Alexander Samson

Join us at this IAS Book Launch

Written Worlds: Non-Elite Writers in Early Modern England Who wrote in early modern England? What did they write and why did they write it? How did their writing fit into the wider worlds that they inhabited? In this talk, Sue Wiseman, Brodie Waddell and Michael Powell Davies – all from Birkbeck University of London – will address these questions by introducing their ongoing Leverhulme-funded collaborative project on non-elite writers in England from c.1570 to 1730. Our research explores the writing practices of people below the level of the gentry and clergy, considering their biographical contexts, their motivations and their contributions to written culture. In addition to giving a bird’s eye view of the sorts of writers and texts we are studying, each of the three speakers will discuss a couple of specific examples of particular writers, including the notebooks of a midland villager, the spiritual diary a London wigmaker, and the confessions of a condemned widow.

'Written Worlds: Non-Elite Writers in Early Modern England'

Sue Wiseman, Michael Powell-Davies and I will be introducing our five-year collaborative project at the @ihr.bsky.social on Thursday, March 5th. Hope to see you there!

Register here: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

Cover of book with text in yellow reading: The Firearm Revolution: From Renaissance Italy to the European Empires, overlaid on an image of an angel in seventeenth-century dress with wings and a long gun.

Hello Bluesky! My new book, THE FIREARM REVOLUTION, is out on 14 April. It’s about how a new technology changed society, and how hard it was to control. Here’s a little thread of what’s inside:

All good things come to an end It is with great sadness that we are sharing the news that the UCL Faculties of Social & Historical Sciences and Arts & Humanities have decided to close the IAS on 31 July 2026.

It is with great sadness that we are sharing the news that the UCL Faculties of Social & Historical Sciences and Arts & Humanities have decided to close the IAS.

We will close our doors forever on 31 July 2026.

Follow the link to leave thoughts, comments, memories 💗

www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of...

Very poor and short sighted decision on the part of UCL, such a shame, it has been an extraordinary agora for encounter and exchange…

⛔ Second statement in one week #saveleicesterml #saveleicesterlanguages

Following last week’s formal letter to the University of Nottingham, AHGBI has now issued a second statement—this time to the University of Leicester—regarding the proposed closure of its Department of Modern Languages.

New IAS Reading Group: Evident Tongues, Evident Bodies Join the IAS Postdoctoral Fellows, Rana Banna & Mary Newman, for the first session of the reading group, exploring how early-modern writers connected linguistic encounters with sensory encounters of s...

Evident Tongues, Evident Bodies: Language, Sense & Proof
12 Nov 2:30-4pm
This new @ucl-ias.bsky.social reading group explores how early-modern writers connected linguistic encounters with sensory encounters in the production of evidence.
www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of...

Sign the Petition Stop Mass Redundancies at Lancaster University – Hold Senior Management Accountable

Goodbye to the history department at Lancaster University, where the @socialhistsoc.bsky.social was founded 49 years ago. From tomorrow we are
part of a School of Global Affairs. Next year, who knows what will be - please sign our petition against mass redundancies chng.it/PZfTFDjNcr

🎭 From lost comedias to lucid dreams, each year students from around the world reimagine Spanish Golden Age Theatre for the Our New Gold Festival.

Watch '24-'25's prize winners and read @samsonaws.bsky.social's (@uclselcs.bsky.social) reflections on the Festival in our latest blog:
bit.ly/4kQwid4

Time Frames: Marking the Early Modern Time Frames: Marking the Early Modern Professor Alexander Samson Before the shattering of organic and providential temporalities by universal clock time, a period dubbed the ‘early modern’ foreshado...

For anyone interested who couldn’t make it to my inaugural ‘Time Frames: Marking the Early Modern’ here’s a recording: mediacentral.ucl.ac.uk/Play/124439

The UK is a relatively low tax economy

This means the revenue raised by Government as a proportion of GDP has been low historically

Less funding raised for infrastructure/healthcare/education etc

A thread 🧵

Thank you so much for coming!

Quote from Derrida’s the future of the profession, p 55-6

Barnstormingly brilliant inaugural! Amazing reflections on the importance of recognising different conceptions of time, and capping it off with a call, in the midst of universities & humanities in crisis, to imagine other futures, inspired not just by present or immediate past.

Picture of a speaker in front of slides with beautiful pocket watches on it

Verrrrrrrry excited about @samsonaws.bsky.social’s inaugural on marking the #EarlyModern

screenshot of an email which opens with Liesbeth Liesbeth!

LOL. Yes, UCL Events Team, I too am excited about @samsonaws.bsky.social's inaugural tomorrow! UCLUCL!

Time Frames: Marking the Early Modern Before the shattering of organic and providential temporalities by universal clock time, a period dubbed the ‘early modern’ foreshadowed and heralded our ‘modernity’. But how are our times different f...

Really looking forward to delivering my inaugural lecture, do sign up, be lovely to see you there fellow early modernists! www.ucl.ac.uk/early-modern...

Rope-Dancing and Female Performance An Early Modern Exchanges event with Prof Clare McManus (Northumbria) and Prof Thibaut Maus de Rolley (UCL)

Female street performers in early modern Europe still a few slots left, do come along... www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of...

The Play of Negotiation: Muslim Ambassadors in Spanish Classical Theatre Early Modern Exchanges welcomes Ruben Gonzalez Cuerva to discuss unearthing cultural heritage and analysing the interplay between actual Islamic representatives in Habsburg Madrid and the different ar...

Do pop along tomorrow for our event at 5 on Muslim ambassadors: www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of...

Time Frames: Marking the Early Modern Time Frames: Marking the Early Modern

Delighted to announce my professorial inaugural at UCL on 28th May, do sign up be great to see you all there! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/time-frame...

And here's @samsonaws.bsky.social with his book MARY AND PHILIP: The marriage of Tudor England and Habsburg Spain.

Also available for 30% off on our Renaissance Literature and History Reading List: manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/blog/2025/02... 👈

Melissa Terras lecturing

Fabulous night yesterday at @edincollegeofart.bsky.social who threw me an inaugural party, talking digital/arts/hums/creativity. Packed house and packed zoom! Thanks to all who were there. And don’t let the dystopian nightmare bullshit dim your sparkle.

Factcheck: Kemi Badenoch’s claim that net zero is ‘impossible’ by 2050 Tory leader provides no evidence to support position that flies in face of expert reports and her own words

This puts paid to that idea net zero = net profit by 2060… www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Phtotograph of Bodleian Benefactors' Register, open and showing gifts of Robert Barker and William Ballow, in italic print and manuscript on parchment.

For anyone interested in the early Bodleian Library or early modern book owners, the Shaping Scholarship project at CELL, UCL has made the project data available: ebdo.org.uk/data/ It details every officially recorded donation made c. 1600-1620, plus some extras, which is around 10,000 items.

Education Committee announces session on higher education funding - Committees - UK Parliament Education Committee Chair Helen Hayes MP has today announced a deep dive evidence session examining funding issues in the higher education sector. 

At long last: committees.parliament.uk/committee/20...

Billionaires at Trump’s Swearing-In Have Since Lost $210 Billion As Donald Trump took the oath of office on Jan. 20, he was flanked by some of the world’s wealthiest people. The billionaires present that day — including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg — h...

Five of the billionaires who attended Donald Trump's inauguration have lost a combined $210 billion in wealth since then, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index

Oh dear

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Time Frames: Marking the Early Modern Time Frames: Marking the Early Modern

Delighted to announce my professorial inaugural at UCL on 28th May, do sign up be great to see you all there! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/time-frame...

I stand with Ukraine

#IStandWithUkraine

IAS Book Launch: Political Culture in the Early Modern Iberian Worlds Join authors Mario Graña Taborelli and Adrian Masters for the launch of their books, Jurisdictional Battlefields and We, the King.

Date and Time: Tuesday 25 February 2025, 6-8pm
Location: IAS Common Ground, G11 Ground Floor, South Wing
Register: IAS Book Launch: Political Culture in the Early Modern Iberian Worlds | Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) - UCL
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ias-book-l...
All welcome!

Abject failure by leaders in HE to take a stand is now bearing fruit… The Guardian view on campus cuts: academics pay a high price for Westminster’s mistakes www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

'In a series of consultancy studies about 20 years ago....A key conclusion was that QR was not just an important part of research funding but the critical element that incentivised staff, lubricated the research machine and geared up value.' 1/3