iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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UCU Edinburgh @ucuedinburgh.bsky.social · 10h

Day 15 of the UCU workers' strike against mass job layoffs, worsening conditions, and the negative impact on students' education in the face of record pay increases and profits for a corporate-oriented management. Scenes at the picket lines ... (1) At Old College, spirits remain strong ...

A worker wearing a protective mask holds up a sign with the words 'Stop the Cuts' while distributing flyers to passers by. Behind her, two colleagues standing smiling and are also holding signs and flyers, while one of them holds the leash of a thoughtful-looking dog.

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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 11h

Please read Open Letter and consider signing! Lancet @thelancet.com staff are striking for another 3 days because - surprise, surprise - Elsevier @elsevierconnect.bsky.social (38% profit margin) hasn't returned to negotiating table & isn't engaging with union. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

docs.google.com

Open Letter

To Erik Engstrom (CEO of RELX), Kumsal Bayazit (CEO of Elsevier), As members of the scientific community, we recognise the value of all staff working to publish medical journals. They champion resear...

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Kathleen Commons @kabcommons.bsky.social · 2h

Less than a week until our (hybrid!) seminar @ihr.bsky.social - 'Race and the Rent Collector' with Jonah Miller: how did social investigators in 2 formative periods of British sociology account for difference in studies of poverty & the working class. Sign up here: tinyurl.com/53xv6j6c

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University and College Union (UCU) @ucu.org.uk · 9h

£8 million in planned savings. Jobs at risk. Vital research under threat. Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine management must come clean on its cuts plans, rule out job losses and work with unions. Staff, students and world-leading research deserve better. www.ucu.org.uk/article/1468...

ucu.org.uk

Union calls on Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine to open up about cuts plans and rule out job losses

The University and College Union is calling on Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) to be open about potential cuts and rule out job losses.

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Mark Crail @markcrail.bsky.social · 7h

New book: Shout for Freedom, about the sonic history of #Chartism. Its author, David Kennerley, spoke at Chartism Day this year. Looking forward to reading this. chartistancestors.blog/2026/10/16/b...

chartistancestors.blog

Book: Shout for Freedom: a sonic history of Chartism

From the clank of machinery to the beauty of birdsong, the tramp of marching feet to the exhilaration of a dance, the cheering of crowds to the silence of prison, sound was central to Chartism. Now…

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Jon Howlett @jonhowlett.bsky.social · 23h

A great opportunity for someone in Hong Kong history:

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Manchester University Press @manchesterup.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

We're inviting readers, pub-goers and anyone interested in Britain's social history to a FREE event in #Manchester with authors Amit Singh & Sivamohan Valluvan (Pubs for the people) and Lewis Bassett (The Full English): www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/pubs-for-t... @versobooks.bsky.social #booksky

eventbrite.co.uk

Pubs for the people: Sivamohan Valluvan and Amit Singh with Lewis Bassett

A look at two original accounts of English eating and drinking habits, why we eat and drink the way we do now with three fantastic authors.

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Josh Pizzuto-Pomaco @joshpizpom.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

EXC: Edinburgh University managers have been warned that the closure of 90 programmes will cause serious reputational damage. A motion submitted ahead of next week’s Senate meeting calls on leadership to "reconsider" the decision @heraldscotland.bsky.social www.heraldscotland.com/news/2663661...

heraldscotland.com

University bosses warned of serious reputational damage over 90 programme closures

A motion submitted ahead of the next staff and student Senate meeting calls on university leadership to "reconsider" the decision to close 90 programmes.

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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

'The University and College Union said that the dispute had been triggered after the university announced plans to operate “on a budget that costs £40 million less than it does currently”, which it said will necessitate cuts to staff and non-staff costs.'

timeshighereducation.com

Sunderland staff declare dispute over £40 million savings plan

Union threatens potential strikes, saying scale of cuts will inevitably lead to job losses

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Stuart Elden @stuartelden.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Today is the 100th anniversary of Foucault's birth. A lot of publications and events have been timed to coincide with this. Here are a few.

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James Kneale @jameskneale.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Is anyone keeping a list of groups or individuals who send spurious emails to authors asking them to discuss their books? It's not that I'm getting tons of these (😁) but I'd like to be able to spot the wrong 'uns. thanks!

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Ian Hunt @ianhunt.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Fairly rare that I write much (been busy) - but here is a review of Emily Gee's excellent book Hostel, House and Chambers: Accommodating the Victorian and Edwardian Working Woman, published by @livunipress.bsky.social #ArchitecturalHistory #Housing architecturalhistoryjournal.com/articles/10....

Cover of Emily Gee's book showing a cubicle in Ada Lewis House with single bed, institutional bedspreas, chair, washstand, an open window

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Dónal Hassett @donalh.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

As well great expressions of collecitve action, strikes are moments of clarification. So happy to have found in comrades in organising and participating on the picket lines in Maynooth some of the most wonderful people you could wish for. Solidarity forever!

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Mary Gilmartin @marygilmartin.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

From dawn to dusk on the picket at Maynooth University. Amazing inter-union solidarity. We are the University. @ifut.bsky.social

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Phil Mellows @philmellows.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Update from the National Brewery Heritage Trust, including plans to build a 'research hub' based on its extensive brewing and pub archives - more important than ever, I'd say: www.breweryheritage.com/preserving-b...

breweryheritage.com

Preserving Britain’s Brewing Heritage - Brewery Heritage

Britain’s brewing heritage is more than a story of beer. Find out why our industry archives matter — and why their future matters to us all.

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UCL Thomas Coram Research Unit @tcru-ucl.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

How do working-class young people make sense of hardship, identity and inequality? This week’s seminar with @amit-singh.bsky.social draws on research in London, Rochdale & Morecambe to ask when race matters, and when shared hardship tells us more. bit.ly/4ybkedb 15 Oct, 12–1pm, Gordon Sq.

bit.ly

Decentring race to make sense of social suffering

Join this event to hear Amit Singh explore how working-class youth in London interpret identity, hardship, and social conditions across racial lines.

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UK Archive Sector Leadership @uknatarcsector.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

We’re pleased to launch of a new search interface for HOSPREC, the Hospital Records Database: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/hospital-rec... HOSPREC is a unique resource for family historians, local researchers, genealogists, academics and anyone interested in the history of healthcare.

A man wearing a lanyard sits in an office watching something on a computer monitor.

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Princeton University Press @princetonupress.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

"Highly readable and highly recommended.”—Sam Friedman, coauthor of Born to Rule In Cancelled Futures, @amit-singh.bsky.social examines how experiences of class-based inequality work through race, place, & gender in different ways. Out now. Read a free preview on our website: buff.ly/BMyZTR4

Cancelled Futures: Class, Race, and Place in Post-Industrial Britain by Amit Singh

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James Kneale @jameskneale.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

A great list, including one spot - the Mackintosh Tearooms - that owes more to temperance than beer 🙂

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Manchester University Press @manchesterup.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

In their new book Pubs for the people, @amit-singh.bsky.social & Sivamohan Valluvan make a heartfelt case for why the English pub still matters and how we can save it. In conversation with Malcolm James (@sussex.ac.uk) & Phil Mellows in #Brighton on Nov 5th. FREE tickets: tinyurl.com/3dh4284m

eventbrite.co.uk

Pubs for the people: The fight for the pint and the nation

Authors Amit Singh and Sivamohan Valluvan make a heartfelt case for why the English pub still matters and how we can save it.

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Urban History @urbanhistory.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

📣 Call for papers! Next year's @urbanhistorygroup.bsky.social conference will be on the theme of Pleasure and the City Submit your abstracts by 22 February 2027 Conference details: 🗓️ 2-3 September 2027 📍 @ljmuhistory.bsky.social, Liverpool 🔗 urbanhistorygroup.wordpress.com/call-for-pap...

Grainy screenshot of an arch with blue lettering reading Pleasure Island. Some buildings in the background, a small number of individuals walking in the foreground.

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Dr Vanessa @hpsvanessa.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

hey so my friend Christine has a podcast which goes through each of the Hugo (scifi book) award winners and she has a smart discussion about them with some relevant person. Great if you like reading scifi, almost better if, like me, you don't but want to be culturally aware e.g. as a #histSTM person

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Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) @rgs.org · 09/10/2026

Are you a researcher, student or teacher looking for funding to support a fieldwork project? 📣 Applications for our 2027 grants are now open! Explore the funding opportunities available and how to apply: www.rgs.org/about-us/our-work/lates…

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Peter Whitewood @pwhitewood.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

A shadowy network of hedgehogs and owls, operating at the highest levels of the British establishment.

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Amit Singh @amit-singh.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Pubs for the People event in Manchester 📆 2nd of November @manchesterup.bsky.social x @versobooks.bsky.social 📍TrackBrewing Co - Brewery & Taproom We'll be chatting with Lewis Bassett, author of The Full English, about nationalism, food, pubs and more. t.co/D3AHfRA7VW

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uopmaritime @uopmaritime.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

CALLING RESEARCHERS, INNOVATORS, ARTISTS & POLICYMAKERS UNDER 40: Join our Europe-wide network to use arts & culture to help people reconnect with coastal places & each other. The project is part of a €690,000 COST Action bid for 4 years www.port.ac.uk/news-events-... @uophistory.bsky.social

port.ac.uk

Appeal for young researchers to join our Europe-wide coastal cultures network

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Phil Mellows @philmellows.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

This is an important contribution to the debate around pubs from @amit-singh.bsky.social and Sivamohan Valluvan. And it's a good read, too. I'll be chairing the Brighton launch event - but don't let that put you off | @britbeerwriters.bsky.social www.beerguild.co.uk/news/pubs-fo...

beerguild.co.uk

Pubs for the People

The fight for the pint and the nationby Sivamohan Valluvan and Amit SinghPublisher: Manchester University PressPublishing Date: October 2026Price: £18.99Pages: 264 (Hardback)ISBN: 9781526194541A heart...

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James Kneale @jameskneale.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Delighted to receive my copy of PUBS FOR THE PEOPLE from the hands of @amit-singh.bsky.social and Vallu themselves. Looks just as good as I thought it would. A Christmas smash, surely!

Two men in an academic office, proudly clutching a hardback copy of their book, PUBS FOR THE PEOPLE. Amit Singh, on the left, is crouching to make Sivamohan Valluvan, on the right, look taller.

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Liz McFall @allartmarkets.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I kind of also want to say it was probably 100000s, large OU foundation courses at their peak reached 10000 students a year and the course teams Stuart was part of spanned 18 years.

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James Kneale @jameskneale.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Interested in talking to a community of well-informed and friendly scholars about many aspects of drinking (and not drinking)? Come to our conference at UCL next March!

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UCU Edinburgh @ucuedinburgh.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Day 9 of the UCU workers' strike at the University of Edinburgh. Camaraderie on the picketlines continues to blossom. Our canine friends are also there in support:

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IHR British History in the Long C18th Seminar @long18thsem.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

AUTUMN 2026-7 Term Card Kicking off tonight at 5:30pm, we have a full slate of seminar papers planned for this term covering a range of topics across the long eighteenth century. Registration to attend will be available at the following link: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/... @ihr.bsky.social

An event poster for the "IHR British History in the Long Eighteenth Century Seminar" for Autumn 2026.
The poster features a parchment-style background with faint historical illustrations and details six upcoming hybrid seminars held from 5:30pm to 7:30pm in the IHR Wolfson Room NB01.
The schedule lists the following events:
• Wednesday 7 October: Miles Ogborn (Queen Mary University of London) on ‘Law, violence and empire: Understanding the Jamaican uprising trials of 1832’.
• Wednesday 21 October: Jeanne Clegg (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice) on ‘Dealing with property crime in 1720s London: The “plain and practical proposals” of Andrew Moreton, aka Daniel Defoe’.
• Wednesday 4 November: Angela McShane (Warwick) on ‘What should we do with drunken sailors? The conflicted politics of drink and drunkenness in the Royal Navy, c. 1660-1689’.
• Wednesday 18 November: Nicholas Dixon (Independent Scholar and Genealogist) on ‘The Revival of Freemasonry in King’s Lynn: Soldiers, Sociability and Subversion in Napoleonic Norfolk’.
• Wednesday 2 December: Ben Jackson (Manchester) on ‘Queering the Eighteenth-Century Clergyman: Bodies, Intimacies, and Faith’.
• Wednesday 16 December: Luca Scholz (Manchester) on ‘Mapping the Weather Wars: A Planetary Microhistory’ - A joint meeting with the IHR Planetary Histories Seminar.

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Dundee UCU @ducuuo.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Day 13 of 25. We are now halfway through our industrial action to rule out compulsory redundancies at the University of Dundee. Join us on our picket line today for a friendly atmosphere and chat. Bake sale tomorrow too.

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James Kneale @jameskneale.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

This looks brilliant: "How... do a range of creative non-fiction texts from the 2010s function as works of immersive place writing? By extension, how do such creative non-fiction texts... complicate the understanding of what it means for a reader to be imaginatively immersed in a literary work?"

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Drinking Studies Network (DSN) @drinkingstudies.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

CFP: our very own Drinking Studies Network conference, now scheduled for March 2027 in London. After 15 years of the DSN, we'll be asking 'What now? What next?' Let's have your answers... drinkingstudies.wordpress.com/dsn-2027-wha...

Pint glass of clear amber beer in a pub setting.

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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

🚨 ALERT 🚨: All of Stuart Hall's notebooks have been digitized and are freely available to browse and read??? stuarthalldigital.bham.ac.uk/archival_mat...

Stuart Hall notebook: NOTES ON THE REPRODUCTION OF IDEOLOGIES AND THE MEDIA (Orange notebook, "Summit Students Pad")

Stuart Hall notebook page with headline: "Problems for a Marxist Theory of the Media" and a series of bulletpoints. Lined notebook paper with black handwriting.

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Liesbeth Corens @onslies.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

ah, this is going to be SO GOOD! And we're luring Aditya Chakrabortty to Mile End! Do join if you've got even just a passing interest in #SocialHistory, #BritishHistory, #UrbanHistory, history of photography, or a bunch of cool brains in one room. #SkyStorians

How do we write histories of small towns in the post-1945 period? Towns such as Halifax in the Calder Valley feature little in an otherwise thriving historiography of contemporary Britain. Yet for an earlier generation of social historian, most notably E. P. Thompson, who wrote The Making of the English Working Class while living there, such towns were crucial to understanding the processes of industrialisation and capitalist modernity. How can we include such places in more purposeful narratives of the more recent past? How do we write inclusive histories of belonging for the residents of these towns that do not consign them to being ‘left behind’, as though their histories are only considered to explain their ‘unmaking’ and marginalisation: towards an overdetermined present of post-Brexit Britain, flags and Reform?

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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Solidarity with all at University of Nottingham combatting this violent dismantling of their university

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Mary Gilmartin @marygilmartin.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Members of my union, IFUT, will have a one hour work stoppage today, from 12-1, as part of the broader public sector union dispute. Read about it here: www.ifut.ie/content/ifut... - solidarity welcome on World Teachers Day

ifut.ie

IFUT Public Service Dispute Hub 2026 | Irish Federation of University Teachers

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University and College Union (UCU) @ucu.org.uk · 05/10/2026

Nottingham bought a campus for £37.5m. Spent £40m more on it. Its own accounts say it could now sell for £14m. Staff and students are paying for that. 609 jobs. Three departments. More than 40 courses. That's why we're on strike. www.thetimes.com/uk/education...

thetimes.com

Lecturers on strike till Christmas: welcome to Nottingham University

Bad business decisions have been blamed for the decision to shut entire departments — as academics protest it is students who suffer

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Ruth Slatter @ruthslatter.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The 2026 annual Dr Williams's Library Lecture, hosted by the @ihr.bsky.social, will be given by Dr James Vigus on 'The 'idle' life of Henry Crabb Robinson: Suffolk dissenter, European traveller, lawyer, literator'. 28th October 2026, 5.30pm. Sign up online: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

history.ac.uk

Dr Williams's Library Annual Lecture

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Amit Singh @amit-singh.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Race, Class and Conviviality in Changing Times Free event at @ucl.ac.uk from the @sprc-ucl.bsky.social 📆 12th November 6-7.30pm With @alexkelbert.bsky.social Sita Balani & Malcolm James discussing conviviality 20 years on from the publication of After Empire www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/race-class...

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Tim Hitchcock @timhitchcock.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Very much looking forward to Miles Ogborn @milesogborn.bsky.social talking about the Jamaican uprising of 1832 this Wed. @long18thsem.bsky.social @ihr.bsky.social All welcome, either in person or online, but please register: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

history.ac.uk

British History in the Long 18th Century

Supported by Mark Storey and Carey Karmel, in memory of Arthur Burns

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