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Sacha Hilhorst

@sachahilhorst.bsky.social
1.4K followers 726 following 89 posts

Hallsworth fellow at University of Manchester & research fellow at Common Wealth. Ajax fan. She/her.

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Reposted by Sacha Hilhorst
Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Archive of @britishacademy.bsky.social Fellow Stuart Hall is now live. Includes looking at his impact on the history of communication theory, culminating in the architecture of contemporary AI models www.theguardian.com/society/2026... Archive link: stuarthalldigital.bham.ac.uk/archival_mat...
theguardian.com
Thatcherism via the Walkman: Stuart Hall’s British cultural studies preserved online
Project lead says it celebrates ‘incredible contributions’ Jamaica-born sociologist made to Britain’s culture
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
For anyone attending the HM conference: this should be a great event to discuss and celebrate two amazing books.
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
As the EHRC guidance comes into force, now is the time for cis people to practice saying, "Leave that woman alone, she is just trying to use the bathroom." I also give £5 a month to this trans-led collective fund which redistributes to UK trans women in need - would recommend. www.fiveforfive.co.uk
fiveforfive.co.uk
FiveforFive - a transfem and trans women collective fund
FiveforFive is a collective crowdfund for UK trans women, trans fem people and organisations which support them.
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Reposted by Sacha Hilhorst
Henry Mance @henrymance.ft.com · 19/06/2026
This is an embarrassing image for the UK. A self-respecting British fox should be dragging Binface's contents out over the stage
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
This by @leninology.bsky.social is really good, on the pseudo-agency conferred by the racist riot. jacobin.com/2026/06/uk-b...
jacobin.com
The British Establishment Fuels Anti-Migrant Pogroms
The rioting in Belfast fits Britain’s now familiar routine of violent crimes followed by race riots. While the government promises anti-immigration crackdowns, the rioters want to unleash their rage a...
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
This is going to be great! The latest in the fab Readings About... series, this time on England. w/ @hettieobrien.bsky.social, Lewis Brown, Antonia Lucia Dawes, Natasha Samrai, Khalid Azizuddin and me. Grab your (free) ticket before they're gone: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/readings-a...
eventbrite.co.uk
Readings About...England
Led by writer and editor, Amelia Horgan, this literary evening brings together a selection of writers responding to the theme of 'England'.
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Unforgivable.
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
Me, in the Guardian today, on Reform voters and sympathisers in England's post-industrial towns www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Snippet from a Guardian article, which reads: "This is the political paradox of England’s post-industrial towns. While it is true that Reform is building its base in former mining and manufacturing areas, the local people who can be won over to progressive politics will only be convinced by being less like Reform, not more. Winning in post-industrial England requires connecting with its popular radicalism.

“A lot of working-class people, they don’t want a lot,” says Martin, the former miner. “They want enough to get by and to have nicer things in life. To go on holiday and to have good food and things like that. They are not bothered about yachts and aeroplanes – not in my eyes, anyway. They are just happy enough to get through in life with a job, a secure job to pay the mortgage and to look after their family … At the end of the day, that is what I think. When you have got peace of mind with that, you can’t beat it.”"
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Reposted by Sacha Hilhorst
Amit Singh @amit-singh.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Organising this summer school with support from @thesociologicalreview.org 🚨Class, Culture & Discontents 📍23rd & 24th July 🏫 Balham, South London 🧑‍🍳 Free lunch Great line-up of speakers on a wide range of topics, come one, come all Free tickets ⬇️ www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/summer-sch...
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
Something exceedingly British about being evicted by your landlord, a veterans’ charity called ‘the Poppy Factory’, which somehow has a property portfolio and is kicking out tenants in order to jack up rents before the new renters’ rights come into force
A screenshot of an FT article, which reads “Her landlord, the Poppy Factory veterans’ charity, told the FT it was evicting “a small number” of tenants to bring properties up to market rate before the new rules on rental increases came into effect.”
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Reposted by Sacha Hilhorst
Ewan Gibbs @ewangibbs.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
Jim Ratcliffe is best known as the unpopular Manchester United owner and today he has been in the news for saying that 'the UK has been colonised by immigrants'. We need to understand Ratcliffe's as an energy billionaire who made his power and money by closing workplaces and opposing unions 🧵
news.sky.com
'UK has been colonised by immigrants', says INEOS boss and Man Utd co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe
In an interview with Sky News's Ed Conway, Sir Jim says Britain faces profound political, social and economic challenges, among them an unprecedented rise in immigration in recent years.
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
Have seen this take a lot and really disagree. Gov’t could invest in anchor institutions for towns; build FE colleges in town centres; set up childcare co-ops; retrofit iconic buildings and make them into community gyms, etc. We are more than individual consumers - that’s the point of politics!
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Reposted by Sacha Hilhorst
Henry Mance @henrymance.ft.com · 28/01/2026
This is completely shocking. The police and CPS prosecuted a woman for allegedly making up rape allegation, despite strong evidence that she had been raped. It should have ended people's careers. It hasn't. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
I accused a police officer of rape, but I ended up on trial
How a secret audio recording played in court helped clear a woman accused of making a false rape allegation.
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Reposted by Sacha Hilhorst
Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 01/12/2025
Have seen a few people passing around this story by Tom Stoppard from just last year, talking about how he learned he was Jewish and also much about his family history, and it's quite a read. He really knew how to write. www.huntingtontheatre.org/2024/09/11/t...
huntingtontheatre.org
Tom Stoppard: On Turning Out to be Jewish | Huntington Theatre Company
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Reposted by Sacha Hilhorst
Tarik Abou-Chadi @tabouchadi.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
To be clear: deportations to increase cultural homogeneity is the text book definition of ethnic cleansing. Demands that come even close to this are so far outside any democratic norm and the rule of law. What has happened to a country when this is not condemned in the strongest possible terms?
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 15/10/2025
Is Melinda Cooper my favourite social theorist producing work today? I think the answer is yes - and you should listen to this two-parter to find out why she should be yours, too.
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
Very happy with this!
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
This @renewaljournal.bsky.social essay is so brilliant - the history of the British far right narrated entirely through its activities in Croydon. Every sentence makes it clear it was written by a scholar with a genuine love for history and for Croydon. renewal.org.uk/articles/sub...
renewal.org.uk
Suburban fascism: the far right in twentieth-century Croydon
Renewal 33.2_FrostRenewal 33.2_Frost.pdf159 KBdownload-circle Croydon is frequently used as a touchstone for farright narratives of decline and demographic change. Daniel Frost traces the suburb’s ...
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Reposted by Sacha Hilhorst
JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
The opening paragraphs - it's like, I don't know, Shakespeare, or Beethoven. You know it's great. Everyone knows it's great. But then you encounter it directly, in its own context, and you can only say, man this is so great.
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
So much talk about Reform voters, but I'm yet to read much about their lives beyond tropes and excuses ('legitimate concerns'). I've been back in the midlands to interview people and learn more. Here's my piece on them and Reform's attempts to present itself as a community-minded, pro-worker party:
renewal.org.uk
Reform’s aesthetics of industry
Renewal 33.2_HilhorstRenewal 33.2_Hilhorst.pdf110 KBdownload-circle In North Nottinghamshire, Reform UK present themselves as the party of workers, community and coalmining heritage. But this image...
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
This event is looking amazing and do give the @transitionsec.bsky.social account a follow - I hear there’s lots to come on the green transition and the political economy of militarism.
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 06/08/2025
Hugely recommend this to my fellow early-career sociologists - I went last year and it was amazing.
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 05/08/2025
I've been slow to share this because in all honesty I was a little bit hungover on Saturday, but I wrote the New Statesman's weekend essay this week, on why England's ex-mining areas have become especially disenchanted with politics: www.newstatesman.com/politics/soc...
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Reposted by Sacha Hilhorst
Alex von Tunzelmann @alexvont.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
This is a very clear historical and current summary, and utterly damning. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...
theguardian.com
The mathematics of starvation: how Israel caused a famine in Gaza
Israel controls the flow of food into Gaza. It has calculated how many calories Palestinians need to stay alive. Its data shows only a fraction has been allowed in
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Reposted by Sacha Hilhorst
Charlotte Lydia Riley @lottelydia.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
God, the number of people who were willing to believe that the South Yorkshire police were too woke to prosecute sexual abuse cases, when in fact the police force was itself an instrument of patriarchal sexual violence. It’s like a case study in the worst excesses of the British press.
theguardian.com
Five survivors of Rotherham grooming gangs say they were also raped by police officers
Three former South Yorkshire police officers arrested in investigation into claims by the women, as young as 12 at the time
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
One of my most prized possessions is my mum's old copy of Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, with her marginalia. Last year it sadly fell apart. Turns out my partner has been secretly working to restore it, as a birthday present. Here it is, all rebound, with my mum's and my initials added on the spine.
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Reposted by Sacha Hilhorst
Nick Garland @npjgarland.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
Great new @ippr.org report from @sachahilhorst.bsky.social, making very clear the link between the decline of community spaces and the rise of the radical right. Sacha reimagines the 20th century miners' welfare fund as a model for reviving social infrastructure: www.ippr.org/articles/pla...
ippr.org
Places to come together: Rebuilding local solidarities against the far right | IPPR
In late July 2024, the seaside town of Southport in Merseyside burst into the national consciousness when it suffered two different, violent events in succ
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Reposted by Sacha Hilhorst
Oliver Rivers @maxrothbarth.bsky.social · 15/07/2025
who could possibly have foreseen
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
rare W for COINTELPRO from a legendary conversation between Bhakti Shringarpure and Mahmood Mamdani (h/t Silke-Marie Weineck)
BS: How was that? How long were you in jail? 

MM: One night. They let you make one phone call, and I called the Ugandan Ambassador in Washington, DC, talked to him, and he said, “What are you doing interfering in the affairs of a foreign country?” I said, “What? We just got our independence! This is the same struggle. Have you forgotten?” Anyway, he got me out. Two or three weeks later, I was in my room. There was a knock at the door. Two gentlemen in trench coats and hats said, “FBI.” I thought, “Wow, just like on television.” They sat down. They were there to find out why I had gone – because this turned out to be big – it is after Montgomery that King organized his march on Selma. They wanted to know who had influenced me. After one hour of probing, the guy said, “Do you like Marx?” 

I said, “I haven’t met him.” 

Guy said, “No, no, he’s dead.” 

“Wow, what happened?” 

“No, no, he died long ago.” 

I thought the guy Marx had just died. So then, “Why are you asking me if he died long ago?”  

“No, he wrote a lot. He wrote that poor people should not be poor.”  

I said, “Sounds amazing.” 

I’m giving you a sense of how naïve I was. After they left, I went to the library to look for Marx. So that was my introduction to Karl Marx.
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
“The future rulers of the void will conquer it with front facing camera.”
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
Contra Adam Curtis, it is not true and never has been true that British xenophobia and racism are confined to "the old industrial towns".
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
Ah yes, creating a class of asset-rich ex-industrial workers otherwise abandoned by the state - famously productive of healthy, democratic subjectivities
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
Morrisons has closed 52 cafés since March - such a blow to many communities. But imo it's a mistake to think of this as mostly a story about loss of community spirit, as this New Statesman piece does, when it's really about the harm caused by private equity. www.newstatesman.com/politics/202...
newstatesman.com
Britain’s aisles of strangers
As the last Morrisons café closes its doors, the nation’s community spirit is further eroded.
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Reposted by Sacha Hilhorst
Dr Chris Noone @chris-noone.bsky.social · 10/05/2025
Just out! Our peer-reviewed critique of the Cass Review has been published by BMC Medical Research Methodology. Please read and share. We show that the Cass Review is fatally flawed and should not be the basis for policy or practice in transgender healthcare. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
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Reposted by Sacha Hilhorst
Chaminda Jayanetti @cjayanetti.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
This is like reading one of those horrific VAW miscarriages of justice from 30 years ago www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
theguardian.com
UK woman loses jail term appeal after killing man as he sexually assaulted her
Martyna Ogonowska was sentenced in 2018 to 17 years in prison for stabbing Filip Jaskiewicz to death in a car park
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Laura Serra @lauraserra.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
How researchers at Bocconi guessed the Pope using network analysis ⬇️ www.unibocconi.it/en/news/netw...
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
When I was living in Mansfield, 'corruption' was one of the main ways of understanding politics. Not ideology, not policy - because 'it's all lies anyway'. It is no coincidence that this frame thrives especially in ex-mining communities. Here I trace the connection between the two.
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
I just don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive the ghouls who are doing this to my friends.
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
This will be fun - come join if you can
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
Here’s an interesting insight in how Reform UK does local politics. This is Farage and Anderson in front of the newly restored winding wheels of Silverhill colliery, which have recently been made into a monument.
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
As Amelia writes, “Work cannot help but change the most basic material stuff of people’s lives… In societies in which people sell their labour to live, one in which paid work is the basis for meeting most needs, what life is like will depend significantly on what work is like.”
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Common Wealth @cmmonwealth.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
“Perhaps worst of all, the government is claiming that military spending is Britain’s economic salvation while wearing fiscal handcuffs of its own making.” Khem Rogaly in @theguardian.com on why increasing military spending isn’t going to fix our broken economy. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
Military spending is touted as a remedy for Britain’s ailing economy. Here’s why it won’t work | Khem Rogaly
Since the 1980s Britain’s military spending has grown in real terms, yet more than half of military jobs have been lost. The sector is hi-tech and low labour, says Khem Rogaly, a senior research fello...
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The BREAK—DOWN @the-breakdown.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
✒ Do you want to write for The Break Down? We’re now taking pitches for our first issue, which will explore what Trump’s second term and the new right mean for the climate. Deadline: 14 Feb, 2025 Pitching guidelines — break-down.org/about 💸 Paid!
break-down.org
About
The Break Down is dedicated to examining how capitalism has both shaped, and is being reshaped by, accelerating climate and ecological crisis. Launched in May 2024, we publish long-form interviews, or...
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
This looks amazing - one more week for early-career scholars to apply.
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Eunice Goes @eunicegoes.bsky.social · 30/11/2024
Great piece by @neilwarner.bsky.social on Labour’s socialist alternatives to Thatcherism in the 1970s. www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/lab...
phenomenalworld.org
Labour’s Choices | Neil Warner
Policy experiments of the 1970s
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Sacha Hilhorst @sachahilhorst.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
How did Britain's post-industrial towns become hubs of badly paid work and disenchanted politics? They were not forgotten or 'left behind', but actively remade. My report for @cmmonwealth.bsky.social two-towns.common-wealth.org
A map of the collieries and factories in North Nottinghamshire, all of which have now closed.
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