Francis Dodsworth

Given that people is asking me for the numbers, here the table provided by UKRI:

After submitting a FOIA request UKRI, I obtained success rates by three grant call scheme and I can only say that I am disheartened by the results:

- AHRC Responsive Mode 2025: 2%
- ESRC New Investigator Grant 2025: 1%
- ESRC Research Grant Round 2025: 1%

How The West Was Lost China spent decades laying its rare earths trap. Then Donald Trump blundered straight into it. Now there is no way out. Some thoughts on how we got here, and what happens next

China spent decades laying its rare earths trap. Then Trump blundered straight into it - and now there is no way out. My latest with thoughts on how we got there and what happens next

This is not normal discourse. It is not just a bit of fun for a Sunday paper interview. It is beyond the realms of the concept of decency shared across the political spectrum until last year.

Apropos of nothing, I really do think UK journalists and politicians need some reminding that mass deportation of LEGAL immigrants, particularly those with permanent status, is far more extreme than even Trump's America and would basically place Britain completely on its own among democracies.

I liked reading it, but laypeople are not going to understand that.

I've tried whittling it down to:
All the generative AI-- AI which outputs stuff from our input-- that exist now primarily rely on a model: a huge set of data that "surmises" all the elements of the domain of the model, words or pic

i am going to try to give a framework of my own understanding which laypeople can understand.

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

Screenshot of the first page of Hilary Taylor, 'The gendered dynamics of violence in English apprenticeship: apprentices’ petitions to the Middlesex and Westminster Sessions, c. 1690–1830' Abstract: This article offers the first systematic analysis of the role that violence played in the management of apprentices, and the gendered dynamics of violence in English apprenticeship more broadly. It does so through an examination of 195 petitions that apprentices or their supporters submitted to the Middlesex and Westminster Sessions, which sought the cancellation of their indentures on grounds of ‘immoderate correction’. It offers a quantitative overview of the surviving petitions, examining the proportion that featured allegations of violence, the terms and level of detail in which violence was described, and its relationship to apprentices’ other stated grievances. It moves on to reconstruct the factors that could prompt masters and mistresses to mete out correction (as well as their commentaries on their perceived right to do so) and the tactics that petitioners used in crafting their complaints to legal authorities. Although female apprentices complained about violence at a disproportionate rate to their male peers, the material considered here suggests that their petitions did so in comparatively formulaic and restricted terms. The final section considers what implications this might have for our understandings of violence, gender and apprenticeship, and a genre of document – the petition – that provides access to these issues.

What can petitions to magistrates from London apprentices tell us about gendered violence in #EarlyModern England?

New addition from Hilary Taylor to the #PowerOfPetitioning annotated bibliography:
petitioning.history.ac.uk/2019/05/13/p...

The first multi-university group arrives The University of Greenwich and the University of Kent are moving together into a single governance structure. Mark Leach and David Kernohan report on the sector's first "super university"

Quite a big deal this - there will be a few VCs and governing bodies across UK reading the fine print… @wonkhe.bsky.social

wonkhe.com/blogs/the-fi...

Nigel Farage looks uncomfortable as Jamie Raskin uses his opening statement to absolutely demolish him

British History in the Long 18th Century Supported by Mark Storey and Carey Karmel, in memory of Arthur Burns

Autumn schedule for @ihr.bsky.social 's British History in the Long 18th Century fortnightly seminar is now live. @long18thsem.bsky.social. Join us in person at the IHR in London or on Zoom, for Mansfield on the Chevalier d'Eon, servants' travel, rhetorics of slavery, Bengal textile workers & more.

YouTube video by Katrina Navickas Katrina Navickas, Contested Commons book promo

youtu.be/u_bxpYHU1Ng?...

Instead of regurgitating the bromide that LLMs are just "autocomplete on steroids" (even by people who know better), maybe we can actually engage in some public education. The problem with genAI is better expressed through a classic computer science concept, known as SYMBOL GROUNDING. 🧵

To Detain or Punish with Kiran Mehta | NACBS Join NACBS to celebrate Kiran Mehta’s recent publication To Detain or Punish: Magistrates and the Making of the London Prison System, 1750-1840. Simon Deveraux will join Kiran Mehta in discussion.

I’ll be speaking about my book online with Simon Devereaux on 24 Sept (not the 25th as it says in some places - completely my fault for confusing the lovely @thenacbs.bsky.social organisers!). RSVP! #skystorians

www.nacbs.org/event-detail...

Research England funding allocations, 2025-26 How much QR and HEIF (and all the others) will your university get next year?

'We’ve just got the institution level allocations for 2025-26, which have been constructed by Research England according to DSIT’s previously stated requirements.'

With a handy link for checking your (English) university's allocation for the year.

To save UK higher education, start talking about knowledge - Research Professional News Until debate on universities foregrounds their core purposes, their woes will deepen, says Margot Finn

If the marketing team is struggling to understand what universities do and are for, they can read this by a former Warwick professor, HoD, research centre founder/director and PVC. 3/3

If most of your problems can (theoretically) be resolved by shifting the base rate of income tax by a few pence then they're not really structural, they're political. And while that's a non-trivial hurdle to get over it does at least suggest that there remains daylight between the centre and right.

... and here's the complete list: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/... Three new seminars for 2025/26: African History, Migration & Mobility, and Planetary Histories. Programmes coming soon. Watch this space...

As someone actually trained in behavioural psychology—unlike most MPs—I can tell you: financial precarity doesn’t “incentivise” sick people to work. It breaks them. Stress worsens health. Fear doesn’t create productivity. It creates collapse. #TakingThePIP

Higher education and the industrial strategy priority areas Labour’s industrial strategy aims to achieve a join-up with skills and qualifications that previous versions have not managed. Michael Salmon unpicks the emerging higher education agenda Labour’s indu...

IS's 8 foci: 'the areas where the government saw the greatest potential for growth – the “picking of winners” that has characterised industrial strategies over the years. The eight that were chosen were less STEM-heavy than previous iterations of the strategy.' 1/2

Reinforcements have arrived, our Civil War minifigures are back in stock! Get yours today... shop.cromwellmuseum.org/products/civ...

From Coroners’ Rolls to the Classroom: Engaging Students with the Medieval Murder Map Dr Stephanie Brown, University of Hull s.brown6@hull.ac.uk @stephemmabrown.bsky.social How can a map of medieval homicides help teach about law, violence and society? In lots of ways, actually. The…

📣New blog!

How can a map of medieval homicides help teach about law, violence and society?

@stephemmabrown.bsky.social shows how mapping coroners’ rolls from London, York & Oxford can give new insights into the realities of medieval urban life 📜

Read more: socialhistory.org.uk/shs_exchange...

The sense that crime is "out of control" despite the fact that it is significantly lower than the 1990s isn't so much a contradiction as an expression of a lack of a sense of collective efficacy

Interesting discussion and comments here. We shouldn't ignore the reality of the crime drop but v much agree that widespread perception of impunity, lack of CJ response and prevalence of signal crimes a real issue for public confidence and CJS legitimacy

Stop gaslighting people about crime Yes, crime statistics show long-term decline, but the numbers don't tell the whole story.

My latest, a response to the tedious ‘but people are wrong, crime is actually falling!’ brigade. Shout out to @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk who inspired the piece.

'Mobilising Imperial History: Crime, Policing and Control in the British Empire'. Call for papers: deadline extended to Friday 16 May 2025

We have had last minute change of schedule - instead join us next week to hear seminar co-convenor Tim Hitchcock discuss his latest research (conducted with Bob Shoemaker) on policing and criminal justice in the late 18th century, at the usual time of 17:30 at the IHR and online.
@ihr.bsky.social

Call for convenors for a relaunched BSA Historical and Comparative Sociology Study Group. The group will provide a forum for sociologists and other social scientists using history and historical methods in their research and teaching https://tinyurl.com/4ryp4dvu #Sociology

Call for convenors for a relaunched BSA Historical and Comparative Sociology Study Group. The group will provide a forum for sociologists and other social scientists using history and historical methods in their research and teaching tinyurl.com/4ryp4dvu #Sociology

What Can We Learn from Barnes & Noble's Surprising Turnaround? Digital platforms are struggling, meanwhile a 136-year-old book retailer is growing again. But why?

Interesting piece on Barnes & Noble, Waterstones and what happens when you put someone who loves books in charge of a bookshop: www.honest-broker.com/p/what-can-w...