theblochian.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

@theblochian.bsky.social and I are stepping down from editing @c21literature.bsky.social. It's been fantastic working with Caroline to develop C21, but after 3 years and an increase in commitments, it's time to step down. If you're interested in the role, details here: c21.openlibhums.org/news/793/

submitted 7 hours ago • 0 comments

This is like a student complaining that they won't be able to graduate if they're not allowed to plagiarize their thesis. arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

submitted 13 hours ago • 1 comment

Reflecting on this, I suppose the message of the speech (once you let the fragments fall into place) is that the aim is smaller govt, less process and consultation, more direct political control. I see how "more AI" fits into this in theory, but not in practice.

submitted 14 hours ago • 5 comments

This is one the moves I warned might happen in Monday's substack - just sooner than I thought. A clear escalation in targeting the independence of universities and their academic freedom open.substack.com/pub/christin... This is authoritarianism.

submitted 13 hours ago • 10 comments

attacking higher education is economic sabotage the largest employer in 10 states + 60 of the 100 top cities “The local impact would reach far and wide: In 2022, Johns Hopkins affiliates accounted for over 93,600 jobs+over $15 billion in economic output in Maryland.” www.wsj.com/health/healt...

submitted 2 days ago • 13 comments

This protest zine was made by a student in the Grossmont Union High School District and passed out at the board meeting on Tuesday. The kids are going to be alright.

submitted 1 day ago • 12 comments

Opinion | When the Humanities Kept Us Sane Michael J. Socolow asks if we have already forgotten how the humanities got us through the COVID-19 pandemic. #HigherEd #EDUSky #AcademicSky bit.ly/4bN7yzv

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

“Instead of providing more services to women, the state has actually reduced access even to the services that were available. Today it is more difficult to get eldercare and childcare than it was at the end of the 1960s.” —Silvia Federici

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

At Columbia, a faculty civil war has broken out over the handling of pro-Palestinian demonstrations, via @WSJ

submitted 2 days ago • 4 comments

The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, UK and Ireland, is now on Bluesky. Please sign up for the latest ASLE-UKI news. As always, you can also find us, and join us, on our website at www.asle.org.uk. See you soon!

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

My lovely dept, The School of English at Trinity College Dublin, is hiring! We are looking for a postcolonial scholar who can also teach American literature. We’re a lovely bunch, I promise. Please spread the word!

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

The UK university sector is on fire. This is happening virtually everywhere -- job cuts, hiring freezes, department closures, PhD funding programmes... full blown crisis

submitted 2 days ago • 13 comments

It's Wednesday— #DesignJustice day for the MSc HCID @hcid.city! This afternoon we'll be exploring why openness matters—both for design and for social justice, feat @eve.gd , co-founder of @openlibhums.bsky.social! www.linkedin.com/posts/ernest...

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

The crisis in the US university system is starting to be dramatic /1

submitted 2 days ago • 5 comments

The Trump administration has terminated $800 million in grants to Johns Hopkins University, spurring the nation’s top spender on research and development to plan layoffs and cancel health projects

submitted 3 days ago • 142 comments

Just spent day reading about the collapse of the British car industry. The lack of vision, the managerial incompetence, the strategic insularity, the complacent reliance on ‘world-class’ marques, the constant short-termism, bad labour relations. And I thought: yup, there go our universities too.

submitted 3 days ago • 32 comments

We have been through several cuts in staff and now at Dundee hundreds more jobs to go. It hasn’t solved the crisis, only increased workloads, reduced choice for students, and created new problems. We all know what the reflex will be in the next crisis. Our system is slowly degrading Higher Education

submitted 2 days ago • 2 comments

#TeslaTakedown is a peaceful, grassroots protest movement formed by many thousands of concerned citizens. Protests and boycotts are perfectly legal and foundational to any democracy. Join a protest or create your own now at Teslatakedown.com

submitted 2 days ago • 89 comments

Approx 50 miles as the crow flies from Grangemouth, where the coming loss of approx 400 refinery jobs (rightfully) created an outcry. I await equivalent noise. But I won't be holding my breath while doing so.

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

Dear God! Dundee University to cut 632 jobs, one fifth of its workforce. The tsunami has been coming in for years. Now it's hit and nothing - nothing - has been done. Britain really is the stupid country. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

submitted 3 days ago • 5 comments

One fifth. ONE FIFTH.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

Great to see @judithfathallah.bsky.social presenting at the Oxford Forum on Open Scholarship (OxFOS) on her own research into fan studies & the benefits of publishing OA with @openbookcollective.bsky.social publishers #OpenAccess

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Today at 15:00-16:30 our Executive Director, Dr. Caroline Edwards (@theblochian.bsky.social), will be speaking at the Oxford Forum of Open Scholarship organised by the Bodleian Libraries.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

My latest post is now out. I show how Trump's attacks on science and universities are neither random nor new - they fit very precisely into the authoritarian playbook. This means we can guess what might come next and prepare - and we must! christinapagel.substack.com/p/censor-pur...

submitted 4 days ago • 38 comments

Tomorrow at 3-4.30pm in Oxford!

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

OLH Executive Director Dr Caroline Edwards will be speaking at The Oxford Forum of Open Scholarship tomorrow. Organised by the Bodleian Libraries, Caroline's panel will be held at the Weston Library Lecture Theatre, 4-4.30pm. Info & booking link here: docs.google.com/document/d/1... #OpenAccess

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

Our colleague, @siobhanh.bsky.social, analyses Clarivate’s attempt to restrict libraries from securing perpetual access to content. This prioritises profit over preservation and raises major concerns about sustainability, equity, and access to knowledge. Read more: www.openlibhums.org/news/792/

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Today I am on strike to protest the massive cuts to higher education funding in the Netherlands. Vandaag ga ik staken om te protesteren tegen de enorme bezuinigingen op het hoger onderwijs in Nederland. nltimes.nl/2025/03/10/s...

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Quelle surprise! Turns out the people with lots of money in this country do, in fact, have lots of money

submitted 4 days ago • 5 comments

New #openAccess special collection from the Open Library of Humanities, 'Cultural Heritage Data for Research: Opening Museum Collections, Project Data and Digital Images for Research, Query and Discovery' : https://olh.openlibhums.org/collections/905/ #GLAM #museums #collectionsAsData

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

Huge win! Government announces plans to open up the Land Registry. If delivered, will finally reveal more about who owns land in England and Wales. Read my blog post for more details & how you can write to the Minister to make sure this now happens: whoownsengland.org/2025/03/06/h... 🧵1/

submitted 8 days ago • 44 comments

This is the news we deserve. “These are the 1st images of humpbacks having sex, and they're both males 'It was not what I was expecting,' says biologist Stephanie Stack”

submitted 8 days ago • 165 comments

Cycling along the seafront, everyone sniffing at the spring sunshine, when I pass a middle-aged man on his bike. He has a pug dog in a little basket, music blaring from the handlebars & a very large spliff dropping from his lips. I smile at the afternoon. He yells F**CK ALL YOU WANKERS. So Brighton.

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Ban on new oil and gas drilling confirmed as UK ministers consult on North Sea’s ‘clean energy future’ #climatecrisis www.theguardian.com/business/202...

submitted 8 days ago • 6 comments

This is a really lovely initiative from @openlibhums.bsky.social, offering small grants for people or projects promoting the benefits of #OpenAccess for humanities research 👇 Please share with anyone who might find this useful!

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

New article in Political Philosophy: "Democratic Consent Under False Pretenses" by Ana Tanasoca (Norwegian Nobel Institute and ANU), available open-access here: politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/1...

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

New article in Political Philosophy: "Liberalism’s Problem of Strongly Pro-Social Work" by Gloria Mähringer (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), available open-access here: politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/1...

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

Political Philosophy / @polphiljournal.bsky.social celebrates its first year at OLH! 🎉 PP was launched in Jan 2024 following the resignation of the entire editorial board of the Journal of Political Philosophy, published by Wiley. Read more here: 🔗 www.openlibhums.org/news/791/

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

Researchers in ‘Limbo’ as Trump Battles Courts Despite court orders blocking Trump’s federal funding freeze, bans on DEI and other executive mandates, academic researchers are still in the dark on what all of it could mean for their careers... #HigherEd #EDUSky #AcademicSky bit.ly/43k4mZZ

submitted 11 days ago • 1 comment

“If Roosevelt had told Churchill to sue for peace on any terms with Adolf Hitler and to fork over Britain’s coal reserves to the United States in exchange for no American security guarantees, it might have approximated what Trump did to Zelensky.” www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/o...

submitted 13 days ago • 68 comments

Oh you could say I dabble in Photoshop #teslatakedown @niedermeyer.online

submitted 13 days ago • 258 comments

Today's university in crisis is Kingston, which is cutting all the departments and subjects below, a savage retrenchment that won't even make them half of the £20m savings they need. Every day will be like this until something is done.

submitted 14 days ago • 3 comments

New article at Orbit > “"NOT WHO BUT WHAT: WHAT IS SHE?" Disembodied Quests for Utopia and Retrotopia from Mkrtich Armen’s Yerevan (1931) to Thomas Pynchon’s V. (1963)” by David Leupold: doi.org/10.16995/orb...

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

Dean Karlan, Chief Economist at USAID, has resigned www.npr.org/sections/goa...

submitted 16 days ago • 11 comments