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Callan Davies

@callanjd.bsky.social
1.8K followers 1.8K following 362 posts

early modern leisure, play/s, culture | books: "What is a Playhouse?"+"Strangeness" + new intro to Shakespeare’s Merry Wives | MCFC⚽️| FSA, FRHistS | he/him | Lecturer at Uni of Southampton www.callandavies.com

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Callan Davies @callanjd.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
A despatch from the reading room (after a summer hiatus) on Shakespeare getting a coat of arms and finding heraldry in the playhouse… shakespearestage.substack.com/p/up-in-arms...
shakespearestage.substack.com
Up in Arms
Shakespeare’s Heraldry and Coats of Arms on Stage
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Callan Davies @callanjd.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Off to Toronto today & looking forward to exploring theatre records in the classroom for this celebratory Records of Early English Drama colloquium, marking 50 years of this amazing series! Lots of brilliant speakers lined up, online also available: crrs.ca/crrsevents/r... @reedproject.bsky.social
Yellow poster with purple etching of clown Tarlton playing tabor, reading “Applying REED to Reality: Pedagogy, Performance and Data Futures Records of Early English Drama 50th Anniversary Colloquium September 19-20.”
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Prof. Liz Oakley-Brown @earlymodlancs.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Fantastic programme of speakers - including my wonderful colleague Clare Egan and the equally wonderful @callanjd.bsky.social Online registration available 👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇 @reedproject.bsky.social REED 50th Anniversary Colloquium / September 19- 20, 2026 share.google/rkecbO66ktGE...
share.google
Records of Early English Drama 50th Anniversary Colloquium - Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies
Location Emmanuel College, Room 119 75 Queen’s Park Cres E, Toronto, ON M5S 1K5 September 19–20, 2026University of Toronto Applying REED to Reality: Pedagogy, Performance and Data Futures The internat...
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John Gallagher @earlymodernjohn.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
For the last nine months it's been my pleasure & privilege to be the editor of Renaissance Studies, and I think we're well overdue a romp through some fantastic articles we've published this year. See below for some of the finest new research in the interdisciplinary study of the Renaissance! 👇
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Daniel C. Blight @danielcblight.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
***URGENT PLEASE SHARE*** University of Brighton management have announced today that they ‘give notice of termination of all collective agreements’. This is a fundamental erasure of workers' rights. Management have announced the termination of all contractual documents, which includes:
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Leonie V. Hicks @lvhicks.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Today my heart is with all colleagues facing redundancy (some for the umpteenth time), who were made redundant over the summer or who have simply had enough and left. Our sector is having its guts ripped out.
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Pascale Aebischer (she/her) @pascaleexeter.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Just in case you haven't signed this yet: The crisis in Exeter is not over. It's just in that dangerous phase where people forget about it unless they're affected. We're waiting to find out the results of the 'consultation'. There's still time to change course. Share and sign! c.org/VZDjrbTybJ
c.org
Sign the Petition
Stop Redundancies at the University of Exeter
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Deidre Lynch @drbibliomane.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
You can/should read Emily Wilson's latest take on the Odyssey, but I'm logging on to convey my hairdresser's reaction. She was AGHAST that Nolan, with his million $ budget, gave Matt Damon ONLY 6 hair extensions. As a result, his hair did not blow around properly, & that ruined the film for her.
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The Material Culture of Wills Project @materialwills.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
📢PROJECT UPDATE📢 You may have seen the news that the University of Exeter, home of the wills project, has placed 500 academics at risk of redundancy. The project leader Prof. Jane Whittle & project co-investigator Dr Laura Sangha are both at risk, alongside almost all of the History department. 1/
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Callan Davies @callanjd.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Some positive (!) announcements for UK research and scholarship from @leverhulme.ac.uk
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Leverhulme Trust @leverhulme.ac.uk · 30/07/2026
As part of the Trust’s centenary commitment, the Trust Board is pleased to announce three new partnerships to strengthen the UK’s world-leading research base, providing direct support to underrepresented scholars at the earliest stages of their research career.
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
The Leverhulme Trust, as part of its major (£100 million) centenary investment in UK research, has announced 3 new partnerships designed to enhance opportunities for underrepresented groups at the early stages of research careers. @leverhulme.ac.uk Terrifically good news, and sorely needed. 1/3
leverhulme.ac.uk
Investing in the future of UK research | The Leverhulme Trust
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Callan Davies @callanjd.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
In Verona, scene is laid.
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Meryl Faiers @merylf.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Sunken Ships, Shakespeare, and Whale Watching open.substack.com/pub/shakespe... An evocative post from Callan Davies on all things watery and Shakespearean, from a Swedish warship to whales in Suffolk.
open.substack.com
Sunken Ships, Shakespeare, and Whale Watching
Maritime Shakespeare, Stockholm's extraordinary Vasa Museum, and whales in early modern East Anglia
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Callan Davies @callanjd.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Reflections on a recent trip to Stockholm’s Vasa Museum (showcasing a retrieved 1628 warship that had lain in tact at the bottom of the brackish Baltic sea) and some Shakespearean resonances that came to mind in today’s new post: open.substack.com/pub/shakespe...
open.substack.com
Sunken Ships, Shakespeare, and Whale Watching
Maritime Shakespeare, Stockholm's extraordinary Vasa Museum, and whales in early modern East Anglia
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University of Southampton @unisouthampton.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
The @britsciassoc.bsky.social Festival is coming to Southampton and the programme is live 🔬 🗓️ 16–20 September 2026 🎟️ Free tickets now available Join us for one of the UK’s biggest celebrations of science, browse and book events here 👉 britishsciencefestival.pulse.ly/qu1…
A person with curly hair is intently looking through a microscope in a laboratory setting, holding a printed page with text in their other hand. They are wearing a navy blue sweater and appear focused on their work. Various laboratory equipment is visible in the blurred background.A person standing with arms raised, silhouetted against a dazzling display of blue and white lights creating abstract patterns. The scene appears futuristic, with the person facing a tunnel-like structure adorned with sparkling lights, centered around a large, illuminated circular design.A male with a VR headset on. He is tilting his head back, has his mouth open in amazement and is wearing a suit jacket. Behind him is a screen with fluorescent colours projected.A man stands in a dark room, looking up at a large digital display of Earth glowing with vibrant blue and green colors. The Earth's surface shows continents and cloud formations. The man wears casual clothing and appears pensive, with his hands in his pockets, creating a contemplative scene.
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Business leaders back the Humanities and Social Sciences, noting their important to economy and culture in Exeter, Cornwall and the Southwest. This is one vital strand in defending the SHAPE subjects. Don't ignore it (or carp about it). Build on it. biz4humanities.com
biz4humanities.com
Business Leaders for Exeter Humanities & Social Sciences
An open letter from business leaders standing up for Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Exeter — a shared asset worth protecting. Read it and add your name.
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Rebekah Higgitt @rhiggitt.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
A depressingly long list of universities who are implementing cuts and redundancies, as well as the petitions and actions against them (via @onslies.bsky.social) qmucu.org/qmul-transfo.... This is a national emergency that should be responded to with national policy.
qmucu.org
UK HE shrinking
a live page of all the redundancies and restructures happening across UK Higher Education. Page is updated regularly.
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Tom Scriven @pigsmeat.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Also working-class autodidacts didn't just read alone - they read in groups, set up libraries and reading rooms, and battled for Mechanics' Institutes (many long ago merged into unis) to teach music, history, and politics. They built the public adult education infrastructure that's being destroyed
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David Veevers @davidveevers.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
I'm getting so very tired of doing this every time these pundits do their whole 'I had a world class education, but maybe you shouldn't?' spiel: James Marriot studied English Literature at Oxford.
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Callan Davies @callanjd.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Exeter made me a researcher, and I owe much to colleagues there past and present and so admire their scholarship and broader championship of our field. These cuts are evidently senseless, counterproductive, and cruel. I hope the union, petition, and other pressure…
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Callan Davies @callanjd.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Finally got round to reupholstering our kitchen chairs with thanks to a wedding gift voucher for the material. It was previously clad in my grandma’s 1950s(?) velveteen (with a vaguely sinister hint of the human circulatory system). Now new and geometric and a bit more us.
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Francesca Stavrakopoulou @proffrancesca.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
I’d love it if you’d sign this. It might not prevent me and my colleagues losing our jobs, but it will draw attention to the ideological vandalism being perpetrated by the wealthy execs running our university. Stop Redundancies at the University of Exeter - sign the petition below! c.org/NpvY4sR9gH
c.org
Sign the Petition
Stop Redundancies at the University of Exeter
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Eoin Price @eoinprice.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
A long time in the making, Reprints & Revivals of Renaissance Drama, which I edited with Harry Newman (a long time friend), is now out! It's a collection about forms of renewal in print & performance & their importance to the production & reception of early modern drama.
Front cover of a book, Reprints and Revivals of Renaissance DramaBack cover of a book, Reprints and Revivals of Renaissance Drama.First contents pageSecond contents page
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Callan Davies @callanjd.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
5 years of flowering and these geraniums still going strong.
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University English @univeng.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
This week, Andy Burnham – an English graduate with a love of poetry – stepped closer to becoming Prime Minister. Andy’s remarkable journey embodies the central message of the #EnglishCreates campaign: this subject has the potential to enrich lives, open up opportunities, and shape the future.
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Glen O'Hara @gsoh31.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
This is one of the dumbest and saddest things I've ever seen. We should not think of universities in this way, and if we do that'll destroy everything that is both useful and good about them. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Find out which university degrees could earn you most across your lifetime
New data suggests which university degrees have the highest and lowest financial returns over a lifetime.
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Ben Phillips @benphillips1989.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
A statement from Exeter UCU branch @ucu.org.uk - please share far and wide.
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
'On average, graduates earn more than non-graduates – even when we adjust for differences based on background characteristics or prior attainment. And on average, the exchequer also sees a substantial lifetime return from state investment in educating an individual to graduate level'. 2/3
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Greg Walker @gregmw4.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
The news of brutal cuts to the Arts and Humanities at Exeter and elsewhere highlights the self-destructive nature of the ´strategies’ being pursued across UK HE. Exeter’s English Dept was rated the best research unit in English in the country in RAE 2008. 1/4
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Glen O'Hara @gsoh31.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
The cuts at Exeter University won't work. They never work. The high-ups will be back for more in a year or two, then even more a year or two after that. Unis just keep doing the same thing consultants tell them to do, over and over again. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
University of Exeter in talks to cut about 150 members of staff
The university says it is consulting with colleagues over "limited and specific potential changes".
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Callan Davies @callanjd.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
A dramatic account of Stratford-upon-Avon’s social world gone wrong… with a few other dispatches from the archive: open.substack.com/pub/shakespe...
open.substack.com
Murder in Shakespeare's Stratford
Barfights and backgammon in a 17th-century market town
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Royal Historical Society @royalhistsoc.org · 16/06/2026
Over the next two weeks, we feature the 8 articles and 8 monographs shortlisted for the Society's 2026 Early Career Article and First Book Prizes. Today: 'Domestic labor and white Creole womanhood in Jamaica, ca.1865–1938', by Liz Egan, published in 'Journal of British Studies' #Skystorians 1/2
Image the Journal of British Studies and text: ‘‘A Lazy Mistress Makes a Lazy Servant’: domestic labor and white Creole womanhood in Jamaica, ca.1865–1938’
 
Liz Egan
Journal of British Studies

SHORTLISTED

Royal Historical Society Early Career Article Prize, 2026
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Matthew Harrison @matthewharrison.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
Googling pseudonymous early modern tracts now often produces a hallucinated scholarly attribution. At first I would check the evidence, wondering if I'd missed something. Here's an example of how it makes up a scholarly consensus on attribution: Robert Parsons, Matthew Grove, Anthony Munday...
this time the AI attributes it to Munday. Here, it's printed by Shakespeare's dad. Here it's William Covell.
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Callan Davies @callanjd.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Nearly 40% of schoolleavers (should be more re “growth” in other major economies) become graduates, making them one of the largest shared interest groups in British society across coming decades. But sure, that’s under 50%, so sacrifice them to The Taxpayer (presumably not these specific taxpayers).
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Callan Davies @callanjd.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
A lovely piece
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Patsy “Resistance Kitty” Evans Ph.D. @drharmony.net · 04/06/2026
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Callan Davies @callanjd.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Admirable strength from the family in what must be an impossible time. Hoping that students and the University community, as well as the wider city, are keeping safe amid these horrendous and heart-breaking events.
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Dominic Dean @drdominicdean.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
What exactly is the government's priority? Because it sure as hell isn't growth... ...nor innovation, nor social mobility, nor regional re-balancing...so what on earth is it?
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Callan Davies @callanjd.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
Anyone interested in playhouses and their legacies, please do consider registering for this @saaupdates.bsky.social semina!
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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
Engaging the public in humanities & social sciences feels more important than ever. So we are offering £8k grants for researchers to work with galleries, libraries, archives, museums or performing arts organisations to do this. Please help spread the word! www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/sche...
thebritishacademy.ac.uk
SHAPE Involve and Engage
A funding programme for innovative public engagement from the British Academy.
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Callan Davies @callanjd.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
Excited to get stuck into reading This Little World (my copy of which should be arriving shortly!)
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
The contrast between the vision with which government & government ministers invested in universities in the post-war era, producing from green fields regional powerhouses like Sussex, Essex, Warwick, and today's impoverished, Gradgrindian government HE steer, is appalling. Likewise its results. 3/3
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🕸️Meg Conley @pocketobservatory.org · 27/05/2026
A university that does not understand the value of physical libraries staffed with real librarians is a university that does not understand how knowledge is kept.
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Sheila Liming @seeshespeak.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
The book is dead! Long live the book! yalereview.org/article/shei...
yalereview.org
Sheila Liming: “The End of Books”
A university professor on what we lose when we lose the book as a physical medium.
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Callan Davies @callanjd.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
Bank holiday heat
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Chloe Fairbanks @fairbanc.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
This is an absolute delight & I recommend you all go read it now as a pre-Bank Holiday treat.
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Callan Davies @callanjd.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
A way into Shakespeare through the weather forecast? A little look at almanacs, biography, and climate… open.substack.com/pub/shakespe...
open.substack.com
Shakespeare under the Weather
Forecasting what Shakespeare was thinking, via almanacs and climate...
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Callan Davies @callanjd.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
More brilliant work on The King's Women site, here unpacking the networks around the Globe and its associated enterprises on Bankside. And how excellent that Alice Tapps's house was a taphouse...
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Samuel @samuel.fm · 16/05/2026
guy who is mad at Nolan’s Odyssey because it depicts the sea as blue instead of wine-dark
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