Rachel Herrmann

Happy publication week to Claiming Land, Claiming Water: Borders and the People Who Crossed Them in the Early Modern Atlantic! Our @ukri.org -funded volume is now accessible in print and open access through @pennpress.bsky.social: penn.manifoldapp.org/projects/cla...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH

In March 2025 I started planning a border that would bring joy in the land of eternal darkness, and it’s doing its thing in today’s writing-from-home gloomy rain

As I've said before, it's only once I became a professor that I realized the entmoot, a meeting that goes on for three days and three nights, was a professor's joke about faculty meetings.

‼️ Kinder-BrANCH MA Fellowship 2027-28 applications now open! Rare opportunity for recent UG students to enroll in the Kinder Institute’s interdisciplinary 1-year Atlantic History and Politics program in Missouri, with full tuition covered and annual stipend. For more details, see below ⬇️

And really all of this could take just five minutes or half an hour and you’ve come away feeling like what you have in your life so far exceeds the capacity of any possible answer to any question anyone could dare pose to you, and that is exactly what being alive is for, that is the whole purpose

Being human is too hard for some people. They seem to be giving up at the first opportunity.

I'm really looking forward to launching my book this week alongside Emily West at the RAI (Oxford) on Wednesday 28th and CSIS at the University of Liverpool on Thursday 29th October. All are welcome, so please come along! RAI link: www.rai.ox.ac.uk/event/new-bo...

A warm welcome to our twelve new fellows for 2026-2027, working on the theme Scarcity and Abundance. Image: De Herfst. Galle, Heemskerck, & Junius. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I'm talking about 'The Wreck of the Gloucester and Why it Matters: The Secrets of a Restoration Warship' TODAY at 2pm in the beautiful Church of St Mary, Haddiscoe, helping to raise funds for essential repairs to the church ... ⛪⚓⛪⚓ www.achurchnearyou.com/church/10151/ #Gloucesterwreck

Hi, hello; I’m having an incredibly nice year

I am on a podcast - This Week in Black History, Society and Culture - which is out now! It was wonderful to talk to Dr Hettie Williams about my book, 'I Felt All This'. You can listen to it here - thisweekinblackhistoryandsociety.buzzsprout.com/1285163/epis...

You can read more about this important project here: www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-news/n...

Stocking stuffer alert. Hardcover of Pax Economica for just £9!! press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

This is a niche post for any older early Americanists working on Georgia who have to think about it every time they spell "Frederica"

Worth reading just for: 'Had these individuals actually read my work, they would have wanted to stay away from me. I have spent the last 10 years reporting on transnational fraud'.

Bodleian Library, Oxford, Visiting Fellowships are open for application. These include African Studies Visiting Fellowship, Visiting Fellowships in Music, in Women's History and in the History of Science, a Visiting Fellowship in South Asian and Black History and more. Great schemes! #Skystorians

Can’t fall for a phishing scam if you never open emails. Check. Mate.

📣 SHEAR (The Society for Historians of the Early American Republic) is inviting proposals for its annual conference next year, to be held in Richmond, Virginia, on July 15-18, 2027. Deadline to submit is 1 December 2026 See more details below ⬇️ shear.org/annual-meeti...

MAPS! Rivers! Swamps! I'm having an extremely nice year having big editing thoughts. If you're in Oxford next week, I'd love to show you inside my head, where the St. Marys River and Okefenokee Swamp currently live: events.ox.ac.uk/oxford_event...?

I love it when institutions step up & face the challenges. And this is @ihr.bsky.social stepping up. Sure, will be directly helping only a few people, but what a solace to know clever people are trying to come up with support in the face of the overwhelming crisis. www.history.ac.uk/fellowships-...

IHR-RHS DC Thomson Applied History Fellowships launch today. Scheme for UK-based recent post-1500 British or Irish History PhDs, providing a 6-month bursary of £12,250 to expand their career opportunities while applying their historical skills in a workplace. #Skystorians

It was a real privilege to be part of the 'Locating Loss' conference earlier this year, where speakers shared work on infertility in historic contexts as well as work in the creative arts and healthcare contexts. These conversations were recorded and you can listen to the podcast in the link below:

I got in trouble in nursery school for eating plants in the nursery school playground because I thought they looked like broccoli

Reminder: applications for our tenure-track search in Modern East Asian History are due October 15. Please spread the word!

My review of Andrew Miller's Patronage, Power and Masculinity in Medieval England is out now in Speculum: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/... #medieval #medievalsky

In re Seth’s first book on labor in early Baltimore inconveniently documenting racism and sexism.

Thank you @adamserwer.bsky.social for the fullest account of what’s actually dangerous in higher ed right now. State censorship at incredible scale. And for particulars of expert history framed as ideology I note @sethrockman.bsky.social on the block here. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/1...

30,000 job losses over 3 years.

Paz Purrmann is almost at full Tudor

Say what you will about the tenets of Suella Braverman's politics, but she is making academics everywhere feel pretty good about the sales figures for their niche monographs.

Still can’t fully believe it but it’s out in the world: I’ve been awarded a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship this round. You can read more about “Past, Present and Futures of Historical Games”👇+more to come soon about what this means for @historygamesnet.bsky.social! www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/view/31...

Upcoming Event: 'Pepperpots & Provision Grounds' A recipe zine-making workshop that unearths food histories in Britain’s former Caribbean colonies within the Library’s archival collections. Saturday 31st Oct | British Library, London | Booking required events.bl.uk/events/peppe...

Today's fun autocorrect battle is learning that William Gerard de Brahm liked to bookend his parenthetical remarks with colons. (: Who amongst us hasn't sat in the BL removing smiley face emojis from their transcriptions? :)

Oh no

Oh no

Submissions are now invited for the Society's 2027 First Book and Early Career Article Prizes - covering monographs and articles published in 2026 bit.ly/4z45bD8 The closing date for submissions is 14 December 2026. Judging begins in early 2027 with winners announced next July #Skystorians 1/2

You’re surrounded by boozers, misfits and losers And down seven goals at the half Your ammo is spent and you can’t find Roy Kent You’re fucked so you might as well laugh

AAAHHHHHHHHHHHH

If the kitten were to make biscuits I think I’d need to call them ruff fluff because he is floofing up for colder times

"Secretary of War Pete Hegseth Signs Directive Halting Tenured Civilian Positions at U.S. Military Service Academies" www.war.gov/News/Release...

would anyone from a non elite college like to write about this for Contingent because you know we would publish it

Team, it finally happened: I went to add an article to my panic-download folder, only to find that Past Rachel already downloaded it.

ImPRESSed Yet? I am thrilled to announce that Impressive Textiles: Premodern Printing on Fabric will be published October 27 in print and Open Access with @acmrs.bsky.social, thanks to 30 textile and print scholars, and 1 groundbreaking exhibition @newberrylibrary.bsky.social! #CoverReveal 1/5

Why isn't one of the broken mugs here (in this Guardian cartoon) the famous "Controls on Immigration" one? Or is that not a slogan Burnham fans are prepared to say was bad?

Yep and couple that with the h1b visa costs and higher ed international profs aren’t coming either

I’m teaching a workshop this weekend about how historians research. #Skystorians, what are your favorite or most important research tips and tricks? What is your favorite method for finding archives and archival material?