Laura Salisbury
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laurasalisbury.bsky.social
Laura Salisbury
@laurasalisbury.bsky.social

Thinks about Modern Literature and Medical Humanities, especially time, waiting, and ending.

Philosophy 25%
Economics 18%

Reposted by Laura Salisbury

If you work in a university, please join us in signing this open letter calling on the UK government to drop the charges against Palestine Action: click through to the link at the bottom of the @versobooks.bsky.social page www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/...
‘We support Palestine Action in Their Campaign Against Proscription’
As scholars dedicated to questions of justice and ethics, we are astonished and dismayed by the current priorities of Keir Starmer and his ministers. On the one hand they continue to offer material, m...
www.versobooks.com

Oo - is it open?

Reposted by Laura Salisbury

The convention here is to say you are delighted to share a paper you’ve written. I'm not quite sure I can say that, but I will be pleased if this paper can further understandings of patient and social science perspectives around #pain and #FND. Look away now if health updates are not your thing 1/n

I embarrassed myself with a non-ironic use of 'hanky-panky' only the other day.

I think it's probably not the same person, but this is amazing nevertheless! But, has nobody told these funders about surrealism, dada, uncreative writing, etc?

I think he was actually thinking about self help books that have no scientific merit, of which there are more than several, I'd wager.

Interesting how bibliotherapy discourse is fairly thoroughly stripped of the idea of education that underpinned the 'improving' twentieth-century work of the WEA, community colleges, the OU, Birkbeck, Ruskin College, etc. The aura of the medical and the NHS as the welfare state's last stand.

This is great! Did I ever tell you about an experimental psychologist once suggesting to me that you could test bibliotherapy by getting people to read books with no active ingredients? My modernist mind was pleasingly boggled.
What happens when reading books gets positioned as a health intervention? And what does this case tell us about the wider landscape of austerity therapeutics? I'm glad to have contributed to a new paper addressing these questions, led by Hayley Redman. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Reading as therapy: medicalising books in an era of mental health austerity
In the UK, a range of everyday activities are being re-framed as interventions to promote public mental health. Drivers of this include the rising burden of mental ill-health and constrained fundin...
www.tandfonline.com
📣🚨 CFP: Neurodiversity Special Issue: A Critical Turn in Neurodiversity Studies: Bridging the Arts, Humanities and the Social Sciences 📣🚨

📝Abstract deadline: 3 August 2025
✉️ Please share widely with arts, humanities and social science networks!

Full call: journals.sagepub.com/pb-assets/cm...
journals.sagepub.com
Opinion from the FT's Editorial Board: 'The US and European countries that tout Israel as an ally that shares their values have issued barely a word of condemnation. They should be ashamed of their silence, and stop enabling Netanyahu to act with impunity.' www.ft.com/content/f5fd...

Reposted by Laura Salisbury

Very sad indeed to see some of these names.

and think quite deliberately as we talk: a hundred years ago I'd have been cleaning your shoes. I know this and you don't.'

'I will do everything and anything until the end of my days to stop anyone ever talking to me like that woman talked to my mother. It is in this place, this bare, curtainless bedroom that lies my secret and shameful defiance. I read a woman's book, meet such a woman at a party (a woman, now like me)

Currently rereading Carolyn Steedman's account of mid-century motherhood and childhood _Landscape for a Good Woma_ and reeling under its intellectual and affective power. It begins by remembering a health visitor saying to her mother 'This house isn't fit for a baby'. Steedman reflects:

Reposted by Laura Salisbury

An industry with world impact being hollowed out with thousands of redundancies: barely a ripple of concern
UK university redundancies: latest updates
As higher education institutions shed thousands of jobs, we track developments and bring together latest analysis with resources for affected staff and students
www.timeshighereducation.com

Reposted by Laura Salisbury

This does indeed seem very 'off brand' for you. Michael will be jealous, though.
A day that demands posting @reproutopia.bsky.social’s “TERF island” published in last autumn’s @readlux.bsky.social

“there are strands of thought that are both authentically feminist and irredeemable — even fascist”

lux-magazine.com/article/terf...
TERF Island - Lux Magazine
There Have Always Been Enemies Inside the Feminist Camp
lux-magazine.com

I'm doomscrolling again. A lot. During that first lockdown, I started thinking about doomscrolling not just as a paranoid mode of reading, but as a form of anxious care. It's not the best or only thing to do, but there is something that might be made from it. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
On not being able to read: doomscrolling and anxiety in pandemic times
This article analyses ‘doomscrolling’, or the compulsive reading of anxiety-inducing online content during the COVID-19 pandemic, against the common idea that it is simply an addictive social pract...
www.tandfonline.com

Reposted by Laura Salisbury

Conceiving Histories - our NHM colleague @drbeldavis.bsky.social discusses the ambiguities of pregancy over time on Woman's Hour BBCRadio4 from 44:46 www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
Woman's Hour - Friendships, Nursery safety, Sudan - BBC Sounds
Can friendships between three people work?
www.bbc.co.uk

Reposted by Laura Salisbury

Who translated Foucault's The Order of Things?
progressivegeographies.com/2025/04/06/w... Not the most important thing even in Foucault studies, but a chance archival discovery and an old oddity...

Reposted by Laura Salisbury

Rachel Reeves is right that the world has changed - so why won’t she change her strategy to reflect it? Rigid adherence to arbitrary fiscal rules & refusing wealth taxes is a political choice that’s causing huge pain & harm, as well as laying out the welcome mat for the populists at Reform UK

No problem! I think it's really interesting.

I think this is a good piece, drawn from lived experience, on chronic pain and FND. Sorry to hear that things have been so difficult. doi.org/10.31235/osf...
OSF
osf.io

Reposted by Laura Salisbury

Deadline 6 March! Innovative, fully-funded PhD scholarship supervised by me (cultural histories of gender & sexuality & human-animal relations) & Karen Hiestand (veterinary & animal ethics). Located at Birkbeck's School of Creative Arts, Culture & Communication & the Royal Veterinary College.
Bloomsbury Colleges PhD Studentship: The rise of veterinary specialist care in twenty-first century Britain — Birkbeck, University of London
This studentship offers a fully-funded doctorate in the interdisciplinary field of human-animal studies.
www.bbk.ac.uk

So painful to have lost these thinkers during a time when their work feels so needed. There is a reading group happening on Friday on Beth's work, organised by some of her friends and colleagues. We're starting with 'Committed to the End'. I'll email you the link.

Reposted by Laura Salisbury

Dear BlueSky,

Please widely share that my book is out today. 🚀 It tells wild & wonderful, (& arrestingly illustrated) little-known histories from the reproductive frontline. It is a history like no other and like any other, ie brill & for any history lover anywhere.

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👇🏾

Both are magnificent.