iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by John McTague

John Stott @jpsastro.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Had a UKRI funded grant proposal rejected at the "AI triage stage". "This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review." 🧪 #academicsky

I am writing to let you know that, unfortunately, your application was not successful.

Review process

As part of the initial triage of the 179 proposals submitted to this call, each was assessed using an AI-based review. Every proposal was read independently by several different AI models against the same seven criteria used to shape this call (including cyber security relevance, research quality and novelty, importance of the problem addressed, feasibility of the project plan, likely outputs and impact, value for money, and responsible research practice), with each model asked to give a score and a written justification with supporting quotations from the text. To guard against any one model's idiosyncrasies, we also ran a second, independent process in which different AI models debated the merits and weaknesses of each proposal before reaching a judgement, again against the same criteria. Scores from both processes were combined to produce an overall ranking.

This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review. Projects selected for funding were drawn from those that progressed to the full human review stage. We recognise that AI-assisted assessment is a new and evolving part of the review process, and we are continuing to evaluate how well it aligns with the judgements of human reviewers on this call. We will soon produce a document detailing our method, so that others can build upon it and improve it.

Feedback on your application

Your application was not selected to progress beyond the AI triage stage. To provide transparency on the outcome of this assessment, we are sharing below the scores (out of 5) from each of the two AI review processes described above, together with the mean score across the two processes.

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Nay, thank you both (I think I am right that your co-author is not on BSky?). I had to stop highlighting because I was just colouring in the whole .pdf.

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

This is full of absolute bangers and I think a must-read for educators: great in its accessible explanation of the mechanics underlying LLMs & at rearticulating why we write (““Writing tasks are designed not primarily to produce text but to produce /change in the writer/.”). And more!

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I use Patricia Comitini, ‘Imaginative Pleasures: Fantomina, Ideology, and Aesthetics’ when I teach UGs and some of them find it difficult, so might be better for grads! Good I think on what the Lady is getting out of the whole thing and connecting power relations to literary matters.

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Joanna Bourke @joannabourke.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Shocking news about redundancies in the Humanities at the University of Hertfordshire, despite their exceptional research activities. I have signed the petition against these actions: it would be great if you would as well: c.org/kDQynZV7J4 @bbkhistorical.bsky.social @bisa-bkk.bsky.social

c.org

Sign the Petition

Save the Humanities at the University of Hertfordshire

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Reposted by John McTague

New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Every staff update in every university right now: 1. We are excited to announce a strategic investment of eleventeen squillion pounds in ACRONYM, a new AI-powered centre for the development of strategic acronyms. 2. Staff have until Friday to apply for enhanced Voluntary Death.

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

First congress, having only just recovered from the HEC I attended a few years ago. Let’s just say I’m glad that attending online facilitates swearing loudly.

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Reposted by John McTague

Onni Gust @onnigust.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

And it just gets worse: it looks like there will be no modern language provision at all. No music, no languages. Can a silent university call itself a university at all? Help us resist! Please contribute to @uonucu.bsky.social hardship fund if you can: www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding...

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Reposted by John McTague

UCU Essex @ucuessex.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

SMT promised that our pay uplift would come in February, but it didn't. We asked them why, and they responded - a full 17 days after payday! - that they were deferring it again. A clear breach of UCEA's requirement to consult trade unions *in advance* about any deferrals.

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 13/12/2025

Look I also think it’s weird when people call Austen ‘Jane’ but using the pronoun ‘it’ to refer to her is probably overcorrection.

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

Beautiful day for a picket with #UCU members in the Centre for Academic Language and Development, 45 of whom have been put at risk of compulsory redundancy. This is the first of TWENTY ONE days of strike action voted for by these members.

A UCU picket line in front of a glass fronted building. People are standing and talking to one another, holding placards reading ’No Compulsory Redundancies’.

A more oblique camera angle showing the same UCU picket line in front of a glass fronted building. People are standing and talking to one another, holding placards reading ’No Compulsory Redundancies’.

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

Bristol Common Press is ready to peddle at the @srsrensoc.bsky.social conference. We are printing two issues of the Bristol Mercury, the conference’s very own newspaper, and delegates can get involved by having a go at printing issues & submitting notices for inclusion in issue 2. Come find us!

A table containing various items printed at bristol common press for sale.

A picture of The Bristol Mercury, a single sheet newspaper printed at bristol common press

Two printed items, The Prayer of Jonas and an early modern ‘indulgence’ in Latin

Two posters with the text ‘Book history for printers, printing for book historians: Bristol Common Press’

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Reposted by John McTague

Dr Dave Hitchcock @davehitchcock.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

My piece for History Workshop looks back at what feels, I'm sure to me and so many other academics in the UK, like a decade-long crisis in universities. A crisis of politics, of a particularly venomous form of "education as market" ideology, and now a crisis of desperate, annihilating job cuts. 1/2

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

(For a sense of what we do at BCP see our insta: www.instagram.com/bristolcommonpress) 4/3

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

historical print shop & its 3 printing presses, to have a look at some of the things we’ve printed, and to discuss practice-based research more broadly. Despite what form says, we aren’t asking participants to do anything in advance, and people presenting papers etc. can still join us. 3/3

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

It’s not really a seminar because it’s really a workshop: we put it in this section because we need to limit numbers. It’ll be an opportunity for folk interested in early modern print cultures to hear about the research projects we are running at Bristol Common Press, to explore our working 2/3

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

If you’re attending the @srsrensoc.bsky.social conference in Bristol this summer (or thinking about it), please consider signing up to our (not-really-a-)seminar, ‘Mechanick Exercises in the History of the Book’. You can find a description and sign up link here: www.rensoc.org.uk/rensoc25-sem... 1/3

rensoc.org.uk

#RenSoc25 Seminar Descriptors – Society for Renaissance Studies

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Society for Renaissance Studies @srsrensoc.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

Don’t forget to sign up for these exciting seminars! Deadline 22 January #RenSoc25 #EarlyModern #Skystorians

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Reposted by John McTague

Helen Smith @wordsmith.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

So this is very exciting! We have 16 places on our AHRC-funded Print Matters Summer School. There is no course fee, and applicants get 4 nights B&B accommodation and a travel bursary of up to £100. The Summer School is open to all disciplines and career stages. www.thinicepress.org/events/print...

thinicepress.org

Print Matters summer school: Thin Ice Press — Thin Ice Press

What does it mean to think about matter and materiality through the medium of letterpress printing?  We invite scholars of matter, materiality and/or material culture (broadly conceived) in any ...

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

Time to wheel out archiveses, precious.

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

Wait are we using ‘archives’ in the singular now? I must have missed the twitter discourse about this.

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

We’re certain IA operatives didn’t abseil down into PQ HQ through a skylight, dodge the lasers, and replace the microfilms with their hat?

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

Am starting to wonder if some members of UCU HEC are in the pay of Civica Election Services.

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

And no doubt the point was made that an unsuccessful ballot does not = ‘action’.

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

Presumably the working theory is that the 73% of members who didn’t even vote in the consultative ballot are absolutely desperate to take industrial action, and don’t get out of bed for anything less than a proper IA ballot.

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

I think my eyes have slid over Bounce to Fop at some point but I will look again. It would be good to have more poems by dogs (2) than men (1) on the unit.

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Reposted by John McTague

Adam Crymble @adamcrymble.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

18th century historians: if you have an article nearing completion that you'd like a round of detailed feedback on in a friendly London setting, consider applying to join our '4* Society' on 19 February. Funding available to cover childcare, travel, and free lunch adamcrymble.org/cfp-18th-cen...

adamcrymble.org

CFP: 18th century British history papers in need of feedback – Adam Crymble

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

I don’t think I know these poems…? Unless you mean ‘whose [dog / fool] are you?’?

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

I have no idea! Yes, Oroonoko is week 2, then Fantomina, then we inexplicably jump to Doris Lessing and hang around in C20th and 21st.

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

My question: can you think of other instances of this i.e. an exposure of some piece of writing as (disguised) autofiction / self-insert. Ideally for satirical purposes / as attack on author, but not necessarily. Needn’t be #C18th.

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

#C18 Given fact I spent much of autumn writing about Swift’s /Lady’s Dressing Room/ and Montagu’s response (‘The Reason’s that Induc’d Dr Swift…’ &c.), I might include them in my unit The Author as Character, because Montagu’s response weaponises the authorial fallacy: Swift = Strephon, etc. 1/2

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Watch out, it’s another handbook: global.oup.com/academic/pro... Come for essays by the luminaries of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century studies, be momentarily distracted by me arguing that ‘Bites and Shams’ are a bit like surprise parties.

global.oup.com

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

(This actually represents several week’s work, not all of it by me, but not all those days were good and many of them some time ago)

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

A good couple of days work in the print shop at the end of this week.

Printed sheets in octavo format hung up to dry in a print shop. 4 sheets are cisible, the camera focussed on the ornamental title page in the background. The title, ‘four sheets to the wind,’ is legible, and there is a linocut engraving of a pile of books beneath it.

Another view of a printed sheet, with a second typeset title page visible. A wooden replica eighteenth-century common press is in the background.

The camera focusses on a sheet hanging on a line, visible between the blurred edges of two sheets hanging on a dofferent line in the foreground. 6 of the 8 octavo pages are partially visible.

A printed sheet in octavo format still attached to the tympan of a replica eighteenth-century common press

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Maybe send a location and I’ll stare really hard at google maps, see if that does anything

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

£1 to shout bastard at me, £2 for fucker, £5 for cunt. 50% discount if it is shouted from a push bike.

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

This morning as I waited to cross a road, at the bottom of one of the roads closed to motor traffic, a man shouted at me from his car window as he drove past: “you’ve caused this, you cunt!”. So let me know if you want a LTN putting in near you, I guess, as I am the cunt that causes them.

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

They’ve put a Low Traffic Neighbourhood in on a trial basis near where I live. It took a few weeks for me to realise that I should probably cycle through it, given fact that it is parallel to the first bit of my normal cycle commute, which was now a bit fuller of angrier-than-usual motorists 1/2

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

Well we are three years deep in this ‘quick 6 month project’ so good luck and godspeed

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

On the plus side yesterday I think I cracked paper dampening and inking levels. On the other hand, now the end matter of the book looks nicer than the main text!

Half a sheet of letterpress-printed text is in the foreground, top right. It’s hanging from a drying line in front of a replica eighteenth-century wooden printing press, which is out of focus. On the side of the sheet visible there is the front and reverse of a ‘colophon,’ the text of which is set in an inverse triangle in an attempt to mimic the colophons of early Italian printed books.

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

The dog just sniffed the baby and started crying and we were all ‘oh no that must be a really bad nappy’ but it turned out he just had two crusts of bread inside his baby grow.

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Reposted by John McTague

BSECS @bsecs.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

You have until MIDNIGHT TONIGHT to apply for one of our bursaries. Details below. HURRY HURRY HURRY! #18thC 🗃️ #skystorians #history

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

Also this by Rhys Kaminski-Jones go.bsky.app/JMDQj4n

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John McTague @johnjoemctague.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

bsky.app/profile/nush... (Nush has also done a part one)

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