Dave Addison

And here is where the class dimension becomes unavoidable: wealthier students have always had access to human “AI” – private tutors, professional editors, writing coaches. The university’s AI policy effectively punishes working-class students for accessing the free version of what wealth has always bought. The defence of this model often claims that “writing and idea development are interconnected.” But this argument privileges a specific type of complexity, the kind that aligns with Western academic traditions. It dismisses other forms of knowledge as lesser. Bob Marley was not a great writer in the academic sense, but he demonstrated through song that he was capable of profound philosophical thought. No-one listens to Redemption Song and thinks it would be better as a peer-reviewed journal article. The university’s insistence that writing and thinking are inseparable is not a pedagogical truth, it is epistemological imperialism that has mistaken the technology of one culture for universal human cognition.

This is a truly wild ride. A professor of economics claiming that AI is working class liberation. Hmmm. wonkhe.com/blogs/ai-sha...

The Rise of Christian Kingship in the Early Medieval West Abstract. This book investigates how Christianity changed politics and how politics changed Christianity over the course of the early Middle Ages. Early Ch

Looking forward to reading this new book by Conor O'Brien.
academic.oup.com/book/61836?l...

I had no idea how embedded it was until the recent outage!

Getting universities to reduce reliance on Microsoft/Amazon Web Services etc. will be like trying to turn round an oil tanker. But I do hope this moment will begin to catalyse something.

Ancient Christianities How, over the course of five centuries, one particular god and one particular Christianity came to dominate late Roman imperial politics and piety

I haven't read it yet, but this looks ideal: share.google/9ryH2wa5bQjX.... Paula Fredriksen's other work (esp. on Augustine and Judaism) is excellent.

The second point is definitely true. Relatedly, a distaste for overt, suited professionalism. Truer of some universities than others ...

In my experience this happens a lot more in England than the US. I'm not sure what follows.

New volume of Traditio Vol. 80 (2025) muse.jhu.edu/issue/56113 @projectmuse.bsky.social @xuthal.bsky.social @jmharland.bsky.social @daveaddison.bsky.social

Point of no returns: researchers are crossing a threshold in the fight for funding With so little money to go round, the costs of competing for grants can exceed what the grants are worth. When that happens, nobody wins.

This report in Nature on the costs of competing for & administering scientific grants is shocking: "In other words, European taxpayers will have spent more on the funding process than on the funding itself, and the scientific ecosystem has been drained." www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪

Ha, of course

Thanks so much for reading it! Sorry it's so long ...

Thank you! Yours too

My new article has now been published in the 2025 volume of Traditio. I use a little examined episode on the lower Rhine in the late 350s with the aid of agricultural archaeology to reveal fiscal dependency relations between the Empire & Barbaricum, & the consequences of their rupture. #medievalsky

I'm very happy to see that my new article on the martyrs of Zaragoza is out in this year's Traditio. Many thanks to the Traditio team, who were wonderful to work with! doi.org/10.1017/tdo....

I'm very happy to see that my new article on the martyrs of Zaragoza is out in this year's Traditio. Many thanks to the Traditio team, who were wonderful to work with! doi.org/10.1017/tdo....

The people tell the public that "no historians talk about feudalism anymore" are not really being honest about the debate, at least in British medieval studies. On the Continent feudal paradigms are still going strong, and plenty of useful work is done within them. Especially in Spain.

Well, the big go-to book when I was an undergrad studying the early Middle Ages was Chris Wickham's Framing the Early Middle Ages, and he *does* believe "feudal" can be a useful word. And that's why he was able to write such a structurally ambitious, comparative work. And it's great.

On interdisciplinary work with environmental science and plague aDNA, Kristina Sessa's article is great: muse.jhu.edu/article/725298

Yes, I agree. I wasn't arguing against you in particular. We might well have no disagreement.

I sense, however, some unspoken assumptions in the comments in this thread - specifically that DH was worthy of greater funding than other forms of intellectual labour. If I was over interpreting, that's on me, but I haven't been convinced that I was.

Given the political situation, I have an enormous amount of sympathy with those who have lost funding. I have no sympathy for the manner in which the cuts have been made or the rationale behind them, which I can only see as anti-intellectual and anti-scientific.

(I have no views on the particular expenses of this grant, about which I know nothing, but I do wonder about the intellectual consequences of the apparently prevalent assumption that DH projects are the natural recipients of such prestigious grants).

All of which is to say that I am less alarmed than some commenters on this thread when grants go to people without DH outcomes. I worry about the intellectual effects of prioritising expensive work.

I get that, and I think the exclusion of DH from NEH grants is ridiculous. But I also know that hiring decisions in cash-poor universities are often informed by the size of previous grants, and I worry about the consequences of certain sub-fields systematically drawing more money than others.

Is the idea here that digital humanities deserves, as a matter of course, all the biggest and most prestigious grants?

I think you might benefit from googling Lee Mordechai

Well people can read the pieces and make their mind up. I've said my piece. You have a good day, too!

Fwiw I'm don't even follow the Eisenberg-Mordechai in my own work, but the idea that they are anti science is just false. They accept the aDNA evidence for Y. Pestis, but contest the way a relatively small number of cases are generalized. I have different views, but they made an imp point.

From what I know of Merle's politics I would be amazed if the intention was to lessen the severity of the Covid pandemic, but I don't have any insider info and I can't read the tea leaves. He's on here; I imagine he'll make his case.

I don't think that's the message your (now deleted) skeet sent. Glad you thought twice about it.