iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

RIP Chris Wickham. Unlike so many historians who emphasise particularities and contingencies, he was the master of constructing grand, coherent, beautifully rendered worlds out of his evidence. This, from his 2021 Past and Present essay, is a masterpiece of historical writing.

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Fiction only, for obvious reasons.

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

A predictable reflection of my historically specific formation

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Caroline Rose Peyton, Radioactive Dixie: A Nuclear History of the American South

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Cindy Anh Nguyen, Bibliotactics: Libraries and the Colonial Public in Vietnam

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Eva Payne, Empire of Purity: The History of Americans' Global War on Prostitution

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Ching Kwan Lee, Forever Hong Kong: A Global City's Decolonisation Struggle

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Ann Elias, The Underharbour: Submerged Histories of Sydney

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Ruby Oram, Home Work: Gender, Child Labor, and Education for Girls in Urban America, 1870–1930

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Emilio de Antuñano, The Politics of Informality: Housing and Planning in Mexico City

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

David E. Barclay Cold War City: A History of West Berlin

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Judith Farquhar and Qicheng Zhang, Ten Thousand Things: Nurturing Life in Contemporary Beijing

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Joshua Specht, Property Values: The Rise and Fall of the American Homeowner

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

The leaves are turning, terms are starting and I am once again looking for people interested in reviewing some wonderful looking books for @urbanhistory.bsky.social - if any of these take your fancy, get in touch. Beginning with Flora Wilson's fabulous looking Operatic Infrastructures.

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The anthropologist Anna Tsing on cooking fish.

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

It’s true, the second baby is easier. And you have all the skills stored up from first time around. Like how to make a pretty decent negroni with one hand.

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Great day to remember that Michel de Certeau’s most famous essay, ‘Walking in the City’, was inspired by the observation tower at the top of the World Trade Center.

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Happy September 1 from Bruno Schulz

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

I think this is what Gramsci meant by “morbid symptoms”

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

What if we solved Britain’s crisis of post industrial obsolescence by making every single redundant building the Prime Minster’s personal office?

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Well, this looks excellent. academic.oup.com/hwj/advance-...

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Or, as the brilliant Corey Robin put it…

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

In which a journalist glances at the Wikipedia page for Liverpool and uses its 1980s local government to argue against, say, universal healthcare in the contemporary US. Here’s what I wrote in my book about this nonsense.

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

I wrote a book about how Liverpool’s modern history helps us think differently about Britain’s twentieth century - how it demands histories of wagelessness, environment ruin, obsolescence and new forms of resistance. It’s out in paperback today!

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Writing a reference for a student for a private sector job. Is it even legal to be asking these questions?

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Feels relevant to re-up an article I wrote almost seven years ago for the now sadly defunct Outline magazine about VAR, techno-optomism and the naive contradictions of liberalism. theoutline.com/post/7822/vi...

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

As a Leicester fan, Mahrez dominated my interior life between 2014 and 2017. This is just wonderful, on scoring late against Austria when a draw would have secured a better opponent in the last 32. www.nytimes.com/athletic/740...

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Part of the fun of reading the FT is learning about radically different types of guy.

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

On 23 June I'll be in Manchester in conversation with the wonderful urban historian and activist Isaac Rose. See below for tickets. And stay tuned for more Liverpool Content later this year. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/manchester...

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Paperbacks have arrived and are looking lovely. Buy yours from 16 July. It has been heartily endorsed by both the Financial Times and the Morning Star so its perfect for any Dialectic enthusiasts in your life. See below for some events too:

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

PSA: For the freaks like me who want to watch alI of, say, Ecuador Curacao, but aren't freakish enough to do so at 2am, I found an angry Reddit community to learn how to turn off the BBC's infuriating and unnecessary embedded spoilers. You have to hit "audio described" during the initial trailer.

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

So excited for Black Liverpool: The Real Thing by the incredible Berkeley Sociologist and scouser Stephen Small. At an affordable price too. If anyone wants to review this for @urbanhistory.bsky.social then drop me a line. liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10....

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Manchester friends! I'm doing an event with the wonderful organiser and urban historian Isaac Rose an another launch for the paperback of Liverpool and the Un-Making of Britain. Spread the word and sign up here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/manchester...

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

When people on here complain about World Cup kickoff times.

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

An update worth waiting with baited breath for.

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

The funniest thing about this by-election is watching people like Nandy having to pretend that an arbitrarily demarcated exurban strip of market towns and commuter villages between Wigan and Manchester is some radically essentialist super special Gemeinschaft that holds the key to Britain's soul.

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

Cannot wait to read the latest by Jonas - this will set off a nuclear bomb beneath a discourse on class in Britain that has been desperately provincial, nakedly partial and unimaginative for too long.

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Great to see that @modbritstud.bsky.social's new website is taking seriously my argument that Liverpool's modern history is exactly where we need to look to understand the past, present and future of Britain.

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Balls is of course sprouting barely literate reactionary nonsense here. But, as I argued in a piece in 2019, Stalinism with a British accent rings true in complicated historical ways... A shared history of ruthless imperialism followed by structural unravelling. www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/...

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Ah I see, Burnham is going to do busses *and* performative acts of racialised border violence!

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Excited to announce that Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain will be out in paperback on July 16. I’ll be doing a launch event that day with the wonderful people at West Kirby Books. See below for tickets! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/liverpool-...

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

Nice reminder to what remains of the Starmer project that there might be an easier way of "winning over Reform voters" that doesn't entail bragging about robbing refugees of their personal possessions in militarised detention centres.

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

Cool, so the byelection will cost approximately 0.5% of the estimated annual amount given in military aid by the British government?

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Everyone is too busy reading Infinite Jest to realise that the NHS waitlist for non-urgent care has fallen from 7.7 million to 7.3 million in the last three years.

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

3) This is also an engagement with the tradition of British cultural studies (from Williams to Hall) in which the changing material *work* that culture does is often neglected. What does it mean to write cultural history now, following two decades of cultural histories of economic life?

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

2) This history requires retelling British history through the framework of obsolescence, abandonment and superfluity categories which I argue are increasingly useful for British histories trying to make sense of the ways that the present relates to the past.

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Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

1) This is an attempt to write the history of what I call "creativity capitalism" - a fleeting alternative modernising project which worked on many levels (social, environmental, economic) to repair the damage of deindustrialisation. A history that is longer and more expansive than often recognised.

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