Liam J. Liburd

Spaces of empire: histories and afterlives of film collections in British colonial archives

Emma Sandon (Birkbeck), 'Spaces of Empire: Histories and Afterlives of Film Collections in British Colonial Archives', 10 February 5:30 pm GMT, at the IHR, London and on Zoom. Free, friendly and open to the public. Please register by the link below. #Skystorians.

This two-day workshop will explore several questions. How can environmental history complement or offer alternatives to existing historiographical narratives and periodisations in British history? What new actors, events, or phenomena might come to the fore? How should it foster engagements with places beyond its national borders or with other disciplines? Is environmental history different from longstanding traditions of ‘landscape’ or ‘urban’ histories of Britain? What contributions can historians make to environmental advocacy and policymaking? And how might a focus on the environment reshape teaching in British history? To take part, participants should submit a 300 word proposal for a short ‘position paper’ (approx. 2500 words) that will be pre-circulated at the workshop. These position papers will address the place of environmental approaches and themes within modern British history (1800 to the present) from the perspective of the participant’s own research. Participants will orally summarise their papers at the workshop. The event is free to attend and includes lunch and refreshments. Submissions are welcomed across a range of perspectives and topics, including but not limited to: energy, extraction, non-human actors, pollution, toxicity, rural and urban landscapes, everyday environmental histories (including how they are shaped by class, gender, and race), imperialism and decolonisation, ‘green’ policy, activism, and the political economy of the natural world. Please send proposals and a one-paragraph biography in a single PDF to andrew.seaton@manchester.ac.uk by 15 May 2026. Please also direct enquiries to this address. This event is organised by Dr. Max Long (Oxford) and Dr. Andrew Seaton (Manchester).

CALL FOR PAPERS - Modern British History and the 'Environmental Turn'.

A two-day workshop organised by @maxlong.bsky.social and myself at Lincoln College, Oxford, 16-17 September. Deadline for abstracts is 15 May.

Details in poster below, please share.

I’m in a newly published collection on political writing in modern Britain published by CUP. I met and got the opportunity to work with some lovely people in the preparation of this collection. I hope it’s as much fun to read as it was to put together.

For anyone interested in our 18-month post in British Studies please follow the link below. @ihr.bsky.social

www.jobs.london.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

🚨History Job: Assistant Professor in Early Modern British History (Permanent) 🗃️

Come work with us at Warwick! You will join a group of excellent early-modernists and one of the nicest bunches of historians around!
👇👇👇

@uni-of-warwick.bsky.social

warwick-careers.tal.net/vx/lang-en-G...

We're looking to capture experiences of what it means to be queer in the UK today! To do that we're collecting day diaries for 12th February. It doesn't matter what you get up to, or how you record it, we'd love to have it!🧵 (1/4) #LGBTplusHM #lgbthm26

Start canvassing to be their external early doors.

I did my PhD at Sheffield working fairly closely with the Special Collections staff (who are brilliant). An excellent funded opportunity here...

18 month postdoc at the lovely IHR in London, $41,740. Deadline 7 March. 'The Fellow will play a key role within the IHR team responsible for hosting the 2027 North American Conference in British Studies (NACBS)' in London 2027.

Repost to spread the word. #Skystorians

One of my favourite people I’ve learned about since I started teaching Black British history full-time.

That settles it then; the sentence for kicking a vehicle is summary execution without trial.

On almost everything – fraud, polarisation, radicalisation, misinformation – evidence suggests that over 60s are in much more urgent need of online protection and education than teenagers.

But that issue gets zero political attention, and is a total non-starter. Nothing good will come of it.

Feels like capitalism‘s latest trap card - like Skynet meets the spinning Jenny.

Getting dissed by a sympathetic biographer of Enoch Powell is a badge of pride. Wear it well.

Just over a week or so left to submit your abstracts. It’s shaping up to be an excellent conference from the papers already submitted, as well as with confirmed keynote speakers Prof. David Featherstone and Dr. @kasperbrasken.bsky.social. Please share with colleagues and networks! #GeneralStrike100

It’s the mind virus.

The Arthur Scargill Archive Following a two year cataloguing project the Library is pleased to announced that the Arthur Scargill Archive is now open to all researchers.

🚨NEWLY CATALOGUED COLLECTION🚨

We are delighted to announce that after a 2-year project, the Arthur Scargill Archive is now available for research in our public reading room!🎉

More info➡️ tinyurl.com/cz3s5dxk

Browse the catalogue➡️ tinyurl.com/vn4xvdd6

@mrcwarwick.bsky.social @sslh.bsky.social

National Populism A crucial new guide to one of the most urgent political phenomena of our time: the rise of national populism Across the West, there is a rising tide of people who feel excluded, alienated from mainst...

One wonders where Roger Eatwell is in all of this? It'll be 8 years ago this year since the publication of 'National Populism', which he co-wrote with Goodwin. I have dipped into it but haven't read it cover to cover, mainly because the whiff coming off it was obvious even then.

*the work of - but what a slip.

Goodwin is, at least partially, the product of an academic field whose main focus was the analysis of white supremacist politics but which avoided, and largely still avoids, talking in terms of whiteness or engage with the woke of those who study it from Du Bois onwards.

… this field doesn’t engage with even the most basic work on the wider history of race and racism in Britain, standing almost completely apart from the history of black and Asian Britons outside of brief moments of intersection during the Battle of Lewisham in ’77 or Southall in late ’70s.

Re-reading his earlier work, I‘ve been struck by his preparedness to acknowledge the ”legitimate grievances” of BNP voters as separate from racism. But this was all kosher in a sub-field that, despite its focus on Britain’s most dedicated racists, has a blind-spot on race. Much of the work in…

The field of British “far-right and fascism” studies, which straddles political science, history & sociology, has yet to grapple with Goodwin. He began writing about the BNP & has ended up standing for a party filling the same political space. His earlier work shows traces of this later trajectory.

A bird's-eye view of a former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp showing a wide dirt pathway flanked by parallel rows of barbed-wire fences. Groups of visitors walk along the path, surrounded by the remnants of brick structures and barracks, now reduced to foundations. Green grass contrasts with the somber history of the site, as the path leads toward a guard tower in the distance.

Auschwitz was at the end of a process. We must remember that it did not start from gas chambers.

This hatred gradually developed: from ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence... to systematic and industrial murder.

Auschwitz took time.

"the advent of fascism is not a single event—a sudden coup d’etat—but rather a protracted social process...The fascist thrust must be resisted in its incipient stages by the broadest possible coalition, before it has an opportunity to consolidate its power" Angela Davis, 1971

Another harrowing photo for future history books.

Abolish the Home Office

Amazing 40% off sale by @manchesterup.bsky.social means that paperback editions of our essay collection British Culture After Empire are just £15! A veritable bargain!

@liamliburd.bsky.social

“But are there not many Fascists in your country?"
"There are many who do not know they are Fascists, but will find it out when the time comes.”

- Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)

Together with @rshc.bsky.social QMCBS's Rob Waters is involved in a great event on 24 Feb at Rich Mix, Bethnal Green on the history of the Home Office and border control, featuring @liamliburd.bsky.social, @juanitacox.bsky.social and Bobby Phe Amis