iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Being judgemental and professional hater (marking and peer review)

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Nothing says “heritage” like Lloyd’s coffee house now being a hub for finance bros buying meal deals

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Reposted by Catherine Phipps

Global Maritime History @globalmarhist.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

ticketpass.org/event/EBVOMP... Check out this very cool event. May 1st, at Lloyds Fenchurch St

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Remember in Notting Hill when Hugh Grant pretends to be a journalist for House and Hound and asks if there are many dogs in her film? Same vibe when I sat down to talk about the sea with the costume designer for the Royal Opera House’s Peter Grimes mariners.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/2026/04/02/t...

mariners.blogs.bristol.ac.uk

“The Rough Side of Fishing” in Peter Grimes – Mariners: Religion, Race and Empire in British Ports, 1801-1914

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Reposted by Catherine Phipps

Arts Matter Bristol @uobartsmatter.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

✨ COMING UP: Join Dr @katyphipps.bsky.social (@uobrishistory.bsky.social) at the National Portrait Gallery for a public lecture on the history of sex & sex work in Victorian Britain & the British Empire The event takes place on Thursday 16 April, 1-2pm with tickets available 👉 brnw.ch/21x1pgc

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

Elisa Camiscioli focuses on borders as much as brothels; her beautiful focus on individual stories makes the archives sing in “Selling French Sex: Prostitution, Trafficking and Global Migrations”. Read my review for @cultsochistory.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

tandfonline.com

Selling French Sex: Prostitution, Trafficking, and Global Migrations

Published in Cultural and Social History: The Journal of the Social History Society (Ahead of Print, 2026)

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

The first seminar today of the masters module I was invited to put together: "Prostitutes", "Perverts" and Pornography: Experiences of Colonial Sexuality in European Empires, 1800-2000. Two hours of history of material cultures, gender and empire at the Pitt Rivers 😍

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Reposted by Catherine Phipps

Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

'On the "bitter cold" Christmas Day of 1830, Mary Ann Macham arrived in North Shields, the northern English fishing port that would become her unlikely home; the endpoint of a 4,000-mile journey filled with fear, courage and a superhuman determination to be free.'

bbc.co.uk

From Slavery in Virginia to Freedom in the North East of England

How an enslaved woman fled America and found safety in the North East of England

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

Seasonal reminder that Nick Cave looks just like The Grinch

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

Brothels regulated by the state and with registration cards were fundamental to the type of biopower Foucault talks about! There were thousands across France by 1945. Does he talk about them? No!

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

Thinking about biopower and how bodies were managed in modern states? Don’t forget brothels! alongside the invention of birth rates, clinics, and prisons, regulated brothels in France from 1800s and in British Empire from 1864 were a key part of the state intervention that created public health

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

I want JStor unwrapped… This year you started 36 articles and finished 2.

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

Colonial violence has unexpected legacies… the only way I’ll finish this manuscript before Christmas is through a regime of fear (I told my sister to slap me if it’s not done)

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

Babe, I think you’ve got this the wrong way round… surely it’s to decolonise Britain, the British Museum and the imperial mindset??? Feel like India already knows it’s independent and has a rich history…

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Reposted by Catherine Phipps

New Lines Magazine @newlinesmag.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

In Morocco in the 1930s, hundreds of women and girls were trapped by the French authorities inside the walls of Bousbir — Casablanca’s red-light district and a tourist destination for Europeans. @katyphipps.bsky.social uncovers their stories.

newlinesmag.com

The Lost Daughters of Bousbir

Under French rule in the 1930s, hundreds of Moroccan girls and women were trapped in Casablanca’s red-light district

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

The French state trapped Moroccan women in colonial brothels, while their fathers wrote letters begging for their freedom. Virgins were arrested, women tried to escape… Read more here

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

I’ll live on in how others remember me

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

Love. The lying media will say I’ve been receiving emails about the money I allegedly owe Oxford for two years…

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

🚨 New job🚨 ill be a senior research associate at Bristol this year, looking at race and religion in British colonial port cities with the Mariners project mar.ine.rs Working on anything to do with colonial ports, sex work or the sea? Let me know the sea is about to become my mistress 🌊

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

A shame to see such poor copy editing for such a beautiful new book from some top decolonial feminists. To include انتفاضة in Arabic but not to connect the letters? Why you need people who know what they’re doing, not AI.

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

This is my all-stars round: solid celebrity status articles, beautiful research

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Reposted by Catherine Phipps

Sam Rutherford (he/him) @echomikeromeo.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

Unsurprised, but disappointed, to see that Newnham College's JRFs are being defined as explicitly trans-exclusionary: newn.cam.ac.uk/research/res...

newn.cam.ac.uk

Research Fellowships

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

Poires dauphinoises, just like mamma used to make

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

Can we all just stop writing for a year to let everyone catch up?

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

Another day, another email signed “nest, Catherine”

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

“Yeah so actually the reason that I’ve published a lot is that every year I’m certain I’ll have to leave academia and not be able to write anything else” 😊🙃

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

Orwell's sex life was also affected by his time in colonial brothels... After spending the night with him, one woman wrote that "he makes love Burma-Sergeant fashion, afterwards saying 'ah that’s better' before he turns over”. At least it would have been quick for the girls in Marrakechi brothels

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

Orwell boasted about his experiences with Moroccan girls as a taste of exotic Orientalism. For these girls, it would have been business as usual in the 600 brothels across Marrakech where they were often held against their will and forced to sell sex. Orwell was part of the colonial project...

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

"He had seldom tasted such bliss as with certain Moroccan girls, whose complete naturalness and grace and candid sensuality he described in language so simple and direct that one could visualize their slender flanks and small pointed breasts and almost sniff the odour of spices" wrote Harold Acton.

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

Morocco was known for sex tourism in this period after the French Protectorate introduced Africa's largest and most exploitative red-light district in Casablanca. Every major city had colonial brothels managed by the French state Two different friends of his note his memories of Moroccan women...

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

This wasn't Orwell's first time visit colonial brothels. During his time in Burma, Orwell frequently visited the brothels in Moulmein, where one teacher had set up a brothel with three of her sixth-form students. He also wrote an "ironic" poem about paying a young "virgin" Burmese girl for sex...

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

Did George Orwell pay for sex in a colonial brothel in Morocco? Orwell and his wife Eileen spent a few months living in a villa outside of Marrakech in the late 1930s. He wrote the essay "Marrakech" about daily life there, but Marrakech in the 1930s was also home to hundreds of colonial brothels...

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

Hello from the archives du Maroc where a cat has walked into the reading room More to follow

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

Spent the morning reading the personal file from the colonial doctor who experimented on these women, and watching his salary slowly rise. What’s the opposite of rest in peace?

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

Humbled. Getting passport photos taken in Morocco and watching the woman photoshop me. Worried will be rejected at customs for not having same glowy skin and fake eyelashes.

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

Can you have a career only mixing two artists? Probably

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Catherine Phipps @katyphipps.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

I just want to hear ya tabtab wa dalla vs toxic before I die 🥺🥺

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