iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

I can't wait for you to read this. Nearly a decade of research has gone into uncovering how Britain’s food shaped its sense of place in the world during the First Age of Nationalism. 'The King's Dinner', out 1 June 2026. uclpress.co.uk/book/the-kin...

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Funded PhD Studentship – UCL x V&A Museum Explore the overlooked contributions of migrant labour to British craft and design in the long eighteenth century (c.1688–1837). Join me at UCL and collaborate with the brilliant team at the V&A. Deadline: 15 April 2026 www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

Funded PhD: Migrant Labour & British Craft: Trace the invisible hands of mihgrant makers in eighteenth-century Britain.

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

We got our first peer review back on our monograph, 'The King's Dinner'. Really grateful for whenever colleagues engage seriously with our work and help us make it better.

Caricature of George III and John Bull eating a feast after defeating Napoleon.

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

I'm an immigrant who studies migration history. If I were studying us right now, I’d say: both sides of the migration debate are too busy trying to win—and not listening. The other side’s words can be frustrating. But good policy listens to both, and rises above the noise.

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

Book Manuscript submitted! 🎉 The King’s Dinner: family, nation, and identity on the British Table, 1760-1820 is off for a peer review at UCL press. Thanks to my fabulous coauthors for getting us to the end. Sarah Fox, Rachel Rich, and Lisa Smith.

Eighteenth century reapers bring in wheat

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

My Global #DigitalHumanities students had to write recommendations for using technology to uplift the cultural sectors of low and middle-income countries. Here's the map of the countries they chose. Really interesting to read their reports. #UCLDH #London

Political map of the world showing the countries my students wrote about in their global DH essays. Includes Panama, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Nigeria, Zambia, South Africa, Egypt, Syria, Sri Lanka, Mongolia, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

🎓An ECR with a piece of 18th c. history writing that could use feedback from 'critical friends'? Join us at UCL on 19 Feb to get targeted feedback on your paper, and give the same to others. Full details on applying at the link below. Please share. adamcrymble.org/cfp-18th-cen...

poster text: Critical Friends for 18th century British History

19 February 2025 ◍ 1000h-1600h ◍ UCL, Bloomsbury Campus

What is a ‘Critical Friend’?
A critical friend helps you create the best paper possible. Participants pre-circulate rather than deliver a handful of papers. We then come together as a small group to discuss each in depth.
The goal is to help the author create the strongest possible article/chapter for publication.
Space is limited to five to ensure maximum time for each paper.
If you are an early career historian with an article or chapter in an advanced state and would like to join our critical friend seminar, we’d love to hear from you.

poster text:

Further Particulars and how to Apply

19 February 2025 ◍ 1000h-1600h ◍ UCL, Bloomsbury Campus

Please send a 200-word summary of the paper/chapter you’d like to receive feedback on to a.crymble@ucl.ac.uk by 12 December 2024, indicating why you think it would benefit from collaborative peer review, and your willingness to do the same for up to four others.
Applicants must be of postdoctoral standing or ‘early career’ academics.
Current papers on the schedule include a chapter on smuggling, and a chapter on global foodways & British identity.
Limited funding is available to cover domestic train travel or essential childcare costs, with thanks to the Faculty of Arts & Humanities at UCL. Vegetarian lunch and hot drinks are provided.

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

This is still by far the best book I have written. 📔‘Technology and the Historian’ Charting the evolution of digital history practice. www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p0...

Cover of ‘Technology and the Historian’ by Adam Crymble

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 06/11/2024

Calling Digital Humanities grads! Survey forms.office.com/e/zKqFu4fK4D We are researching the career paths, progression, and skills development of graduates with DH training. Please help shape the future of Digital Humanities education. The survey will take c. 10-15 minutes to complete.

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 16/09/2024

Found my old printed copy of Programming Historian back when it was still small enough to print and bind. Here's a lesson from Laura Turner O'Hara on finding patterns in text using Regular Expressions. Lesson's still available online: programminghistorian.org/en/lessons/c...

A photo of a page of a book showing a digital humanities tutorial called 'Cleaning OCR'd text with Regular Expressions' by Laura Turner O'Hara, 2013.

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 04/09/2024

Ya why not? She invented the rose diagram.

The Rose Diagram, created by statistician Florence Nightingale in 1858.

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 03/09/2024

Royal Historical Society elections are open. Please consider voting for 🦊Dr Sarah Fox🦊. She brings a post-92, early career, and Northern voice to the council. You're spoiled for choice for your second vote.

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 08/08/2024

What is with the bleed through/phantom text on BRAND NEW article pdfs put out by Taylor and Francis? They are practically unreadable. I've seen this 3 times this week.

a screenshot of an article from the London journal with text showing through from the reverse side of the page.

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 30/03/2024

Red locations are CURRENTLY discharging sewage. Orange locations have done so in the past 48 hours. #USSPension owns 20% of this company.

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 30/03/2024

Thames Water is dumping huge volumes of sewage into our waterways. Academics in the UK own 20% of this company through their USS pension scheme. The second largest owner. Check out their live map of the dozens of places they're discharging sewage right this second. www.thameswater.co.uk/edm-map

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 12/03/2024

📣New Open Access Article Unintentional Migration:🍀Irish soldiers demobilised in London after major 18th- and early 19th-century wars were an important but overlooked source of unintentional Irish migrants to the capital. #migration #history www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

David Wilkie's 1816 painting 'The Chelsea Pensioners reading the Waterloo Dispatch'. A group of soldiers sit at a large outdoor table. A man in the middle of the group holds up a newspaper. They have just read of the British victory at waterloo. They have excited looks on their faces.

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 03/01/2024

The Migration Museum in London is looking for (hourly paid) curators for their new community space. #migration www.migrationmuseum.org/migration-mu...

A woman in a yellow blazer works on an exhibit card at the Migration Museum.

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 02/01/2024

Here is John Wyckham Archer's painting of the area in the mid-nineteenth century.

A painting of the St Giles Rookery by John Wyckham Archer. It shows a sad street scene of two and three story red brick buildings with simple windows, looking in a dilapidated state. A few cold and generally unhappy looking people are on the street. It gives a sense of being neglected but not dangerous. It's probably morning by the look of the lighting.

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 23/12/2023

Jewish Credit, Debt, and Economic Integration in Eighteenth-Century London. New study by Alex Wakelam shows Jewish widespread use of legal system to collect unpaid debts evidence they had been 'normalised' into London society, if not integrated. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Thomas Rowlandson cartoon of man being released from prison, with a skeleton guiding him out the door. The caption reads 'The dance of death: the prisoner discharged' (1816).

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 22/12/2023

We've been eating Turkey for Christmas in England since the Georgian era. Great piece on 'Christmas at Kew' in the 1780s by my wonderful colleague Sarah Fox on our collaborative research into dining and identity: theconversation.com/christmas-at...

Kew Palace stands in the distance, with a foreground full of snow. The acption reads 'Christmas at Kew: what the royal household of King George III ate for their festive dinner in 1788'

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 21/12/2023

Really wonderful exhibit 'Unforgotten Lives' at the London Metropolitan Archives, highlighting a number of Black, Indigenous, and Asian inhabitants of London in the past five hundred years. The web presence doesn't do it justice www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/events/unfor...

A visitor stands in front of text panels at the London Metropolitan Archives exhibit. The panels showcase two Black individuals: Robert Wedderburn and Ellen Craft. The text is too small to read in the photo.

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 22/11/2023

A German immigrant to London named Rudolph Ackermann brought us the glorious "Microcosm of London" series, drawn collaboratively by Pugin and Rowlandson in the early 19th century at Ackermann's expense. These views into London's spaces are a celebration of Ackermann's adopted home.

A boisterous crowd in Trafalgar Square in the early 19th century looks towards two men standing with their head in the pillory. A carriage led by a horse moves along the road in front of some grand London terraced properties. Smoke rises from the chimneys. A statue of a man on a horse looms to the upper right of the image, towering over the people. The watercolour painting is part of the 'Microcosm of London' series, published in the early 19th century by Rudolph Ackermann. The drawing is by Pugin and Rowlandson, who collaborated on all of the pieces in the series.

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 20/11/2023

'Buying a German Sausage' for the King's granddaughter. A Protestant German bridegroom was a good match for a royal woman in the early nineteenth century. Large sausages were a common visual trope about Germans in Britain. I don't think German men put much effort into refuting the stereotype.

A German salesmen in a German military hat sells a large German sausage to the King's grandaughter. The King, with a large sack of money in his hand, is attempting to make the purchase. The queen comments in the background. Outside, pigs graze on the grass. This cartoon draws on German stereotypes for consuming pig, while providing a double ententre about shopping for a husband.

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 18/11/2023

It may be a summer habit, when eggs were cheaper. The King paid more from Nov to April for his eggs. 11s per hundred. 8s per hundred in summer. And we know he paid premium prices, so I'd bump it down a little for huntsmen That's delivered though. You could save money by going to get your own eggs.

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 18/11/2023

'Irish Peg in a Rage' A London street veg seller depicted by Carington Bowles in the 1770s. By the looks of things, she's challenging a Macaroni to a duel over a spilt beer. Without family connections to secure better work, many migrants needed to turn to subsistence roles such as street selling.

An angry Irish woman sitting next to a basket of cabbages angrily pulls the ponytail of a well dressed man who has spilled her beer. The caption reads 'Irish Peg in a Rage, Make good the Damage you Dog, or I'll cut away your PARSNIP'. By Carington Bowles, London, 1770s

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 17/11/2023

'The Sauce Shop' by Rowlandson, 1776. A view into one of London's Italian Warehouses, which sold wares from the Continent to wealthy Londoners. Great window into historical migrant culture. Read more in Riello, 'A Taste of Italy' www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1... British Museum collection.

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 12/11/2023

'A cellar in the Rookery', mid 19th century painting by John Wyckham Archer of London's infamous slum. likely an imagined image, but indicative of what might have been in rented accommodation. Dining and cooking implements, cleaning tools, a place to sit and lie down. But look at those stairs.

Painting by John Wyckham Archer (c. 1840?) called 'A Cellar in the Rookery', depicting a woman sitting in front of a hearth in a dingy stone basement in St Giles in the Field's most notorious slum. The painting includes a bed, two chairs, a fireplace with a kettle, some plates above the fireplace, a mop and bucket, broom, and a few personal items. The staircase on the right is near vertical, highlighting her lack of natural light and the depth of her accommodation below street level.

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 11/11/2023

Cod, John Dorie, Smelts, and Mackerel. Pike, Salmon, Oysters and Lobsters. Halibut, Prawns, an Anchovies. 🐟 Get what you need at Billingsgate Market in London Image by John Wyckham Archer, circa 1850, from the British Museum collection.

Coloured drawing of Billingsgate FIsh market in London, circa 1850, showing a throng of people shopping for fish, many carrying baskets on their heads. By John Wyckham Archer.

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 08/11/2023

Amazing to learn that Programming Historian has been built by 380 different people so far. Including authors, editors, reviewers, and translators. 🥂 Here are some of our fabulous (current) editors keeping that project vibrant. Thanks to everyone who contributes. programminghistorian.org

Headshots of the 28 current editors of Programming Historian.

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Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 04/11/2023

Fun to see our research on foreign dining habits of Georgian Britain featured on 'Have I got News for You' last night on BBC, alongside Taylor Swift. Turns out they both like a Kebab. (www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis... )

Screenshot of 'Have I got News for You' episode, showing photos of four people: vladamir putin, Jeremy Corbin, King George IV, and Taylor Swift.

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