among the thousands of groups affected by the sudden cessation of funds are state arts councils, museums, historic sites, archives, libraries, educators and media outlets in all 50 states.

Solidarity with all those getting grant termination notices from National Endowment for the Humanities this week. 😞

While the humanities may not have the easy "we cure cancer" talking points that some sciences do -- HUMANITIES SCHOLARSHIP IS IMPORTANT TOO!

Huge loss to our country.

#Academicsky

Struggling to write your thesis into a book? Here's my practical, nuts and bolts, advice on what to do once your proposal has been accepted: bdc.bris.ac.uk/2025/03/05/t... #academicsky

Big news: we are setting up a new non-profit organization to run bioRxiv and medRxiv. It's called openRxiv [no it's not a new preprint server; it's dedicated organization to oversee the servers] openrxiv.org 1/n

My piece for History Workshop looks back at what feels, I'm sure to me and so many other academics in the UK, like a decade-long crisis in universities. A crisis of politics, of a particularly venomous form of "education as market" ideology, and now a crisis of desperate, annihilating job cuts. 1/2

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🔗 Websites vanish. Links break. But knowledge can live on with your help. Use the Wayback Machine’s Save Page Now tool to archive webpages that are important to you. 🕰️ 💾

📌 Try it now: web.archive.org/save

YouTube video by Letters Live FKA Twigs and Minnie Driver read letters about the secret fury of 'nice' women

I mean, just, yes.

The Guardian view on Labour arts policy: time to make history again | Editorial Editorial: Sixty years ago this week, Jennie Lee launched Britain’s first culture white paper. Lisa Nandy must pick up the baton

'The date is not in many history books. But it should be. It is 60 years on Tuesday since Britain’s first minister for the arts, Jennie Lee, published the first UK government white paper on the arts.'

"Research reveals UK institutions educated 50 world leaders in post in 2022, despite job cuts, course closures and a fall in foreign students." #highered

www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Currently aged 45. I pivoted to HE libraries from being a post-doc arts researcher just over a year ago, with a fixed term contract ending in July. Feeling tippity-top! It's been on fire for a while but it feels like gasoline has been poured on to every part.

This is academic freedom: "By liberal values, we do not mean views aligned with any political ideology: a commitment to freedom and social justice;
tolerance and respect of difference;
open-mindedness coupled with intellectual curiosity;
generosity of spirit and a willingness to learn from others."

This January has felt like a bit of a funk (probably due to job insecurity, a pet death anniversary, missing sunlight & the state of the world) but I'm so grateful for a few crisp bright mornings, like today.

Open Access Toolkit for Aotearoa New Zealand Researchers