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Julian Dobson

@juliandobson.bsky.social
1.2K followers 1.1K following 147 posts

Place, poetry, a dash of policy. Books on civic universities, urban nature, town centre futures and urban policy. Poems on anything. Imposter geographer. Also at juliandobson.net

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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
Great to make an appearance in Abridged magazine, with a poem inspired by litter on the banks of the River Don near Penistone. Well, there weren’t any Grecian urns to be found.
The cover of Abridged magazine, featuring what appears to be an upside down palm tree against a blue backgroundText of poem ‘A mop’s world’ in Abridged
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Area @areajournal.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Check out @juliandobson.bsky.social's recent Area paper on civic geographies of care, featured in last month's RGS-IBG Journals highlights ⬇️
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Great to be back in @blacknorereview.bsky.social with this #poem inspired by the Howgills.
The Howgill fells near Sedbergh, a wooden bridge in the foreground.
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Prof Bill McGuire @profbillmcguire.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
The early wildfire season continues up here in the English Peak District Doesn't bode well for what could be blisteringly hot summer www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Crews tackle two 'significant' Peak District wildfires in 24 hours
Fire officials says 800,000 sq m of moorland was affected and warned people to be responsible.
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
Do you live or work in South Yorkshire? If so, what does the River Don mean to you? Sewage? Filth? Or recovery and the return of salmon and otters? Come and explore what it means to be an ecological citizen at one of our workshops next month: forms.office.com/e/3jS3hgAp3P
The River Don at Sprotbrough Stone marking high floodwater at Mexborough 
The River Don on a sunny winter day Combined sewer outfall on the River Don
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
A little word of praise for independent poetry publishers. Thanks to @inksweatandtears.co.uk for taking this!
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
Lovely to be back in Stand with a couple of poems, including one about Sheffield’s own Shepherd Wheel. A little taster in the photo for you.
Cover of the latest Stand poetry magazine The first few lines of a poem about Shepherd Wheel, a historic workshop in Sheffield’s Porter Valley
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Black Bough Poetry @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social · 28/12/2025
Julian Dobson takes to the allotment on Christmas Eve in our Christmas-winter anthology. 🪏 🎄 ❄️ @juliandobson.bsky.social www.blackboughpoetry.com/news
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
Brunnenmarkt, Vienna: the common good not as a benefit bestowed by planners but as emergent and fluid, generated through the everyday exchanges of some of the city’s most precarious residents.
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 11/07/2025
Well, who’d have thought it? High streets do better in wealthier places. —— So we need to build wealth in the communities that don’t have it, in ways that lock the benefits into those communities. And that’s what the big-ticket investments consistently fail to do.
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Higher Education Policy Institute @hepi-news.bsky.social · 07/07/2025
New Post: Can a university be civic if it fails to invest in local relationships? www.hepi.ac.uk/2025/07/07/c...
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 07/07/2025
Universities risk losing focus, memory, credibility and relevance as they strip back their civic work at a time when they are being called on to better serve their communities. New research from @cresr-shu.bsky.social out now. Blogged at @hepi-news.bsky.social: www.hepi.ac.uk/2025/07/07/c...
hepi.ac.uk
Can a university be civic if it fails to invest in local relationships? - HEPI
The Government wants English universities to play a greater civic role in their localities. But new research shows universities are failing to invest in the people who perform this work, putting local...
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
In which my @cresr-shu.bsky.social colleague Jamie Redman and I get to grips with the question of environmental wellbeing: what environment, whose wellbeing, and what about those who cause harm? Free to read. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
Environmental wellbeing: a concept and principles for research, policy and action
Environmental wellbeing is often referred to in academic literature but seldom defined. This article provides two contributions to knowledge: (1) developing an integrated concept of environmental w...
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 20/06/2025
There’s nothing like turning up at the allotment at 6am just before the solstice…
Freshly picked kohl rabi and beetroot, placed almost artistically on a couple of slatesOpening sunflower at 6am
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
Really pleased to be working with @ella-hubbard.bsky.social and @riverdonproject.bsky.social on this - a chance to understand the rich variety of relationships between people and the river than connects South Yorkshire.
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
A short poem about long Sunday mornings. Thanks to @benbanyard.bsky.social for taking this for Black Nore Review. blacknorereview.wordpress.com/2025/05/08/j...
blacknorereview.wordpress.com
Julian Dobson – “Sabbath”
Sabbath I’d observe a cherry tree through the arch whisking through seasons while Sunday sermons drifted over me in spent blossom. At the time I’d missed the point of boredom, which was only partly…
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 01/05/2025
I've reviewed Robert Macfarlane's new book, Is A River Alive? for The Conversation 📚 It's a great read 🌳 It's an urgent call for new ways of relating to the natural world 😀 It’s timely inspiration for everyone who wants systems for mutual flourishing theconversation.com/robert-macfa...
theconversation.com
Robert Macfarlane’s new book is a plea to feel the pulse of our rivers
Robert Macfarlane’s new book asks a simple question that poses a profound challenge to environmental policy and the drive for economic growth.
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
Always nice to see a bike shed in full bloom.
Green bike shed covered with pink flowering clematis montana
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 26/04/2025
Fascinating conversations and challenging discussions at the ‘Meeting of Rivers’ workshop in Sheffield today. Kudos to the person who picked the room.
Window decorated with fish graphics
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
It’s that time again…
Freshly picked rhubarb
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 21/04/2025
Embracing the bank holiday spirit: Easedale Tarn, Stickle Tarn, Elterwater and Loughrigg Tarn.
Reflections in Easedale Tarn, Lake DistrictStone in mist by the shore of Stickle TarnReeds and branches reflected in ElterwaterOverhanging branch reflected in Loughrigg Tarn
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
It’s the sort of weekend (gloomy, ominous, unpromising) when thoughts turn to Lake District hillwalking. Here’s my take on the Kentmere round, just out in And Other Poems: andotherpoems.com/2025/04/16/a...
A Lake District scene: sunlight filtering through low, threatening cloud seen from a ridge.
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 06/04/2025
Plum and damson blossom against a cloudless sky. The allotment is waking up, and thirsty already.
Plum blossom Damson in bud and about to flower
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
An impressive range of responses to the River Don at the Faethm exhibition at Kelham Island, Sheffield. Industry, history, poetry, litter and the backdrop of an unfolding ecological crisis.
Installation focusing on ochre in the rivers of Sheffield Part of Joanne Lee’s installation at Kelham Island Museum, Sheffield Prints inspired by litter picked along the River Don and the skeletons of creatures living in the river
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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
Perhaps my favourite starter pack: #poets with collections - finished, WiP - they want to share. Let me know if you'd like to be included. Publishers, reach out to these fine people. There's gold in here. Everyone else, please follow and repost #booksky #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #vss365
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
Great to have a snippet in this fine zine today.
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Garry Kasparov @garrykasparov.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
I started today’s “Putinization of America” article for the Atlantic before the Trump-Zelensky meeting was announced, but I have a bad track record when it comes to hoping I’m wrong. It could’ve been scripted by Putin, especially Vance’s attacks. Maybe it was. www.theatlantic.com/internationa...
theatlantic.com
The Putinization of America
Trump’s deference to the Russian dictator has become full-blown imitation.
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Once he’s had his free banquet at Balmoral, Trump will show the same level of respect to us. The only difference is that our survival isn’t at stake, yet.
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
It’s the middle of the night, it’s raining, and I’m walking across Sheffield. Here’s what it feels like. Thanks to Ink Sweat & Tears for finding a home for this today. inksweatandtears.co.uk/julian-dobso...
inksweatandtears.co.uk
Julian Dobson | Ink Sweat and Tears
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
This is what a free press should do. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Trump 2.0: an assault on science anywhere is an assault on science everywhere
US President Donald Trump is taking a wrecking ball to science and to international institutions. The global research community must take a stand against these attacks.
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
Great to have a couple of pieces in the latest Tears in the Fence - and to be in the company of such luminaries as @steveeely.bsky.social and @hannahl1n.bsky.social
Issue 81 of Tears in the Fence, awaiting the delighted reader
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 22/02/2025
Editorial footnote of the day.
“This article was updated to reflect a Nasa revision of the probability that the 2024 YR4 asteroid will hit Earth”
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Chaucer Doth Tweet @levostregc.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
You kan not run educacioun lyke a businesse. A businesse ys meant to make a profit. Educacioun ys meant to make the future. A businesse ys meant to serve customers. Educacioun ys meant to empower citizens.
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
Morning run, and the song thrushes are tuning up - and spotted my first dipper of the year by the stream. ‘For all this*, nature is never spent’… we hope, still. *and yes, there’s an ever scarier amount of ‘this’, even from people who should know better.
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 18/02/2025
📣 New article klaxon: with my @cresr-shu.bsky.social colleague Femi Owolade I’ve been reflecting on universities’ civic impact. Findings published today in the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management: www.tandfonline.com/eprint/3M9CS...
tandfonline.com
Resourcing universities to increase their civic impact: meeting challenges of communication, complexity and commitment
The 21st century has witnessed an increasing focus on universities’ civic role and their impacts on the social and economic wellbeing of their communities. Recent work in the UK has emphasised the ...
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 16/02/2025
Celebrating surrealist landscapes: both inside and outside the Hepworth Wakefield. Catch it while it’s still in your subconscious.
Junk figure in boatyard opposite the Hepworth gallery, Wakefield Installation at the Surrealist Landscapes exhibition at the Hepworth, Wakefield
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Peter Geoghegan @petergeoghegan.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
"Democracy will not go down without a fight" @kimlanelaw.bsky.social explains Trump’s power grab and what can be done to stop the destruction of American democracy in latest Democracy for Sale Highly recommended reading this in full democracyforsale.substack.com/p/the-poster...
democracyforsale.substack.com
“The poster child for autocracy”: how to understand Trump’s regime
Author and legal expert Kim Lane Schepelle explains Trump’s power grab and what can be done to stop the destruction of American democracy
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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 14/02/2025
‘The Israeli aerial bombing of Gaza may have lessened but it has not stopped; nor has the killing of Palestinians by other means. More than a hundred people have been killed since the ceasefire.’ Selma Dabbagh on the blog: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/fe...
lrb.co.uk
Selma Dabbagh | Ransacked
On 9 February, two branches of the Muna family’s bookshops in East Jerusalem were ransacked by Israeli police. They...
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
‘In this emergency, I think it likely that we are going to need to pitch a very big tent and invite everyone in who doesn’t want to live in a dictatorship…’ Wise words from @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social - well worth subscribing to her newsletter at this moment.
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
A poem for the weekend. There’s a load of painting to be done, so here are a few decorator’s tips. This one appeared last year in the much-missed Dreich. #poetsonbluesky
Lessons learned while decorating

Half the job is moving furniture around the room. 
Behind the perfect colour match are five marked ‘never’. 
Unprimed plaster takes all you have, and screams for more. 
The hole you fail to fill will gaze at you forever. 

Virtually anything can be glossed over. 

Sanding a floor, all you have to show is dust. 
Masking tape creates as many problems as it covers. 
Buy too much emulsion, but work edges like a miser. 
Remember your work exists for painting over. 

When glossing, you can expect something to drip.

Only you will know the joy of a neat architrave. 
The time to chuck a brush is when it’s still got life. 
The best of jobs could have been done a tidier way. 
A stranger will view your work, and suck their teeth.

Everything glossed will find a way to reappear
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
‘To write fully aware and reflexive poetry about the modern world necessarily involves an engagement with the Apocalyptic’ - a timely anthology from @steveeely.bsky.social and Valley Press, and great to hear featured poets at the launch this evening.
Cover of Apocalyptic Landscape poetry anthology, pictured on a non-apocalyptic table.
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
Great to see this collaboration between @sheffieldhallamuni.bsky.social and the River Don Project taking shape - exploring relationships between people and the more-than-human. blogs.shu.ac.uk/c3riimpact/f...
blogs.shu.ac.uk
fæthm: exploring curation with the River Dôn 13-16 March 2025 - The CCRI Impact Blog
fæthm: exploring curation with the River Dôn Kelham Island Industrial Museum and The River Dôn  Thursday 13th – Sunday 16th March 2025 Opening times Thurs: 10-4 Fri: 10-4 Sat: 10-4 Sun: 11-4 Our entan...
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The Conversation UK @uk.theconversation.com · 15/01/2025
Retraumatisation can lead to mental health crises including suicidal thoughts and actions, self-harm and agoraphobia.
theconversation.com
I work with abuse survivors in Rotherham – the current discussion about grooming gangs risks retraumatising them
Retraumatisation can lead to mental health crises including suicidal thoughts and actions, self-harm and agoraphobia.
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.” For Trump’s second coming, Yeats’s The Second Coming.
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 19/01/2025
A poem for the weekend. In a week when a felon returns to power, here’s one about another act of rehabilitation. Published back in 2016 in the late lamented Poets’ Republic. #poetsonbluesky #monarchy
Rehabilitation of offenders 

A man's found beneath a car park. He's not 
the only one lost under concrete. In sterile rooms
relatives offer DNA, hope for strands of hair.

We unearth bits of bones with tractor wheels, 
brooches in tree roots. They are flimsy, uncertain
as loyalty. We manoeuvre around them,

turn over their meanings like armies
assembled on hillsides, sniffing the breeze
for the winning side. In the soil

the leather harness of a lost horse, 
by a ditch a hawthorn. In the village churchyard
all the unnamed, given the heave-ho. 

Five hundred years on, we trust our violences
will be excusable. We’ve ordered a cortège,
an oak casket, burial in a cathedral.
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
When in hell, it’s helpful to know where you are. Thanks to @armenikus.bsky.social and his excellent Dante read-along for this handy piece of public signage.
Illustration of Dante’s Inferno, with a sign reading ‘you are here’
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Malcolm Tait @malcolmtait.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
Our article in the Conversation - reveals that only half of ecological features required on new housing estates are actually there. It's a systemic problem of housebuilders not putting them in, management companies not maintaining them and a lack of enforcement theconversation.com/property-dev...
theconversation.com
Property developers installing as few as half of promised ecological features – new report
A new report highlights the extent that housing developers fail to deliver on their ecological commitments.
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 12/01/2025
A poem for the weekend, from Ink Sweat & Tears. A few years back I did a series of interviews at an organisation in crisis. Every time I turned up the offices were emptier. Some of the scenes might sound familiar. #poetsonbluesky
Out of office auto-response

desks morph into surplus femurs
stalking unlit rooms    chairs
are pelvises minus a sense of swing
walls creep further apart each day
carpet oceans lap workstations
nobody needs to raise a voice now
on the executive floor a plaque
prone as an exhausted dog    this was
the best place to work, years ago
the manager’s books have broken spines
someone had given her how to live off-grid
unplugged, she had no call for it
inspirational quotes wait to paraglide
from cupboards as their tack-balls dry
be the change you want to see    below,
a team picture, glammed-up for an award
smiles fizz everywhere    can you remember
who laughed most that night?
reconfiguration, restructuring    pulled
apart, parts bolted back together
so many bones    no longer needed
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
Witch hazel season in Sheffield Botanic Gardens. Enough to warm the heart but not the hands.
Yellow witch hazel flowers agains a background of ice and treesOrange witch hazel flowers against a backdrop of skyRed witch hazel flowers against a backdrop of afternoon sky and icy ground
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Julian Dobson @juliandobson.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
Very happy to see restoring nature and widening access at the heart of the new @nationaltrust.bsky.social strategy. Possibly the most encouraging news I’ve seen this week.
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