Clare Downham

Available for pre-order (Hive is the cheapest offer just now £12.49) #medievalsky #booksky #skystorians #history www.penguin.co.uk/books/452352...

‘Robinson - who has said Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk is paying his legal costs - was released on bail and will be sentenced on 16 December’ #musk #tesla news.sky.com/story/tommy-...

A new, greatly expanded edition of a book about generations of Oxford University’s Black scholars will be launched in November. ‘Black Oxford’ draws on more than a decade of research by author Pamela Roberts since its original 2013 publication.

Your chance to vote in the Irish Book Awards, including well loved authors including Sally Hayden, Colm Toibin, Irish Studies colleague Frank Shovlin and Irish language books #booksky #gaeilge www.irishbookawards.ie/vote/

🧵 Three years on, the genocide in Gaza has been named by states, UN bodies, courts, human rights organizations and genocide scholars — yet it has not been stopped.

Gwilim bastart 1066 Brut y Tywysogion (Chronicle of the Princes) National Library of Wales, Peniarth MS 19

Can't get your students to the Bayeux Tapestry? Bring the Bayeux Tapestry to your classroom! We're delighted to be joined by historian Emily A. Winkler for a special webinar for teachers and students exploring the stories, secrets and significance of the Bayeux Tapestry. tinyurl.com/y368cdnc

One of the many reasons why we love the team at @victoriagallery.bsky.social , always friendly, helpful and welcoming to all 🥰

...at the 7th Ulidia conference I officially launched the proceedings. The 8th Ulidia conference took place this June. Today for the first time, I finally hold the physical volume of the proceedings in my own hands. Downloadable for free at mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/id/eprint/21...

Some leaves of the Voynich manuscript fold out. This one opens into three: plants, and a text no one has ever managed to read. Image: Beinecke MS 408, ff. 88v-89r. Yale University. Public domain. #VoynichManuscript

In a joint letter to Mark Zuckerberg, ranking members of the House Oversight and Judiciary committees wrote “corporate censorship of political speech raise[s] serious concerns about Meta’s dedication to ensuring free and fair elections.”

Viking values? #medievalsky #history #vikingsky #archaeology do consider giving this great new account a follow!!

Runes in the British Isles: on the Isle of Man two crosses in three were raised for a woman – against one stone in thirty in Sweden. Gaelic and Norse names share families, and the Swedes who wrote of England at home left almost no runes there. #runology #MedievalSky #EarlyMedieval

In this calendar November is the time for a roaring fire and smithying. #medievalcalendar BL Cotton MS Tiberius B V /1; 11th century; f.8r @blmedieval.bsky.social

We did see that coming.

Women help raise one runestone in four, but only one in thirty is raised for a woman. Were women the vanguard of Christianity, as is often said? Our figures point to inheritance instead. #runestones #runology #MedievalSky #EarlyMedieval

in person or online lecture in Oxford next week - the Genealogy of I var the Boneless events.ox.ac.uk/oxford_event... #medievalsky #history

Luis Sandoval is the 60th person to die in ICE custody. From Folkston ICE Facility to El Valle Detention Center, ICE detention is deadly.

This is wholesome.

updates.ashmolean.org/cr/AQjMhhYQt... New Exhibition forthcoming at the Ashmolean #archaeology #museums #medievalsky Anglo-Saxon England Treasures, Travel & Trade

As a published researcher, I do not want to submit my unpublished work to a company that is going to run it through an AI. If I’ve spent months working on it, a peer reviewer can do me the courtesy of spending half an hour reading it. Anyone else feel the same?

BUT IS THERE TERRY'S CHOCOLATE ORANGE OR BAKLAVA DOWN THERE? @dfgillie.bsky.social (Would love to go!)

Anthropic stole Georgia voter data. It's CEO should be prosecuted How the company Anthropic stole Georgia Voter data was through AI software THEY coded, Claude. Anthropic & the other AI Chatbot programs should all be shut down & their CEOs investigated, prosecuted & imprisoned for theft & harm

Let’s not forget, Musk and Trump got their hands on the inner workings of electronic voting booths - so assuming Grok isn’t advanced enough to access them yet, it will be by 2028.

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

Vučić concedes defeat to Serbia’s student movement! After Orbán, another huge blow to Putin and Trump. Maybe Europe isn’t lost after all ? 🇷🇸🇪🇺 #Serbia

An excerpt from #ThePathlessLand in today's Irish Times. It's not that Ireland *never* had a network of rights of way, comparable to those in France or Wales; it's that it *lost* them... How it lost them - and whether there's any hope to get some of them back - is what I'm trying to figure out.

Book proofs went back last night, with the draft index done. Annoyed at a few examples of eye skip when doing translation and never intuitively knowing when to use commas, but *generally* I am quite happy with this. Sneak peak of contents … #medievalsky #booksky

For this week for #calling353 at @thejournal.ie I looked at a small sample of Ireland’s spooky placenames and asked if the spookiness is warranted . jrnl.ie/7202846

"The short-termism of universities burning through their social licence neatly parallels the roll out of the resource-hungry, carbon intensive data centres on which AI depends. In both cases, the underlying philosophy might be rendered as après moi, le déluge (after me, the flood)"

'Tiree Wave' by Beth Robertson Fiddes, contemporary painter of Western Scottish sea and landscapes #womensart

Among other contributions, open access version of my paper revisiting the origins of the Kingdom of Man and the Isles using under-utilised evidence from Ireland #medievalsky #scotland #hebrides #isleofman #history #stair

Well that was a bit different - visit to Williamson Tunnels beneath Liverpool built at the behest of an eccentric tobacco merchant, partly as a job creation scheme in the early 19th century #history #liverpool someone needs to do ghost tours here 👻

Technology doesn't control society, humans do. Powerful voices are pushing AI into every corner of our lives, from classrooms to jobs. But despite what they say, AI is not inevitable. It is a political choice and we can choose a different future. #TechEthics #SystemChange #YouthVoices

“This appears to be a long document ... save time by reading a summary.” “Thanks. But my flying fish is already working on it.”

I was wondering what the actual figure might be. Why isn’t the collapse of UK HE as a sector reported as the social crisis it is.

"Chris Wickham (1950-2026): A Portrait" by current Past & Present Editor and Chichele Professor of Medieval History Alice Rio (@ox.ac.uk) for @oxhistoryfaculty.bsky.social www.history.ox.ac.uk/articles/chr...

'Crouching hare' by UK textile artist Rachel Wright, machine embroidered on calico with various fabrics #Womensart

Woah - boards of service in the Marines and the Navy are ignoring Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth's order to purge transgender troops from the military. "Navy and Marine Corps boards have voted to retain trans members in nine of 12 cases." www.nytimes.com/2026/10/23/u...