Liesbeth Corens

A couple of hours to get a replacement ballot! If you had initially received it & discarded it, but now can see all the branches that are pushed to strike on their own (+IN SOME CASES ALREADY WON) and realise that it would be vital to give staff a seat at the table again: you can still get a new one

Same thing is happening to "high-performing" research centres at Coventry.

The cuts at Leicester University are also targeting some of our top REF (and NSS) performers: History; Film Studies; Chemistry; Modern Languages; Geography, Geology & Environment

I’ve been trying to figure out a good lyric from Chicago or Sister Act to play the meme, but none is going to top this one is it…

🎶Papal reign, papal reign…🎶

HUGELY looking forward to @araujohistorian.bsky.social’s paper in a week’s time! (So much so that we’re going to ignore that that means *IT’S DECEMBER IN A WEEK’S TIME*)

Join us in lovely Bloomsbury or on zoom!

#EarlyModern #SkyStorians

Reposting this. If you're interested in the early modern Low Countries, these are the people to follow.
#earlymodern

<adding learning Sicilian to my To Do list to get away with uttering how I really feel without people knowing>

Oh fuck yes. And they’re not even subtle about it anymore, are they…

It's rarely a question anymore of who's 'good at it' - every department everywhere produces great work - it's that the people assessing what 'good' actually DOES have such a very narrow sense of it. 'Good' is only ever commercial, serves the private sector, or 'innovates' in profitable terms.

Failure to Drain: Expert Resistance and Environmental Thought in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic* Abstract. Historical scholarship has long highlighted the extensive landscape interventions initiated by state agents, early capitalists and experts in the

I *adore* it when we get to see a paper we hosted a version of at an @ihr.bsky.social seminar! This time; @annalunapost.bsky.social’s brilliant work on expert resistance & environmental thought @pastpresentsoc.bsky.social:

Exciting work for #SkyStorians into #EarlyModern #EnvHist or #LowCountries

This is a pattern that pervades the post REF2021 era. See also for example Kent, or at UoA level History, where the top 4 performing UoAs have all faced significant redundancies after their high results.

What does the White Paper (and DSIT/UKRI) mean by advocating 'specialism' in this context? 2/2

'It is notable that in the last Research Excellence Framework exercise the Department of American Studies at Nottingham was ranked third in the Area Studies unit of assessment and was one of the top-performing units across the whole of the University of Nottingham.' 1/2

The drive for ‘specialisation’ in what universities are ’good at’ is seldom going to translate in investment in the humanities, isn’t it?

Places that are going everything right & all that’s demanded of them are still being punished. And that alone tells you we need a new (less arbitrary) system.

Our caseworkers have been working extremely hard supporting members through the endless restructures and individual protected concersations.

We need a mandate to put and end to this barrage and not let colleagues be picked off one by one. ##UKHE #UCU

Shamelessly plagiarised @ducu.bsky.social’s excellent 26 Reasons To Vote In The Ballot blogpost for our branch Comms.

If you don’t have time to read 26 reasons [then you absolutely should vote as they’re overworking you], read a condensed 5: qmucu.org/2025/11/21/v...

LAST DAY TO REQUEST YOUR REPLACEMENT BALLOT! yoursay.ucu.org.uk/s3/wearetheu...

Join us in helping to get staff a voice again.

Perdi mi PhD por bullying y abuso académico. No quiero que mi historia termine en silencio. Ayúdame a que se escuche: comparte y etiqueta a quienes puedan ayudar. I lost my PhD because of bullying and... TikTok video by Angel

QMUL acknowledged bullying by upholding a complaint, & confirmed that his academic progress was good by signing off on his progression. Yet they accept the funder's declaration of dissatisfaction & deregister, risking his visa?

#UKHE
📸 www.instagram.com/reel/DQzqntL...
🐦 x.com/sism94/statu...

this thread pairs nicely with the excellent responses to which historians are beautiful prose writers: bsky.app/profile/onsl... #SkyStorians

HE SAID WHAT??

How hard is that no because surely this can be negotiated. And surely it will involve Daniel Craig absolutely boring the man to death all through the shooting of the fourth movie demanding to be teamed up with Miss Piggy.

carbs, caffeine, and certain death: the university and Panera experience.

further confirming that other lesson they don't teach in MBAs: trust and reputation takes a long time to build and once you've destroyed it you can't get it back straight away. All those 'short-term' cost-cutting measures forget that in doing so they remove the foundation of income.

What a notion. Mindblowing. (I genuinely keep looking on in horror at the disconnect from reality in all the single-minded prioritisation of profit. Many a strategy meeting would be vastly improved with the addition of one ppt: slide "let's start from the assumption that people actually give a shit"

Absolutely agreed.

And an excellent analog to so many things and so much expertise that people don't see as part of a process and thus think happen without that process.

oh hiiii. Cutting all the things that make you you in order to save money, and those cuts resulting in a worse experience and therefore a drop in income? Where have I heard that before?

(Can someone infiltrate the MBA programmes & set up a module on 'people actually care about stuff, not profits'?)

ha, jullie hebben duidelijk een grote WhatsApp group nodig met *alle* werkers van het Hoger Onderwijs.... Als Engeland iets vertelt, dan is het dat dat het goed is dat dat kleiner collectief heel publiek kan zijn zodat het meteen meer mensen omarmd. Ik duim alvast heel hard mee.

OMG OMG OMG! Belgian universities ARE SPEAKING OUT! And brilliantly collectively. LOOK! hogeronderwijsinopstand.be

Belgian unis are also facing drastic cuts that will change what universities are. It's so hopeful to see staff pulling together so thoughtfully. Let's protect what we know to matter.

I'm going to pull my Jansenist upbringing shortly in dealing with the mess.

Jewish. Perpetual intellectual wrestling. bsky.app/profile/wool...