Ana Stevenson

When people say that Wuthering Heights doesn't have anything to do with race or that no film has engaged with race, what they mean is that for them Romani people do not count and they also haven't been paying attention. I'm going to share a little material from a recent talk. Content note: racism 1/

[Scene is a kitchen - a middle aged woman called JANET is boiling peas at the stove. A younger more colourfully dressed woman named LIZ approached her.] JANET: Ugh... LIZ: What's up? JANET: I am so bored of cooking peas! LIZ: Have you tried... AI peas? JANET: AI peas? LIZ: They're peas with AI! [Liz holds up to us a packet of peas labelled: Pea-i AI - Peas with AI]. LIZ: Al-powered peas harness the potential of your peas JANET: What LIZ [Now a voiceover as we cut to a whizzy technology diagram of peas all connected by meaningless dotted lines] Why not take your peas to the next level with Al Peas' new Al tools to power your peas? [Show a techno diagram of a pea with a label reading 'AI' pointing to a random zone in it] LIZ: Each pea has Al in a way we haven't quite worked out yet but it's fine [Show Janet and Liz now in a Matrix-style world of peas] LIZ: With Al peas you can supercharge productivity and make AI work for your peas! JANET: What LIZ: Shut up LIZ: Our game-changing Pea-Al gives you the freedom to unlock the potential of the power of the future of your peas workflow From opening the bag of peas to boiling the peas to eating the peas To spending millions on adding Al to the peas and then having to work out what that even means. JANET: Is it really necessary to- LIZ [Grabbing Janet by the collar]: THE PEAS HAVE GOT AI, JANET [Cut to an advert ending screen, with the bag of peas and the slogan: AI PEAS: Just 'Peas' for god's sake buy the AI peas. [Ends]

Every ad now

Governments and universities alike have perfected the art of crying poor to conceal wealth The point.com.au

Governments have been crying poor to justify & conceal their priorities for decades…now some of our publicly owned universities are using the same neoliberal accounting tricks to claim they are in ‘crisis’ when they are hoarding records amounts of cash and shares

thepoint.com.au/opinions/251...

The Pub at the End of the University As universities implode, the world still needs us.

The world needs is even as the universities collapse.

open.substack.com/pub/hannahfo...

Book cover: Women and Whitlam: Revisiting the Revolution, edited by Michelle Arrow (NewSouth Publishing, 2023).

On the 50th anniversary of the Dismissal, revisit the career and achievements of Elizabeth Reid, the world’s first advisor on women’s affairs advisor to Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, at #VIDAblog.

Read more here ⬇️
www.auswhn.com.au/blog/revisit...

With a bold reform agenda and occasional administrative chaos, Whitlam’s three-year government continues to have a profound effect on Australian life.

👉 theconversation.com/extraor...

We’ve forgotten what universities are for With New Zealand universities facing not only a funding crisis but a philosophical challenge to their role, the soul of tertiary education is at stake....

We’ve forgotten what universities are for

A meme of 'Is this an archive?' showing a grid with various classifications of things that might be archives based on their content and structure.

Hoping this helps our colleagues across the industry

Politics with Michelle Grattan: Remembering the day Gough Whitlam lost his job

🎧LISTEN: Michelle Grattan is one of the few remaining working journalists who witnesses The Dismissal first hand. She shares her memories of that tumultuous day.

Tony Abbott’s history of Australia wants us to be proud of men like him Tony Abbott begins his book Australia: A History, by telling off professional historians – and laments the “cultural confusion” of our present moment.

My review of former Australian PM Tony Abbott's new book out today: Tony Abbott’s history of Australia wants us to be proud of men like him theconversation.com/tony-abbotts...

Reflection: ‘Thinking Beyond Liberal Narratives of Progress’ Symposium | Australian Women's History Network Eli Branagh and Tahlya Evans reflect on their experience hosting the ‘Thinking Beyond Liberal Narratives of Progress’ symposium.

NEW at #VIDAblog!

Eli Branagh and Taylah Evans discuss their experience hosting ‘Thinking Beyond Liberal Narratives of Progress’, a one-day symposium held in response to the recently published Personal Politics: The Remaking of Gender, Sexuality, and Citizenship (2024).

Find out more here ⬇️

Reframing Failure in Digital Scholarship - University of London Press Failure is ordinary. From technological failures and computational obsolescence to rejected applications and challenging collaborations, failure is an unavoidable part of any scholarly endeavour. This...

Publishing next month!

Reframing Failure in Digital Scholarship tackles what failure – in all its messy but immensely valuable complexity – means for the DH community.

Edited by @mjdonnay.bsky.social and @amsichani.bsky.social
Published by @uolpress.bsky.social

uolpress.co.uk/book/reframi...

Social media bans suggest a resurgence of conservative values in our digital lives. But at what cost to young people’s autonomy, creativity and expression?

👉 Read the full story: theconversation.com/as-soci...

COVID-19 is “Airborne AIDS”: provocative oversimplification, emerging science, or something in between? COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2 is often compared to other pandemics for its societal and global health impact, with some commentators drawing parallels to HIV/AIDS due to the immune dysfunction caused ...

Our new review article examines the parallels between COVID and AIDS, including the social impacts

www.ajpmfocus.org/article/S277...

‘Prince Andrew believed having sex with me was his birthright’: Virginia Giuffre on her abuse at the hands of Epstein, Maxwell and the King’s brother In an extract from her posthumous memoir, Virginia Roberts Giuffre remembers the day an ‘apex predator’ recruited her from Mar-a-Lago, aged just 16; how she was trafficked to a succession of wealthy and powerful men, and how everyone knew what was going on

‘Prince Andrew believed having sex with me was his birthright’: Virginia Giuffre on her abuse at the hands of Epstein, Maxwell and the King’s brother

My latest article for Health and History @anzshm.bsky.social explores how emotion helped establish new hygienic norms in turn-of-the-century Sydney, revealing how disgust and pride motivated both compliance with and resistance to public health policies on plague and TB:
dx.doi.org/10.1353/hah....

The fledgling UN tried to rein in mass-scale misinformation. The world turned its back and is now paying the price | Roland Burke The ruinous result of the US approach to freedom of information and media has made anti-democratic contagion impossible to ignore

The war against 'false news' is not 'new', but has been a concern of international organisations for over 100 years. The ever captivating Roland Burke launches a new Guardian column, Past/Present, sponsored by the @austhistassoc.bsky.social.

Women and kids often pay a heavy price when men drink. Our gender violence plan should reflect this

We can’t prevent violence against women and children without tackling men’s heavy alcohol use.

Australia's universities may win in global rankings, but they're failing teachers and students

The Times Higher Education global universities rankings have again swept through the marketing departments of Australia's unis, putting a thin lacquer over an industry plagued by endemic wage theft and poor student satisfaction outcomes.

How the ALP outsourced the soul of higher education For most of its history, the Australian Labor Party spoke of education as a public good, the light on the hill, a vision of collective progress through strong institutions, universal access, and the elevation of ordinary citizens.

If Labor wishes to reclaim its moral authority, it must break with the consultant paradigm: rebuild public governance, fund socially vital disciplines and restore universities as places of learning, not revenue streams. #auspol #universitiesAU

‘Only if we help shall all be saved’: Jane Goodall showed we can all be part of the solution

Jane Goodall showed tremendous courage in charting her own course as a pioneering researcher – and working to spread hope wherever she went.

YouTube video by Rodgers & Hammerstein Maria von Trapp teaches Julie Andrews to Yodel

Since it's Julie Andrews birthday (+24 hours) here she is yodelling with Maria von Trapp

youtu.be/g6j376yOlm4?...

Seeking: NSW History Teachers. Have you taught History 7-10 in NSW? Are you interested in taking part in an online interview for a PhD study at WSU about the representation of women in the NSW history syllabuses? Please enter your details into the form below for further details. https://forms.office.com/r/cvf5QfLrLb Contacts: Kate Littlejohn, Kay Carroll

#PhD research callout!

I am seeking History teachers in NSW for a short interview about NSW History 7-10 syllabuses. If you have taught History in NSW and are interested, please enter your details into this form.

forms.office.com/r/cvf5QfLrLb

Ethics approval: H16788

Please share!

Meet the Grants Office: Marianne | Medarbetarwebben Marianne Gillion joined the SLU Grants Office as a Research Coordinator in April 2024. She comes to us from the world of social sciences, humanities, and musicology!

I like to say that I'm a musicologist (cultural historian of music and books) by training and a research coordinator by profession.

Here's a little interview about how I changed careers, what I do now, and my very best grant writing tip!

internt.slu.se/en/support-s...

#EnvHum #EnvHist

I'll also be joining Margaret Baguley, Damion Morris, and Rebecca Dickens in a panel discussion about Mary Poppins as a global phenomenon!

More details ⬇️
www.eventbrite.com.au/e/lines-in-t...

I'm excited to be speaking at the Lines in the Sand festival in Maryborough in October!

This talk draws on my Camera Obscura journal article about Mary Poppins and The Suffrage Postcard Project, a digital archive of women's suffrage postcards.

Find out more ⬇️
www.eventbrite.com.au/e/lines-in-t...

An advertisement for the polio vaccine which reads: "they all got vaccine except dad...don't take a chance...take your polio shots!" It depicts a photo of a family gathered around a father who is in an iron lung.

With science falling under increasing attack, this medical historian is here to remind people of the power of #vaccines. THREAD🧵

Hard-hitting polio advert from 1958. In the first half of the 20th century, polio was the leading cause of death in children and young adults. 1/7

How Can We Live Together? - Boston Review Ezra Klein is wrong: shame is essential.

"Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply."

me on why Ezra Klein should be ashamed / why shame is Good Actually

www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

“We are told by leaders that we are the future. But when it comes to the ongoing pandemic, our present is being stolen right in front of our eyes.”

Incredible speech by Violet Affleck who warned about the ongoing dangers of COVID & Long Covid, & advocated for masks and clean air at the UN today!

Poisoning Crimes and the ‘Mushroom Murderer’: Patterns and Precedents By Cassie Watson and Carolyn Strange; posted 23 September 2025. The prosecution and sentencing of the Australian ‘Mushroom Murderer’ to life in prison for the poisoning of three relatives and the a…

New post by @drkdwatson.bsky.social and Carolyn Strange: "Poisoning Crimes and the ‘Mushroom Murderer’: Patterns and Precedents"
legalhistorymiscellany.com/2025/09/23/p...