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Len Scales.bsky.social

@lenscales.bsky.social
150 followers 118 following 112 posts

Historian of medieval Europe, especially Germany, Holy Roman Empire. Writing book about myths and memories of medieval emperors in Germany from the Middle Ages to the present day.

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Reposted by Len Scales.bsky.social
Helen Gittos @helengittos.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
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Len Scales.bsky.social @lenscales.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Out next month from @boydellandbrewer.bsky.social, edited by @marcusmeer.bsky.social and me! Quoting the code BB135 gets you (or your library) 35% off all formats. Also applies to advance orders. boydellandbrewer.com/book/iconocl...
boydellandbrewer.com
Iconoclasm and Power in the European Middle Ages
Explores the destruction, mutilation, and erasure of images, artefacts, and monuments during the European Middle Ages.
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Charles West @pseudo-isidore.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Looks like a great job for medieval historians, at either Assistant or Associate (tenured) level, at John Hopkins.
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
'The idea of archaeology as adventure predates the discipline itself. It grew from 19th-century colonial exploration, when the past was treated less as knowledge than as loot.'
theconversation.com
Why Indiana Jones is the best and worst thing to happen to archaeology
The idea of archaeology as adventure predates the discipline itself.
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Reposted by Len Scales.bsky.social
Charles West @pseudo-isidore.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The governance of late medieval England, drawn by Sebastian Sobecki. communities-of-practice.english.utoronto.ca?page_id=222
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Len Scales.bsky.social @lenscales.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
For those missing their dose of AI doom - ballistic missiles designed by Claude: unherd.com/2026/09/clau...
unherd.com
Claude: tyranny’s little helper
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Len Scales.bsky.social @lenscales.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
It matters because it teaches scepticism. Not exclusive to university history, of course. But we teach it (or we should) from day one. Why believe this? For what purpose was it said / written? Instinctive questioning. In an age of fakes, frauds and liars I can't think of a more relevant discipline.
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Len Scales.bsky.social @lenscales.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
For #adoorableThursday the (Welf?) 'lion portal' from Königslutter minster (burial site of Emperor Lothar III, Empress Richenza and Duke Henry the Proud). Romanesque with 19th-cent. restoration and some serious neo-medieval ironmongery. My photo.
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Len Scales.bsky.social @lenscales.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Perspectives on Europe rooted in the eastern EU states are often very fruitful. Reminded me of the landmark 'Europe's Centre at the first Millennium' exhibition from the start of the second, with 'Sclavinia' hurrying to join. The designers chopped 'Gallia' (old news?) out to fit the catalogue cover.
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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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Len Scales.bsky.social @lenscales.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Hardly news to #medievalsky, but was reminded yesterday just how good are the medieval galleries at the V&A. Here, for Thursday morning, a mid-12th-century Byzantine falcon bowl.
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Iain MacInnes @iainmacinnesuhi.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Medieval history will never not be of relevance... #medievalsky
independent.co.uk
Putin sends bones of warrior prince to Ukraine in desperate bid to boost morale
Donskoy, whose name was given to a Soviet tank column funded by the church in World War Two, was declared a saint in 1988
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Colin Veach @colinveach.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Come join me and my colleagues as a Lecturer in History at the University of Hull! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSV911/l... @universityofhull.bsky.social
jobs.ac.uk
Lecturer at University of Hull
Apply for the Lecturer role on jobs.ac.uk, the top job board for academic positions in higher education. View details and apply now.
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Len Scales.bsky.social @lenscales.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
taz.de/Otto-Begraeb... Piece in Berlin's TAZ on the reburial of Otto I, including a report of the regional AfD denouncing the scientific study of Otto's remains as 'Leichenschändung' (corpse-desecration). Link to (paywall) essay by Sachsen-Anhalt chief archaeologist on nationalism and archaeology.
taz.de
Otto-Begräbnis im Magdeburger Dom: Denn er war unser!
Keine kleine Aufgabe, den den Großen genannten Kaiser Otto wieder in den neuen Sarg zu kriegen! Geglückt aber ist es. Muss er uns interessieren?
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Monumenta Germaniae Historica @monumenta.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
200 years ago: The publication of the first MGH volume! Annales et chronica aevi Carolini More about the initial volume publicated in August 1826: mgh.de/en/blog/post... mgh.de/de/blog/post... #medievalsky
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Kim Posster @kposster.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
War heute mit meiner Pflegehilfe zum ersten Mal im großen Rewe im Viertel einkaufen und habt dort das gesehen Da lässt man euch einmal 3 Jahre alleine und ihr macht sowas
Aufsteller mit Aufschrift:
Single-Korb
für alle, die nicht nur Lebensmittel finden wollen.
REWE
Pohl
Dein Markt
Aus deiner
Regio
• einfach den pinken Korb
nehmen
• zeigt: offen für ein Lächeln, ein Gespräch oder vielleicht ein Date
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Len Scales.bsky.social @lenscales.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Looking forward to speaking tomorrow afternoon at the @germanhistsoc.bsky.social conference on the strange post-1945 afterlives of medieval emperors - strange enough to allow even the troubled Kyffhäuser ('Barbarossa') monument eventually (1990) to make it onto a DDR stamp.
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John Levin @anterotesis.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
An "update" to JSTOR’s free reading program: they're downgrading access from 100 free articles/month to just 10. Access to academic writing is being whittled down, bit by bit. about.jstor.org/blog/an-upda...
about.jstor.org
An update to JSTOR’s free reading program
Beginning September 1, 2026, JSTOR’s free reading program will provide registered readers with access to 10 articles every 30 days.
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Len Scales.bsky.social @lenscales.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Otto the Great laid to rest (in a titanium coffin) in Magdeburg cathedral.
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Len Scales.bsky.social @lenscales.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Should be compelling stuff, again. The medievalist in me always appreciated that Gereon is supposed to be originally from Cologne. www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...
theguardian.com
Goodbye to Babylon Berlin, the 1920s TV drama that has eerily foreshadowed real-life politics
The long-running drama reaches Hitler’s rise to power in its final season as its creators reflect on the unsettling parallels between Weimar Germany and the present day
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Len Scales.bsky.social @lenscales.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Sachsen-Anhalt: surely the most paradoxically 'German' of German states. Not for nothing did Thomas Mann set the early chapters of Doktor Faustus in a fictionalised Naumburg (or is it Merseburg, or Halle - or all three?) - fictional burial place of that most paradoxical medieval emperor, Otto III.
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Len Scales.bsky.social @lenscales.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
A good piece. Sachsen-Anhalt is a beautiful corner of Germany. (Well, much of it is.) But what strikes the outsider (this one at least) is the sad emptiness - the permanent Sunday afternoon feel - of many of its ancient, historic towns.
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German at Portsmouth @germanatportsmouth.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
The Nazis drove Bauhaus out of town. Now the far right is waging another war against the movement. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a... via @theguardian.com @deborahcole.bsky.social
theguardian.com
The Nazis drove Bauhaus out of town. Now the far right is waging another war against the movement
Poll to take place in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, where Bauhaus blossomed a century ago – and where AfD is promising ‘patriotic culture policy’ if it wins
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German History Society @germanhistsoc.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
🎉 Keynote Announcement We're pleased to welcome Prof. John Breuilly (LSE) to the GHS annual conference in Stirling! 📅 3–5 September 2026 📖 Find out more and book your place: www.germanhistorysociety.org/conference/ #GermanHistSoc2026
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Len Scales.bsky.social @lenscales.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
A subtext of this bleak piece is that humanistic-human skills have the potential to become *more* important (though rarer) under AI. Perhaps (hopeless optimism) an incentive for tech leaders - who are supposed to be pretty smart - to seek a less piratical relationship with those who nurture them?
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
An important read (not just for historians). Do the habits and skills of research and critical analysis really have no other cognitive , social and/or political values? (Well, in much current thinking, sadly no).
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Len Scales.bsky.social @lenscales.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Whole thread is good advice. Related is diff. levels of academic formality. UK academics, unless very old-school, usually move to the informal as soon as decently possible (often prefaced with a cautious 'if I may'). German academia often keeps things formal for longer.
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Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte Halle (Saale) @landesmuseumhalle.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Am Mittwoch, den 19.08.2026, wurden im Magdeburger Dom die Ergebnisse der Sanierung des Sarkophag Ottos des Großen vorgestellt. Mehr Informationen bietet die Presseinformation des Landesamts für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie: www.lda-lsa.de/presse-und-o... © LDA Sachsen-Anhalt, A. Hörentrup.
Das Bild zeigt den Sarkophag Ottos des Großen. Deutlich erkennbar sind an der vorderen Quersetie zwei rechteckige, eingetiefte Felder.
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Kenan Malik @kenanmalik.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
“The retreat to the small, and the jettisoning of grand metanarratives of the kind that Hobsbawm excelled at, has reduced our understanding of who we are.” @johnmerrick.bsky.social on @emile-chabal.bsky.social’s biography of Eric Hobsbawm: unherd.com/2026/08/eric...
unherd.com
Eric Hobsbawm's age of contradictions
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Len Scales.bsky.social @lenscales.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
It was indeed a terrific conference, superbly organised by Éloïse Adde. It was great to have the chance to reflect on the conference themes in the concluding discussion with Éloïse and @cathleen-sarti.bsky.social, captured in the YouTube recording.
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Arc Humanities Press @archumanities.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
{New book} Shaping the Nation in Medieval Europe Edited by Éloïse Adde explores a fundamental problem of European historiography within a global context: the history of medieval nations and the question of their relationship to modern nation-states. www.arc-humanities.org/978180270424...
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404 Media @404media.co · 17/08/2026
We placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books.
404media.co
We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility
We placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books.
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Len Scales.bsky.social @lenscales.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Very much looking forward to exploring the late 20th-century afterlives of medieval Holy Roman emperors, from 1970s Stuttgart via 1990s Hessen to Frederick Barbarossa in the DDR. And very grateful for the invitation. If you're at the GHS conference in Stirling on 3 September, 6 p.m., do come along!
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German at Portsmouth @germanatportsmouth.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
13 August 1919: a surprisingly blunt newspaper description of some of the participants at the "Gauturnfest Münster"
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cbnewham @parishchurches.org · 11/08/2026
The Warning against Idle Gossip. c.1330-50 High up in the tracery lights of the chancel at Stanford-on-Avon is this scene. Three women are engaged in conversation while demons surround them. The only known example of this subject in stained glass.
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Len Scales.bsky.social @lenscales.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Re-reading A.J.P. Taylor's _The Habsburg Monarchy_. The bibliography concludes with the words, 'This list does not exhaust the books that I have consulted, some with profit, most without'. Ought to be standard.
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Len Scales.bsky.social @lenscales.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
A bleak, powerful piece. www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int... Makes the important point that the classic humanities student essay, with its challenge to craft something substantial, considered, and your own out of words and ideas, a form now so compromised by AI, simply isn't really replaceable.
theguardian.com
‘I hate what AI is doing to the minds and happiness of the young’: Katherine Rundell on the view from the classroom
Education is at a crossroads, argues the author and academic. Should we embrace new technology in the name of efficiency, or is it time to fight back?
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Medievalist.net @medievalists.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
New Medieval Books: Black Knights: Arabic Epic and the Making of Medieval Race www.medievalists.net/2025/08/new-... #books
medievalists.net
New Medieval Books: Black Knights - Medievalists.net
Medieval Arabic literature frequently included Black African characters, offering valuable insight into contemporary ideas about race and race relations. This book examines those sources to uncover…
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Grant Jones @grantosjones.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
CALL FOR PAPERS! Alastair Forbes (@areforbes.bsky.social) and I are seeking papers for our proposed Leeds #IMC2027 session: 'Ordered and Disordered Communities in Clerical Thought' All disciplines and career stages welcome - abstracts due 14 September. @imc-leeds.bsky.social #MedievalSky
A call for papers for Leeds International Medieval Congress 2027 on the topic of 'Ordered and Disordered Communities in Clerical Thought'. This panel examines how medieval clerical and monastic cultures defined communities and situated them within social or religious order. We seek to explore how these cultures understood disorder within or between communities, as well as how their judgements shaped ideas about communal identity and belonging. Communities considered might range from individual institutions to wider social order and communities, across the entirety of Christendom in the Middle Ages.

We welcome proposals from colleagues in any discipline of medieval studies and at any career stage, including postgraduate and early career researchers. Although papers should engage substantively with clerical or monastic understandings of order, they need not be confined to clerical communities or clerically authored sources. Please submit abstracts of up to 300 words for a 20-minute paper, along with a short biography, to Dr Alastair Forbes and Dr Grant Jones at: a.r.e.forbes@durham.ac.uk and grant.jones@durham.ac.uk no later than Monday 14 September 2026.
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Pieter Beullens @pieterbeullens.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
If you want to earn a PhD with a study of the medieval readers of the earliest MSS of Aristotle's De anima in Latin, only two days left to apply!
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Charles West @pseudo-isidore.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
🤔
Screenshot of Telegraph article
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Charles West @pseudo-isidore.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
Listening to Elisabeth van Houts talking about her new book on Empress Matilda on the @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social newbooksnetwork.com/empress-mati...
newbooksnetwork.com
Elisabeth van Houts, "Empress Matilda: Queen of the Romans, Ruler of the English" (Yale UP, 2026) - New Books Network
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Robert Friedrich @rofrie11.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Medievalists, I'm proposing a CfP for a couple of sessions for @imc-leeds.bsky.social on "Multilingualism in the Global Middle Ages. Creating Communities through Inclusion and Exclusion". Please share and apply (and check out the beautiful 12th c. quadrilingual epitaph from Palermo) #medievalsky
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Harvard University Press @harvardpress.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
The first truly global biography of a revolutionary thinker. How well do you know Eric Hobsbawm? Discover our conversation with biographer and historian Emile Chabal: bit.ly/3RZrUjK Coming August 18.
An image of the cover of Emile Chabal's "The Age of Hobsbawm," a black-and-white image of a spectacled Eric Hobsbawm smiling and looking off into the distance on the cover. Dark green background.
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Dr. Jeroen W.P. Wijnendaele @drdragases.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
No longer content with pillaging intellectual work and dismembering our environment (already critically weakened), AI companies are now hellbent on destroying books galore including rare editions. Shut down these nefarious enterprises already.
news.com.au
AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books
If you have retreated to physical books because the internet is too full of AI slop, bad news — now they’re shredding the books to feed their AI slop machines.
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Steffen Hope @hopesteffen.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
As I'm currently in Stiklestad for a work trip, I got to see this wonderful twelfth-century door knocker from Stiklestad Church. It might have served as a sanctuary ring, & is an extremely rare survival of Norwegian medieval metalwork.
An iron door knocker attached to a wooden door from 1930. The knocker is in the form of a ring shaped like two serpents whose heads are biting the top of the ring, where it is linked to a metal plate with serrated edges - like a stylised sun or a lion's mane. At the bottom of the ring is the head of a man with a forked beard, the right-hand fork of which has been broken off or rubbed away. The serpents appear to emerge from the head's ears.
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Jane Winters @jfwinters.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Royal Historical Society open meeting (online) for historians working in universities, 4 Aug 2026 - ‘The crisis in UK higher education: the future for history’ www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-crisis.... It’s a definite sign of the times that places are almost gone.
eventbrite.co.uk
The Crisis in UK HE: the Future for History
An open meeting for historians in UK higher education on what is needed to best support and protect the profession and discipline.
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Marcus Meer @marcusmeer.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
CfP: "Media of Memory and the Pre-Modern Economy" at the @ghilondon.bsky.social, 5-7 May 2027, www.ghil.ac.uk/events/confe... Interested in how pre-modern communities used the past to address present challenges and future aspirations in economic terms? Please do get in touch by 15/12/2026!
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Carin Ruff @carinr.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
I made the happy discovery that the catalog from the 2013-2014 Met exhibit "Medieval Treasures from Hildesheim" is online, with many glorious illustrations: resources.metmuseum.org/resources/me... #medievalsky
Bernward Bible dedication page fol. 1r, from the Met Museum catalog "Medieval Treasures from Hildesheim, p. 37.
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Dr Vanessa @hpsvanessa.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
"don't cite what you haven't read" remains the basic entry level academic responsibility; & if your discpline "doesn't have that as a norm" then sorry, your discipline needs reforming for this new world. Citations are structural parts of trust and knowledge building, not trinkets or optional extras
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