@kabcommons
Researching immigration control in 17C England, and what it tells us about citizenship now and then. Co-convenor @ihr.bsky.social Migration and Mobility Seminar + currently work in refugee and migration legal(ish) sector
Performative cruelty (again); refugee status is already temporary. Shortening it causes massive distress to refugees, many of whom have been waiting for leave for years. Given the HO already has a huge backlog, how will they resource reviews for every refugee at 30 months? tinyurl.com/ycx5ewty
V pleased to be part of the Migrants' Law Project who are representing @safepassageintl.bsky.social in this important case: www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026.... The MLP's lawyers + SPI have worked incredibly hard since last September to get this case into court
John Cowell! Nobody's favourite
V pleased (& scared) to be sharing some of my research at the Oxford Early Modern Britain seminar on how the legal status of "infidel" was deployed in early modern England in different ways to control Jewish migrants and enslaved Africans: talks.ox.ac.uk/talks/id/e1f...
This looks like an amazing intervention into thinking about bordering (thinking particularly as someone who is banging the drum for bringing the law back into early modern migration history - which revolves around (legally enforced) internal borders)
The next @ihr.bsky.social Migration and Mobility Seminar is on 3rd March - @conniethomas.bsky.social will be presenting 'Public activism and the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts' - of (huge) interest to those interested in migration, citizenship & US history. Sign up here: tinyurl.com/3s6yym7t
The next @ihrhistorylab.bsky.social Migration and Mobility Seminar is on 3rd March - @conniethomas.bsky.social will be presenting 'Public activism and the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts' - of (huge) interest to those interested in migration, citizenship & US history. Sign up here: tinyurl.com/3s6yym7t
This was a real testament to the breadth of approaches in migration and mobility history, and an exciting peek into some amazing future directions for this work
It was a real pleasure and privilege for the @ihr.bsky.social Migration and Mobility Seminar to host a showcase of postgrad students' work in migration history with @ihrhistorylab.bsky.social last night - some fascinating papers on academic mobility, gender, vikings and Irish "displaced patriots"
A 1680s view on Calvin's Case: " “there is scarce any one Proposition…advanced through that whole Case… but what may be answered (that is, contradicted) by something else of the same Author in the same Case”.
I am once again imploring people to not abuse Calvin's Case to argue against birthright citizenship in the US: it simply summarised a bunch of (contested) legal thinking. More important is that in 17thC legal practice, birthright subjecthood most certainly *was* a thing tinyurl.com/2rjyvwnb
Less than a week to sign up for our exciting showcase of new research directions in migration and mobility history, ft. Vikings, Germans in interwar Turkey, Cumann na mBan & female Indian scholars in England with @ihr.bsky.social @ihrhistorylab.bsky.social 3rd Feb, book here: tinyurl.com/3bxsdy32
Hello, I have a new book out in the spring with Picador and I would love it if you could help me spread the word.
IF WE TOLERATE THIS draws on years of work, to help readers understand why British politics is hurtling rightwards and what to do about it.
Pre-orders: uk.bookshop.org/p/books/if-w...
Wonderful paper yesterday from Nadia Joseph @ihr.bsky.social Migration and Mobility Seminar on mobility, Apartheid, exile, & the personal and political. Next up, an exciting showcase of new research on migration in partnership with @ihrhistorylab.bsky.social! 3rd Feb, book here: tinyurl.com/3bxsdy32
PhD Graduation photo of a woman and her mother
Thank you Sheffield (and my mum)!
I know!!
!!!!!
Really delighted to have Nadia Joseph at the first @ihr.bsky.social Migration and Mobility Seminar of 2026 speaking on anti-apartheid activism and mobility. Sign up here! www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...
Congratulations!
In addition to academic stuff about migration, I am Director of a small charity providing group therapies to torture survivors: vital work as the govt seeks to marginalise & isolate refugees. We have a match funding campaign this week, pls give if you can: donate.biggive.org/campaign/a05...
My (unpublished) thesis goes back further, to 17thC law governing access to subjects' rights for migrants, if you want to go deep
From the government that first refused to allow unaccompanied children seeking asylum to access family reunion, then suspended *all* family reunion.
By carefully tracing longer histories of exclusion (& refugee challenges to this) we can provide a useful corrective to the notion that Britain has a "proud history of welcome", so often used by the govt to justify contemporary attacks on the concept of refuge.
As the UK moves towards redefining what constitutes a refugee (in questionably legal ways), I want to highlight my piece looking at previous English experiments in refugee protection. There is a long (long) prehistory of exclusion - and if refugee resistance to this
"Palestinians experience the displacement of the 2020s genocide not as a singular event, but as part of a repeated cycle."
Anne Irfan on the importance of writing Gaza's history.
papers on early modern US migration law @conniethomas.bsky.social, British Gypsies and Roma, refugees from apartheid, migrants in ancient Greece, work on churches and sanctuary & a @ihrhistorylab.bsky.social collaboration for ECRs and PhDs working on migration and mobility!
Great paper at the @ihr.bsky.social Migration and Mobility Seminar yesterday by Ben Braber on media depictions of migrants in 19th & 20thC British media. We'll be back in 2026 with...
Cannot wrap my head around the fact that Labour's new policies for refugees are both performatively cruel but also obviously nonsensical. People seeking asylum won't get financial support if they "can work" but the ban on asylum seekers' working won't be lifted? Meaningless and stupid "announcement"
To reiterate, this is about making life immeasurably more miserable and stressful for some of the most vulnerable people, in the almost certainly vain hope of winning over the votes of racists.
Anything more shabby and shameful is difficult to envisage.
Our next @ihr.bsky.social Migration and Mobility Seminar will be on 25th November. We will be welcoming Ben Braber to present on depictions of immigrants in British media between 1841 and 2021 - sign up link here: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...