Justine Firnhaber-Baker

Being female, in essence

Running the PhD programme in history at my university, this is my observation too. The PhD is maybe the only chance that they will get to do what matters to them. They don’t want to dilute that time.

true

It's a pretty striking contrast when a (former) prince gets arrested in the UK for stuff that's in the Epstein files, but still no one has been in the US. #NoKings

Oh, the grand old duke of york
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I use mine every day and I bet you do too!

Featuring my own expert opinions on medieval French geography and modern AI idiocy

I never expected that my love of basketball and medieval France could be brought together

What?

I have been British for long enough to feel this

Blue book cover with a king riding a horse covered in a fleurs-de-ly caparison and yellow lettering reading: Justine Firnhaber-Baker/House of Lilies/They Dynasty that Made Medieval France/"A splendid, enthralling book" - Wall Street Journal

I love the deep blue cover for the US paperback of my book House of Lilies: The Dynasty that Made Medieval France. It's now available for pre-order. ⚜️Shipping 13 October 2026 💙 📚#booksky
www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/justi...

Hey, Bluesky history nerds! Who are your favorite pre-modern historians on here?

I'm convinced AI is our generation's radium - a discovery with genuinely useful applications in specific, controlled circumstances that we stupidly put in everything from kid's toys to toothpaste until we realised the harm far too late where future generations will ask if we were out of our minds.

I’m Still Your America Hey, patriot. It’s been a week. As ICE spreads terror through the streets, and Teacup Eichmann presided over the murder of yet another innocent civ...

"Every scrap of progress has been torn from my clenched talons by citizens who loved me more than themselves and their neighbors more than me."

Donate to Alex Pretti is an American Hero, organized by Keith Edwards On January 24, 2026, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a Minneapolis resident and American citizen wa… Keith Edwards needs your support for Alex Pretti is an American Hero

gofund.me/ca1e907f0

Digital Tools for Manuscript Studies

If you have graduate students working with medieval manuscripts this free online training might be useful 👇
www.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

Grid of faces displaying various face-painting to prevent facial recognition.

Homework assignment for my beauty influencer followers:

Let's see some tutorials for applying anti-facial recognition makeup, it's a skill we should all start learning.

I really want ppl w/o Minneapolis connections to understand

You might've heard that Mpls public schools went hybrid bc so many families are in hiding. Well, a coworker just told me that today, during his kid's hybrid class, a kid's apt building was raided onscreen

*Everyone has stories like this*

"Organised gangs of wine moms using Antifa tactics"
All my girlfriend group chats are going to change the group description to this

And women and queer people. They hate women and queer people. A lot

A woman recording an ICE agent tells him "Shame on you."

The agent responds, "Have you all not learned from the past couple of days?"

"Learned what?" she asks

Then he knocks her phone out of her hand

the best antidote to blackpilling is remembering that every video you see of an ICE thug abusing their power was recorded by an American who volunteered to put themselves in harm's way for the sake of people they've likely never met and never will

Yes. This, too, is an aspect of patriarchy.

But the vast majority of it is men abusing women

AOC: This has now become what we feared most about ICE for a long time—that it would be used as an anti-civilian force with no accountability. At the end of the day, what we saw today was a murder, and murders in cold blood need to be prosecuted.

not to go all identity politics but I think it’s also because the victims are women

I feel like I haven’t even been properly lied to about the purposes of this war

HSS Murdoch Prize

The John E. Murdoch Prize is awarded annually for an original graduate student essay examining ancient or medieval ideas in science, mathematics, or natural philosophy.
www.themedievalacademyblog.org/hss-murdoch-...

A man in a sky-blue St Andrews PhD gown and a woman in red Harvard PhD gown standing in front of a bookcase

Dressing up to celebrate my most recent PhD student's graduation is a highlight of my job. Congratulations to Dr Nathan Meades!

I'm glad to say that the American edition of House of Lilies:The Dynasty that Made Medieval France is coming out in PAPERBACK next year. ⚜️
In the meantime, the hardback makes a very handsome Christmas present.
#booksky 📚