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Ben Mechen

@benmechen.bsky.social
1.9K followers 842 following 317 posts

Historian of 20thC Britain, London: liberalism, capitalism, media and sexuality, 1960s-90s / + new things on political ecology and psychoanalysis. Precariously employed 🫠 www.ucl.ac.uk/history/people/academ…

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Reposted by Ben Mechen
LSE Library @lselibrary.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
You can read digitised issues of She (1970-1973), Mukti (1983-1987), and more in the South Asian Heritage collection on LSE Digital Library: digital.library.lse.ac.uk/collections/... @lsesouthasia.bsky.social #TheWomen'sLibraryat100
digital.library.lse.ac.uk
Collections - LSE Digital Library
Explore our digital collections through curated selections of material according to themes, type or source of material.
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Reposted by Ben Mechen
lewisryder.bsky.social @lewisryder.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Proud of this one - my new article in The Historical Journal is out on first view. It's a historiographical review of the literature on British colonial spoils, or 'loot'.
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Teresa Doherty @dohertyta.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Delighted that the archive catalogue for the Radical Nurses Group has been released #HistNursing @rcnhistory.bsky.social @ukahn.bsky.social @womenshistnet.bsky.social rcn.epexio.com/records/C405
rcn.epexio.com
Papers of the Radical Nurses Group
Papers of the Radical Nurses Group. This collection contains: Large, folded page of notes with the heading: “Nurses – Politicians Puppets?” c.1985. Note from “Sue” to “Marie” regarding a borrow…
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Saima Nasar @saimanasar.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Please join us in celebrating the Centre for Black Humanities’ tenth anniversary. CBH is holding a two-day symposium titled ‘Collectivity, Community, Collaboration’. Our keynote will be Professor Christina Sharpe. Cfp below. Please spread the word!
CALL FOR PAPERS
Centre For Black Humanities 10th Anniversary Symposium: 
‘Black Humanities: Collectivity, Community, Collaboration’
Keynote Speaker: Professor Christina Sharpe
8-9
th April 2027
University of Bristol

The Centre for Black Humanities is an interdisciplinary research collective dedicated to 
advancing scholarship on the artistic and intellectual contributions of people of African 
descent. It is inspired by and expands legacies of scholarship, art, and activism relating 
to Black lives across time and space. Building on our international and multilingual
networks, and our home in the port city of Bristol, our research often engages with 
communities beyond traditional academic settings and addresses inequality and social 
justice through innovative collaborations. By centring an ethics of care and generosity, 
despite the chronic conditions of life in and beyond the academy, we support earlycareer scholars and visiting scholars/practitioners. In turn, we seek to interrogate and 
repurpose institutions of knowledge production such as universities, museums and
publishing houses, within entangled contexts of reparative justice, decolonization, and 
the climate crisis. We imagine collectivity, community and collaboration as methods for 
Black Humanities research going forwards.To celebrate the Centre’s 10-year anniversary, we will be holding a two-day symposium 
entitled: ‘Black Humanities: Collectivity, Community, Collaboration’. The keynote 
will be Professor Christina Sharpe, Research Chair in Black Studies in the Humanities at 
York University (Canada), and author of In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (2016) and 
Ordinary Notes (2024). We invite scholars and practitioners (at all levels, independent 
and affiliated) to submit abstracts for presentations of 15 minutes. The event will be 
held in person at the University of Bristol. We invite presentations that speak to Black 
Humanities in its multi/anti/undisciplinary forms. We are particularly interested in work
that speaks to the following themes:
- Collectivity, Collaboration and/or Community in Black Humanities
- Black Humanities/Studies in times of polycrisis
- Black Health
- Environmental Justice
- Radical Imaginaries (how creative works make sense of Black pasts/present and 
help to shape Black futures)
- Methods for solidarity and/or incompleteness
- Folklore and storytelling as method
- Translation and multilingual solidarities
- Beyond critique
Please submit your abstract of no more than 250 words, along with a short bio of no 
more than 100 words, to cbh-publicity@bristol.ac.uk. Abstracts should be submitted 
no later than Friday 30th October 2026. A publication and podcast series are planned to 
follow on after this event.
You may reach us at cbh-publicity@bristol.ac.uk in case of any questions or 
observations.
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
This is looking like a welcome report Fonagy is able to draw upon a long career in clinical work, as well as deep familiarity with psy traditions - esp. object relations - to argue (obviously, necessarily) that the external conditions for young ppl’s happiness and self-worth are currently NOT GOOD
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
This is looking like a welcome report Fonagy is able to draw upon a long career in clinical work, as well as deep familiarity with psy traditions - esp. object relations - to argue (obviously, necessarily) that the external conditions for young ppl’s happiness and self-worth are currently NOT GOOD
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Past and Present @pastpresentsoc.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
On advance access: "Bodies, Tides, Timber, and the Global History of London’s Docks, 1860–1928" by Simeon Koole (@uobrishistory.bsky.social) and @benmechen.bsky.social (@uclhistory.bsky.social) #OpenAccess doi.org/10.1093/past...
doi.org
Bodies, Tides, Timber, and the Global History of London’s Docks, 1860–1928*
Abstract. This article examines changes in the bodies and environment of labourers carrying timber imported into London’s docks in the 1860s to the 1920s t
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Reposted by Ben Mechen
Marta Zboralska @marta-zboralska.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Non-digitised sources? Original approaches? Interdisciplinarity? Non-anglophone topics? Do not compute!!
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
And just produce proposals that sound like what’s already in its training data, meaning the “usual suspect” projects and CVs will be the ones that float to the top.
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Marta Zboralska @marta-zboralska.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
I guess that’s the inevitable outcome of a system that requires people to write funding applications to get money for research — just produce whatever Computer will like.
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Obviously an outrage. But also an unsurprising gambit by SMTs when Labour’s message since 2024 has been “cut your own costs before you come knocking at our door”
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Creepy Kleinslop
AI generated book cover for a book about Melanie Klein
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I should say here that the BL are looking for EOIs from academics who might come on board as supervisors for projects like this one
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Alice Marples @alicemarples.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
See below for collaborative project outlines inviting UK PhD supervisor proposals - deadline is 27 Nov 2026. Happy to answer any queries and please do repost/pass on to all interested parties!
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Some fascinating Collaborative Doctoral Awards on offer here at the BL, including a great history of sexuality/book history/library history project relating to the Rund Collection of 19th/20thC erotic books and ephemera www.bl.uk/services/res...
bl.uk
Collaborative Doctoral Landscape Awards
Fully-funded and jointly supervised studentships across four developing research areas.
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Chris Millard @chrismillard83.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
this is perhaps the most useful thing that LLMs and GenAI have done: to provoke people into articulating (over again) that even the 'hardest' of 'hard sciences' are human endeavours, with human meaning, and concerned with human understanding of the significance of the world we all inhabit
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
“These systems will soon be able to revolutionise any field overnight” Hmm. The first whistleblower these companies actually care about will be the one who admits that claims like this are ludicrous
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
All very interesting and the responses definitely ring true with my own perception of what was happening in classes and in assessments in 2025-26, e.g. rising student anxieties, paired w/ extensive use of AI for certain tasks but only rarely as aa straightforward essay-mill
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
All very interesting and the responses definitely ring true with my own perception of what was happening in classes and in assessments in 2025-26, e.g. rising student anxieties, paired w/ extensive use of AI for certain tasks but only rarely as aa straightforward essay-mill
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Can't work out if this (investing machines with agency/god-like powers/consciousness/rights) is all part of the plan [mwa-ha-ha] or if it's a kind of techgnosis-psychosis produced by too many Silicon Valley guys microdosing for too many years
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Marta Zboralska @marta-zboralska.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
It seems to me like the whole idea of “alignment” is trying to turn the fact that LLMs are error machines into supposed “agency”.
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John Warner @biblioracle.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Thinking about what I see as a contradiction lately. I think it's pretty clear that AI has advanced quite a lot in terms of its capabilities and reliability since the arrival of Chat GPT, and yet, despite this, I, personally, still have very little use for it. If Google search hadn't shit the bed...
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
I teach with it every year and Bill Schwarz’s The White Man’s World is ever more prescient on the bizarre psychic structures formed through the the white experience of decolonisation in Africa global.oup.com/academic/pro...
global.oup.com
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Even if Orr now gets bounced out of the Faculty of Divinity (a good thing), “The Moorings” will surely continue as an intellectual base, recruiting ground and social centre for Christian nationalism. It’s barnacled onto the wider Cambridge scene now. Whether Orr has a post or not won’t really matter
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
- doesn’t (allegedly) do crime
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
2. His real goal at Cambridge and within Reform is to create an intellectual, institutional and political architecture for the rechristianisation of society on his own theologically conservative terms 3. In this effort, he has the financial and political backing of figures like Thiel and Vance
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
What did I conclude from this? Nothing we didn’t know already I guess. 1. His highly simplistic “stop the boats”, nationalistic kind of stuff on daytime TV and YouTube is knowingly cynical and probably mostly to increase his profile on the Right
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Anyway, all very scholastic, twisting and turning through various philosophical/theological reference points, from Aquinas to Heidegger to Rawls. But eventually arriving at an antimodernist restatement of classical Christian theism.
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
I read a couple of James Orr’s academic articles yesterday. One was a recovery of Edith Stein’s phenomenology of eternity. The other was an investigation of how one might philosophically ground “basic equality”, concluding that a notion of God’s love is sufficient.
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Not surprising, I guess, that in a university renowned for its dining clubs, decentralised power structures, taps-on-the-shoulder and tolerance of charismatic dons that Orr has been able to turn his private home into a parallel institution without anyone really blinking an eye
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
The ideal supervisor relationship imo: - meets with u every 6 wks - replies to yr emails - reads chapters when u send them - recommends books - writes u a reference - doesn’t want to be yr dad (/mum) - doesn’t know yr home address - doesn’t have printed rugby shirts www.ft.com/content/c2d0...
ft.com
James Orr and the gospel of the new British right
Reform’s policy head is a Cambridge theologian with an enviable contact book and a belief in ‘faith, family and flag’
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
The ideal supervisor relationship imo: - meets with u every 6 wks - replies to yr emails - reads chapters when u send them - recommends books - writes u a reference - doesn’t want to be yr dad (/mum) - doesn’t know yr home address - doesn’t have printed rugby shirts www.ft.com/content/c2d0...
ft.com
James Orr and the gospel of the new British right
Reform’s policy head is a Cambridge theologian with an enviable contact book and a belief in ‘faith, family and flag’
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Not surprising, I guess, that in a university renowned for its dining clubs, decentralised power structures, taps-on-the-shoulder and tolerance of charismatic dons that Orr has been able to turn his private home into a parallel institution without anyone really blinking an eye
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Very fun and normal ppl: "He asked the crowd if anyone could supply “a little poem, a little joke, a song”. First to step forward was a postgraduate Cambridge philosopher who announced he would read from the concluding chapter of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit" giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
bsky.app/profile/benm...
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
The network around JO in Cambridge, for example, develops, conjoins and promotes the following intellectual positions, among others >”Race realism” >”Sex realism” >Christian classical theism (“no God, no powers”) >Transhumanism We will probably see more and more PhDs and postdocs in these areas
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
The Nick Land [xenocosmography] arc from 1988 (articles in Third Text promoting revolutionary feminism via Irigaray and Wittig) to 1995 (CCRU) to 2026 (fascist thought-leader, if thoughts were farts) continues to amaze me.
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
I read a couple of James Orr’s academic articles yesterday. One was a recovery of Edith Stein’s phenomenology of eternity. The other was an investigation of how one might philosophically ground “basic equality”, concluding that a notion of God’s love is sufficient.
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Marta Zboralska @marta-zboralska.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Sometimes I think “I may not have any art world or academic connections but it’s fine, I can make it, I work hard and my work speaks for itself!” then I read something like this and… oh. Silly silly me.
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
The Nick Land [xenocosmography] arc from 1988 (articles in Third Text promoting revolutionary feminism via Irigaray and Wittig) to 1995 (CCRU) to 2026 (fascist thought-leader, if thoughts were farts) continues to amaze me.
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
A lot to consider for historians here. I agree that the short coursework essay as core assessment needs to be rethought. On the other hand, assessments which already emphasise primary research seem salvageable, through mini-vivas or making non-digital archival work more of an expectation.
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
The network around JO in Cambridge, for example, develops, conjoins and promotes the following intellectual positions, among others >”Race realism” >”Sex realism” >Christian classical theism (“no God, no powers”) >Transhumanism We will probably see more and more PhDs and postdocs in these areas
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Despite letters like this one, C*fnas will ultimately prove expendable. The very well-funded network of far right intellectuals of which he was a protégé are creating spaces at Cambridge and elsewhere where this kind of work will continue to flourish and be celebrated. That’s the bigger game.
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
A side point, but my impression is the currency of citation metrics varies significantly across disciplines and there is no one “academic” POV on this. In history, publishing with “top” journals or presses, or having done a doc/postdoc at a small number of institutions, seems to count most of all
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Marta Zboralska @marta-zboralska.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
I remember being asked about “research-led teaching” in an interview for a full-time teaching-only job, and I really had to stop myself from saying “but you won’t be paying me to do any research!”
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Lewis Wade 🗃️ @wadehistory.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
As late as the end of 2024, Cambridge's Careers Service said openly regarding JRFs that "Some interviewers may have decided in advance that they are not interested in certain candidates. They are not accountable to HR in the way that other employers would be... /1
web.archive.org
Junior Research Fellowships (JRFs) | Careers Service
JRF's are fixed term awards of college membership, given to early stage academics, often before final submission of their PhD or shortly afterwards. They are awarded on the basis of research excellenc...
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Dave Andress @davidandress.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Once again I am telling you we ought to nationalise the Oxbridge colleges, and turn the 2 universities into real national centres for excellence in POSTGRADUATE education, with student places allocated by open national competition, and teaching places on secondment from the rest of the sector.
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Ben Mechen @benmechen.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Interesting thoughts on folk revival, Ghost Box, Goblin Band and Mark Fisher in this latest instalment of Katrina’s ongoing essay on place, history and culture
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Katrina Navickas @katrinanavickas.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
Work in progress historyofpublicspace.uk/draft-essay-...
historyofpublicspace.uk
Draft essay interlude – contested commons
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Past and Present @pastpresentsoc.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
On advance access: "Bodies, Tides, Timber, and the Global History of London’s Docks, 1860–1928" by Simeon Koole (@uobrishistory.bsky.social) and @benmechen.bsky.social (@uclhistory.bsky.social) #OpenAccess doi.org/10.1093/past...
doi.org
Bodies, Tides, Timber, and the Global History of London’s Docks, 1860–1928*
Abstract. This article examines changes in the bodies and environment of labourers carrying timber imported into London’s docks in the 1860s to the 1920s t
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