iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I’ve been to the @historians.org once, the year that motion was tabled and PASSED. What unfolded right before and afterwards was unbelievable. I don’t plan to return (most US historians care fuck all about researchers from other countries and the collaborationist aftertaste is one that lingers)

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John Angus Spencer-Barnes 🏳️‍🌈 @johnbarnes.org · 31/08/2026

Today is the 29th anniversary of the greatest apology in the history of journalism.

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

I’ll be in Innsbruck 🇦🇹 later this month. I heard it’s pretty. You can come say hi. diebaeckerei.at/programm/202...

diebaeckerei.at

Take my Breath Away: Queer World-Making and this Mess that is Desire by João Florêncio and Liz Rosenfeld

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

They have a local music act at the opening of the 8Th European Geographies of Sexuality Conference in Maribor!

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Ben Miller @benwritesthings.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Just submitted to @wwnorton.com and @pushkinpress.com for June 2027 publication: my biography, the first, of Rudi Gernreich, who was one of the two degrees of separation between Karl Marx and Cher.

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

🚨CFP🚨 “Visual Cultures of Sexuality in Postwar Europe” (Birmingham City University, 19-20 May, 2027)

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

New day, new insights from what’s going on at @exeter.ac.uk. It doesn’t cease to amaze me how uni management patronises its workers while deploying the most obscene kind of “caring management” attitude by offering free mental health support to those whose lives it wants to destroy. #DefendExeterUni

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MNG - University Presses @mngupbooks.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Crossings offers an exploration of queer sex and sex cultures, exploring cruising as a mode of thinking with the body and communicating through sexuality 📍Lenbachhaus Garden, Munich 🗓️ 17th July 2026 🔗 buff.ly/LbQM74q @rutgersupress.bsky.social @lizrosenfeld.bsky.social @noisybits.bsky.social

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Exeter UCU @exeterucu.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Missed the VC’s speech? Lucky you. Here’s the financial highlights! 1/ Confirmed Exeter uni is STILL IN SURPLUS for 25/26 2/ The top 16 execs at Exeter have a combined pay packet of nearly £4m 3/ The VC has a pay packet of nearly £400k a year 4/ Our cash reserves are going up, year on year [1/2]

Greg and Tom from the HBO show succession, with text saying "you can't do anything with five million"

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

I went to the StaBi in Berlin to finally fill the blanks on this little story about the serendipitous transnational connections that forged “The Europe that Gay Porn Built, 1945–2000” (just in case the UK far-right pundits are interested in keeping up with the project they’re so outraged about. ⬇️

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

I can’t believe I’ve just heard about the University of Exeter campus being built in Egypt while, in Devon, 500+ staff are at risk of redundancy. It’s giving farce this time around.

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Fun facts about the University of Exeter: when I accepted my job at Linköping, i was told by senior management of the HASS faculty “you’ve just made a huge hole in our research budget!” That hole, dear reader, was money from a large AHRC grant—my grant!—that would move elsewhere due to my new job.

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Exeter UCU @exeterucu.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

We just had a meeting with over 700 (!!) of our members and OVERWHELMINGLY voted in favour of a motion to calling for a strike ballot! 🩷 We're doing this together. We are the University! #DefendExeterUni.

EXETER UCU VOTES IN FAVOUR OF MOTION CALLING FOR STRIKE BALLOT

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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Something deeply troubling & shocking is happening at Exeter University*, where a mass cull of staff is planned, even though it's in surplus. No good justifications given. @jamesgdyke.info provides the details: www.technosphere.earth/the-bonfire-... *Disclosure: I have a Visiting Fellowship here. +🧵

technosphere.earth

The bonfire of the humanities

150 academic posts at the University of Exeter are to be cut, most in the humanities but also in social sciences, engineering and environmental sciences

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Delighted to hear @exeterucu.bsky.social has just voted no confidence in the senior management of the faculty of humanities and social sciences. @exeter.ac.uk once again leading in the destruction of UKHE in the most obscene, despicable, and patronising way. “Our university,” “our community” my ass.

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Things I hear through the grapevine: The University of Exeter, which has just put most of its HASS academics at risk of redundancy, has just announced that, while no 2026/27 research leaves will be cancelled during consultation, staff on leave may need to be recalled to teach after September. 🤯

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Exeter UCU @exeterucu.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Hey Bluesky crowd! You also should be signing our petition opposing the announced redundancies at the University of Exeter. 📢 We're 17k and growing! Redundancies ARE NOT necessary and we must #DefendExeterUni 🩷 c.org/RFqMvrKb6z

c.org

Sign the Petition

Stop Redundancies at the University of Exeter

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Back to my postwar gay magazine archive, where dick picks used to share space with political education and consciousness raising.

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

UK universities: we’re introducing all these digital workload, publication management, and funding application pipeline platforms to make your work easier! Also UK universities: we’re using those platforms to score and rank you, and decide who stays and who’s going to be made redundant.

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Natalie Hempel @nataliehempel.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

500 academics are threatened with compulsory redundancy at the University of Exeter, most in Humanities, and also in the Sciences arbitrarily targeting diverse research groups. The university is in a strong financial position. Support us, sign this petition c.org/yKcx6Zr29H

c.org

This campaign needs you now

Stop Redundancies at the University of Exeter

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

I’ve just heard through the grapevine that Exeter UCU has just passed a vote of no confidence in the Vice-Chancellor.

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

The way in which @exeter.ac.uk is hosting this year’s @forarthistory.org.uk conference having just announced a cull of academics that puts 80% of all its humanities, arts and social sciences staff at risk.

Reposted by João Florêncio

Exeter Green Party @exetergreens.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

The Green Party is committed to rebalancing the scales of our workplaces and ensuring every student has access to higher education without the burden of debt by restoring maintenance grants and scrapping undergraduate tuition fees. 4/4

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Exeter Green Party @exetergreens.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

Exeter Green Party stands in solidarity with the Exeter University and College Union in condemning the University of Exeter’s announcement of sweeping job cuts. These plans will recklessly imperil the University’s vital contributions to the social, cultural, and economic life of the city. 1/4

Graphic which reads: Statement of solidarity with Exeter University and College Union.

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

These are the people UK universities choose to managed their strategic financial planning. Despicable.

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

The Chair of the Council at Exeter “spent most of his career as a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company.” You know McKinsey, famed for its role in the 2008 financial crisis, in helping pharma “turbocharge” sales of opioids, leading to the ongoing opioid crisis in the US, corruption, etc.

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threadwhisperer.bsky.social @threadwhisperer.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

170 jobs in Humanities and Social Sciences. the VCs-cum-CEOs on £300k+ will be fine though, they'll just have fewer people to lecture about 'innovation.' you can't austerity your way into a knowledge economy — that's not a strategy, it's a contradiction with a PR team

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

Meanwhile, while the average salary of a university Rektor in Sweden is, converted to GBP, around 113,000 per year (not that much more than a full university professor), UK Vice-Chancellors earn at least twice that amount (and much, OBSCENELY MUCH more than a full professor at a UK university)

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

When, years ago, UK universities started selling “student experience” instead of learning, and hiring a whole gang of bureaucrats to better market luxury accommodation, beautiful campuses, gourmet “world food” halls, we knew what that meant: UK universities were to become a lifestyle industry.

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

This is the calibre of the people who run UK universities as corporate entities. More here, if you’d like a list of who’s destroying the University of Exeter from within: www.exeter.ac.uk/about/govern...

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

Just heard about the 200 redundancies announced by my previous employer, the University of Exeter. 170 of those are in Humanities and Social Sciences. This is what happens in a country with the collapsing HE funding system with VCs-cum-CEOs on £300k salaries+bonuses and corporate governing bodies.

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Midsummer Eve is for strawberries

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Waiting for my parents to land in Stockholm with two baguettes, drinks, and Swedish pastries, because in Portugal we don’t say “nice to see you!”, we say “have you eaten?”.

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

The ridiculous thing that really is symptomatic of the shallowness of populist rhetoric, is that there are several British researchers working in the UK who turn up named in the Swedish records of research funding. But I guess that does not matter to Nigel because thinking ain’t his forte.

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Name-checked by the likely future far-right PM of the United Kingdom promising to sink the island once he gets elected.

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Charlotte keeps on re-releasing her most popular single even though it is now 3 years old! C’mon Charlotte, you can write a new song if you put your mind to it!

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Really generous and attentive review of CROSSINGS just out in GLQ. Thank you, Connor!

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João Florêncio @noisybits.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

A new Russell T Davies series is out on the UK’s Channel 4 this Pride month, as if we hadn’t had enough of the moral high horse, formulaic tropes, and bad screenwriting. To calm myself down, I came up with a few titles for essays I’d write if it were worth it:

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