Alex Drace‐Francis

Alex Drace-Francis

@alexdrace.bsky.social

1.8K followers 930 following 1.5K posts

Cultural historian, modern Europe @uvahumanities.bsky.social. Books: The Making of Mămăligă (CEU Press); Networks, Narratives and Nations (Amsterdam UP). Amateur gardener.
https://www.uva.nl/en/profile/d/r/a.j.drace-francis/a.j.drace-francis.html .. more

Videos

Political science 47%

Sociology 22%

Posts Replies Media Videos

Reposted by Alex Drace‐Francis

Pierre Purseigle @purseigle.bsky.social · 16h

Please sign to protest the closure of Modern Languages programmes at Nottingham.

Solidarity with affected colleagues and students in Modern Languages and other departments.
👇👇👇
c.org/xYPmDLcXBn

c.org

Reposted by Joanna Bourke, Lesley A. Hall, Margot C. Finn , and 4 more Joanna Bourke, Lesley A. Hall, Margot C. Finn, Michael H. Whitworth, Gary Sheffield, Catriona Seth, Alex Drace‐Francis

Illuminations @illuminations.bsky.social · 3d

WAC wrong-headedness
(that's the BBC Written Archives Centre)

I've brought together the key links for the campaign against the changes which now make independent and exploratory research at WAC impossible - and why this matters.

www.illuminationsmedia.co.uk/wac-wrong-he...

WAC wrong-headedness - Illuminations

John Wyver writes: Some of you will know that I have been very involved over the past months with attempts to reverse the wrong-headed changes to access at the BBC Written Archives Centre (above, with...

www.illuminationsmedia.co.uk

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 4d

📖 Proofs! The introduction is called "A World in Motion"

O lume în mişcare [A world in motion], introduction proofs

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 7d

Quantitative analysis - I hope there's no mis-stakes in the data...

Royal Historical Society @royalhistsoc.org · 8d

Historian Dénes Harai appeared on Radio 4's 'More or Less' this weekend to discuss findings from his recent article published in 'Transactions of the Royal Historical Society' www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p...

Dénes's TRHS article, 'Counting the Stakes', is available here bit.ly/49hXy2n #Skystorians

BBC Radio 4 - More or Less, Halloween special: How many people did the real Dracula impale?

Looking at the math's behind the myth

www.bbc.co.uk

Reposted by Alex Drace‐Francis

Royal Historical Society @royalhistsoc.org · 8d

BBC Radio 4 - More or Less, Halloween special: How many people did the real Dracula impale?

Looking at the math's behind the myth

www.bbc.co.uk

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 8d

"We had some seriously good turnips" - good to see the real reveal in this feature on Paul McCartney
www.theguardian.com/music/2025/n...

"We put our backs into it, tilling the fields, and grew all sorts in our vegetable garden. We had some seriously good turnips." (Paul McCartney)

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 8d

J’ai faim / Am foamé

French-Romanian dialogue about asking for food. From “Annuaire de la Principauté de Valachie” (1842)

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 8d

Plan de Bucarest, 1842

Map of Bucharest, 1842 (published in Annuaire de la Principaute de Valachie)

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 9d

In Bucharest Strada Mecet commemorates the site of a former Turkish cemetery. So much for 'no Turks ever settled here'

Snippet of Bucharest (Google Maps) showing Strada Mecet (= 'cemetery' < Turkish)

Reposted by Alex Drace‐Francis

Susan DuBose @houseofbast777.bsky.social · 9d

Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian Culinary History of the Tomato
by Anny Gaul
Shows how Egyptians' embrace of the tomato & the emergence of Egypt's modern national identity were both driven by the modernization of the country's food system & driven by predominantly woman cooks.
#Booksky

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 10d

November #Saturday ##ilfautcultiver

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 10d

Such a great colleague - such a sad loss. But what a lovely gesture!

UCL SSEES @uclssees.bsky.social · 11d

Earlier this week, SSEES staff gathered for the unveiling of a portrait of our late colleague, Dr Philippa Hetherington. Philippa was a historian and much-loved colleague, teacher and friend. The portrait now stands as a tribute to her scholarship, warmth, and enduring presence at UCL SSEES.

Colleagues gathered around the portrait of our late colleague Dr Philippa Hetherington on 29 October 2025.

The portrait was unveiled by Philippa's husband, Dr Alessandro Iandolo.

Reposted by Alex Drace‐Francis

Gili Bar-Hillel @gilibug.bsky.social · 11d

There once was a king, Ozymandias
Who was known as a cruel, commanding ass
After centuries gone by
All that’s left of the guy
Are two legs in the sand, and they too shall pass

Andromeda Yelton @thatandromeda.bsky.social · 11d

my name is Oz
and wen the stone
is broke to bits
and all alone
i lie in sand
it stretches bare
you read my words
you pls despair

sirosenbaum.bsky.social @sirosenbaum.bsky.social · 12d

Ozyman, Ozyman-
dias does what no mortal can
and his works? are they there?
no, but maybe still despair

Reposted by Alex Drace‐Francis

UCL SSEES @uclssees.bsky.social · 11d

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 23d

Maybe it was some kind of pitch-in party where each ethnic group brought a different food - Avars the beef, Balts the fish, Thracians the porridge, Romance speakers the lettuce..

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 23d

Controversially, Curta argues that Slavic was not an ethnic language with deep roots but a koine formed in a specific conjuncture. This involved not only beef and porridge but also lettuce (ibid.)

In other words, before contact with Romance, speakers of Thracian must have adopted the Common Slavic koiné in order to communicate with speakers of Iranian to the east and of Balto-Slavic to the north. Judging from the sound changes in the word for lettuce in modern Slavic languages (a word borrowed from Romance), contact between the koiné and Romance was established ca. 600.

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 23d

The gastronomical origins of Common Slavic (Curta 2001) Not quite sure what to make of this intriguing beef-porridge theory
www.routledge.com/Slavs-in-the...

The disposition to express oneself in particular ways accommodating other people’s behavior finds its direct and concrete expression in
language as koiné, but also in practice as “intentional matrix” of cognitive, affective, and volitive values. To put it in different yet simpler terms, if the Slavic koiné came into being because of real-life communicative acts, there must have been some practices that speakers of that koiné shared or wanted to share. A number of such practices are documented archaeologically and may well signal the social transformations responsible for the linguistic convergence. For example, the sudden appearance on many sites of a specific ceramic category, the clay pans, has been linked to radical changes in food preparation which are also signaled by frequent closed cooking pots and the greater number of cattle bones indicating the

consumption of beef-based stews or semi-liquid, porridge-like foods. Because of its great nutritional and organoleptic properties, the resulting “soup” may have been consumed separately, possibly with large quantities of bread, such as that baked in clay pans. Moreover, clay pans seem to be associated with special kinds of flour-based foods, the consumption of which was reserved for communal ceremonies or feasts. Flat-bread baking and the associated clay pan phenomenon started at some point during the second half of the 6th century, perhaps during its last third, and then quickly became widespread during the first half of the 7th century. The accompanying culinary changes must have involved some components of the “intentional matrix,” particularly affective (tastes and feelings) and cognitive (concepts, perhaps also beliefs) values. To speak Slavic meant perhaps to be able to explain to others how certain new things were supposed to be done.

Reposted by Peter Thorne, Gavin A. Schmidt, Steve Peers , and 5 more Peter Thorne, Gavin A. Schmidt, Steve Peers, Andrew Scott, Tim Bale, Charles West, Pepper D. Culpepper, Alex Drace‐Francis

Sky News @news.sky.com · 23d

Shakespeare family home damaged by reversing driver

A 17th-century building that housed William Shakespeare's family has been left damaged after a driver reversed into it.

news.sky.com

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 24d

October Saturday ##ilfautcultiver

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 25d

Interesting piece, thanks! So not The Death of the Author but The Silencing of the Translator..

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 25d

Anyone know who translated Foucault's Les mots et les chose into English?
Sad that the recent edition gives no details
www.google.nl/books/editio...

The Order of Things

When one defines "order" as a sorting of priorities, it becomes beautifully clear as to what Foucault is doing here. With virtuoso showmanship, he weaves an intensely complex history of thought. He di...

www.google.nl

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 26d

Proof emerged on the verso of this coin, authenticated only in 2022. Definitely corn and proof that the Dacians made it across the Atlantic!

journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Coin of the ‘emperor’ Sponsian (Hunterian Museum, Glasgow)

Alex Drace-Francis @alexdrace.bsky.social · 26d

It's the Dacian mămăligă that does that

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