iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Inspired by inanities emanating from Washington and a classic 19th-century depiction of the Vandals marching on Rome....

Left: news headline in which Trump blames the reflecting pool debacle on Vandals. Right: 19th-c engraving of Vandals with a speech bubble

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Ancient History Lectureship at Queen's University Belfast: a great opportunity in a fine city (okay, I was born there and might be biased -- but it was a very different place back then!!). hrwebapp.qub.ac.uk/tlive_webrec...

hrwebapp.qub.ac.uk

Job profile

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Exciting new arrivals from @livunipress.bsky.social in the Translated Texts for Historians/Byzantinists series.

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

Last class with a fantastic group of finalists taking my 'Pagans, Christians, and the "Falls" of Rome' module. We finished by reading Cavafy's "Waiting for the barbarians". Wishing these marvellous humans a fantastic future: I'll miss them ❤️

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

Let's keep in touch. I'll be in Leeds in July for the IMC in case tou want to grab a quick coffee and discuss things (if you are around at that time, that is).

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

It was a great presentation on what is clearly a really successful form of assessment. It got me thinking about what I could do!

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

I spent a large chunk of today at a really interesting (and inspiring) symposium on Rethinking Assessment in Classical Studies organised by the Open University. I had the opportunity to present on a creative assessment I have introduced to my final year module on late antiquity.

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

With the possible exception of the one about carousing students, that is my favourite one of his laws.

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

I had such a great time this afternoon presenting online to a seminar at UCD. My ramblings were followed by some excellent questions, not least from @croeuan.bsky.social

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

The monk Auxentius, based on a miniature from the Menologion of Basil II, for a forthcoming volume of lives of Monastic Saints centred on Constantinople. (This is my 47th cover drawing for TTH/TTB) Forthcoming from @livunipress.bsky.social

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 21/02/2026

I am rubbish at keeping BlueSky updated, and getting a new phone didn't help. So to get restarted, here are three vegetarian meals from the past few days: proof I'm home alone at the moment.

Rukmini Iyer's chickpea, cavolo nero, and harissa gratin.

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Julia Hillner @writinghelena.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

For real!

Female torso holding the two volumes of A Companion to Rome, c. 400-1050

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Julia Hillner @writinghelena.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

Tomorrow, 21 January, 4-6pm, in person and online! Until March, you will also be able to get a 35% discount, see below. (I realise that the volumes are still prohibitively expensive 😢)

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

6 January is Epiphany, marking the visit of the Magi from the East to the infant Christ (Matthew 2.1-12). It always prompts me to reflect on how late antique Christians imagined this episode, repurposing iconographic tropes from secular art to visualise this key moment in the Nativity story.

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

❤️ Back where it all started (in spite of the university starting to renovate the rooms we had booked the day before it started...).

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

I pretended to be Brian Clough and got the whole team to lay into her.

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

After nearly 19 and a half years, I must be beginning to look somewhat native to these parts. A woman just approached me in Greggs in Pontardawe and said: "I thought you were Michael Sheen for a moment." Luckily for her, there is an optician just across the road....

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

Happy New Year! Ianuarius from a calendar mosaic, c.200, from El Djem, Tunisia. Image: Ad Meskens / Wikimedia Commons.l

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Scott Bryan @scottygb.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

Meanwhile on Irish breakfast television.

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Antiquity Journal @antiquity.ac.uk · 15/11/2025

After Islamic State militants took Mosul, Iraq in 2015, they vandalised the Mosul Cultural Museum and its collections. Now, the museum is gradually being brought back to life so that the citizens of Mosul can again identify with and learn from Iraq’s rich cultural heritage. 🏺 #Archaeology 1/2

A man in a suit (Zaid Ghazi Saadallah, Director of the Mosul Cultural Museum) in front of the damaged interior of a building, lecturing to a group of schoolchildren.

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 15/11/2025

More defaced images of Constantius II and Eudoxia from Friday's Being Human event in Cardiff.

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 15/11/2025

Really busy week, part two. I was invited by colleagues in Cardiff to participate in a Being Human Festival event on satire for high school pupils. I got them to deface images of Constantius II and Eudoxia in line with how those figures had been lampooned. The results were fabulous.

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 15/11/2025

Really busy week, part one: on Wednesday I participated in an online discussion of Hendrik Dey and Fabrizio Oppedisano's new book in Justinian's Legacy. Thanks to colleagues at Perugia for honouring me with the invitation.

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

Pedagogical highlight of the week: (1) discussing Ammianus Marcellinus' account of the death of Valentinian I, in which the emperor, in his fatal seizure, attempts to communicate by flailing his arms like a boxer; and (2) having one of the students voluntarily acting out what this looked like.

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

And now for something completely different: more proofs! This time featuring: how I became a historian of the ancient world thanks to the combined effects of a trip to Egypt and growing up in Belfast and Dublin.

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

This is a terrific novel. The cadences of the language brought me back to a Belfast I left more than forty years ago.

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

Shostakovich: a programme marking 50 years since his death. There is, for understandable reasons, a small group with Ukrainian flags outside the hall.

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

All set for an orchestral concert for the first time in goodness knows how long. I used to go quite frequently to such events. I couldn't pass up a chance to listen to the mighty Seventh: it must be twenty years since last I heard it performed live.

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

#readingcharitably Orbital, by Samantha Harvey, from the Swansea Oxfam Bookshop. A lyrical exploration of the meanings of humanity and existence. The looming presences of the Earth and the space station impressiveness not as much as the astronauts carrying all humankind's dreams and anxieties.

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

Episode 4, which I think will air this Friday -- we watched all episodes on streaming.

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

Always a satisfying feeling. Incidentally, the new Mitchell and Webb series on Channel 4, though very, very hit and miss, contains one gem of a sketch in which E. M. Forster discusses writing Howards End with members of a writers' workshop, who attempt to offer him advice on how to make it better.

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

In my lunch today, I found a happy chickpea with a very unconvincing comb over.

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

More proofs. This time for a review of a gem of a book.

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

Exciting new series from @livunipress.bsky.social , Translated Texts from Antiquity (TTA to join TTH and TTB) , launches with two excellent volumes on #pomponiusmela and #suetonius I'm very honoured to be involved in this new venture.

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

#readingcharitably I just finished Bernardine Evaristo's _Girl, Woman, Other_. (Purchased for a quid in the Swansea British Heart Foundation shop.) What a revelation of a book: a life affirming, celebration of a Britain enriched by multiculturalism and intersectionalities.

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

Summer reading 2025, eclectic as ever. (Not shown: articles, typescripts, student drafts.)

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

Hunting the (bitter and belligerent) legacy of antiquity in Place Vendôme, Paris.

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Yes, indeed: with that horror McGregor somehow being presented as an acceptable choice for the presidency. (Telling that *he* got to see the Orange Mussolini on actual St Patrick's day, but the government reps were shunted to another day.)

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

It is shocking how retrograde opinions have become mainstream in recent years. This country has changed so much in the 18 years since I moved here. The poisonous debates that began with the Brexit referendum have just grown worse.

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

Not only have I made the TTH book cover drawings into t-shirts, but today I wore one (Conference of Carthage 411) to visit its inspiration, Van Loos' Augustine disputing with the Donatists, Note Dame des Victoires, Paris @livunipress.bsky.social

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

Further adventures in wearable book covers: tie-dye Hormizd II #TTH @livunipress.bsky.social

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

#readingcharitably A surprise purchase (from Oxfam Books in Swansea, naturally). I think Mario Vargas Llosa was the first "grown up" author I read for fun, with his "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter". This one gripped me from beginning to end.

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

Wearable book covers! I turned a few of my Translated Texts for Historians cover drawings for @livunipress.bsky.social into summer attire.

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Clare Rowan @ancient-tokens.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

I know it's only part time, since this is cover for Alison Cooley being made head of Warwick Institute of Advanced Studies (take it up with the powers who decide these buy outs), but there is a 3 year teaching gig at in Roman history at Warwick. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNX770/a...

jobs.ac.uk

Assistant Professor (Teaching Focussed) in Roman History (110578-0625) at University of Warwick

Apply now for the Assistant Professor (Teaching Focussed) in Roman History (110578-0625) role on jobs.ac.uk - the leading job board for higher education jobs. View details.

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Mark Humphries @profmarkhumphries.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

Celebrating 40 years of Translated Texts for Historians with @livunipress.bsky.social

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Nora White @ndefaoite.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

Happy International Day of Ogham! Although the OG(H)AM project has sadly now finished, work on ogham continues. Here is a sneak preview of our digital corpus, still under development, but due to be launched in September! #InternationalDayOfOgham #OG_H_AM

screenshot showing a map of ogham locations (more to add) with search filters and an index of ogham inscriptions below

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