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Dr Amanda McVitty

@dramandamcvitty.bsky.social
1.1K followers 619 following 163 posts

Professional historian FRHistS | Social, cultural and legal histories of medieval Europe and modern Aotearoa New Zealand | Writing a book on colonial ghosts #UncannyCountry phanza.org.nz/historian/amanda-mcvi…

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Reposted by Dr Amanda McVitty
PHANZA Professional Historians of New Zealand / Aotearoa @phanza.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Dunedin Heritage Weekend is coming up 9-11 October, with talks, tours and events exploring some of the stories, places and people that have shaped Dunedin. Come along and get a taste of Dunedin's rich heritage resources. www.southernheritage.org.nz/events
southernheritage.org.nz
Events | Southern Heritage Trust
Join us to appreciate Otago’s rich social, cultural, architectural and industrial heritage.
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
To exactly no one’s surprise.
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
This makes me sick, for myself and every other human whose creativity and labour has been stolen.
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Louie Stowell @louiestowell.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
And, as someone whose labour (all my books published pre 2021) was stolen, I took that personally
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Co-signed!
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Dr Laura Sangha @lsangha.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I overheard some holidaymakers comparing the extreme heat of the summer of 1976 with that of 2026 and couldn't help but write a blog post about how History could help: manyheadedmonster.com/2026/09/22/a...
manyheadedmonster.com
A plea for critical thinking humans in our world of extremes
Laura Sangha A companion piece to: What is history for? Or: Doing history/thinking historically The train to Totnes this weekend was full of late holiday makers heading for Cornwall. They were grat…
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Phil Wheeler @phil-wh.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I'm old enough to remember when Family First was the hardline conservative bigoted lobby group for parents. Education is now a battle front, just like it has been in the US for decades. Well-funded astroturf groups are here to commodify education.
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Yes please, what time is the launch?
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The Past and other Places @pastandotherplaces.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
The Lost Nightclubs tour "...was created by archivist Nella McNicol - who believes Glasgow's nightlife deserves just as much celebration as its A-listed buildings and Gothic architecture." #DoorsOpenDay #heritage #Glasgow #LocalHistory www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
New heritage trail remembers Glasgow's legendary nightclubs
Archaos, the Arches and the Tunnel all feature in the Lost Nightclubs walking tour.
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Asking for New Zealand, too.
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Anita Hoffmann @17cmedicalwomen.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
#earlymodern ads are never boring! Yesterday's fave - the dragon is so cute... 'A Natural and Medicinal History of Worms bred in Bodies of Men and other Animals', 5s, available a the Green Dragon on Little Britain. London Mercury, Jan. 13, 1722
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Dr Dean Knight @drdeanknight.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Saturday afternoon in Parliament and legislation is being passed under urgency that has the potential to adversely affect our protest rights.
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I'm wondering if anyone has ever written this story up? It would make for a great, if gruesome, #truecrime tale, complete with a cast of colourful characters and a curse from the unrepentant murderer uttered from the scaffold just before he hangs.
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Today's research for #UncannyCountry took me on a macabre little side quest to the 1884 Maori Creek murder. Not a ghost story, but backstory of a barrister who later features in the Supreme Court trial of a medium charged with 'pretending to exercise sorcery' and commune with the dead. #amwriting
The gold mining settlement of Maori Creek, later called Dunganville. Photograph by W.F. Heinz, from West Coast New Zealand History, West Coast Recollect.
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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
if you are reviewing an unpublished manuscript and you have the sheer unmitigated audacity, cheek, gall and laziness to upload it into an LLM to generate a review, let me tell you, you should be shunned and tarred and feathered
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Feana Tu’akoi @feanatuakoi.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Woohoo!!! Such great news! 🥳 🎉🎊 LOVED my time as 2024 Children’s Writer in Residence & highly recommend it. C’mon children’s writers - get applying! 🤩 www.otago.ac.nz/news/newsroo...
otago.ac.nz
Otago celebrates return of Children’s Writer in Residence
New Zealand’s longest established residency for children’s writers returns and with it the promise of more stories for, and about, our children and young people.
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Stories like this remind me there are still tons of good people in the world, who do things just because they care. Community is our bulwark against the darkness. (Also, cats.🐈‍⬛)
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
(Apologies to Jennifer - it’s Thibodeaux)
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Jennifer Thibodeux is the perfect person to write this. Straight onto my TBR pile!
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Kenneth F. Duggan 🇨🇦 @kfduggan.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Deadline for applications to this TT job in Medieval and/or Transregional History (7th-15th centuries) at the University of Ottawa is only one month away (16 October). universityaffairs.ca/search-jobs/...
universityaffairs.ca
Search Jobs - University Affairs
Explore the latest academic and higher education job opportunities on the University Affairs Jobs board. Updated daily, our job board features hundreds of teaching, research, postdoctoral, administrat...
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Katherine Churchill @katherinechurchill.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Here’s a link to my new article on archives and plague death! I loved being part of this special issue (and huge thanks to editor Daniel Davies and my fellow contributors—go read their essays too!) read.dukeupress.edu/jmems/articl...
read.dukeupress.edu
Forgetting the Plague: Disease, Social Hierarchy, and the Limits of the Archive in Saint Erkenwald and the Liber albus
During England's fourteenth‐ and fifteenth‐century plague outbreaks, medieval archivists and literary authors alike emphasized the imbrication of archives and death. The London clerk John Carpenter ag...
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Sometimes comes in fully airborne form, when leaping from the top of the fridge onto a handy human shoulder.
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Aww, I always love the superman pose 😻 (or as it's known in our house, Superpaws!!!)
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
So many delightful tentacled goodies! 🐙 Happy birthday!
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
I say Barry should keep going all the way west, straight into the sea. Deliberately leaking confidential health data should be disqualifying for any candidate.
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Just when you think the AI behemoths couldn't get more toxic.
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Amy Leonard @hoyahistorian.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
The ATWG Conference program committee is extending the workshop proposal deadline from Sept. 15 to Sept. 30. The information you'll need for this process can be found here: www.ssemwg.org/attending-to.... Let me know if you have any questions! #earlymodern
ssemwg.org
Attending to EMW 2027 CFP — Society for the Study of Early Modern Women & Gender
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Next week's PHANZA AGM is being held at the new Archives Reading Room at Te Matapihi te Ao Nui here in Wellington. I hope to see some of my fellow historians there in person!👋
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
More on the unintended (🤔) consequences of drastic cuts at Archives NZ and National Library. Among the key points: huge capital investments have been made in infrastructure, incl digitisation and buildings, but operational cuts mean losing the expert staff needed to deliver public benefits from it.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 11/09/2026
“It is humanities scholarship that will suffer most immediately, as it is more likely to depend upon obscure texts, specific editions, and material books, and it relies on methods of quotation and citation for which LLMs offer no alternative“
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Kiwi on your left @kiwionyourleft.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Look familiar #nzpol? We've done this with power generation and retail, prisons, telecommunications, now they're going to do it with water/wastewater and health. Get rid of the right. They will always sell the country down the river, and WE pay the price every. Damn. Time.
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Bernard Hickey @bernardchickey.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
All for the sake of a smidgen of a skerrick of a basis point lower in the Government bond yield and (maybe) mortgage rates.
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
If I recall correctly, during/after Covid, we were promised mass digitisation of records as the trade-off for temporary-turned-permanent reductions in reading room hours, but then the digitisation programme ran out of funds and seems to have been quietly mothballed. Crap all around, really.
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Just did my vote for #BirdOfTheYear and these chaps got my top vote because they are the destructive delights of my garden. Team #kākā all the way! 🦜 It's fun to vote and follow the competition but also confronting to see how many of our precious manu are listed as 'in serious trouble'.
Slightly blurry photo of two kākā hanging out on my deck.
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Hannah O’Regan @palaeohan.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
📣 new #bear paper! Dr Liam Lewis and I gathered the evidence for bears and bear-baiting in #medieval England and northern France. We looked at bones, literature and archival accounts. We found that evidence for live bears increased after the #Norman Conquest 🧵
A sculpture of a muzzled and chained bear lying down with its right front paw crossed over the left. It’s carved as the floor rest on the tomb of Richard Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick, located in the Beauchamp Chapel at the Collegiate Church of St Mary in Warwick. Photo by Liam Lewis.
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
This is fascinating research but also so disturbing through the modern lens of animal cruelty. Poor bears! The statue is so sad 🐻💔
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
When I started doing historical research for Waitangi Tribunal inquiries, I looked up a timeline of every settlement and the amounts, and was shocked at how small the cumulative total was. The cost to the Crown of some semblance of justice has actually been pretty minimal over 30+ years.
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
There's a reason one of the first things Elon Musk's DOGE did was slash archives funding and staff. In NZ's case, I'm not going to attribute to malice what can be attributed to short-sighted cost-cutting and managerialism, but the end result is the same: less transparent, accountable government.
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
If you care about governments being held accountable, then you need to know about disastrous cuts being planned for Archives NZ and the National Library. These cuts don't just make it much harder to do history. They undermine the institutions at the heart of our democracy.
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Jared Davidson @anrchivist.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
So thrilled to have been featured on Drafting the Past. If you like hearing about *how* people write and organise their craft (as well as geek out on books), this is the podcast for you
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Yay! I've been listening to @draftingthepast.bsky.social since you got started and was delighted to open the feed this week see the first historian from Aotearoa New Zealand featured. May @anrchivist.bsky.social be the first of many!
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
It’s been a few years since I’ve written anything on prostitution in medieval Europe, so I’m excited to catch up on the latest research. This one’s going straight to the top of my TBR pile! 📚 Love that it’s open access, too.
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Paul Byrne @theplanetaryguy.com · 09/09/2026
Astrophotographer Adam (AJ) Smadi caught this image a few hours ago from Washington state. A thin crescent Moon, sunlight illuminating the rugged lunar surface. And 2,400 times farther away—and on the other side of the Sun—mighty Jupiter, and its moons Io (left) and Ganymede (right).
A crescent Moon seen during the day, arcing from upper left to lower right of the frame. At lower centre is the full disk of Jupiter; the small dots to its upper left and lower right and Io and Ganymede, respectively.
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Bernard Hickey @bernardchickey.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
This is where we are. A homeless man has a stroke that damages his speech and mobilty while sleeping ubder a bridge. So Health NZ discharges him in a hospital gown to a charity not funded to support him. What. The. Actual.
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Stunning. Your sky and landscape photos are always a such a refreshing improvement to my feed!
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Dr Amanda McVitty @dramandamcvitty.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Today I'm having fun unraveling the sensational trial of a medium tried for 'pretending an enchantment' (1735 Witchcraft Act, still in force in colonial NZ!) Exhibit A was a 'photograph taken at seance'. You'd better believe I'm hunting out that ghost photo! #amwriting #UncannyCountry #legalhistory
List of trial exhibits. A is Photograph taken at seance
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Wallenstein Appreciator @marbleliberal.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
48% actually. I keep this graph on my phone
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Monica H Green @monicamedhist.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
"Codicological genomes". Not a term I expected to hear, but I guess it will become part of the medievalist vocabulary now. Great summary of an intriguing study. (And no, fellow codicologists, you still do not have to wear gloves. The DNA in your books is too degraded to do any damage.) #MedievalSky
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Ben Ross @benakl.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Remember the Herald was founded in 1863 to support the Waikato invasion that kicked off the Land Wars. Not much has changed honestly since then given the Paul Henry article below
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Te Ara Paerangi Com - Research Advocacy Capability @te-ara-paerangi.community · 04/09/2026
🚨🚨🚨'increasingly rely on knowledge/generosity of retired experts' is describing a state of emergency. 🚨🚨🚨 This is what decades of under funding followed by outright attacks on public research leads to. And there are almost no jobs for those finishing PhDs. Why not? 🤔 #ResearchIsWork #NZPOl 🇳🇿
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