Sonya Cronin

Happy International Women’s Day from @voicestcd.bsky.social! Check out latest blog on the technology to recover lives of women from Irish history ☘️ who were hiding in plain sight 🕵️ blog includes demo of tech 🖥️ @janeohlmeyer.bsky.social @tlrhub.bsky.social @adaptcentre.bsky.social

If you’re in Melbourne at the end of the month I’m doing a lecture www.slv.vic.gov.au/whats-on/202...

The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, at Birkbeck, University of London, is looking for a talented researcher to join a project focused on expanding our understanding of non elite writers and writing in seventeenth century England. As Postdoctoral Research Associate you will join 'Written Worlds in Seventeenth-Century England', an exciting Leverhulme Trust–funded project. The role is offered on a 13 month, part time (17.5 hours a week) contract with a salary of £22,124 rising to £25,189 per annum (pro-rated £44,247 to £50,379 per annum). In this role, you will carry out dedicated research on non elite textual production, working closely with the Principal Investigator, Professor Sue Wiseman, and the Co Investigator, Dr Brodie Waddell. You will have the opportunity to work extensively with manuscripts and printed sources, visit archives, investigate datasets, develop the project database, and contribute to shaping the project’s scholarly outputs - and you may also be involved in textual editing. As Research Associate, you will focus on one of two thematic strands: 1. Non elite writing produced in the provinces, or 2. Writing produced by non elite women. Further details via link

We are hiring postdoc researchers to join our #WrittenWorlds project at Birkbeck, with Sue Wiseman, @mdpowelldavies.bsky.social, @richardjansell.bsky.social and I.

0.5FTE, 13 months, focus on women's or provincial non-elite writing #EarlyModern 🗃️
cis7.bbk.ac.uk/vacancy/post...

Women, Gender and Sexuality in Premodern Literature and Culture Welcome to Cambridge Core

Delighted to be series editor for Cambridge Elements in Women, Gender and Sexuality in Premodern Literature and Culture. If you have something cool and interesting you’d like to work with us on please get in touch (micrograph 20-30k)

www.cambridge.org/core/publica...

It’s Fairies on Fridays, once more!

The Book Proposal Book A step-by-step guide to crafting a compelling scholarly book proposal—and seeing your book through to successful publication

I think Laura Porterwood-Stacer's Book Proposal Book offers some great advice on when and how to negotiate the contract that applies to this — it's definitely easier for later-career folks with more security, but she outlines questions you can and should ask +

press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

And also that they will not put your unpublished manuscript into an AI to generate marketing copy. Don’t ask me how I know.

Some academic publishing contract advice: make sure your contract specifies 1. a qualified human copyeditor will copyedit on the MS; 2. a qualified human proofreader will proofread the MS; 3. that production must have a proper system for version control (!).

A colorized image from 1588 showing dancing people, a musican, and a few very big dabbers.

Just giant dabbers flying around while people are dancing. I am unsure what they are celebrating, but giant ink-balls were used in #earlymodern printing offices in the last step before printing. Such dabbers consist of pieces of leather filled with wool or hair and a wooden handle. #bookhistory

Clio Reframed aims to explore historical writing and historiography produced by women between the sixteenth and mid-eighteenth centuries, asking why, when and to what purpose and effect women chose different historical subjects as their focus; to situate these texts within their social, religious, political, and textual production contexts, with the aim of expanding our critical understanding of historical writing that often elides the participation of women; and to challenge narratives that homogenize women’s interests in history and their writing strategies. It proposes that women’s historical writing is not an essentially gendered or isolated space in which individual contributions and agendas are uniform. Rather, women’s historical writing is diverse, prevalent, and characterized by relational frameworks and networks, involving other writers, patrons, stationers, and readers.

#CfP: Clio Reframed: Women Writing History, 1500-1750. Oxford, June 18-19, 2026 Abstracts by Feb 28 '26. Featuring a quintessential quartet of keynotes: @rhetorician.bsky.social, Claire Gheeraert-Graffeuille, @emiliekmmurphy.bsky.social, & Sue Wiseman www.rensoc.org.uk/event/clio-r... #SRS_Sponsored

Have just searched it again to send more feedback but it has changed, the section has vanished. Google couldn’t have corrected it that quickly…could it…gaslit by google. Exasperated.

Read more here electricscotland.com/history/mora...

May your Christmas be filled with mayhem, happiness and spontaneous snoozes, much akin to Mya’s Christmas morning. ✨✨

May your times be filled with mayhem and happiness.

Just altogether absurd.

A completely unprompted surprise today from my institutional library. Very lovely indeed.

Tolerance and Dissent University of Fribourg (Switzerland), June 24, 2026 - June 26, 2026 Deadline for submission/application: January 15, 2026 9th biennial conference of the Swiss Association of Medieval and Early Modern English Studies We are inviting abstracts for 20-min papers or complete panels in the field of medieval and early modern English studies or adjacent disciplines for the 9th biennial conference of the Swiss Association of Medieval and Early Modern English Studies (SAMEMES), which will be dedicated to the topic of ”Tolerance and Dissent.” The conference will take place at the University of Fribourg, from 24-26 June 2026. The deadline for the submission of abstracts (c. 250 words + a short bionote of max. 100 words) is 15 January 2026. Please send your abstract, or any other conference-related query, to the following email address: samemes2026[at]unifr.ch. Select papers presented at this conference will be published in the open-access and peer-reviewed Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature (SPELL) in 2027. More information on the conference, travel recommendations, travel grants, etc. is available under www.samemes2026.com. Please send your abstract, or any other conference-related query, to samemes2026[at]unifr.ch. We would be delighted to welcome you to Fribourg in June 2026!

CFP: Tolerance and Dissent

Deadline for abstracts 15 January 2026
Conference: 24-26 June 2026, University of Fribourg
Travel grants available for graduate students
#EarlyModern #SkyStorians
all info: www.rensoc.org.uk/event/tolera...

Thanks for the tag, great news!

Today on the blog: a magnificent find by @franceswolfreston.bsky.social of a book that the poet Katherine Philips gave to Mary Jeffreys; a discussion with important scholarly implications for the study of Philips earlymodernfemalebookownership.wordpress.com/2025/10/27/h... #EarlyModern #HerBook

Wonderful find!

What a delightful find!

We have just joined BlueSky! Since our foundation in 1880, we have reproduced an unrivalled selection of historic maps, plans and views of London. We also publish books and monographs containing original research. See more of what we have to offer at: londontopsoc.org

I ask my students not to use AI because it means they are not fully engaging with their own learning. If they do, it’s a betrayal of my trust.

I don’t want to use AI to grade student work because it means that I am not fully engaging with their learning. If I do, it’s a betrayal of their trust

Well, that concludes a week long trawl at the #NationalLibraryofScotland. 🙏 A lovely experience and only the beginning! #earlymodern #earlymodernwomen #songbooks and #miscellanies #earlymoderncreatives

Damn, was just gearing up for a good soliloquy! #edinburgh #earlymodernprejudice #ifeelopressed

An amusingly blasé address to John Scot of Scots Tarvet ‘at Edinburgh, or where soever he is’. #earlymodernletters #earlymodernadresses #scottishhistory

Um, this wasn’t on my archival itinerary. 😏

A lovely view from special collections reading room at #nationallibraryofscotland; a tonic for tired eyes.

Items are ordered from the NLS, I think will not require coffee that morning for the excitement will be coursing through my veins.

Many Irish citizens as well. Please protect them @simonharrisireland.bsky.social