@renaissancerach
Career Development Fellow in Early Modern Literature at Durham University Out now: Elizabethan Occult Poetics: Exploring Practice and Knowledge in English Poetry https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10.3828/9781836244783
Another @ucunorthumbria.bsky.social picket line @northumbriauni.bsky.social yesterday. We're loud and proud in our fight for pay and pensions justice! @ucu.org.uk @chionwurah.bsky.social @chroniclelive.co.uk @timeshighered.bsky.social @bylinesnetwork.co.uk
It's ASOS time, everyone! We regularly hear from colleagues that they're working, to use a technical term, "silly hours"; way beyond what could be considered reasonable. It wasn't our first choice to end that via action short of strike, but it was clear SOMETHING needed to be done, so here we are.
Reading the news today & came across this. To be CRYSTAL CLEAR, @ducu.bsky.social has REPEATEDLY raised workload problems to management and offered potential solutions for negotiation. In EVERY instance, management has refused to negotiate. “No” is not negotiation. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Solidarity with colleagues at Durham
Durham University staff start industrial action in workload row - BBC News share.google/dFdh9caLfjIN...
✊✊👉@ucunorthumbria.bsky.social are back on strike next week, all week. No-one wants to be, and no-one is asking for more than keeping what we have. For our communities, colleagues, and students, we will never accept the pay and pension injustice planned by management at @northumbriauni.bsky.social
No-one wants to go on strike, and no-one ever does it just for themselves. @jimdickinson.bsky.social @moneyontheleft.bsky.social @ukhenews.bsky.social @ucea.bsky.social @andylong6.bsky.social @georgeclarke.bsky.social
Folk thynke that innovacioun yn academia will come from technologye. It will come ynstead from settinge asyde olde assumptions and hierarchies and givinge people more chances to trulye and radicallye thynke wyth each othir wyth no specific outcome yn mynde.
Whose uni? Our uni! @ucunorthumbria.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk We are united, loud, and proud. We will never accept bosses @northumbriauni.bsky.social stealing our pay and pensions, demoralising and demeaning staff and students. We are always ready to talk, listen, and negotiate. Let's fix this!
Replacing the flowers on St Valentine’s head The purported skull of St Valentine is displayed in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome, where it is crowned with flowers. A reliquary is a fine eternity; plush interior, gilt frame, glass window, south facing, the rent paid in prayers and miracles granted. This saint, if that’s who he is, wears a crown of flowers. Daisies, pansies, stems thick and green, turning yellow, brown, dissolving into slime. Unlike stories no flowers last forever. Bone is an uncommon vase, the aura of sainthood no fertiliser. These flowers are replaced when required, their blaze not yet extinguished. Petals unaware — for now, at least — that they, like the saint, are dead.
"Unlike stories no flowers
last forever. Bone is an
uncommon vase, the aura of
sainthood no fertiliser."
- from 'The Vanishing Song'
Delighted to be series editor for Cambridge Elements in Women, Gender and Sexuality in Premodern Literature and Culture. If you have something cool and interesting you’d like to work with us on please get in touch (micrograph 20-30k)
www.cambridge.org/core/publica...
Caleb makes some really useful points here - the feeling that we need a new approach to workload in Durham is even more widespread than the raw ballot numbers suggest. We need to hear more from our employer than "We responded fully to [your] claims".
I was very pleased to find that my copy of The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Authorship had arrived when I got home today! I find myself in very good company, and I'm looking forward to reading more. @loughnrv.bsky.social and Will Sharpe were great editors to work with 😊
Results are in regarding our local ballot.
63.3% of voters are prepared to take IA consisting of a strike action, and 75.6% are prepared to take ASOS. Return rate was 53.1%, comfortably clear of the Tory anti-trade union minimum.
Thrilled for my colleague, Laurence Publicover, and his appearance on In Our Time today, joined by the brilliant @oldfortunatus.bsky.social and @lucycmunro.bsky.social - what a trio! Have worked on H4 quite a bit and still learned lots! www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
In which @oldfortunatus.bsky.social, Laurence Publicover and I did a thing... www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
This is the strangers' case / and this your mountainish inhumanity
@ucunorthumbria.bsky.social has developed reasonable, comprehensive, and constructive counter-proposals to help resolve the dispute @northumbriauni.bsky.social regarding pay and pensions in good faith. You can see them here: www.ucu-unn.org.uk/news/319-ucu....
What do you think?
Dr Alistair Brown from our Department of English Studies uses VR & gaming make classic literature immersive, accessible & future-focused. He is helping English Studies thrive in the digital age. Find out more 👉 www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...
#DUinspire #DUSpotlightOn
Dear UKHEI Managers
Stop spending money on things
Start investing in people - students, employees - other than yourselves
I just spoke to the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History in an online talk about the Franciscans in Bury St Edmunds, and the Suffolk Records Society currently has an INSANE offer where you can buy my £60 book on the Bury Franciscans for *£10* 😯 suffolkrecordssociety.com/publications...
Tech wythout wisdom ys dystopia
For a bettir future we need poetrye, creativitye, historical studye, love of languages, dreames, dialogues, new storyes, & intellectual curiositye.
We must fund & expand higher educacioun yn HEART:
H umanityes
E thiques
A rtes
R hetorique & the crafte of
T eaching
And it begins! Post your ballots ASAP, #ducu members!
Our workloads are rising & our jobs security isn’t.
We deserve better from management than just “no” to our reasonable requests and suggestions.
@ducu.bsky.social
@ucu.org.uk
Very happy to see this volume finally out. Anyone opening it will immediately appreciate the enormous amount of work involved -- should be the definitive edition of these difficult but fascinating poems for many years to come.
Job klaxon: for a medievalist working across English and history cis7.bbk.ac.uk/vacancy/lect...
Management at @northumbriauni.bsky.social say they want to 'do different things' to fund their strategy. Whodathunk that mean freezing staff pay? @ucu.org.uk @strathclydeucu.bsky.social @sheffielducu.bsky.social @danhollandnews.bsky.social
A shout-out for this excellent collection edited by @johannawinant.bsky.social and @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social including essays by Robert Stagg of @nvshakespeare.bsky.social and @noreenmasud.bsky.social
#CloseReading
Bookes are like Cheese, that is neuer well seasoned to euery mans tast; for one will say it is too salt, another wil say it is too fresh, a thirde will say it is to tart, another thinkes it to be too milde; one will haue it too hard, another too soft, another too tough, another too brittle, it neuer pleaseth euery mans tast; no more do Bookes.
Barnabe Rich explaining that "bookes are like cheese"
Excellent and empoweringe educacioun will nevir be "efficient" yn the waye that a businesse doth stryve to be "efficient." It ys the heighte of knavery to use one standarde to measure everye human activitye. Businesses are ther to make profits. Educacioun ys ther to make the future.
Pretty big news to kick off the year... Predramatic Theatre now available as an e-publication! Happy 2026 everyone!
