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Marta Zboralska

@martazb.bsky.social
2.2K followers 938 following 1.2K posts

Art historian. Currently working on a book about visual art and Witold Gombrowicz

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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 43m
“It ends kind of abruptly”, I said to the invigilator as I was leaving the show — and I felt stupid before I could finish the sentence, because of course it does.
Silhouette in grass and flowers by Ana Mendieta.
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Dorothy Bishop @deevybee.bsky.social · 4h
This is a very disturbing read by Philip Moriarty about the corporate consultants at University of Nottingham, whose "bloodless prime-LLM-grade corporate boilerplate" called Future Nottingham 2 is guiding decision-making - cuts, cuts and more cuts. muircheartblog.wpcomstaging.com/2026/10/07/j...
muircheartblog.wpcomstaging.com
Just how much of Future Nottingham 2 was written by vastly overpaid consultants?
PA Consulting misled a government department, threatened the press, and over-charged the NHS up to £2,500 a day. So why is a PA consultant listed as the author of the Future Nottingham 2 business c…
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 15h
Not out in the UK until 20th November
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 16h
Kind of funny that this is what happened to both Katalin Karikó and Anne Carson
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Jacqueline Antonovich @jackiantonovich.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Academia distilled.
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
And I’ve never heard anyone talk about “mature students” in Poland because, well, that’s just students.
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
The only difference is that day degrees at public universities are free of charge and there are fees for weekend programmes because the assumption is that you’re in simultaneous full-time employment.
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
The idea that you have to “deserve” to go to university is ludicrous. In Poland people start degrees, drop degrees, do two degrees at once, complete degrees without submitting a thesis, do weekend degrees (available at the same institutions, not specialist ones)… That’s all very normal.
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Yuliya Komska @ykomska.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
As these negotiations led to nothing--*and* I learned in the process that the proceeds would benefit a Nazi-era perpetrator's family--my publisher, Cabinet Books, and I have decided to leave the page blank in a protest of sorts. Very pleased w/ how it turned out & glad to have such support
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Excellent!
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
I guess I’m the mob here and I just want Tom Watson to know that I hold him in as much contempt as he holds me.
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Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
I'll always remember something a colleague said early on in my career, soon after we finished grad school together: "Academia is not a meritocracy." I've been regularly reminded of this truism during my subsequent years in the profession
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Gareth Spencer @garethspencer.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Wife and I have spent the last few months taming (ie feeding) this local tomcat. He had a fearsome reputation on our street WhatsApp, which after one week on the sofa has proved to be completely unfounded. I present to Bluesky the utter doofus who we call Big Bub:
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Sally Hayden @sallyhayd.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Applications open for Oxford University scholarship which will "fully fund a Palestinian scholar to pursue a DPhil (PhD) commencing in October 2027 at the School of Geography and the Environment." www.geog.ox.ac.uk/study/gradua...
geog.ox.ac.uk
Palestine-Oxford Scholarship in Geography and the Environment
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
I think you were being summoned here bsky.app/profile/kirk...
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
💯
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Meredith Martin @mmvty.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
In grad school I studied Decreation with Anne Carson before she wrote the book. When I told her I got the Princeton job (near the steps of Angell Hall) she said, rightly: “they’ll suck you dry and throw you in the river” with her amused almost smile & sparkle eyes. She was so right. Always is.
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Jonathan Fine @jonathanbfine.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
let the record show it is easier to get a nobel prize than tenure at an ivy
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
This is, I’m afraid, the poisonous side of Widening Participation initiatives at elite universities — they reinforce the existing hierarchy of institutions. What is often missing is material support for students from underrepresented backgrounds when they get there.
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Only Eastern Europe has small towns; the West has territory.
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Sol Gamsu @solgamsu.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Glad to see Michael Rosen gets the scale of the crisis facing HE and is calling out @ucu.org.uk leaderships inadequate response. (Why was there gloating on X about having won the best stall at labour conference??? Bizarre)
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
There are points in this LRB article I fully agree with and ones that I do not; but the thinly veiled contempt for Eastern Europe and its “small towns” in Western left-wing writing is a little tiring. (I realise this is commenting on fictional scenarios described in the reviewed books, but still.)
And is there no better solution than a very long militarised border secured by elaborate demonstrations of commitment to small Eastern European towns?
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Rebecca Tushnet @rtushnet.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
“UChicago’s national ranking for selectivity, currently No. 4, depends crucially on its rejecting so many women. Its selectivity of men alone would drop it out of the top 10. By contrast, Chicago’s selectivity for women alone would place it in the first position in the country.”
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Kyla Wazana Tompkins @kwazana.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
About three months ago Tavia Nyong’o & I conceived of a collection of essays on The Epstein Class and the University meant to consider the ubiquity is sexual violence in the university & the fundamental fact that access to young women has long been a side perk of university employment & attendance.
A photograph of an art exhibit from the Donald J Trump and Jeffrey Epstein library showing a shelf of redacted Epstein files
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University and College Union (UCU) @ucu.org.uk · 07/10/2026
Goldsmiths has spent £14m on consultants since 2019. Now it's replacing striking lecturers with staff who need only "an interest in teaching". Joe Newman, Goldsmiths UCU co-president, on management's strike-breaking. 📰 @novaramedia.com
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Well, exactly (not that qualifying as an “associate fellow of the higher education academy” has seemed to make any difference in my case…)
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
What would certainly help IMO is if institutions could show current PhDs that they do value teaching by making people who have been fixed-term lecturers in the same department for years and years permanent; that would go a long way to changing the optics
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Hourly-paid teaching also means a lot of different things and ranges from pretty fair to very exploitative, so I wonder if perhaps current PhDs are more attuned to this
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Well yes, of course — but are there really many who do none whatsoever? Or perhaps PhDs just don’t take everything that’s offered to them anymore/are more selective? Since they can clearly see it doesn’t guarantee a future job…
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
In fact, I have wondered whether all this experience is great for fixed-term jobs/people view me as dependable in that context, but makes me look less “fresh” than the promise of a more recent PhD graduate.
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
I was a PG teaching assistant on 3 different courses during my PhD and have taught 11 distinct courses since (6 my own, 5 pre-designed) and I’m afraid it does feel like teaching experience counts for nothing when it comes to permanent job applications
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 06/10/2026
3/ 100+ Americans have been held after agents questioned their citizenship. Nearly all of them were people of color. They say they were profiled — detained because of their skin color, accents or jobs. “ICE isn’t looking for criminals. They’re looking for Latinos,” one said.
100+ U.S. citizens held after agents questioned their citizenship
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
How I wish for serious arts criticism in the national papers — there is no one to read so you have to wait weeks before someone serious writes something serious in a magazine
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Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives @darrencullen.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends towards Jeremy Clarkson spending decades denying global warming only to sink his fortune into a farm just as global warming really starts to kick in
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
'seven women...have told the Guardian they are survivors of domestic abuse carried out by key figures in the anti-immigration street patrol movement. All have chosen to come forward to make the public aware of the patterns of violence behind this new form of activism.'
theguardian.com
‘Bully in every way’: domestic abuse survivors say ex-partners behind far-right UK street patrols
Seven women share their stories to make people aware of patterns of violence behind anti-immigration street patrol movement
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
You know how Birmingham continues to “honour” the legacy of Stuart Hall despite closing the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies? Yeah. It’s that, everywhere. “We love to see it in theory, not in practice.”
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
“Russian and Slavonic Studies in Nottingham has a long and distinguished history, starting in 1916 when Nottingham became one of the first universities in the UK to teach Russian.” 110 years.
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
As does Novo Nordisk of Ozempic fame — including for art-historical research! novonordiskfonden.dk/en/art-resea...
novonordiskfonden.dk
Art research - Novo Nordisk Fonden
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Sometimes it feels like I’m fighting not just for my own survival but the survival of an entire field of research in the UK.
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
The sad reality is that neither EU students nor UK students with EE backgrounds are particularly profitable (yuck) to universities anymore, so I guess these subjects are an easy target.
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
One of the few places you could study Eastern European/Slavonic languages & cultures in the UK. I remember being encouraged to study Poland for my PhD because diversity of research is important. But it has affected my career prospects in the opposite way; I wish I had pursued an Anglophone topic.
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
I think what I realised in the past few years is that extraordinary wealth is far more common in academia than I had previously assumed.
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Rebecca Colesworthy @rcolesworthy.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
ffs I just read a European job ad that explicitly requires TWO PUBLISHED MONOGRAPHS for an asst prof position. yes, yes, I knew it was like this but it's truly startling to see TWO required. it's official: unis have zero respect for books & the ppl who write & publish them. Nothing affirms it more.
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
This is undoubtedly true, see e.g. the 1968 antisemitic campaign in the Polish People’s Republic.
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Illuminating.
My husband and I own a house which we rent out and for the past five years we have had a young Polish couple living in it. They are lovely people.
They are polite and considerate. They both work and are eager to learn new skills. They do not however appear to mix, beyond work, other than with their Polish friends and five years on D can still barely speak English. I am not at all sure talking to them that they are here [to] embrace British life but merely to take advantage of what this country can offer them and because they do have possibly a better work ethic and certainly a willingness to work for a basic wage it does feel they are taking from British citizens. A court of human rights would say it was their human right to work here but my daughter has no job although she was born here and wants to work - she is not working at present, because her employer cut her hours and she is better off on benefits than working and she can't pay the rent with principles!?
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
If the point is “we don’t even realise all the ways LLMs are robbing us of literacy by flattening the process of research”, then the restaurant menu example just isn’t the best — and yet you use the word “even” as if that’s the simplest illustration.
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
While the second sentence clarifies your intent, I think what weakens and muddles your point — & cannot be blamed on the reader — is that the example you give of use is “finding a restaurant menu”, which reads as a lot more intentional than the insidious ways in which LLMs infiltrate everyday tasks.
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MoMA Paintings and Sculpture @moma.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Edward Krasiński, Map of Warsaw, 1972 botfrens.com/collections/14377/cont…
Committee on Painting and Sculpture Funds
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Haven’t seen the show yet but dunno if I agree with you on the review; such irritating cadence and tone
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Marta Zboralska @martazb.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I feel sorry for their children in particular, who appear to exist, as she presents it, to excuse and correct all the horrible things Musk does.
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