Jade Shepherd

Announcing a brand new series launching this #Halloween 👻

Manchester Studies in the Supernatural explores how the #supernatural shapes human experience across time and place.

Bridging disciplines and challenging boundaries, it welcomes bold new research on the #occult and the #unseen

Friedrich Engels ‘took creative liberties’ with descriptions of class divides in Manchester Cambridge historian Emily Chung finds philosopher’s blistering depictions of segregation may have been exaggerated

Behind the sensationalised headline, there’s some excellent and fascinating research here.

www.theguardian.com/education/20...

And I will tell you flat out, there is a HELL OF A LOT BETTER-QUALITY ACTUAL TEACHING involved in getting a good degree out of a student who came in with BCD than there is getting one from an A*A*A student.

A banner advert for Matt Houlbrook’s new book Songs of Seven Dials: An intimate history of 1920s and 1930s London

There's just a day to go until @manchesterup.bsky.social publish my latest book Songs of Seven Dials: An intimate history of 1920s and 1930s London.

I thought I should explain a bit about where the book came from.

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What HE managers fail to understand is that in the context of the Humanities, ‘employability’ isn’t teaching coding or carpentry, but skills around writing, presenting, reasoning, evaluation, analysis, research etc. In an 80% service economy, these are the skills that fundamentally matter.

If you don’t want to do your job, you can leave! People are desperate to teach at universities, let them do it!

Cover of my book We Have Come To Be Destroyed: Growing Up In Cold War Britain. The cover is an eerie blue-green and the words melt into an image of a group of children confronting the camera at a festival in Coventry in 1980.

Cover reveal for my forthcoming book, WE HAVE COME TO BE DESTROYED: GROWING UP IN COLD WAR BRITAIN which tells the history of Cold War Britain (c.1956-89) through the eyes of children & young people! Out with @yalebooks.bsky.social 28 April 2026 #booksky #skystorians yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300...

I also think the assumption was “You need to be ridiculously lucky to get an open ended job, but only once”. And then the wave of redundancies began, and I realised you also only need to be unlucky once.

Child holding a book titled Joining Up In The Second World War

It’s real and I’ve got one!
Daughter’s honest and accurate review: “It doesn’t have so many pictures.” She’s not wrong. If you need pictures this isn’t for you, but if you like free access to new First and Second World War history then download it here: www.manchesterhive.com/display/9781...

OpenAI claims new GPT-5 model boosts ChatGPT to ‘PhD level’ GPT-5's release comes as tech firms continue to compete in an effort to claim the world's most advanced AI.

Obviously a lie, since the definition of PhD-level expertise, standard across universities worldwide, is that you can produce original knowledge.

Front cover of book; civilian men queuing to become soldiers

Delighted to see that my book Joining Up is published today, a mere 11 years after I started writing it. You can read it for free here: doi.org/10.7765/9781...
@manchesterup.bsky.social

Hey... our July titles in Modern History are all #OpenAccess on manchesterhive.com 🔓

Available from 29 July, these books are new in our @sshmedicine.bsky.social & Cultural History of Modern War series.

Feat. @sarahcrook.bsky.social, Joel Morley & more.

Ground-breaking research, completely free.

THIS.

Petition: Raise statutory maternity/paternity pay to match the National Living Wage Statutory maternity and paternity pay is £4.99 per hour for a full-time worker on 37.5 hours per week - approximately 59% less than the 2024 National Living Wage of £12.21 per hour for workers aged 21...

The government response to this petition is infuriating.
“Maternity and other types of Parental Pay are intended to provide a measure of financial security to support parents whilst they are away from the workplace; they are not a replacement of earnings” except they literally are??? Please sign:

What we're doing in the uni sector is shutting off routes for kids with Bs and Cs to do key (and prestigious) subjects, and closing down the ability of young people to go to the local uni just when it becomes ruinous expensive to go way. Will have incalculable consequences for social mobility.

Is there a better time to read and review books than summer? I don't think so - and I'm looking for reviewers for lots of titles for the Journal of Contemporary History. We now do review articles of up to 4,000 words, covering three books. These and many more are up for grabs:

When Universities are mismanaged or run into financial issues, it's always the staff and NEVER the management who lose their jobs.

On the contrary, they get above-inflation pay rises that are the equivalent to one or two of the full time jobs they cut.

How and why do we let this happen?

It's notable that the only student speech frequently shut down on university campuses is a) pro-Palestine b) pro-trans-rights. The OfS seems *deeply* unconcerned about that speech being limited. In fact, they want academics who oppose those positions to have the right to 'shock and offend' students.

Last year we ran a survey on UK HE redundancies.

Based on 349 responses, the UNIVERSITIES DEGRADED REPORT uncovers awful conditions, targeting of marginalised groups, & far more cuts than estimated.

People's stories matter. We can hold leaders to account. Please share widely tinyurl.com/48nzf7ew

Job Opportunity at Lancaster University: Lecturer in Modern History (Teaching and Scholarship) Lecturer in Modern History (Teaching and Scholarship)The School of Global Affairs at Lancaster University is seeking to appoint a new Lecturer in Modern History (Teaching and Scholarship).* This is a ...

We are currently advertising for a 1-year fixed term 0.8 FTE post in Modern History at Lancaster. It goes without saying that it would have been nice had it been a F/T post but, in the current climate, it is something ...

hr-jobs.lancs.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

Exterior view of Armstrong Building, Newcastle University, red brick, neo-Gothic-ish architecture with many windows.

Newcastle University staff invited to a ‘Doodling for Wellbeing’ session (‘Let your pen dance across the page' in 'a perfect escape from the everyday hustle and bustle'. Invites sent on same day 153 academics were informed of their location in 'redundancy pools', with 38 redundancies planned. 1/2

Good, thanks. Hope all’s well with you. It’s a great project (& fab team) - still can’t believe my luck.

Such brilliant news, Leah. Congratulations!

this is in fact true for almost all early years interventions, which is yet another reason why the lack of childcare support in the UK is criminal

A fringe group of bigoted weirdos have dragged British media, government, and law into their hateful obsession with trans people. Grim, depressing, and dangerous. Everyone with power in the UK who's played along should be ashamed of themselves.

Making the Case for History: A View from the Royal Historical Society Lucy Noakes on how the crisis in UK higher education is impacting history and historians, and how the Royal Historical Society can advocate for our discipline.

How is the crisis in higher education impacting history and historians in the UK?

Lucy Noakes on the scale of cuts and closures, and how the Royal Historical Society (@royalhistsoc.org) can advocate for our discipline.
www.historyworkshop....

This. An emergency recall of parliament on a weekend for British Steel. Nothing at all for UK HE which employs far more people, has already shed 10,000 academic jobs, with several institutions on the brink of collapse.

A reminder: we train all the doctors, teachers, engineers, nurses, lawyers &c &c

University of Lincoln warns of potential job cuts The University of Lincoln says the majority of the cuts would be through voluntary redundancy.

Our second university of the day shedding jobs is Lincoln, much-praised for its superb innovative teaching and with a host of awards for it. Every single day in Higher Ed is like this, and every day will be like this until someone gets a grip. 🇬🇧 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Given the government is now looking at 'all options' for steel, as it's of 'huge strategic importance', here's a reminder of how localised steel employment (important though these jobs are) stacks up against HE as an employer and life float for numerous towns and cities in many neglected areas 👇