iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

The 1933 National Plan for American Forestry has a distinctly hallucinatory quality, halfway between Thomas Pyncheon and religious tract.

screenshot of the report with WORLD WILL CONTINUE TO NEED WOOD in capital letters across an empty space between paragraphs

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Book week! The day starts with a visit to an actual professional photographer to get author photos for the upcoming Finnish forestry book.

author in a selfie in front of a mirror at a studio, wearing a dark orange jacket

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I turned on the tv at the hotel and once again I'm asking how can anyone stand the motion smoothing algorithms all tvs have switched on by default these days.

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

What do you do if you're asked to peer review a piece that is blatantly just a repackaging of the author's previous work? Like, not in a bad way, there are reasons to do this sort of thing, but the work's already been extensively reviewed by this point so what do I need to do here.

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Driving around in the SW of England last summer, everything utterly scorched, no green anywhere, tattered faded flags hanging from the lamp posts here and there, it wasn't like Mad Max exactly but it wasn't not like it either.

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Alex Cheung @klalexcheung.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

My new article tells the story of peri-urban Chinese villagers in early 20th century Hong Kong when the colonial government settle land ownership, implement ‘improvement schemes’ and remove their village homes. If you are interested in #ColonialCities, or #HongKongHistory in general, check it out!

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

My employer wants to give me a Copilot+ laptop with "enhanced AI features", except their ad copy for the machine does not mention said features and also, when asked, they themselves appear to be unaware of them. In case you were wondering how this stuff gets mainstreamed.

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Gianamar Giovannetti-Singh @gianamar97.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Our entire roundtable on "Cross-Contextualization as Method", co-edited with @mikahyman.bsky.social, is out now in FirstView in @historicaljnl.bsky.social! doi.org/10.1017/S001...

doi.org

Cross-Contextualization as Method | The Historical Journal | Cambridge Core

Cross-Contextualization as Method

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Maybe just a coincidence but seeing a lot of conference cfp's at the moment that ask to precirculate what are basically full papers, with the expectation these will lead to special issues, but no commitment all participants will be included. Is that... fair?

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

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The White Horse Press @whitehorsepress.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

We’ve published issue 3.2 of ‘Plant Perspectives’, a special issue on ‘Global More-than-Human Histories of Palms’ (guest edited by Sophie Chao, Pilar Egüez Guevara and Jayson Maurice Porter); #openaccess here: www.whp-journals.co.uk/PP/issue/vie... #plantstudies #envhum #palms

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Oh no I've also got a plant history article with an "uprooted" pun in the title in production but they beat me to it

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Need to get some author photos taken for a thing soon, I'm staring quizzically into the wardrobe and it doesn't look like it's got any answers.

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Loving this 1930 graph setting out forest ownership in Finland by sector (private, public, companies, other). You could have just drawn them as trees, that would have been way less weird!

vertical bar graph as described in the post except the bars are male figures in typical forester attire of the time

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

This is basically Stanisław Lem's The Investigation.

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Jennifer Wallis-Bernard @harbottlestores.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Here goes: read my book if you want to know about scientific work in #c19 asylums. Each chapter focuses on a part of the body that was deemed important for understanding General Paralysis of the Insane (neurosyphilis). Also, it's open access and *free*. link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

link.springer.com

Investigating the Body in the Victorian Asylum

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.This book explores how the body was investigated in the late nineteenth-century asylum in Britain. As more and more Victorian asylum doctors looked t...

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Fabi Kutsche @fabikutsche.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

My book "Between Global Standards and Unequal Treatment. The International Labour Organization and Racialised Labour, 1920s–1950s" has finally been published with @degruyterbrill.bsky.social! I am very excited to see this work out in the world today. www.degruyterbrill.com/de/document/...

degruyterbrill.com

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

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Luca Scholz @lscholz.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

A new special issue on the history of freedom of movement, edited by @spe07.bsky.social, including my article on why we should expand the history freedom of movement beyond established frames: journals.openedition.org/chrhc/27766

Table of contents page listing six French-language scholarly articles on the history of freedom of movement, migration, and mobility control, with authors’ names and article titles displayed in red and black text.

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

There is still time to submit a chapter proposal for the book that @livsmitch.bsky.social and I are editing on the aesthetics of modern monarchies. Full details in the post here, but happy to answer informal questions too. Proposals due in by 1 Oct to aestheticsmonarchy@gmail.com Please share!

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

A surprising number of apps you have to get these days just to start a new job.

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Big bonus of having a real grown-up employment contract is that I've just joined a union woohoo unemployment benefits here I come (after my contract ends (probably))

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Hei onko suomalaisilla kollegoilla näkemystä akateemisen alan ammattiliitoista? Mihin liittyä?

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Today is officially my first day working at the University of Eastern Finland! Very happy to have found a home for my transimperial forestry project here. Very appropriate, too, that the university logo reads as either a book or a pine cone, depending on how you look at it.

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Vanda Wilcox @vandawilcox.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Years ago on twitter some historians kindly suggested readings about the history of bureaucracy & about official paperwork as technologies of power/ meaning-making - I'm thinking about printed forms which officials complete - but I lost the thread, does anyone here have some suggestions?

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

What Robert says and also, it's not just that there have always been people who were against e.g. colonialism. The baseline worldview of the people *doing* the colonialism was also more often than not "whoa, pretty dodgy business this, someone should probably make it better eventually".

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

The tricky thing about doing research on the interwar period is you quickly realise a lot of people subsequently carelessly misplaced all their correspondence from the 1930s somehow.

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Katherine Arnold @arnoldke.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Very happy to see another article out in the world! Part of a special issue edited by the wonderful @sabinehanke.bsky.social & Anne Sophie Overkamp, from a fantastic (and very hot) workshop we had in Tübingen back in 2024 #envhist #envhum #histsci Available open access: doi.org/10.1002/bewi...

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Sarah Arens @saraharens.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Over the moon that the special issue of Social History of Medicine @sshmedicine.bsky.social I co-edited with Sam Goodman on "Ailing Empires: Medicine, Science and Imperialism" is finally out in the world. Endless gratitude to @fcondrau.bsky.social. All article links below: academic.oup.com/shm/issue

academic.oup.com

Issues | Social History of Medicine | Oxford Academic

The official journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine. Publishes research concerned with all aspects of health, illness, and medical treatment in the past. Articles treat the social h...

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Are LLM tools a conspiracy to break down trust-based networks and interactions? No, I guess not, but this sort of thing does reflect the worldview these tools/applications spring from, so in that sense it's hardly an accidental outcome. It's dispiriting.

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

The contract is signed so it's official: in September I will be starting my work on this project as an academy researcher at the University of Eastern Finland! Big plans in the works for the coming years.

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Happy to see that the volume 'Cities and Fantasy Across Cultures, 1830–1930' is now out! Including my chapter on colonial-era ghost stories from Batavia/Jakarta: www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10....

cover of the book 'Cities and Fantasy Across Cultures, 1830–1930 Urban Imaginaries and Transnational Encounters'

screenshot of chapter title 'Enchanting Batavia: Fantastic Apparitions and the Colonial City in the Literary Journal Warnasarie (1848–58)' by myself

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Tom Menger @tommenger.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

CFP for a great conference of the Centre for Transimperial History, taking place in Leipzig next year 19-21 May. Organised by Nadin Heé, Daniel Hedinger & me. Subject: Geopolitics and Empire, revisited from transimperial perspective. Please send in your abstracts! networks.h-net.org/group/announ...

networks.h-net.org

Revisiting Geopolitics and Empire: A Transimperial Approach | H-Net

Geopolitics have returned to our present—and it is only a matter of time before they will also return to the study of our past. The conference, organized by the Centre for Transimperial History at Lei...

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Ole Birk Laursen @olebirklaursen.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

📢 Publication Day! My book "The Indian Revolutionary Movement in Europe, 1905–1918: Exile, Internationalism, and Resistance to Empire" is out now with @livunipress.bsky.social. I am grateful to everyone who has helped me along the way. www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10....

liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk

The Indian Revolutionary Movement in Europe, 1905–1918 | Home

Exile, Internationalism, and Resistance to Empire

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Moritz von Brescius @mbrescius.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Working on resources, extraction, resistance, capitalism or ecologies? Bern, Sept. 2027, with fantastic keynotes by Katja Bruisch (@kbruisch.bsky.social) & Debjani Bhattacharyya. Travel & hotel funded. Do Apply! hist-ecosoc.ch

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

My least helpful personal characteristic in this day and age is constantly getting distracted scrutinising the argumentation of people on *my side* of a debate rather than the other side.

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

history bluesky going feral today I see, I guess it's been a long hot summer

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

maybe the real eclipse was the 4G uplink overload caused by the tens of thousands of people gathered at tempelhofer feld to witness the event meaning no one could post about it on social media or whatsapp or upload photos or whatever

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Ah, The Malay Archipelago Through Travellers’ Eyes is now up online! Coming out in November, including my chapter ‘Tropical tours, northern narratives: late-19th-century Scandinavian travellers in the Dutch East Indies’ - and thus completing my 'Nordics in colonial SE Asia' trilogy.

press.uchicago.edu

The Malay Archipelago Through Travellers’ Eyes

A history of colonial encounters in maritime Southeast Asia, through the lens of an underexplored group of nineteenth-century travelogues.What did nineteenth-century travellers actually see when they ...

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

press.uchicago.edu

The Malay Archipelago Through Travellers’ Eyes

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

everyone going on about the eclipse but the only eclipse I care about is the impossibility of love in the age of materialism, as portrayed by the incomparably beautiful monica vitti and alain delon in 1962

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Xavier Aldana Reyes @xaldanareyes.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Body Horror is out today in the UK (and I believe already out in the US and other countries)! The code CUP20 gets you 20% off when purchasing the book directly from @ColumbiaUP. I’d be really grateful for any reposts or help with promotion! 🪰🧪🩸 #horror #bodyhorror cup.columbia.edu/book/body-ho...

Cover for Body Horror: Biology, Biopower, Biotechnology, by Xavier Aldana Reyes. It includes a still from the film, featuring Jeff Goldblum. His face shows visible signs that his body is beginning to change.

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Weirdly getting a lot of grasshoppers inside the house these past days? Now googling for any historical/mythical precedents

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Jay Roszman @jayroszman.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

1/5 📣 An article I've written about the Queen's University in Ireland, its constituent colleges, and their relationship to the British Empire has been published with @jbritishstudies.bsky.social. The article makes the case for rethinking about the Queen's University's purpose in Ireland. 🗃️

cambridge.org

Institutions of Empire? The Foundation of the Queen’s Colleges and British Imperial Service, 1845–85 | Journal of British Studies | Cambridge Core

Institutions of Empire? The Foundation of the Queen’s Colleges and British Imperial Service, 1845–85 - Volume 65

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Mikko Toivanen @mtoiv.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

I've been wondering why I get such a visceral reaction to this stuff. I think it's about the loss of texture. Menus/posters/leaflets etc have always mostly been ugly, but in different ways: poorly lit pics or weirdly cropped stock photos, pixelated or weirdly stretched, bleached, whatever...

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