I was interviewed by the French History Network blog about my new @manchesterup.bsky.social book, 'Make cheese not war'. It was an ace opportunity to reflect on the lifecycle of a book project, personal encounters, research-led teaching (& vice versa) & more
frenchhistorysociety.co.uk/6838/
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‘Caravaggio exploits dress not so much as a language, but as a way of posing the question: what is it we’re most susceptible to? A scrap of fur? A feather on a thigh? Hard, burnished armour?’
@erinmaglaque.bsky.social on Caravaggio’s clothes.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Oh wow, there are already enough hallucinations in inquisition records before LLMs get involved...
24.02.2026 16:06 — 👍 6 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Fellowship Opportunity!
Jenny Wormald Junior Research Fellow in Women’s History
University of Oxford - St Hilda’s College
www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQL341/j...
Do you want to teach wonderful students alongside great colleagues? Look no further and apply! www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/assista...
16.02.2026 19:16 — 👍 7 🔁 8 💬 2 📌 0
Another very attractive job offer (only two years, alas) to join the Faculty of History in Cambridge!
www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/assista...
Very excited to see this out, congratulations Elly!!
13.02.2026 09:54 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Front cover of Violent Waters: Environmental Politics in Early Modern England by Elly Robson Dezateux.
Blurb of Violent Waters: How were environments and politics remade by sovereigns, floods, mapmakers, migrants, rioters, and writers during wetland improvement projects in early modern England? Violent Waters examines flagship ventures which promised to transform unruly fenland fringes into orderly terrain at the heart of national power and productivity. In practice, these projects sparked constitutional controversy, new floods, and huge riots. The first state-led project in Hatfield Level brought local, national, and transnational interests into contact and conflict for almost a century. Elly Robson Dezateux traces the environmental politics that emerged as water and land were constructed and contested, both mentally and materially. These disputes pivoted on urgent questions about risk and justice, which became entangled in civil war conflict and exposed the limits of central authority and technology. Ultimately, improvement was destabilised by a lack of legitimacy and the dynamism of local custom as a method of environmental management and collective action. Wetland communities, as much as improvers and sovereigns, remade the terrain of politics and the future of the fens.
Violent Waters: Environmental Politics in Early Modern England is out now with Cambridge University Press: www.cambridge.org/core/books/v...
This watery, riotous book has been more than a decade in the making, and I'm delighted to see it out in the world to live its own life!
Delighted to share the Call for Papers for a special issue of French Historical Studies on the theme "European-Indigenous Relations in the French Americas" (to be co-edited by Scott Berthelette and myself)
CFP and submission guidelines can be found here:
read.dukeupress.edu/french-histo...
'Working with Early Modern Letters' has arrived! ✉️✒️
An introduction to early modern letters and a guide to their use as historical sources, designed to be taken at your own pace.
📲Join us and book your place for just £100: imemsdurhamlearn.com/working-with...
Applications are open for the Addison Wheeler Fellowship at Durham's Institute of Advanced Studies, a 36-month postdoctoral position – please get in touch with a potential department mentor asap if you're interested!
www.dur.ac.uk/research/ins...
'The University of York and Swansea University have became the seventh and eighth universities to confirm they will not take up a three-year deal with the world’s biggest academic publisher'. Sheffield, Lancaster, Surrey, Kent, Essex and Sussex have already opted out.
06.02.2026 07:01 — 👍 33 🔁 18 💬 0 📌 0Oyez Valois historians medieval and early modern!
04.02.2026 08:24 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Check it out, we're planning a special issue of @frenchhistory.bsky.social for the 700th anniversary of the advent of the Valois dynasty! Details and timeline at the link below, but don't hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions 😊
04.02.2026 07:34 — 👍 35 🔁 24 💬 0 📌 3
Associate Professorship in Eighteenth Century History- Faculty of History - Worcester College- University of Oxford #skystorians 🗃️#c18th www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQE665/a...
29.01.2026 12:55 — 👍 2 🔁 7 💬 0 📌 0Thank you Kate for a wonderful keynote AND article!
29.01.2026 15:03 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Delighted to have had this joint article published - even if the keynote it grew out of was almost 3 years ago now! Thank you for being so patient with me @tombhamilton.bsky.social @frenchhistory.bsky.social
29.01.2026 13:57 — 👍 14 🔁 5 💬 1 📌 0
New article by Katherine Astbury and Abigail Coppins, 'French prisoner-of-war sociability in Hampshire during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars'
Open Access here: doi.org/10.1093/fh/c...
@frenchhistory.bsky.social
The Senses and Medical Humanities – 24 February
A one-day workshop exploring sensory studies and medical humanities, organised by @claireturner.bsky.social with the Institute for Medical Humanities, Durham University
Details here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-senses...
How is the concept of culture wars rooted in the social and political struggles of nineteenth-century Germany?
Robert D. Priest explores these little-known origins.
Durham History PhD candidate Ashleigh Percival-Borley will be appearing on BBC Radio 4's Free Thinking this Friday at 9pm
It's about 'Double Lives', from undercover field operatives to online anonymity, via lives led in the closet and large scale infidelity:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...
Call for Royal Historical Society PhD funding with text: The Royal Historical Society offers two annual PhD Fellowships for postgraduate historians in their third year of research at a university in the UK or overseas in order to complete a doctorate. The Fellowships comprise: Two RHS Centenary Fellowships: each Centenary Fellowship runs for 6-months and is worth £8,500 for final-year PhD students to complete their dissertations and to develop their research career. All Fellowships are open to candidates without regard to nationality or academic affiliation. They are jointly held with the Institute of Historical Research (IHR), University of London, where Fellows are based.
PhD funding for early career historians completing a doctorate.
Applications are invited for the Society's Centenary PhD Fellowships for the academic year 2026-27 bit.ly/49MzqmT.
Two awards of £8500 per student, held jointly with @ihr.bsky.social. Closing date: 31 January 2026 #Skystorians
1/ A shout out to seriously the most stunning article I have read perhaps ever - Erin Maglaque's in the December @Journalofmoder. I was one of the readers for this piece, and I even wrote in my report that it was such an intense read that I had to go for a walk afterwards to calm down.
14.01.2026 15:47 — 👍 105 🔁 42 💬 2 📌 1Congratulations to Marc Jaffré on his new article 'Sociability and Diplomacy at Louis XIII’s Court, 1610–1643': academic.oup.com/ehr/article-...
16.01.2026 12:52 — 👍 10 🔁 7 💬 0 📌 0
@brettrushforth.bsky.social says 'Colonisations' is 'among the most innovative contributions to French colonial scholarship for the pre-revolutionary period'.
But that was just a warm-up for co-editor Mélanie Lamotte's upcoming BY FLESH AND TOIL out this month!!
www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...
Talitha Ilacqua has won the Society for the Study of French History Book Prize for her book *Inventing the Modern Region: Basque Identity and the French Nation-State* (MUP, 2024). Congratulations!!
frenchhistorysociety.co.uk/prizes/winne...
@manchesterup.bsky.social
@frenchhistory.bsky.social
To summarize, the landscape of academia, just like the rest of the global political economy, is marked by a huge fracture engendered by colonialism that continues to operate as well as mutate. This book observes it and attempts to address it, but it is not in itself sufficient repair. We hope that it will act as a preliminary point d'étape in what remains an incomplete process of trying to produce a genuinely global form of knowledge that can help us navigate our shared, divided, burning world.
Brilliant round table online ahead of print from @frenchhistory.bsky.social on “Colonisations: notre histoire”, a history in reverse of France and empire, written by 268 contributors (!!!)
doi.org/10.1093/fh/c...
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VERY excited we get to discuss Mélanie Lamotte's book @ihreurope1500.bsky.social with @lrhodges.bsky.social & @juliehardwick.bsky.social and Mélanie herself!
18 May, 17:30 @ihr.bsky.social
Get your copy @harvardpress.bsky.social: www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...
#EarlyModern #SkyStorians
How have History Workshop Journal articles been used to teach history over the past 50 years?
From the French Revolution, to policing in early modern England, to LGBTQ+ histories, these reflections highlight the HWJ archive as a valuable resource within many different classrooms.
Covers of the following 5 new titles in the New Historical Perspectives book series. Forging Fraternity in Late Medieval Society, Rachael Harkes Atlantic Isles: Travel and Identity in the British and Irish West, 1880–1940, Gareth Roddy Waterscapes: Reservoirs, Environment and Identity in Modern England and Wales, Andrew McTominey Reading, Gender and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England, Hannah Jeans Voice, Silence and Gender in South Africa’s Anti-Apartheid Struggle, Rachel E. Johnson
In 2025 the Society was pleased to add 5 titles to its 'New Historical Perspectives' book series for early career historians bit.ly/4qh8eDt
This year saw publication of the 25th NHP title and the 200,000th download from the series. All books are available free Open Access @uolpress.bsky.social.
