Christopher Smith

"Poetry may make nothing happen, but a novel destroyed Hiroshima and without Hiroshima there is no me and these words erase themselves and me with them."

Richard Flanagan, Question 7.

H G Wells, dotd 1946

"Without Rebecca West’s kiss H.G. Wells would not have run off to Switzerland to write a book in which everything burns, and without H.G. Wells’s book Leo Szilard would never have conceived of a nuclear chain reaction...

It’s wonderful to see this exhibition come to life: Our seven BRAID-commissioned artists are showing their works at Inspace in Edinburgh, free to visit until the 31st August - come see them if you’re in town for the festival!

Thanks to all our amazing artists, AHRC, and the BRAID-Inspace team

A-level results in England expected to return to near pre-pandemic levels Career-focused subjects such as business studies and economics to surpass traditional academic disciplines like history in popularity

'Just 40,900 students entered to take history, compared with 41,900 taking economics and 43,000 for physics. Maths remains the most popular A-level with 105,000 entries this year, up by more than 4% compared with 2024.'

Both 'Just' and 'career-related' doing heavy lifting here. 1/2

"after a long slumber, signs are emerging of an entrepreneurial awakening: the number of tech start-ups in Europe more than quadrupled in the last decade to 35,000."

cf the House of Lords report on UK's need to support innovation (incl. creative industries)

committees.parliament.uk/committee/17...

This from @profserious.bsky.social (who knows a thing or two) is very good although raises the question of what has to change...

Are Angels OK? The Parallel Universes of New Zealand Writers and Scien ‘Are Angels OK?’ asked Bill the poet.‘Angels are just fine,’ said Paul the physicist. And thus began an extraordinary blind date between New Zealand writers and physicists. In this remarkable book, te...

Are half-price angels ok?

teherengawakapress.co.nz/products/are...

Video game created to help young people's mental health Ace Of Hearts is part of a £35m research project on how young people cope with negative experiences.

there's a great story on BBC from one of the projects in the MRC/ESRC/AHRC Adolescence, Mental Health and Developing Mind programme
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

@ukri.org

Woman’s memoirs give fascinating insight into life in 17th-century northern England Newly reunited manuscripts by Alice Thornton show how she navigated personal crises during tumultuous events such as the civil war

Today, the Guardian covers an AHRC-funded project based on the life on the 17th century writer and memoirist Alice Thornton and ...

www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...

📌

If you find your way to the Royal Academy's provocative Kiefer / van Gogh show, look out for Lesley Chamberlain's superb A Shoe Story: van Gogh, the Philosophers and the West

"The capacity of #art to protect and protest, to stand on real ground"

The Edward Burra show @tate.bsky.social has gathered attention for his striking depictions of France and Spain, but in light of current conversations below this 1963 depiction of violence against a straw man resonates.
Burra was himself in many ways an outsider through his sexuality and invalidity.

Demonising migrants won’t fill jobs or boost falling popu... ‘Stop the boats’ is a popular refrain but it obscures the real issues rich countries across the world are facing

"At some point, politicians will have to change the conversation and explain the real trade-offs to voters. Until then, we’ll keep going round in circles."
@samfr.bsky.social

(And we need to be sensible about students whilst we are at it).

observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

@samfr.bsky.social tackles a really important topic; see also William Davies @lrb.co.uk

"We are beginning to witness what happens when algorithmically channeled resentments show up in mainstream politics"

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Mellon Foundation The Mellon Foundation makes grants to actively unlock the power in the arts and humanities that helps connect us all.

“American Academy of Arts&Sciences reports 96.3% of humanities grads age 23-32 fully employed. Earnings in humanitiess comparable to social/life sciences, job satisfaction levels too. A serious mismatch bw actual employment for hum grads +general perception."
www.mellon.org/voices/human...

A stack of 31 books atop a typewriter. Blood-Flex by Ajanaé Dawkins Jimmy's Blues and Other Poems by James Baldwin Something About Living by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha  A Map of My Want by Faylita Hicks Something Sinister by Hayan Charara Citizen Illegal by José Olivarez Ballast by Quenton Baker  American Inmate by Justin Rovillos Monson Some Changes by June Jordan Reprise by Golden Portrait of the Alcoholic by Kaveh Akbar There Are Trans People Here by H. Melt Abalone ((animus)) / abalone ((anima))by fahima ife Florida Water by aja monet Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow. by Noor Hindi The Word From His Song by Li-Young Lee American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes  Vertical Interrogation of Strangers by Bhanu Kapil Somebody Blew Up America by Amiri Baraka This Connection of Everyone with Lungs: Poems by Juliana Spahr  Good Dress by Brittany Rogers Those Who Ride the Night Winds by Nikki Giovanni Nazar Boy by Tarik Dobbs Consider the Rooster by Oliver Baez Bendorf Togethering by Rose Zinnia Homegirls & Handgrenades by Sonia Sanchez A box of longing with fifty drawers by Jen Benka Time Slips Right Before Your Eyes by Erica Hunt Textu by Fady Joudah The Book of Light by Lucille Clifton Beast / Meridian by Vanessa Angélica Villarreal

We’re reading 31 books of poetry this month!

Read along with Haymarket Poetry director Maya Marshall’s #SealeyChallenge! 📚

August arrives in the dark we are not even asleep and it is here with a gust of rain rustling before it how can it be so late all at once somewhere the Perseids are falling toward us already at a speed that would burn us alive if we could believe it but in the stillness after the rain ends nothing is to be heard but the drops falling one at a time from the tips of the leaves into the night and I lie in the dark listening to what I remember while the night flies on with us into itself

August arrives in the dark

we are not even asleep and it is here

how can it be so late all at once

-WS Merwin, Nocturne II
from The Shadow of Sirius
#everynightapoem

Excellent start to the last day of #DCDC25 A powerful keynote from Prof Katy Shaw, Director of AHRC Creative Communities. Amazing work around co creation, cultural policy and meaningful community participation

UK gets first female Astronomer Royal in 350 years Prof Michele Dougherty is the first woman to be appointed to the influential post.

Huge congratulations to my @ukri.org colleague Michele Dougherty, our new Astronomer Royal.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

My journey from arts researcher to entrepreneur Embarking on the journey from arts researcher to entrepreneur has been a transformative odyssey, driven by passion, resilience, and an unwavering belief in creativity.

"The entrepreneurial path is demanding but rewarding, offering the independence to innovate and make an impact."

From arts researcher to entrepreneur, Dr. Tamara Kohn shares her journey of turning ideas on paper into real-world innovations improving lives.

www.ukri.org/blog/my-jour...

The Empire of Forgetting by John Burnside review – last words from an essential poet of our age This posthumously published final collection confronts mortality, alongside the world’s almost unbearable beauty

"He was the ideal laureate of our age, painfully alive to the glory of what we’re losing. Now we’ve lost him, our Anthropocene spirit guide. A light has gone out."

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

And see @eicathomefinn.bsky.social and my comments re AHRC and NERC. We need to get better at facing up to the trade offs which the system demands.

Quite so.

Cultural heritage and climate change networks to drive policy change Apply for DCMS funding to maximise the international partnership brokering and networking opportunities of UK arts and humanities research, as a step towards the Horizon Europe Resilient Cultural Heritage Partnership. You must be based at a UK research organisation eligible for AHRC funding.

Cultural heritage and climate change networks to drive policy change #ahrc #academicsky

CC: Child using VR headset at an exhibition event.

2/3 📲 Be inspired by the @MuseumsAssoc ’s Digital Innovation and Engagement Fund, in collaboration with AHRC UKRI.

Credits: Wessex Archaeology.

Completely agree. And that’s what @timeshighered.bsky.social should be making clear.

One key issue is that nothing prevents reapplication to other schemes (eg Horizon) and I have seen that work.

AHRC and ESRC together fund the research of getting on for half the FTEs submitted to REF with a combined budget less than that of any other research council.
Of course we use demand management
We try not to devolve that to universities and I think that’s right

🎙️What’s the value of speaking other languages?

In this month’s Crossing Channels, Wendy Ayres-Bennett points out a major AI issue: big languages dominate training data, so smaller languages & dialects get left behind. That’s a problem.

🎧 pod.fo/e/2fb7e1

#AI #Multilingualism #podcast @iast.fr

The Myth of a Wilderness Without Humans For over a century, conflicting views of wild nature created a rift between indigenous people and misguided conservationists.

"They all knew better, the portrayers of wilderness; [Ansel] Adams assiduously avoided photographing any of the local Miwok who were rarely out of his sight as he worked Yosemite Valley. He filled thousands of human-free negatives with land he knew the Miwok had tended for at least 4,000 years."

Yes we try to get there or thereabouts on average. It varies for obvious reasons. And we did increase the upper limit of grant (rightly I believe) but that pressed down on success rates

This is why we had to get a grip on PhD spend esp because we strongly supported increasing stipends.