Artist Timothy Yufit’s In Place project uses Layers of London to document displaced headstones embedded within London’s parks and public spaces. These fragmented historical traces remain present within the contemporary urban landscape. www.layersoflondon.org/map/collecti...
On Friday, 6 March 2026, the MLA, ACLS, and AHA filed a motion for summary judgment in our case seeking to reverse the elimination of grants, grant programs, staff, and entire divisions and programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
www.mla.org/Resources/Ad...
Please repost - opportunity to work on a great project with a great team here at Birkbeck!
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...
Great to see the new website for ‘LIMINALWATER: Liminal Waterway Countercultures’, led by my colleague @bengidley.bsky.social and working with the fab @humap.bsky.social liminalwater.uni-graz.at/en/projects/
Sound on, hats off.
This is such sad news….
Terrible news of the death of Stephen Baxter, superb historian and kind colleague. www.spc.ox.ac.uk/news/in-memo...
It’s time for a new 🧵 about one of our editorial board’s choice of an article from the journal’s back catalogue that was influential on them. This time it’s our Board Chair Bob Shoemaker’s choice of Valerie Pearl’s 1979 article, ‘Change and Stability in Seventeenth-century London’.
The Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery (CSLBS) is excited to announce 3 new roles on our groundbreaking Valuable Lives project!
🔍 Open roles:
• 2 x Research Assistant (Digital Humanities)
• 1 x Research Fellow (Digital Humanities)
🗓 Closing date: 23 Jan 2026
shorturl.at/OCpLP
@britishacademy.bsky.social International Fellowships are now open
Applications are welcome across the #humanities and #socialsciences from early career researchers anywhere in the world to come to 🇬🇧 for 2 years
The deadline is 11 March
www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/sche...
Quizstorians ftw! 🎉🍾
Today!
Monthly student visa applications
Uh oh for the university business model as student visa applications hit four year low since Oct.
Only 29,300 applications last month, down from 35,200 in Dec 2024. Back in December 2022 more than 46,000 would-be international students applied…
www.researchprofessional.com/news-article...
Calling all fifteenth-century scholars: if you have not yet submitted your proposal for this year's conference hosted by @memsunikent.bsky.social, now is the time to do so. CfP open until 31st January.
Eligibility To be eligible for this bursary, you must meet all of the conditions for application set out below and at least one of the eligibility criteria. Identifying in more than one category may be used as a factor to prioritise applicants to receive this award. Conditions for application You have been accepted onto a master’s degree programme at Birkbeck beginning in the 2026-27 academic year. If you have made an application but not yet received a decision, you may still apply but your application will only be considered if you have been accepted onto your course by the scholarship application deadline (31 July 2026). You have made provision to fund the remainder of your studies should you be successful in your application for this bursary. You do not already hold a master's degree or other level 7 qualification. You have Home fee status. Your household income is less than £42,875. Eligibility criteria We welcome applications from students who meet one or more of the following criteria (in addition to the above): Have a declared disability. Identify as a care leaver (a care leaver is a young person, under the age of 25 who is currently or has been in public care for a minimum of three months. This would include foster care, semi-independent living, residential care homes). Are single parents. Are carers (a carer is someone who, without payment, provides help and support to a friend, neighbour or relative who could not manage otherwise because of frailty, illness or disability). Hold refugee status. Have Black or Black mixed heritage. Are the first generation in their family to participate in Higher Education.
Masters in History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck MA Historical Research MA Contemporary History and Politics MA Public History and Heritage MA European History MA Global History MA Classical Civilisation MA Archaeology and Heritage
If you want to do an MA in London but have 'barriers accessing education or may face greater challenges while undertaking their degree' (specific criteria below), you can apply for a £3,000 tuition grant at Birkbeck. Lots of choices at @bbkhistorical.bsky.social:
www.bbk.ac.uk/student-serv...
Coming up!
We're now advertising for open-ended Lectureships in Medieval Studies and in Art History, based in @bbkhistorical.bsky.social in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. See cis7.bbk.ac.uk/home.html Please repost!
Screenshot of search for 'petition' on the BL's Archives and Manuscript catalogue
Hooray! The British Library has just released a beta version of its rebuilt Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue: searcharchives.bl.uk
2,619 hits for 'petition' in Western Manuscripts, texts in English, in case you're curious. 🗃️
I am very excited for this workshop: please do submit an EOI or get in touch if you have any queries.
Publishing a journal article doesn’t have to be a daunting experience, and we are very proud of our support for ECRs.
Our third and final issue of 2025 has now been published! A 🧵 on its contents...
We are running a free workshop at @tandfresearch.bsky.social's office in South London on 30 January 2026 to support early career scholars in developing their work into a publishable journal article. Expressions of interest due by 16 January. See here for more details (and please share widely!)
The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure invites applications for a two-week Summer School on ‘Micro-Census Insights into Historical Households, Mortality and Fertility’, held at University of Cambridge from July 6-17th, 2026. Application deadline February 2 2026.
Nocturnal London: From Torches to Neon Signs in a City After Dark Edited by Maurizio Cinquegrani, Yihong Zhu and Michael McCluskey The editors of this special issue, Maurizio Cinquegrani, Yihong Zhu and Michael McCluskey invite submissions on the theme of London nights. This volume of the London Journal will examine the histories of the city after dark, from its origins in Roman London to the present. Often overlooked, night has long been an essential dimension of urban life: as the city’s appearance change in the lightening of torches, oil lamps, gaslight, incendiary bombs and neon signs, nocturnal imagery, sounds, smells and professions – legal and not legal – emerge from the darkness. For Londoners, the night was never simply the absence of day; it was a time of danger, sociability, and creativity; a theatre of crime and vice, but also of performance, work, and pleasure. The special issue will place particular emphasis on moments when the character of London’s nights was especially contested, including – but not limited to – the Elizabethan, the eighteenth century, the Victorian, the wartime and the postwar city. The Elizabethan period witnessed the emergence of the city’s playhouses, taverns, and nocturnal entertainments, alongside concerns about disorder and moral decline. Eighteenth-century coffee-houses and club meetings reflected the nocturnal city’s uneasy mix of polite sociability and transgressive undercurrents, while pleasure gardens flourished as spaces of spectacle, employment, cross-class mingling, and erotic charge
under cover of darkness. In the Victorian era, the introduction of gaslight transformed both the material and imaginative experience of the night, making the city’s streets newly navigable while also exposing poverty, vice, and vulnerability to the gaze of reformers, police, photographers, and journalists. Wartime London, by contrast, was marked by darkness and silence imposed from above: the blackout and the Blitz remade the urban night as a zone of danger, solidarity, and belonging. The postwar decades, and especially the 1960s, brought the era of Swinging London, in which nightlife became emblematic of youth, fashion, music, and cultural revolution. Equally important are the particular districts that have defined London’s reputation after dark, including – but again not limited to – the West End and the East End. The East End has been imagined as a zone of poverty, danger, and cultural resilience, alive with street-level economies that flourished under cover of night. The West End has long been associated with theatres, clubs, and the rituals of fashionable display. Soho, especially in the twentieth century, became a microcosm of cosmopolitanism, transgression, and reinvention, providing a home for migrants, artists, musicians, and London’s gay community, who together redefined the possibilities of nocturnal sociability. Beyond districts and periods, we also invite reflections on the people who navigated, transformed, and reimagined the nocturnal city. The editors are especially keen to foreground questions of diversity and difference. How have London’s nights been inhabited, shaped,
and contested by women, by queer citizens, by migrants and racialised communities, and by those whose working lives were tied to the hours of darkness? How was night both policed and celebrated? How did nocturnal spaces serve as arenas of negotiation between surveillance and resistance, authority and anonymity, privilege and precarity? How have representations in literature, theatre, music, art, and film contributed to the cultural meanings of the nocturnal city? We welcome submissions from across the disciplines, including history, literary and cultural studies, art history, archaeology, urban geography, sociology, performance and media studies, as well as ecology, environmental humanities, and architecture and urbanism. Interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged, as are contributions that combine archival research with theoretical or methodological innovation. Abstracts of 300–400 words, accompanied by a short biographical statement, should be submitted by 31 March 2026. Full-length articles will be in the range of 6,000–8,000 words and are due by 31 March 2027. Please send proposals and queries to Maurizio Cinquegrani, Yihong Zhu, and Michael McCluskey (m.cinquegrani@kent.ac.uk, scarlett.zhu24@gmail.com, and m.mccluskey@northeastern.edu) with the subject line Nocturnal London Special Issue.
Call for papers for our new special issue on 'Nocturnal London', edited by Maurizio Cinquegrani, Yihong Zhu, and @mcmccluskey.bsky.social. Abstracts due in by 31 March 2026.
All submissions and reposts much appreciated.
The Curriers' Prize is now open! Submit your best unpublished essay on any aspect of London's history, and you could get a £1,000 award!
Full details: 👇 w ww.history.ac.uk/funding/awards-bursaries-prizes/curriers-prize
‘The CBI and Universities UK… said universities already subsidised research by £5.4 billion a year, largely through international student income. A levy would "accelerate contraction" in research and innovation, they warned.’
www.thetimes.com/article/95f2...
Pleased to see my ‘viewpoint’ looking at the historiography of London’s crafts and guilds now available @thelondonjournal.bsky.social as part of the journal’s 50th birthday celebrations!
Our latest Viewpoint article is out: 'Guilds and Companies in London, 1200–1700: Contexts and Comparisons' by @mpdavies.bsky.social.
A 🧵 on the insights provided by this article into the history and historiography of these key metropolitan institutions in the medieval and early modern periods.
I'm so proud of what we're building!
www.bbk.ac.uk/news/meet-th...
