Laura O'Brien

Northumbria University staff announce 10 more days of strikes in pensions row UCU members at Northumbria University have confirmed that they will take another 10 days of strike action, as a dispute over an alleged 'pension grab' continues

PLEASE SHARE! @ucu.org.uk As it says @ucunorthumbria.bsky.social are always happy to talk - our door is open to management @northumbriauni.bsky.social . But members will never, ever accept pay and pension injustice! www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-e...

Right now I am joining colleagues @ucunorthumbria.bsky.social on picket. I should be preparing for a seminar today on barricade fighting and 1848. Do you know how *hard* it is for me to not be doing this session?! That’s how much we care about this action in defence of pensions, pay, and bargaining.

✊✊👉@ucunorthumbria.bsky.social are back on strike next week, all week. No-one wants to be, and no-one is asking for more than keeping what we have. For our communities, colleagues, and students, we will never accept the pay and pension injustice planned by management at @northumbriauni.bsky.social

@ucunorthumbria.bsky.social members are proud to teach students from around the world 🌍. But @northumbriauni.bsky.social plans to slash staff pay and pensions affect them too, as these words of fire 🔥and solidarity ✊from a student show. Happy staff = happy students: ucu-unn.org.uk/blogucu/327-...

union power is people power is written in white on a black background Alt: union power is people power is written in white on a black background

ON STRIKE again this week - the university administration wants to take £100,000 out of my pension because they're bad at math and undercosted their construction plans -I stand with my colleagues in @ucunorthumbria.bsky.social, not asking for more just to keep what we've been promised.

Pensions are the headline but more concerning to me and many others is the university’s commitment to withdraw from national collective bargaining. A disaster for us all if this is normalised. Any smidge of solidarity is gratefully received. And now to put on my waders…

The first session is at the end of the month with David Hopkin about LACEMAKING.

Now, watch me throw his cool Lace In Context website (laceincontext.com/category/lac...) at my maternal family which was one of the cross-border lace making factories:

Ongoing decimation of British universities part 252:

Apx. 1000 academic staff at University of Essex just received formal ‘risk of redundancy’ letters via email.

Please share @ucuessex.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk

Sign the Petition SAVE AMERICAN STUDIES TEACHING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM

American Studies and a variety of other programs under under threat at the University of Nottingham. Lend your voice to the petition.

If anyone thought Bruce Springsteen would back down after Donald Trump’s threats, last night he doubled down: “In my country, they're taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they inflict on loyal American workers. They're rolling back historic civil rights legislation that led to a more just society”

Historians for Trans Rights - Open Letter to MPs In light of the recent and incessant attacks on the trans community in the UK by the UK government and legal system, a group of UK-based historians have drafted the letter linked below. Our aim is to ...

OPEN LETTER: HISTORIANS FOR TRANS RIGHTS

Are you a historian in the UK or working on UK history fed up at seeing the history of LGBTQIA+ discrimination repeat itself? Sign this open letter to MPs demanding they stand up for trans rights now!

Letter: tinyurl.com/879vuver
Sign: tinyurl.com/4p7wktrn

Caught between genuinely thinking the Michel Thomas audio method will work for my language learning and my misophonia going haywire at Michel’s mouth noises on certain tracks 😵‍💫

The backstory of Reacher author Lee Child as a union guy in Granada TV is new to me! Jack Reacher would not cross a picket line I'm pretty sure!

. @annettejosephg.bsky.social discussing her students’ brilliant project “Mapping Marronage” - but highlights immediately that this project would not be funded now, due to anti-DEI policies. This is a really powerful discussion about the conditions in which global history can get done.

Actually the image doesn't explain why it's so exciting -- the book is about modern New York as the most linguistically diverse place that has ever existed on earth, the work of the Endangered Language Alliance in documenting & supporting marginalised languages, and the stories of their speakers.

Enjoying waving remotely at @rpanchasi.bsky.social and the rest of the stellar panel for tonight’s @frenchhistory.bsky.social event on French and francophone global history…

Let’s be real though, the blame isn’t just to be laid at Westminster’s door. These swingeing cuts and increasingly crappy conditions (physical, as well as everything else) never seem to hit the upper echelons of the sector. Weird, huh.

The Guardian view on campus cuts: academics pay a high price for Westminster’s mistakes | Editorial Editorial: The government should not stand aloof as a crisis unfolds in our universities. A new settlement is needed

Wait…an editorial on universities that *doesn’t* blame staff and actually thinks we suffer as a result of the problems in the sector?! www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Alexa play “My Happy Place” by @divinecomedyhq.bsky.social merciiiiii

Thank you!!!! @emilyscartoons.bsky.social you’ve made some religious history dorks very happy ❤️😍

Saw this on the other place. Immediately thought of @onslies.bsky.social. #nuntastic

The Algeria Analogy We must turn to histories of decolonization not in order to predictoutcomes, but to expand our sense of how to fight without knowing the future.

“We should ask not whether what unfolded in 🇩🇿 is especially similar to 🇵🇸, but how reading these histories together might help us consider what decolonization feels like not as an end point, but as an ongoing process.” The always-great @arthurasseraf.bsky.social on Algeria and Palestine.

Question: does anyone know if there are decent digitised runs of 1950s/1960s British women’s magazines - not for me, for a student? Woman’s Own seems only to exist in hard copy in various libraries…

THIS FRIDAY! It's going to be spectacular, so don't miss out!
#LowCountries #EarlyModern #FoodHistory #SkyStorians

Goodbye to the lost children of Gaza. You were loved, you are remembered, you did not deserve it | Nesrine Malik There is no way to rationalise the horrors inflicted on Gaza’s innocent children. Now is the time to mourn them fully For the past week, Palestinians in Gaza have been returning to their homes, now mostly reduced to rubble – and to their dead who still…

Goodbye to the lost children of Gaza. You were loved, you are remembered, you did not deserve it | Nesrine Malik

Me, writing my book, 4 years in, and still not being quite sure what it is.

Cover of Napoleonic Objects and their Afterlives.

Extremely hot book cover klaxon! “Napoleonic Objects and their Afterlives”, edited by @matildagreig.bsky.social and Nicole Cochrane, coming on 6 February (and featuring a chapter from me on Napoleonic performance w/Albert Dieudonné as key case study). www.bloomsbury.com/uk/napoleoni...

A black and white print from 1793 depicting the decapitated head of French ex-king Louis XVI

21 January: execution of Louis XVI. “Something for crowned jugglers to ponder”, as this contemporary print warns. Mort aux tyrans, indeed…

Search engines exist. Calendars and reminders are already on your phone and email client. No one needs to use immense amounts of energy and water and stolen IP to make a worse version!