Day 2: John Blanke π§Ά
John Blanke was a Black trumpeter at the Tudor court, best known from the Westminster Tournament Roll of 1511, commissioned during the reign of Henry VIII. Blanke appears twice in the ms & is shown wearing the same livery
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#BHM #yarnsky #yarnmarket #blackhistorymonth
If anyone needs reminding of how migration is always been part of human history, here, have just one nice example.
The English government started to tax immigrants in the 1330s as a significant source of revenue and the records are freely available online at www.englandsimmigrants.com
Ian Forrest's "Gender and Authority in the Late Medieval Church: a new history"
Very excited. Will report back.
[monster truck announcer voice]
Early.
Modern.
Bodies.
In November 2025 get your grubby hands on the freshest and coolest scholarship from yours truly ("Vagrant Bodies") and a frankly much more impressive range of other scholars.
Straight out in very affordable Paperback! Years in the making.
Fissures: Gender and Political Crisis 17-18 September 2026 Pembroke College, University of Cambridge Gendered work on medieval popular politics has tended to revolve around the exceptional. This workshop explores how studies of gender can reconfigure discourses of medieval political community. We ask how attending to gendered bodies and identities might help us better understand the fissures in political culture in medieval Europe. Marking, for example, womenβs participation as either absent or rare confines their involvement to the historical margins. How did literary as well as non-literary texts from various genres, ranging from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, engage with gendered political action? How did ideas of gender stabilise or destabilise political performances? We invite abstracts for 25-minute papers, as well as expressions of interest for participation. We welcome papers with a historical, literary, or interdisciplinary focus. Potential topics could include but are not limited to: β’ Frameworks for understanding non-normative gender expressions in political spaces. β’ Studies of politics at the intersection of gendered, queer, or trans methodologies. β’ Histories of masculinities in political community. β’ Emotion and/or Affect β’ Weaponized/defensive gender β’ Manoeuvring bodies through political crisis β’ Inclusion and exclusion β’ Different sites of political discourse, such as domestic and non-violent conflict. Collectively, the papers will interrogate the role of gender in political discourse. Selected papers may be considered for inclusion in an edited volume. Means-based bursaries for speakers may be available by further application. Please submit a title and abstract of no more than 200 words to Alice Raw (ar889@cam.ac.uk) and Abbie Fray (abigail.fray@unibe.ch) by 16 January 2026.
Call for Papers! Fissures: Gender and Political Crisis #medievalsky #Fissures2026
Screenshot of a 17th century record. Mac Preview has highlighted some it and offer options: βAdd To Contacts... Call Ω₯Ω£Ω Ω’Ω₯Ω’Ω‘- Using iPhone FaceTime FaceTime Audio Message Ω₯Ω£Ω Ω’Ω₯Ω’Ω‘Ω Large Type Look Up "Ω₯Ω£Ω Ω’Ω₯Ω’Ω‘Ω Ω Writing Toolsβ
my mac doing its best to telephone a seventeenth century ecclesiastical record ποΈ
The Courtauld is offering a a new fully funded Peter Fergusson PhD Scholarship in English Medieval Architecture for eligible projects focusing on England from the eleventh to the early sixteenth centuries. Statement of intents are due by 17 November 2025.
Book cover for: 'Forging Fraternity in Late Medieval Society The Palmers' Guild of Ludlow', by Rachael Harkes
Published today: 'Forging Fraternity in Late Medieval Society. The Palmers' Guild of Ludlow', by Rachael Harkes bit.ly/49CIDzC
Rachael's new book is the latest title in the Society's New Historical Perspectives series. It's now available free Open Access & paperback print @uolpress.bsky.social 1/2
CCASNC will return on 21 February 2026! We hope to see you there!
"Moreover, the Greensβ core purpose is to tackle the destruction of our natural environment, climate change and its catastrophic impacts, none of which are the preserve of either the political left or right"
As if right wing politics aren't demolishing the planet's ecosystem π
βMore than half of the work done by women in the period between the 16th and 18th centuries took place outside of the home, and around half of all housework and three-quarters of care work was conducted professionally for other householdsβ [England]
phys.org/news/2025-10...
Picture of the top half of the Earthsea series by Ursula K. LeGuin with a perfect pint of pilsner on a coffee table in the background
"You'll know the value of a good reputation," Moss said drily, "when you've lost it. 'Tisn't everything. But it's hard to fill the place of."
Tehanu, my beloved.
Publication day is October 2nd tomorrow. Launch tonight for the first day of the London Month of the Dead at Highgate Cemetery!
Pinch, punch, it's the first of the month. And here's your medieval Labour of the Month, courtesy of a 13th century psalter:
nah
Fantastic piece on a fascinating aspect of early Irish law, by my former PhD student and @ceilteachomn.bsky.social graduate, Dr Viktoriia Krivoshchekova, who is now a postdoc at @scs-dias.bsky.social
#MedievalSky
www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2...
Thanks Eric βΊοΈ
"some legal experts have called it a crime to summarily execute civilians" says today's New York Times, continuing their long tradition of whitewashing fascism
Absolute all-timer sentence in today's @nytimes.com
Oh hiya! Looking forward to spending the year writing about church courts, litigation and debt π«‘π
@ihr.bsky.social and @ies-sas.bsky.social are partnering with @thelondonarchives.bsky.social to run a new series of public lectures, featuring the chance to see the original records first hand. First lecture by @patrickwallis.bsky.social on "Apprenticeship and the Rise of London", Weds 15th October!
A monk is seated, working on a manuscript. He is writing in a book and the writing appears to be horizontal lines.
The quickest way to finish an article is to start it. It also helps if you can stay away from social media, tv and the internet. And your cell phone. And other people. You should also fight urges to clean and organise spaces, and to cook big meals.
In other words, itβs difficult to finish articles.
βAIβ isnβt a tool or technology or even a cluster of technologies with a misleading name. Itβs the infrastructure at the foundation of a form of capitalism dependent on data brokering. We should be teaching our students about this and not teaching them about βresponsibleβ use.
This is a problem.
If this intends to make it legally compulsory for every adult in Derry to carry something called a "Brit Card", then I'm willing to offer some high-paid consultancy on why this plan might be flawed.
The white supremacist conceit that everyone in antiquity was living under some kind of global jim crow segregation is just complete bullshit news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...
The front cover of the book 'Birth, Death, and Domestic Religion in early modern London' - it has a red from cover and the image is from a seventeenth-century woodcut.
I really enjoyed speaking about my new book with Dr Miranda Melcher for the @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social podcast π
Now available online! ππ»
newbooksnetwork.com/birth-death-...
@universitypress.cambridge.org @uoearchhist.bsky.social @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social @uniofexeternews.bsky.social
Re last repost about teaching women's history in UK schools, it's extra frustrating because there are resources out there to tell much more interesting stories within the curriculum.
Full disclosure, I wrote this one: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/re...
Also, my monograph 'The Making of Urban Customary Law in Medieval and Reformation England' is about 50% off now, for algorithmically mysterious reasons. www.amazon.com/Making-Custo...
Delighted to share that my first book The Experience of Work in Early Modern England (co-written with the fantastic @jwhittle.bsky.social, @markhailwood.bsky.social, and Hannah Robb) has been published and is available free and Open Access! doi.org/10.1017/9781...
#earlymodern #economic #history
