Lizzy Williamson

The point isn't to produce essays, it's to teach students how to think for fuck's sake. The minute you automate that, it's over. You might as well close the course. Which they're also doing. This is an attack on learning, and everyone is just shrugging.

open.substack.com/pub/lizzywil...

New on the Shakespearean Graves blog, @lizzywilliamson.bsky.social writes about shared commemorative language and the value of the humanities -- under threat at the University of Exeter and so many institutions worldwide. #ShaxEpitaphs #DefendExeterUni shaxepitaphs.exeter.ac.uk/2026/07/15/j...

Professor Whittle is one of four colleagues in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Faculty at the University of Exeter elected to Fellowship of the British Academy this year. 🗃️ ALL FOUR of these outstanding scholars were placed at risk of redundancy last month. Here's their statement:

When your excellent union re-phrases the VC's fear-mongering all-staff talk:

#DefendExeterUni

We are against these unjustified, cruel and ideologically founded attacks on our University. Exeter is not in financial deficit and the 153 job losses are overwhelmingly directed at the humanities and social sciences. Please sign, share and shout #DefendExeterUni: www.change.org/p/stop-redun...

📣 People are understandably up in the arms about this (it is horrible). But just want to wave a hand out there 👋 as we're going through the same thing in Humanities at Northumbria (1 out of 5 staff need to go by end of July). 1/?

If you asked me, off the top of my head, to name a non-Oxbridge university in England synonymous with excellence in the Humanities - I would probably think of Exeter first. This feels like a very deliberate, targeted and ideological Bonfire of the Humanities

Exeter Green Party stands in solidarity with the Exeter University and College Union in condemning the University of Exeter’s announcement of sweeping job cuts. These plans will recklessly imperil the University’s vital contributions to the social, cultural, and economic life of the city. 1/4

Humanities, arts and social sciences prop up stem - we cost less to run but are modelled as costing the same. Exeter does not have a financial deficit. This is ideological.

The University of Exeter has become the latest Russell Group university to announce major job cuts, insisting it “must” take action to reduce financial pressures. Juliette Rowsell reports #highered #jobcuts https://ow.ly/K8bq50ZfYlY

Another 500+ people facing months of uncertainty. As part of our ongoing Dispatches series, Glen O’Hara asks “What does it mean to live under a constant cloud of uncertainty?” isrf.org/blog/what-do...

UK historians! Please could you help with this survey about AI use? Open to all doing history professionally (independent, uni-based, etc); it's the work of a lovely friend (& brilliant former colleague at @uophistory.bsky.social), @alexandraortolja.bsky.social: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

When utilized in literature review, LLMs consistently 1. fail to mention female authors in female-led literatures, 2. insist that men are more influential or more heavily cited when this is contradicted by objective citation counts, and 3. attribute women’s work to hallucinated male scholars.

Ooh this looks good 😊

Recently, FamilySearch digitized and uploaded tons of microfilmed records, including many from 18th-century Massachsuetts. They're using some sort of AI to transcribe/summarize the handwritten documents. I've noticed that the AI strips out references to race and enslavement in 18thc documents.

My team is hiring a permanent lecturer: -> Lecturer Digital Culture & Society Deadline 28 June 2026. Please share with friends. www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

I wrote a thing on (commercial) digitized archives, digital provenance and slow scholarship: doi.org/10.1093/llc/...

📢Considering a PhD in History?📢 Find out more about what funding is available, and what to include in a PhD research proposal 👇 🗃️ #PhDChat

🎺ANNOUNCEMENT!🎺 STORIES & SONGS: WILLS AS WINDOWS ONTO PAST LIVES Join Chris Hoban and I at #Exeter Phoenix for a unique performance of history & original music inspired by #Tudor, #Stuart & Georgian wills! 🗃️ FREE! Claim your ticket: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1738865536...

The police (wrongly) inform a peaceful protestor that holding a Palestinian flag and signs deploring genocide is an offence under the Terrorism Act. This is the deranged policing environment the government has created.

*really not funny at all. Those loans these managers are taking on bind universities to a high cash reserve (hundreds of millions) for years, leading to more cutting in running cost just to meet the covenant. This is why we need a governance review alongside a financial structure reform. #UKHE

Hello Bluesky, in September I'll be out of contract and would be grateful to hear of any potential teaching (early modern lit) or research (with archives, rare books, humanities data) work. I'm based in SW England. Thank you!

Another stimulating day at #RenSoc25: rich keynote by Subha Mukherji; I especially liked panel on bibliographic data science (unsurprisingly!) Good discussion of potential and pitfalls of data-led approaches to incomplete em sources by @fredschurink.bsky.social, @annalujz.bsky.social, Pete Morris

My personal fav panel from yesterday was John-Mark Philo's project on Global Libraries, check it out if you like books, travel, knowledge exchange, and putting the past in dialogue with the present (in this case forced migrants' lack of/access to libraries) #RenSoc25 www.globallibrary.net/about

Rounding off yesterday's #RenSoc25 panels with a hybrid lecture/concert with David Bednall was gorgeous, what conference wouldn't benefit from a little choral inspiration?

Totally fabulous paper just given by Lucy Havens on gender bias/archives/ML, recording will be available with RLUK for those who missed it

Hello. We're the Digital Humanities Lab at the University of Exeter and you can find out more about the work we do here: www.exeter.ac.uk/research/dig... We support teaching and research including the digital preservation, analysis and display of cultural heritage materials, text and objects.

As accurately predicted here for a long time, the number of UK universities actively making redundancies has now risen to 80. This wil rise to 90, then 100, during the next calendar year. qmucu.org/qmul-transfo...

25% discount on new paperback! Elizabethan Diplomacy and Epistolary Culture digs into information gathering in C16th politics, with focus on the materiality and provenance of manuscript sources as they exist across digital archives and their analogue antecedents www.routledge.com/Elizabethan-...

Is it true? Is it like the good old days here? I have missed social media that didn't feel hellish or banal 🙏

It's happening: my ERC Consolidator project 🪶#FEATHERS🪶is organising a 3-day international conference on early modern scribal culture & manuscript production at @unileiden.bsky.social on 7-9 May 2025. See Call for Papers (deadline for abstracts 20 Dec): student.universiteitleiden.nl/en/events/20...