I popped into Marketing Derby Derby City Lab in the Derbion shopping centre. It’s a space inviting Derbians to express their ambitions for the city.

A City of Surprises sounds good to me!

In the face of so much competition, careerism & demands for more, more, more (money, impact, awards, citations etc), it might be time to reclaim and/or just sit with the many, many ways we feel failure as academics.

Read this as a start —
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Overhead yesterday in Derby. A small child asks their mum 'will Daddy be watching Derby County today?'
'I don't think so, he's not from round here, is he?'
'Where's Daddy from again, Mummy?' 'Burton.'
'Well I like Derby, Mummy!' #derbycounty

As Alan adroitly discusses here, the economic benefits of Empire to Britain have been attested at exhaustive length by real economic historians for decades upon decades, & cannot be dismissed by fake economic historians working for dodgy dark-money lobbyists.

Incredibly sad as we face 6 more redundancies in History at UoLincoln on top of the loss of 3 valued colleagues (via voluntary severance). We've always punched above our weight in terms of research + teaching and this is such a sad comment on all of that work and UK HE overall.

One hundred years ago this date, the British Empire Exhibition opened at Wembley. In June 1924, Derby exhibited there in the Civic Hall for ten days. This summer Museum of Making at Derby Silk Mill there will be an exhibition and events to explore Empire and the Making of Modern Derby.

BIG fan of universities ending their statements to the Telegraph with “jog on.” Can we start affixing this to the end of our responses to FOIA requests??

Very important as a female academic to be *exactly* the right level of attractive. Too much blonde hair spilling over your shoulders is as dangerous as too little make-up and too shapeless an outfit.

We’re excited to be collaborating with HistoryLab+ to run Place-Based Histories: an interdisciplinary workshop for early career researchers. Tickets are free & there are a limited number of travel bursaries available. history.ac.uk/events/place-b…

I went on a jewellery making workshop with Anisha Parmar Studio this afternoon and it was such a lovely thing. Such a great group of women and I made stuff - look!

An interesting paper to round off the week. National Trust and University of Oxford PhD researcher Rebekah Hodgkinson on the Trust's 20th century history and colonial links. Given as part of Cambridge University Heritage and Colonialism Discussion Group Heritage and Colonialism Discussion Group
youtu.be/z4Ka8a-BBaw?si…

Wonderful fully funded PhD in early modern English history: work with a great team, learn new skills and change how we understand the global past. 1 May deadline: exeter.ac.uk/study/funding/…

Ministers ‘boast about how well Britain’s creative industries are doing and how many billions they contribute to the economy. Yet they seem … incapable of making the connection between growing this sector and educating the future workforce it needs.’ ⁩ thetimes.co.uk/article/richar…

Are you a member of academic teaching staff at a university where arts/culture courses are being cut? Would like to hear from you. Drop me an email summarising what's being cut, impact & a contact number & will try to get back to you. Drop me a line at: [email protected]
thx

I know not everyone gets why, but this is a really bad move - for any historian or sociologist of knowledge, place of publication is important info, more so in many cases than publisher or even author name

Just a reminder that Robert Tombs is a historian of France, not of the British Empire. He has no expertise in this area and does not publish peer reviewed academic scholarship in colonial history. Neither does Nigel Biggar. Neither does David Abulafia. Stop listening to them.

We’ve known for a long time that women (&marginalised) academics do a lot of academic housework. But, what angers me is that, while it’s essential, it has no value. Our metrics are to obsessed with measurable impacts rather than the running of healthy &well balanced institutions.

Tenniel Tenniel TENNIEL! #UniversityChallenge