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Felicity Callard

@felicitycallard.bsky.social
2.8K followers 1.6K following 1.1K posts

Geographies & histories of what we have come to call “mental health” | the university | daydreams & fantasies | Freud | Marx Editor, History of the Human Sciences @histhum.bsky.social

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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
"A headache in a novel is more than a character trait or plot point: it is a narrative object that registers the force of, & embodied responses to, history...the way a headache mediates inner life & outside world tells us...abt the felt dimension of social reality organised by the capital relation"
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Ketil Slagstad @slagstadk.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Very pleased to share the first article from my research project on the history clinical research and biological psychiatry, published open access in Isis. The article analyses the introduction of pneumoencephalography in schizophrenia research in the 1950s. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
A textbook page with machine written text and an interspersed radiograph of the skull with black shades in the center.
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
This is great: Rahul Rao @rahulraothariel.bsky.social reading Esmat Elhalaby’s 'Parting Gifts of Empire: Palestine and India at the Dawn of Decolonization' to counter Pankaj Mishra's equivocations in 'The World After Gaza'
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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I’ve suddenly realised what actually happened in my workload meeting yesterday. My head of dept offered me hourly-paid teaching on top of the proposed 0.5 role *to cover the shortfall caused by my own half-sacking*. (I said no - it’s a proper job or nothing).
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
The brutal reality of universities' suppression of wages (in KPMG's report for DfE on cost of undergraduate provision in England) assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6aabfa...
Table 1 – Cost increases since the last study by cost type
Actual % increase
between 2016-17 and
2019 study cost groupings
2023-24 weighted
average unit cost
Staff costs 14%
Non-pay costs 46%
Indirect departmental costs -24%
Centrally allocated indirect costs 29%
Estates costs 40%
Sustainability adjustment -2%

Source: Analysis of Data Returns
Table 1 shows that costs have not increased equally in the time between the two costing studies. Non-pay costs have increased slightly ahead of inflation and estates costs have increased in line with inflation. Universities have managed staff costs significantly below inflation, increasing only by 14% compared to the 41.2% increase in RPIX. By contrast, indirect departmental costs have reduced by 24%, but this may be due to differences in the universities participating in the 2019 and this study. The movement in MSI is reflective of changes in financial performance rather than any inflationary impact.
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
The brutal reality of universities' suppression of wages (in KPMG's report for DfE on cost of undergraduate provision in England) assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6aabfa...
Table 1 – Cost increases since the last study by cost type
Actual % increase
between 2016-17 and
2019 study cost groupings
2023-24 weighted
average unit cost
Staff costs 14%
Non-pay costs 46%
Indirect departmental costs -24%
Centrally allocated indirect costs 29%
Estates costs 40%
Sustainability adjustment -2%

Source: Analysis of Data Returns
Table 1 shows that costs have not increased equally in the time between the two costing studies. Non-pay costs have increased slightly ahead of inflation and estates costs have increased in line with inflation. Universities have managed staff costs significantly below inflation, increasing only by 14% compared to the 41.2% increase in RPIX. By contrast, indirect departmental costs have reduced by 24%, but this may be due to differences in the universities participating in the 2019 and this study. The movement in MSI is reflective of changes in financial performance rather than any inflationary impact.
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Trying to describe what it’s like working inside British universities at the moment is very hard. One small vignette: not a single week of my teaching this semester looks the same as any other. We have virtually no courses/modules that are taught by
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Emile Chabal @emile-chabal.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
The programme I run - the MSc in Contemporary History - will be axed, amongst so many others. We've also been told our undergrad courses will need to have a minimum of 20 students over a 3 year period. The bonfire of the universities has truly come for Edinburgh.
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Also: Can someone clarify what they are planning to do to history at Edinburgh. Cutting intellectual history, contemporary history and medieval history looks catastrophic
School of Economics:
• Economics and Statistics (UG)
School of History, Classics and Archaeology:
• Intellectual History
• Contemporary History
• Medieval History
School of Law:
• Law and Social Policy (UG)
• Law and Social Anthropology (UG)
• Law and Sociology (UG)
• Law and Celtic (UG)
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Robert Smith @bondhack.ft.com · 17/09/2026
Ben Delo is many things: a crypto billionaire, a Reform mega-donor and a free speech advocate. @oilsheppard.bsky.social and I discovered he's also the landlord of a bankrupt academic after funding her failed libel claim against a Jewish artist who complained of antisemism www.ft.com/content/21aa...
ft.com
Reform UK’s mega-donor backed a friend’s libel claim. Now he controls her home
Crypto billionaire Ben Delo loaned more than £300,000 to former academic Nina Power
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Yet more planned destruction “The biggest casualty by far is the university's School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures (LLC), which is losing a total of 48 programmes”
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
"I've been less impressed with what LLMs do with Henry James". Well. [from the entry by the postdoc] www.thedriftmag.com/into-the-fun...
thedriftmag.com
Into the Funhouse Mirror | Anonymous A.I. Confessional
Fourteen anonymous contributors share how they’re using, not using, or being forced to use A.I.
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
'The University and College Union (UCU)’s Edinburgh branch said staff had been called into “informal meetings at less than 24 hours' notice” and told not to bring union representatives.'
heraldscotland.com
Fear and anger as university set to announce 'massive course and programme closures'
Asked to respond, a university spokesperson said that staff and students were recently informed of changes to “our future academic offering across…
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Anna Girling @annagirling.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
The Centre of African Studies is the only academic institute in Scotland of its kind - with its own budget, space, and leadership - and has produced, and brought to Edinburgh, generations of scholars. The proposal to close ('restructure') it diminishes the university, and Edinburgh, as a whole.
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Anything written by Kaleem Hawa is always very much worth reading
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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Got the formal notification of my half-sacking. Apparently congratulations are due!
'Your appointment is subject to a variation to your contractual terms and conditions. Your substantive contractual hours will reduce from 1.0FTE to 0.5 FTE, equivalent to 18.5 hours per week effective from 1st October 2026Once again thank you for your valuable contribution throughout this process and congratulations on your successful appointment to your new role.
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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Quick equalities check: across English, History/Politics/War Studies 6 women have lost their jobs and 0.5 men. 4 men and one woman are safe. English goes from 50:50 (6M, 6F) to 1 woman and 2.5 men.
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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Well, it’s Sacking Day (to the tune of Tannenbaum), when we learn via Teams calls which one of the 4 of us left is to go. That will leave 3 (from 12) to teach English Language, Literature and Creative Writing and supervise 25 PhD students. I’m sure management have thought this through carefully.
static.klipy.com
The Simpsons Airhorn
ALT: The Simpsons Airhorn
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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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professor tools for commensality (red scare edition) @inquiline.myatproto.social · 14/09/2026
(it does feel sort of silly to post about them when i do but) i am always hoping my books will find their readers! my last book thinks about and with the truly monstrous force field of the ports in Los Angeles, interacting with "nature", the ocean, and oil press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
press.uchicago.edu
Oil Beach
Can the stories of bananas, whales, sea birds, and otters teach us to reconsider the seaport as a place of ecological violence, tied to oil, capital, and trade?   San Pedro Bay, which contains the co...
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Chris Millard @chrismillard83.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
if you’ve ever wondered why historians are very reluctant to talk about how their own experiences / backgrounds relate to their writing, i wrote a book about some who have tried, and how we all can be more self-conscious & analytical about it. i used myself as a case study. it is free to download!
taylorfrancis.com
The Politics of Personal Experience | Writing a History of Munchausen
How should a historian with personal experience of their topics write about them? Exploring the author’s own experiences with Munchausen Syndrome and Munchausen
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Just look at Jupiter’s posture as he paints those butterflies on that gorgeous greenblue of a painted sky. When or when will there be a Dosso Dossi monographic exhibition somewhere? Has there *ever* been one in London? You can see Jupiter painting butterflies in Wawel Castle in Kraków
Jupiter sits painting butterflies on an easel while Mercury has his finger to his lips cautioning the Virtue 

Dosso Dossi: Jupiter, Mercury, Virtue
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Just back from the Małopolskie region of Poland
Cover of Tadeusz Borowski’s This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentleman
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
What a church
Outside of a modernist church with beautiful curves and a slip of stained glass
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Sophie Lewis also has the most insightful takes on...Sophie Lewis (as refracted through kin relations). I particularly love this essay www.e-flux.com/journal/111/...
e-flux.com
With-Women: Grieving in Capitalist Time - Journal #111
Sophie Lewis, nine months after her mother’s death, finds a needed, if only digital, being-with grief in today’s physically distant reality.
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Sophie Lewis @reproutopia.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
I was annoyed at the *discourse* and wrote some rapid fire notes on Steinem www.patreon.com/posts/168891...
patreon.com
Eight theses on Gloria Steinem, because goddamn | Sophie Lewis
I think the phrase we’re looking for is social-democratic anticommunism. She was a metonym of the 20th century, which is currently dying. Sh
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stilllife @stilllife0.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Today is official publication day for Cultural Geographies of Love and Catastrophe, edited by @ajsecor.bsky.social @mikkojorge.bsky.social and myself, and published by @edinburghup.bsky.social. You can DOWNLOAD THE WHOLE TEXT FOR FREE via the EUP web page edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-cultura...
edinburghuniversitypress.com
Cultural Geographies of Love and Catastrophe
Cultural Geographies of Love and Catastrophe
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
“which Deleuze travels, and which Deleuze remains difficult to assimilate?”
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Dr Hannah J. Elizabeth @sexhistorian.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
We're looking for a fabulous person to join us @strathclydehass.bsky.social on a funded PhD with me & Prof Matt Smith. Are you a historian with an interest in activism who wants to design a cool project on unorthodox health movements in Britain after 1948? Apply! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSR502/p...
jobs.ac.uk
PhD Studentship: Unorthodox health activism in Britain after 1948 at University of Strathclyde
Apply for a PhD Studentship: Unorthodox health activism in Britain after 1948. Discover a wide range of PhD opportunities at jobs.ac.uk.
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
As we mark the death of Sliman Mansour, I’m rereading @hamayel.bsky.social’s The Burden Assumed — where Mansour topples Kipling’s model of burden and transforms the work of bearing into stubborn fidelity communispress.com/the-burden-a...
communispress.com
The Burden Assumed
Palestine is the remainder that refuses to be remaindered.
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Still wear the cap I bought 30 years ago in Dollywood, Tennessee in the summer of 1996 on a road trip Baltimore to New Orleans
A faded black baseball cap with “Dolly” on the front
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
London South Bank University is in the midst of a vicious fire and rehire attack on its workers. The details are here. If in Britain, please ask your MP to sign the early day motion edm.parliament.uk/early-day-mo...
edm.parliament.uk
London South Bank University industrial dispute - Early Day Motions - UK Parliament
That this House notes with concern the escalating industrial dispute between London South Bank University (LSBU) and University and College Union (UCU) over fire and rehire proposals to terminate the ...
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Netpol @netpol.org · 17/07/2026
Launched on Wednesday, our petition in solidarity with Rajiv Menon KC, the first barrister in British legal history to face contempt proceedings, on 28 July, over a closing speech (for a Palestine Action defendant), has almost 8000 signatories. Help us get to 10K you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/sa...
you.38degrees.org.uk
Save Britain's Juries
Juries have had the right to acquit based on their conscience for centuries. Now, a barrister is facing jail just for mentioning it in court. Add your name to help save Britain's juries.
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Another extraordinary essay by Abdaljawad Omar @hamayel.bsky.social - on moral stupidity (“These people act morally stupidly…because what they know, if inhabited fully, would cost them their world”) & the “tragic reality” of the Palestinian intellectual’s position www.equator.org/articles/mor...
equator.org
Gaza and the Problem of Moral Stupidity • EQUATOR
Forty years after Edward Said demanded ‘permission to narrate’, the truth from Palestine has never been more widely known. And yet the annihilation continues.
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
I am so incredibly sad to hear that Andrew Lakoff has died. I remember so clearly when I first read his words — in Pharmaceutical Reason, and then when I first heard him speak. My condolences to all who loved him. What an enormous, profound loss.
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Vice-Chancellor of University of Bristol (salary £312,251): “I take a really personal view on this. My oldest daughter is the only child in my family who really is making a very significant amount of money.”
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Elspeth Van Veeren @evanveeren.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Another excellent example of just how incurious and limited the UK press has been about this crisis. Not one mention of the cuts to humanities that Bristol’s own VC is trying to push through at the moment in this article about her position on the cuts 🤔🙄. www.theguardian.com/education/20...
theguardian.com
Florence Welch’s mother says cuts to arts and humanities ‘absolutely tragic’
Exclusive: Prof Evelyn Welch, vice-chancellor of Bristol University, believes her daughter’s success shows value of arts education
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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
A few weeks ago, @wellcometrust.bsky.social announced that scholars in the republic of Ireland would no longer be eligible to lead bids to the flagship discovery research scheme. We think this decision is badly flawed, and are asking them to rethink: www.irishhumanities.ie/assets/PDFs/...
irishhumanities.ie
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Walking back from glasgow queen street in a daze after multiple hours of #eshs-hss <why is everyone screaming?> boy, about 5 years old, plaintively, confused, holding his mother’s hand <coz England’s getting beat> the voice comes, conveying profound truths from the universe
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Alex Baker @anomiegeog.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
The programs now being cut across the sector - e.g. modern languages, anthropology, 'area studies - were funded and promoted as part of the Cold War. Which is a tell that this isn't serious beyond the objective of handing over more of our universities to war profiteers in the armaments industry.
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
University of Glasgow - which prides itself on being “world changers together” - is a founding member
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
We are keen to encourage paper/special submissions to History of the Human Sciences @histhum.bsky.social — particularly on topics our journal less frequently addresses. Please get in touch w @sarahvmarks.bsky.social or me; we are happy to discuss in person at Edinburgh conf or afterwards #eshs-hss
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Have been to lots of excellent panels at #eshs-hss in Edinburgh. This one on “Beyond Binaries in LGBTQI+ Histories of Sexology: Bi, Trans, Intersex” was particularly rich convention2.allacademic.com/one/hss/hss2...
convention2.allacademic.com
ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting 2026
Content is hosted by All Academic Inc, a leading provider of online hosting and software solutions for academic conferences supporting submission, peer review, scheduling, invitaions, volunteers, sche...
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dr. thrasher, an american writer in ex(archia)(xile) @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
BREAKING: I am suing Northwestern University, a member of congress, two cabinet secretaries and the Attorney General of the United States. I explain why in @literaryhub.bsky.social lithub.com/when-we-figh...
lithub.com
When We Fight, We Win: Why I Am Suing Northwestern University—and the US Government
Yesterday, I filed a lawsuit against Northwestern University and—in his official capacity as Chairman of the US House of Representatives House Committee on Education and the Workforce—Michigan Cong…
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Joshi Herrmann @joshih.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
When @molliesimpson.bsky.social started reporting on the renamed Bolton University two years ago, I had *no idea* it would turn into one of the biggest scandals in the history of UK higher education. Proper, proper reporting of the kind that a functioning society relies upon.
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
Beautiful essay by Isabella Hammad on Gaza, grief, mourning, rubble, monuments. And on Arabic poetry and its recasting of some of the foundational readings/uses of Freud and Klein
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QM_UCU @qmucu.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
We stand in solidarity with our colleagues at Lincoln University, who are once again facing redundancy! We also updated our #UKHE Shrinking list. Check it out to get a full picture of the systematic destruction of the sector: qmucu.org/qmul-transfo...
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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Andrew Defty @adefty.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Yesterday 142 academic staff at the University of Lincoln were put at risk of redundancy including the entire Politics and International Relations team. This follows cuts since 2024 which have already seen over 500 people leave the university. This is the 'University of No Regrets'.
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
The dismantling of UKHE continues. Solidarity with all at University of Lincoln
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Liesbeth Corens @onslies.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
This petition needs as many signatories as the Exeter one. Please sign and share — don’t let Hertfordshire managers get away with this just because a Russell Group one took the spotlight. #UKHE
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