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Elizabeth Biggs

@elizabethbiggs.bsky.social
2.7K followers 398 following 807 posts

Research fellow at Swansea working on fiefs of medieval & early modern Jersey; women in the Plantagenet world, first book on the Palace of Westminster; formerly @virtualtreasury.bsky.social, UWE, York and Durham; was once called Irene Adler; dogs; she/her.

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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Question for #medievalSky- what should I read on 10th century Brittany? I need context for the Channel Islands and the bay of St Malo ideally, but any sense of how Brittany operated politically would be hugely appreciated.
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Happy Michaelmas! One of the four quarter days on which debts and rents were often paid, including over the font in the palace chapel at Westminster, and also the saint's day for the warrior angel, Michael the Archangel, dedicatee of Mont-St-Michel and many other high-up abbeys.
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
😬 The Historic England archives are wonderful and already hard to access. This bankruptcy of a vendor makes it even more difficult, particularly since once digitised, items are often embargoed from physical access.
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Dr Richard Asquith @richardasquith.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Prof. Sue Powell, chair of the Harlaxton Medieval Symposium, has written a tribute to the memory of Prof. Julia Boffey, a much missed friend of the Symposium and long-standing member of the steering committee (among many other things). It can be read here: harlaxtonmedievalsymposium.org
A photograph of Prof. Julia Boffey at the Harlaxton Medieval Symposium.
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Mapping the March: Medieval Wales and England, c.1282-1550 @mappingthemarch.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Research Seminar- 19 Oct, 4pm Speaker: Brendan Smith, Professor of Medieval History, Department of History, Uni of Bristol. Title: 'Pale Reflections: English Enclaves in the Plantagenet Empire'. Open to all! Please join using the QR code or email us for the link (mapping-the-march@bristol.ac.uk).
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I went to Jersey and took about a million archive photos but also ate specular food, walked along empty beaches at sunset and finished up with a visit to La Hougue Bie, a Neolithic site with a twelfth- century chapel.
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
For international dog day, old photos of the hooligans being cuddly, since I’m away today and miss them.
A large white fluffy dog leaning up against my legA sleepy white fluffy dog lying on a red sofa
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Liesbeth Corens @onslies.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
THEY GOT TO 2000 SUPPORTERS! Now in need of 3000 more in just under a year. LETS GO! #earlymodern #bookhistory #skystorians
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Victoria County History @vch-home.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
NEW JOB! We are pleased to share news from our friends at VCH Hampshire who are advertising for a contributing editor to edit, research, and write work towards the county's first #BigRedBook for over a century. Applications close 1 October. #Skystorians #LocalHistory
jobs.ac.uk
Contributing Editor at Victoria County History Hampshire
Recruiting now: Contributing Editor on jobs.ac.uk. Click for details and explore more academic job opportunities on the top job board
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I did not realise that Southern History covered the Channel Islands! That choice puts them in a long line of attempts to harmonise the Channel Islands with England. I've so far found Jersey being included with Hampshire, Dorset and my personal favourite, Cornwall, in the sixteenth century.
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Dr Jo Edge 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @hagenilda.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Anyone got any recommendations for decent historical work on scrying in the early modern period? #EarlyModern
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
The family sofas belong to the dogs (I don’t make the rules)
A big white dog on a red leather sofaA brown and white dog on a wicker sofa
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
The BBC is covering the opening of the Bayeux Tapestry exhibition live. The king has just used the very Irish phrase "these islands", which is a nice gesture to the impact of the conquest beyond England. He's also denied that he is duke of Normandy. The Channel Islands might like a word about that.
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Dr Nicola Clark @nikkiclark86.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
I need a historian of parliament! When a bill was committed in Elizabeth's reign, is there any reason to read into the person leading the committee - were they someone trusted by the House, by both 'sides' if there were sides to the issue? Or could it even be influenced by the Q?
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
I’m back from my ten days in New England with family- walking, biking and swimming. Highlights included getting up early to see the sunrise on the beach, birds over the sea and splashing through the waves with the dogs.
A walk on greenway trails by the edge of the sea. The sea in the background is ultra calm and there are no clouds in the skyThe sun is just starting to rise above the horizon over the sea. The waves are gently breaking onto a sandy beach. The clouds are orange.A dog racing in the breaking waves on the beach. The sky is orange just before sunrise.Me sitting on a sofa hugging a tall dog and laughing because she’s being goofy.
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Le roi, notre duc! - the formal toast of the Channel Islands. The nineteenth-century constitutional law cases over who should fund and run the Jersey prison are genuinely amazing (and preserve some medieval documents then destroyed in ww2).
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
I'm on leave this week and there's rain forecast so I'm planning to bake. So far I have honey cake, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate/peanut butter cookies. What would you put on the list? Holiday cottage so equipment and tins will be very minimal. Allergies not relevant here.
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Dr Alison Ray @liber-ray.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Happy Black Cat Appreciation Day to all the ghoulies celebrating! Illustration from a 13th-century Bestiary, now @bodleian.ox.ac.uk MS Bodl. 533, f. 13r 🐈‍⬛🖤
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Reposting in case I know anyone who can help with this type of printing (US government context). I know bits about the UK equivalents so was ready to comment and then realised that I would be talking about the wrong side of the Atlantic when I scrolled down.
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
It may be the hottest day of the year, but I’m choosing to look ahead to when a warm cabled sweater will be useful.
Grey cabled knitting in progress
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Pamela Toler (she/her) @pdtoler.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
One of the best parts of being a historian? Changing my mind. Sometimes one letter or one newspaper article sends me back to rethink everything I thought I knew. That's not failure. That's good history. 🗃️
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
I've worked on creating a historical dataset from my freely-online translations of structured sources. Structuring it for machine analysis was hard, as @mikej1971.bsky.social can attest. There's a tension between the needs of a good edition and creating a good dataset. Two very different things.
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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
This is a lovely site which helps remind us of much of what we take for granted in material progress ordinaryabundance.com (HT @aveek18.bsky.social)
ordinaryabundance.com
Ordinary Abundance
A walk through a modern apartment, through the eyes of the people for whom everything in it was new.
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Baking adventures continue with double chocolate courgette bread to try to use up the courgette glut in the garden. There are still four in the fridge.
A dark chocolate cake in a large loaf tin sitting on a counter.
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Eddie Meehan @eddiemeehan99.eurosky.social · 11/08/2026
Postdoc job alert! Early medieval charters, monastic economics and XML-TEI, starting January 2027. Come join a lovely department @livunihss.bsky.social, brilliant project team with @unituebingen.bsky.social and awesome city! #medievalsky #digitalhumanities www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSO571/p...
jobs.ac.uk
Postdoctoral Research Associate at University of Liverpool
An opportunity for an academic position as a Postdoctoral Research Associate is available, as advertised on jobs.ac.uk. Apply now and explore other academic job openings.
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Dr Jo Edge 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @hagenilda.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
TALK KLAXON: 21 October 2026, 5.30pm at the London Archives, Farringdon. I will be talking about: 'Witchcraft, Necromancy, and Politics: The 'Eleanor Cobham’ trial of 1441' £10 for tickts. Hope to see you there! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/evening-ta...
eventbrite.co.uk
Evening Talk: Witchcraft, Necromancy, Politics -Eleanor Cobham’s 1441 Trial
Eleanor Cobham faced trial in 1441 for plotting against Henry VI with occult methods. Explore the crime, the people and the places.
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
My research subject ‘in person’! In my latest article, Agnes de Valance is a major figure and here she is at the right of the reconstructed 1280 supper at Pembroke Castle.
Life size statues sitting at a wooden table covered in food in a room at Pembroke castle showing William de Valance and his household in 1280. Pembroke castle from across the pool
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Royal Historical Society @royalhistsoc.org · 15/07/2026
The Society will write up a summary for History for next week. Key points at this stage include: > 11% decline (-440 FPE) across all History staff between 2018/19 and 2024/25, compared with a 7% decline across all humanities > loss of 140 FPE History roles 2022/23 to 2024/25 #Skystorians 1/3
Screen shot from British Academy mapping SHAPE staff resource, showing change in History staff between 2018/19 and 2024/25. A loss of 440 FPE or 11% of the total.
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Beth DeBold @elizaaudacis.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
To the inevitable cries of “just digitize everything, then;” not an answer. Making digital facsimiles accessible requires huge investment: staff, metadata, preservation. Orgs are currently not funded to meet these needs. While digital objects are great, they’ll never replace looking at originals.
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Loved being at #IMC2026, but snuck off this afternoon to see the brilliant Genghis Khan exhibition at the Royal Armouries before heading home. Because I’m a serious historian, I had to try the replica wooden saddle. I definitely would not have lasted long in the Mongol horde!
A picture of a white woman in glasses (me) sitting on a brightly painted replica wooden saddle against a backdrop of a picture of horses on the steppes. An actual wooden saddle from the thirteenth century in an exhibition case.
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
I’ve been at #IMC2026 for three hours and have already picked up some books I’ve been looking for, run into people and been to Bundobust for Indian food. Already an excellent conference and it’s not even started officially.
Two books on a wooden background; with a conference badge above them. The left-hand book is the edited volume on The Plantagenet Empire and the right-hand one is John le Patourel on Feudal Empires.
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Yuliya Komska @ykomska.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
With so many completely ridiculous bookshelf photos and news, check out this brilliant Berlin happening (as satirical as it's full of gravitas) organized by @cabinetmagazine.bsky.social to make books look read and re-read inside and out www.cabinetmagazine.org/events/chaou...
cabinetmagazine.org
Participatory Event / “The Book Handling Agency: The Berlin Session,” with Michel Chaouli, Jeff Dolven, Merve Emre, Tom McCarthy, and company | Cabinet
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Thrilled to hear this afternoon that my article on medieval women interacting with English government in Ireland is now live at Speculum! It was all due to the resources @virtualtreasury.bsky.social 50 people can access it for free here: www.journals.uchicago.edu/eprint/VCYQU...
journals.uchicago.edu
University of Chicago Press Journals: Cookie absent
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Thrilled to hear this afternoon that my article on medieval women interacting with English government in Ireland is now live at Speculum! It was all due to the resources @virtualtreasury.bsky.social 50 people can access it for free here: www.journals.uchicago.edu/eprint/VCYQU...
journals.uchicago.edu
University of Chicago Press Journals: Cookie absent
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Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland @virtualtreasury.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
More records, more collections + new research tools in our 2026 New Releases. www.tcd.ie/news_events/... Hear about some of the great stories being made available: 📻️ 👇️ www.rte.ie/radio/radio1... Jump in and go Hunting ! 😊 New to the VRTI? Check out our help Page: virtualtreasury.ie/help
Composite image showing portions of four documents  now available on the Virtual Treasury, and the Public Record Office of Ireland before and after the battle of 30 June 1922. Title page form the Council book for the province of Munster, Ireland (c. 1650)
showing a decorative capital letter 'T'.

https://www.virtualtreasury.ie/item/BL-Harley-MS-697  Screen grab of the The new Knowledge Graph for Irish History - now with 15,000 names (and growing!) and 3.5 million linked historical facts. 

https://kg.virtualtreasury.ie/
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RTÉ News @news.rte.ie · 30/06/2026
Almost 200,000 historical records have been released online by the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland. The release of the records will cover seven centuries of Irish history and will make over half a million documents free and permanently available to the public
rte.ie
Almost 200,000 Irish historical records released online
Almost 200,000 historical records have been released online by the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland.
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
Crossness pumping station is such a fun site and amazing Victorian engineering. The "granddads having fun problem solving" vibes (there's a narrow-gauge railway and a route master bus to take you to the station) made me wish I could have taken my grampa, a civil engineer. He'd have loved it to bits.
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
UK-based early career historian in need of up to £2,000 to complete a project? Deadline for the Royal Historical Society's scheme is 4 September: royalhistorical.smapply.io/prog/early_c...
royalhistsoc.org
Early Career Fellowship Grants - RHS
The Society's Early Career Fellowship Grant scheme provides grants of £2,000, maximum, for discrete research projects lasting no more than six months. In 2026, two rounds of grants will be awarded by ...
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Please turn the weather off and on again: the song of a disgruntled fluffy dog.
A large fluffy white dog with her ears back lying on a wooden floor with her mouth slightly open
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
I see general discourse about what heritage jobs pay in London. Of course they should be much higher, given the skills and experience involved, but the London Living Wage is currently equivalent to £27k, which is the baseline for living in the city. www.livingwage.org.uk/what-real-li...
livingwage.org.uk
What is the real Living Wage?
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Spare a thought in this weather for the Samoyed who really really would like her normal walk but it's far too hot. So far, she has whinged, had a puzzle mat, been into the garden (boring), and is now trying to sabotage my computer.
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Tuija Ainonen @tainonen.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Job alert! British Library seeks a Curator for their Ancient and Medieval Manuscripts DL 12 July tinyurl.com/25fs9kun #medievalMSS
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Mickaël Wilmart @mickaelwilmart.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Demain, Simonne Vidal va entrer au Panthéon aux côtés de son mari Marc Bloch. Elle sera la 7e femme panthéonnisée et la 2e en tant que "femme de". Je comprends les familles ne voulant pas séparer, même symboliquement, les couples, ms quelle tristesse de voir qu'elle reste finalement ds l'ombre 1/11
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
smittenkitchen.com/2026/06/stra... Back on my baking nonsense this week (after a busy few weeks) and thinking I'll try making this since it's the height of strawberry season.
smittenkitchen.com
strawberry chiffon shortcake, perfected
My best-yet strawberry chiffon shortcake is a towering but weightless, melt-in-your-mouth dessert with almost all of the fussiness of chiffon cakes eliminated so we can make this again and again th…
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Is anyone else having issues logging into British History Online version of the Parliament Rolls of Medieval England? I'm getting a bad link when I try to connect via the library and the direct login on the BHO site doesn't work for me at the moment.
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
It's hot and sticky in London, so Juno the Samoyed has just rolled over with a disgruntled huff that the humans haven't turned the weather off and tried again for an acceptable temperature. Meanwhile, I am living for iced coffee and perfect strawberries.
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
The reading is piling up today at the British Library as I try to get to grips with Jersey Norman law. Send coffee?
A pile of books on a desk. The books from top to bottom have these titles. A concise history of Jersey. Commise 1204. Les enquêtes de Saint Louis. Vernacular Law.
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
Weekend baking time! I turned sad bananas into banana-bread-with-chocolate-chips in muffin form. Can definitely recommend!
A muffin in a case sitting on a white piece of paper. The muffin is dark brown and has chocolate chips and a crunchy sugar topping.
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
One for anyone interested in Jewish history: a debt recognisance from 13th century Rouen with a signature in Hebrew script, copied in the nineteenth century from the records of Mont St Michel then at St Lô. TNA PRO 31/8/140B p. 304.
Page of a book showing text copied in a nineteenth century hand including copies of Hebrew script.
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Elizabeth Biggs @elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Lovely find in the IHR today- their copy of the Cartulaire des Iles Normandes has two loose letters from Ethel Stokes, who had a business as a researcher at the public record office, asking LC Loyd about the Paynel family. She wants to borrow one of the about-to-be-destroyed records at St-Lô 😭😭
Close up of a document written in purple ink showing Ethel Stokes’ signature on her September 1938 letter to LC Loyd.
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