My dad was friends with someone at school who was put in the “slow learners” class, and got (I think) one A Level - he later became a physics professor at Oxford… academic performance at school has no bearing on intellect, it’s just such a Victorian idea of what education is.
📣Out now on #firstview!
Molly Groarke (@mollygroarke.bsky.social) (@camhistory.bsky.social) on 'Imperial Family Biographies and New Approaches to the Family in Histories of the British Empire, c.1650–c.1950'
#Empire #Family #Personal #Review 📜🗃️
👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
This is a fantastic piece about UCL from Georgina Brewis, which made me reflect on my own four years as a student there. Lots of parallels with exploring London and engaging with topical issues - less so with the bawdy entertainment in taverns...
www.historytoday.com/archive/feat...
Very happy to announce my article is now out with the @historicaljnl.bsky.social! It reviews the current literature on family networks in the British Empire and biographical approaches to writing imperial history
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
100% this. I picked apart that report here:
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
“Studying history, we know that nothing is inevitable.”
In the first piece in a series on artificial intelligence, @amywb.bsky.social argues that now is the time to make the case for studying the humanities.
Read the full piece at Broadsides: www.nacbs.org/post/the-ai-...
🇺🇸 The U.S. is actively dismantling its own soft power
(Had they asked, I would gladly have sent them this...)
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Media outlets are still giving airtime to that Microsoft report on AI and the workplace, even though its methods and conclusions are so crude... and they're also not balancing it with any of the report's critiques.
This was published yesterday:
fortune.com/article/what...
And it’s also just manifestly untrue that military history was the only history for ‘thousands of years’ - like, Herodotus wrote a cultural history of the Persian empire as much as he documented their wars with Greece
The discourse around it is the more significant thing, regardless of whether it's genuine or just hyped marketing. For many people 'the age of AI' is absolutely real, here and now. And that's presenting problems for historians (and others) to grapple with - as seen in that Microsoft report.
Front page of 'Transactions of the Royal Historical Society' Comment article, title 'The Historian in the Age of AI', by Chris Campbell. Full abstract: "This comment interrogates the methods and conclusions of Working with AI, a recent report conducted under the auspices of Microsoft, which identified historians as the profession with the second-highest ‘AI applicability’. It finds that the authors’ conclusions are based on an erroneous simplification and misrepresentation of a historian’s typical professional tasks, which have been publicly amplified by extensive media coverage. This comment then offers a wider provocation about the report’s conception of a professional historian, and whether it is related to the public application of ‘historian’ to a number of different practitioners with varied training and qualifications. In particular, it seeks to highlight a paradox which the report exposes: that we cannot defend the specialist training and expertise of professional historians against the encroachment of AI without also separating the academic skills and qualifications of historians from those engaged in more popular forms of historical writing and communication. The comment questions how we might grapple with this paradox without reverting to academic elitism."
This week we also published its latest article in the Society's journal 'Transactions'.
'The Historian in the Age of AI' by @chriscampbell1.bsky.social
explores what it means to be a historian, and why historical skills and craft need to defended and understood bit.ly/4atErTB #Skystorians 1/2
Thank you! And thanks for all your editorial help!
Front page of 'Transactions of the Royal Historical Society' Comment article, title 'The Historian in the Age of AI', by Chris Campbell. Full abstract: "This comment interrogates the methods and conclusions of Working with AI, a recent report conducted under the auspices of Microsoft, which identified historians as the profession with the second-highest ‘AI applicability’. It finds that the authors’ conclusions are based on an erroneous simplification and misrepresentation of a historian’s typical professional tasks, which have been publicly amplified by extensive media coverage. This comment then offers a wider provocation about the report’s conception of a professional historian, and whether it is related to the public application of ‘historian’ to a number of different practitioners with varied training and qualifications. In particular, it seeks to highlight a paradox which the report exposes: that we cannot defend the specialist training and expertise of professional historians against the encroachment of AI without also separating the academic skills and qualifications of historians from those engaged in more popular forms of historical writing and communication. The comment questions how we might grapple with this paradox without reverting to academic elitism."
What does Gen AI mean for the work of the historian and the value of historical experience, skills and craft?
'The Historian in the Age of AI' by @chriscampbell1.bsky.social.
New Comment article now available in 'Transactions of the Royal Historical Society' bit.ly/4atErTB #Skystorians 1/2
Thanks for sharing!
Thank you, that's very kind!
If anyone remembers that list which said historians were second in line to be replaced by AI, I've had some thoughts about it... and how it relates to some aspects of public history and the current climate facing historians.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Well that’s embarrassing
Archival find:
Here's Churchill exploiting his diplomatic connections to maintain his usual supply of whisky, despite French import quotas.
🚨 Job Alert!
We're recruiting a part-time freelance managing editor to join the CEH editorial team.
Applications are due by 30 November 2025.
Full details and application process here:
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Dream PhD opportunity! We are recruiting another doctoral researcher in our @erc.europa.eu synergy project BLOCKADE - this one is on interwar blockades and sanctions. 4 years, fully funded at @uvahumanities.bsky.social and supervised by the amazing and super kind @samuelkruizinga.bsky.social
🧵 In CEH's first digest (tinyurl.com/38p3yxky), our six editors each highlighted a recent article they have particularly enjoyed working on.
This thread showcases these articles and explores why our editors made their selections. ⬇️ [1/7]
Dubai seems to be to the current Right as the early Soviet Union was to the interwar Left - presentationally utopian, but highly choreographed and hiding a darker truth.
Both examples of how soft power can shape a place's image and influence political discourse.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
"A Global Mission of Faith and Freedom", a new exhibition opens tomorrow at Killerton House, Devon, including some findings from my PhD research. Free entry this weekend as part of Heritage Open Days!
@researchnt.bsky.social
Find out more here: www.instagram.com/reel/DOLKZAk...
Today is the last day to sign up for this! ⬇️⬇️
📣 We're delighted to announce that CEH is now Gold Open Access!
All articles accepted to the journal will be published #OpenAccess, regardless of the author's funding situation.
More information and FAQs about this change below! ⬇️
www.cambridge.org/core/open-re...
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What did nineteenth-century British public school students think about Islam and the British Empire? Find out in my blog post, written as part of my doctoral internship with the excellent Schools of Empire research project: www.schoolsofempireproject.org/islam-and-em...
