Dr Catherine Bateson

Happy 3rd #pubday birthday to my @lsupress.bsky.social book “Irish American Civil War Songs: Identity, Loyalty and Nationhood”! Available from the press & all good bookstores. If any Civil War era/Irish Studies folk want me to talk about it/review it, get in touch! lsupress.org/978080717793...

Obama said Trump's White House looked like "Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory," and conservatives were pissed... at the Cheesecake Factory part??

I am really looking forward to being part of "Politics Across the Pond" tomorrow, an online event hosted by East Midlands Labour all about the US midterm elections. Very excited about who is joining me on the line-up – including the iconic Emily Thornberry! 🗳️🇺🇸🌹

Every book, article, script, image & performance starts with a creator. We're proud to back the Smart Fund, a proposal that could raise up to £300m annually for creators. Read our joint letter with DACS - Design and Artists Copyright Society PICSEL & BECS: https://ow.ly/feEO5101pyj

Walter was more than Chekov. He was a writer, a teacher, a thoughtful man, and a loyal friend. To the fans who loved him for so many years, thank you. He loved you too. Rest well, my dear friend. Keep navigating a steady course. – George

My heart is heavy. Walter Koenig, our Ensign Pavel Chekov, passed away early today. Walter and I met on the bridge of the Enterprise in the 1960s, and we stayed friends for nearly six decades. When Brad and I married in 2008, Walter stood beside us as our best man.

❄️ The HOTCUS Winter Symposium 2027 will take place in Warwick on 19th February. 📚 Proposals are invited for papers/panels/roundtables which engage with American educational history. ❗ Abstracts should be submitted no later than 1st November. Read more: baas.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

Our latest “Document of the Week” was chosen by our Senior Curator, Dr Charlie Hall. It is an annual report from the British Embassy in Berlin for 1933, detailing the enormous changes occasioned in Germany by Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. Read the full post here: buff.ly/ZmBgsrL

Not ‘significant numbers’ of universities collapsing isn’t great reassurance from the OfS

It was great to join Ian on the “Authors of History” podcast to discuss my research, my writing, and what it is like being an author of history. Please do have a listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts: shows.acast.com/67c5cc6ab48a...? 🎧📚🗃️

Headline of the week

They smashed the globe. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

The collapse of academic history is a part of this trend - if you dig into the original report, "History & Related Fields dropped from a peak of 7,496 [dissertations per year] in 2015 to 3,583 by 2025, a contraction of 52% in a single decade." Which of course mirrors the trend in academic jobs.

Very intereesting new article on the site by Peter Irvine on how Wolfe Tone, the father of Irish republicanism, once advoated for a British military colony in the Sandwich Islands. www.theirishstory.com/2026/10/23/b...

I don't think he'll go in the water again, after what happened yesterday.

Spooky season special: The Library is home to the sole surviving nitrate print of the first film adaptation of "Frankenstein," produced in 1910 by the Edison Manufacturing Company! Watch the full film and learn how it came to the Library. ⬇️ blogs.loc.gov/loc/2018/11/...

We’re seeking an enterprising Head of Global Sales! It’s a great opportunity to join our innovative team! You can view the full job specification and find out how to apply by visiting buff.ly/r3uaGuM

BOA is seeking an Assistant Curator (six-month contract) to lead the development of a new collection. An exciting opportunity for post-docs/PhD students to bring primary source material to a wider audience and apply academic expertise in a commercial setting. Apply by 9 November via buff.ly/r3uaGuM

We're delighted to announce that applications are now open for the second year of the Applied History Fellowships, delivered in partnership with the Institute of Historical Research and the Royal Historical Society. Find out more: www.history.ac.uk/fellowships-... #HistoryFellowship

Applications are open for the 2027 SAS Creative Practitioner in Residence Scheme, hosted with institutes including the Institute of Historical Research. The 6-month residency offers a stipend to support artists, writers, filmmakers, curators, and creative practitioners. Apply here: buff.ly/mnO3dCN

📣The Joint BME Small Grants Scheme is open for applications! ❓A scheme to support research, events and activities undertaken by BME historians or focused on the histories of BME people ⏰Deadline: 4 December 2026 👉To find out more and apply, click here: socialhistory.org.uk/funding/bme-...

'Booth’s maps form the backbone of a new exhibition at Senate House library titled A Place to Call Home, which charts the history of housing and poverty in London over the past 200 years.'

Indentures are a type of deed named for their indented cut at the head (technical term, "wiggly line"). Each party kept a copy, and signed and sealed the other copy, so they could provide proof of transfer of title. Here's a nice example of both copies together [TNA E 355/177-178]

Coming soon—Spain and Portugal, 1837–1974: British Foreign Office Confidential Print. Comprising over 27,600 images, it surveys the changes and reconfigurations which the Iberian countries experienced during this period. To learn more, visit the collection page at buff.ly/xpnzjb5.

Containing over 47,000 images sourced from The National Archives (UK), it includes trade ledgers, registers, and indexes that supply detailed statistical data on British trade throughout the globe during the “long eighteenth century”. To learn more, visit the collection page at buff.ly/fuNxB8r.

Explore our fascinating primary source collection—British Mercantile Trade Statistics, 1662–1809.

Found this at work from a document about disaster preparedness - the tragedy at Aberfan 60 years ago today was used as an example. Even within the factual reporting, the emotion & horror of what happened appears. It’s a moment in Welsh history & injustice that remains deeply moving #CofiwnAberfan

If you've not heard this previously, listen. It captures the horror of what happened 60 years ago today in Aberfan and eloquently reflects on how the community had to face their grief and the enormous tragedy in public, and above ground. www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-w... "But Aberfan is different..."

Today we remember 60 yrs since the Aberfan Disaster The impact of the disaster – and the collective grief - was felt far beyond South Wales This poster came to the Archives from Jersey. It shares details of the disaster fund organised by the Jersey Welsh Society on behalf of the people of Jersey

Looking for inspiration, or your next great American Studies read? 📖 The BAAS News & Events feed is updated with brand new books 📚 baas.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

Next Wednesday (Oct 28th) East Midlands Labour is hosting “Politics across the Pond”, an online event all about the upcoming US midterm elections. I will be one of guest speakers offering my expert ten cents. If you’re interested, register here: tickets.eastmidslabour.org.uk/events/thela... 🇺🇸🗳️🌹

there's a lot to this even in many FT/TT jobs (now vanishing) your real intellectual community are people you see once a year at a conference; perhaps your employer pays for you to attend and perhaps not your job itself is a constant effort to prove to your "institution" that your job should exist

Great to see our Maritime Britain project featured in The Times today! Our new database reveals the extraordinary scale of Britain's maritime trade and the importance of European commerce in the development of Britain's empire. Explore the database: maritimebritain.org/database/

The collapse of a coal tip on a school at Aberfan in 1966 "is also felt in the empty places left behind at family tables, in childhood bedrooms which were suddenly occupied by one child instead of two, and in the portraits that came to represent those who never grew up." www.bbc.com/news/article...

There's obviously a serious point here, but it's quite funny optics for the Conservative party to complain that it used to be so much quicker to build a stately home.

The October 2026 update to the Bibliography of British and Irish History adds 4035 new publications. Find out more about what the latest update contains buff.ly/a96pnIb @brepols.net

📣 SHEAR (The Society for Historians of the Early American Republic) is inviting proposals for its annual conference next year, to be held in Richmond, Virginia, on July 15-18, 2027. Deadline to submit is 1 December 2026 See more details below ⬇️ shear.org/annual-meeti...

My favorite bit was when Abdul told Tommy he should study history and quoted JFK. Here’s the link to the original quote from JFK. (Actually 14:49 time mark.)

Marisa's entire piece is terrific, but this part has really stuck with me. A group of College Republicans decided that El-Sayed wasn't "welcome" in the Senate and set out to stop him.

“You need to read history Tommy…”

can't believe America is ready to elect a Rhodes scholar

WATCH: SNL's Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson) crashes SNL UK's cold open.

How to stay in the #CelebrityTraitors: 1. Don’t tell everyone that you are a Traitor. 2. Don’t tell everyone that you want to be a Traitor.

A nice hook for my “The American Civil War and European Powers” class in a few weeks. Civil War memory is everywhere! 🗃️

Sad. But at least she can go back to not being a lawyer.

Better than 'The Uprising' ;) youtu.be/Zi-opAT60to?...

A follow-up... we've had to take measures to block bots, but this seems to be causing problems for some legitimate users. In particular, you might not able to be access the site using Safari. "Switch to another browser" is not the most satisfactory advice(!) but it might work.

using the 49-day measurement for a Truss, a Zacharia would be 0.143 Trusses

This aged really quickly