Brodie Waddell

Impressive that US democracy has managed to replicate the "king so bad in a medieval chronicle you wonder if they're real or a symbolic trope for misrule" effect

TIL about the 16th c German goldsmith Wenzel Jamnitzer's statues of Daphne made from coral and I am metamorphosed for it

The Dr Williams’s Trust Library Bursaries for Mid-Career Researchers The Dr Williams’s Trust has generously provided funds to support the work of mid-career historians researching the British Protestant dissenting traditions.

Are you a mid-career historian researching 17th & 18th-century British Protestant dissenting traditions? 🏛️ Apply for the Dr Williams's Trust Library Bursaries at the IHR! Three awards of £3,500 are available to support your research in London libraries and archives www.history.ac.uk/fellowships-...

I love them!

Oh interesting! I've only skimmed the text so far, but will need to write up a little context note sometime soon. Thanks!

Two Working LEGO Printing Presses | LEGO® Ideas The development of mechanical printing changed how ideas move through the world. Once text and images could be printed rather than copied by hand, knowledge was…

Hi #EarlyModern Bluesky - did you know that someone brilliant has built working printing presses using Lego and they are trying to get enough supporters so that Lego will release it as a kit?

They look so cool!

beta.ideas.lego.com/product-idea...

I've used my London Lives datasets of 18th-century St Clement Danes pauper removal orders and settlement exams to make a new interactive map mindseye.sharonhoward.org/dashboards/cdr… #18thc

Happy International Women’s Day - today I’m celebrating Rose Thurgood, a poor woman with a “hard and hungry” stomach who supported her four children alone after being abandoned by her husband - and found the inspiration and courage to write one of the earliest English autobiographies in the 1630s

Yes, definitely. But quite funny blasphemy, so I think it should get a pass.

📣Out now on #firstview!

Jenni Hyde (@wallyberry.bsky.social) on 'Providence, Editorial, and News in Early Modern Ballads'

#News #Religion #God #Print #Everyday 17thc 📜🗃️

👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Photo of a manuscript beginning "this indenture"

Treated myself to a 1698 manuscript indenture off ebay. 'It's just for teaching' I tell myself as I admire the confused-looking lion on the royal crest.

Particularly effective when you're teaching it in a building in Bloomsbury!

Yeah, the depictions of slavery in tobacco branding in the late 17th century are extraordinary. Always gets students talking!

And yes, the mention of 'mill' suggests this is a direct reference to the Americas.

Yes, absolutely, though I was thinking of the Egyptian Captivity, which was pretty famously a Bad Thing. At least according to Moses.

And Roman slavery which was a basic part of every grammar school education.

And Barbary slavery, which featured a lot in politics and pop culture, because many English sailors were captured in the 16th and early 17th century.

I think the Old Testament probably provided some ready-made 'evidence' that slavery was bad that everyone would have been familiar with.

The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, at Birkbeck, University of London, is looking for a talented researcher to join a project focused on expanding our understanding of non elite writers and writing in seventeenth century England. As Postdoctoral Research Associate you will join 'Written Worlds in Seventeenth-Century England', an exciting Leverhulme Trust–funded project. The role is offered on a 13 month, part time (17.5 hours a week) contract with a salary of £22,124 rising to £25,189 per annum (pro-rated £44,247 to £50,379 per annum). In this role, you will carry out dedicated research on non elite textual production, working closely with the Principal Investigator, Professor Sue Wiseman, and the Co Investigator, Dr Brodie Waddell. You will have the opportunity to work extensively with manuscripts and printed sources, visit archives, investigate datasets, develop the project database, and contribute to shaping the project’s scholarly outputs - and you may also be involved in textual editing. As Research Associate, you will focus on one of two thematic strands: 1. Non elite writing produced in the provinces, or 2. Writing produced by non elite women. Further details via link

We are hiring postdoc researchers to join our #WrittenWorlds project at Birkbeck, with Sue Wiseman, @mdpowelldavies.bsky.social, @richardjansell.bsky.social and I.

0.5FTE, 13 months, focus on women's or provincial non-elite writing #EarlyModern 🗃️
cis7.bbk.ac.uk/vacancy/post...

Years ago I found a note in the parish register of Glenfield in Leicestershire which instantly became one of my favourite Civil War commentaries:

'Churchwardens, not any; because
distractions many; & distructions mightie'.

I've returned to that document, explored other pages nearby, and found...

UK puts emergency brake on study visas for four countries’ nationals Shabana Mahmood says UK’s generosity abused as study visas halted for nationals from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan

I have personally seen the applications of many Afghani students to our gender studies programme: people who have started grassroots LGBT orgs; who have fought for women's education; who want to come to the UK to study to make their country & the world better...

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Ah, very interesting! Thanks for sharing the context.

Written Worlds: Non-Elite Writers in Early Modern England

Just a reminder... Tomorrow, 5 March, 5.30 pm ✨ Sue Wiseman, Brodie Waddell @brodiewaddell.bsky.social ,
and Michael Powell Davies @mdpowelldavies.bsky.social speaking on "Written Worlds: Non-Elite Writers in Early Modern England" Sign-up in person & online: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

BME Small Grants: 2026 Recipients We are delighted to announce the results of the latest round of the BME small grants funding scheme. This scheme is administered by SHS in partnership with the Economic History Society, History UK,…

📣We are delighted to announce the 2026 recipients of the Joint BME Small Grants!

This scheme is supported by @histedsocuk.bsky.social; EHS; History UK; @historyworkshop.org.uk; @royalhistsoc.org; @sslh.bsky.social and @womenshistnet.bsky.social!✨

socialhistory.org.uk/2026/02/17/b...

The story is horrific from a modern perspective, but presumably was meant to be funny at the the time? That final line presents Crisp as a clever (if immoral) schemer and the enslaved people as credulous primitives. The audience would identify with Crisp, not the enslaved. What genre of text was it?

Text on an academic article about "Moving Things: Moving Cartloads of Treasures from Venice to Ethiopia, ca. 1400" pasted into Grammarly in a Browser. It offers to invoke the digital ghosts of David Abulafia, Barry Flood and Chris Wickham to give me "expert feedback".

Using Grammarly for the first time in forever ... WHAT?

As a non-native speaker writing primarily in English, I used to use it to check prepositions, point out too long/convoluted sentences etc.

It now offers to summon colleagues both living and dead to "expert review" the piece???

What?

“My ‘methodology’ was a series of errors”: Gemini generates false records and fake screenshots of TNA website | Who Do You Think You Are Magazine The Gemini LLM generates fake records and screenshots from the UK National Archives, a family historian has revealed

Gemini: 'I deeply regret the time and effort you spent searching for references that I fabricated. My ‘methodology’ was a series of errors and an attempt to cover those errors with more artificial information.'

www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/news/gemini-...

Congratulations Sophie! A huge achievement!

The Body as Property and the Moral Limits of the Market: Attitudes towards the Sex Trade in Eighteenth-Century England This article explores understandings and attitudes surrounding the nature of commercial sex and the moral limits of the market in eighteenth-century England. It examines this contested commodificat...

Hot off the press and available open access. #Skystorians

Here's a 🧵 with some more information about what this chart is based on, and a couple graphs of social breakdowns of the data. [1/n]

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/...