Helen Lovatt

Agreed!

Misophonia + dentist’s waiting room = deep breathing needed

I agree to publish this image under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence.

Wooden bench surrounded by greenery with E.M. Barraud inscribed on the back

Here’s the bench! Hope this dies the job, can email higher resolution if needed

Byron Society PhD bursary - The Byron Society invites applications for a PhD bursary of up to £5,000 per year.

Byron Society PhD Bursary - up to £5,000 for 2026-27. ​
New & existing full-time PhD students enrolled at a UK university & working on any aspect of the life, work &/or influence of Lord Byron can apply. Deadline: May 1st, 2026. More details: www.thebyronsociety.com/phd-bursary #C19th #byron

Agree with this. Vocabulary also an issue. Fronted adverbials etc are not the solution. Kids need to love reading, writing and learning about words. Read more, write more, learn more languages. Less tick box assessment, more joy in discovery.

As of tonight, licenses of trans people across Kansas are being invalidated en masse, enabling the overnight criminalization of an entire group of people for going about our lives. It’s often said you never know when you’re living through history, so let me assure you: that’s what’s happening now.

One of the unexpected challenges of teaching Latin (I mean, it came up last semester, so I guess now an expected challenge) is helping students whose struggle is that they're not well prepared for complex *English* grammar, like relative clauses or participial phrases, because they don't use them.

So sorry

To start writing again. If you’re convinced you’re about to be sacked, how do you do long term work? Avoid this consultant induced death spiral if you possibly can.

I still have so many brilliant conscientious thoughtful colleagues, but morale is rock bottom, and this sort of destabilisation creates post traumatic behaviour which lasts for years. I took over HoD after redundancies and merger between classics and archaeology, and it was so hard for colleagues

It’s all gone downhill so quickly. Nottingham used to be a good, supportive, ethical employer, broadly. Not perfect, but actually valuing all the different aspects of academic life. New management and it’s all gone sideways.

It’s worse than it looks too. Cuts to admin staff have massively increased admin workload across the board and they are considering including PGR supervision as research time = taking it off the workload. Meanwhile university valued research = desperately chasing funding but no buyout after success.

I am completely empty. I think today is a recovery day. I can hear the rooks and the house is cold. Pick six things and roll a dice?

I've learned that a lot of guys visualize our social environment like this: [image of a graph with two points] good men / crazed evil men but it's actually closer to this: [image of a graph that is a spectrum with the following points] heroic men who will intervene well-meaning men who underestimate the issue men who think predation is an unfortunate fact of life men who think certain women deserve it( but aren't active predators ) men who passively enjoy/consume/encourage predation textbook predators we're all aware of monsters so cruel we can't even fathom them

added alt-text.

That is an excellent article. Many thanks for doing it. Tail Corn is still the name of our village magazine, and there is still a village library, currently in the village hall, although for many years housed in a shed in the back garden of Barbara (whose surname I’ve forgotten).

Fantastic! Yes, can do. Where is it?

One of the side concerns I have about this BAFTA news cycle is that, as a trans woman living in the UK I can attest to the fact that pitting a clash between a poorly understood oppressed group's human rights and a more culturally legible group's rights, even with it not being a deliberate set up...

One of the worst things about AI, for me, is that it takes away from people the sheer joy of writing. Schools don’t often make this point, but writing should be fun. Putting words together, finding ways to express yourself, the pure pleasure of a well-crafted sentence. 1/5

On reflection this might be a bit worrying. Ooh Sanctuary Moon

The main character’s voice. It me, but with weapons

Just recently finished a K. B. Wagers binge. NeoG ftw!!! Now reading a queer trans farming memoir from my very own village, bit of a change of pace and direction. E.M. Barraud, Set My Hand Upon The Plough

Got me through the pandemic!

Bujold reading-order guide, 2025 update It seems time for my occasional repost and update of my reading-order guide, in an attempt to help quell the perpetual confusion about Where to Start wit...

If you haven’t read Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls they are wonderful too. For Vorkosigan saga start with Shards of Honour and then work on through following Lois’ recommended reading order. www.goodreads.com/author_blog_...

We were reading John Henderson on Fordyce on Catullus and I got follow up questions! I wrote a little commentary, so now we have Lovatt on Henderson on Fordyce on Catullus. I do hope the student replies with their own commentary on my commentary. *happy Latinist chortling*

Wow I really messed up the timing on that session. In my defence, the students were really engaged and I was having altogether too much fun.

Very squid game

Nice is a front; kind is actually caring.
Daughter considers ’nice’ an insult.

Scamming via compliments probably going to make most academics’ hackles rise. (also extremely familiar AI tropes) But in case anyone is not already familiar with this sort of thing…

Guys being Dudes