Dr Rachel Pope
@prehistorian.bsky.social
Rankin Reader in European Prehistory • Vice President, The Prehistoric Society • on research leave ✍️
Resolving the structure of prehistoric society • unpicking patriarchal assertion from present to past • digs hillforts & Celts
Personal account #NUFC 🇵🇸
Resolving the structure of prehistoric society • unpicking patriarchal assertion from present to past • digs hillforts & Celts
Personal account #NUFC 🇵🇸
Pinned
Dr Rachel Pope
@prehistorian.bsky.social
· Sep 26
Documenting the profession: Recording historic access and retention issues for women in UK archaeology | Archaeological Dialogues | Cambridge Core
Documenting the profession: Recording historic access and retention issues for women in UK archaeology
www.cambridge.org
New paper. Recording the female experience of UK archaeology 1990-2010. Anne Teather and I document how an industry EDI agenda evolved in the 1990s and was dismantled, uncovering the ramifications of that for women archaeologists over the next decade.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
#openaccess✅
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
#openaccess✅
I have typed the word ‘hillfort’ 641 times.
November 11, 2025 at 10:13 AM
I have typed the word ‘hillfort’ 641 times.
In case you’re having a crap day, here’s my dog:
November 10, 2025 at 7:31 PM
In case you’re having a crap day, here’s my dog:
Reposted by Dr Rachel Pope
Read the whole thread
1/ The US Government has quietly removed a memorial to Black soldiers who died in World War II from the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, South Limburg. The move follows a complaint from the right-wing Heritage Foundation to the American Battle Monuments Commission. ⬇️
November 9, 2025 at 6:15 PM
Read the whole thread
I always remember old Mr Pink in the early 1980s who had been a Japanese POW. He just used to sit in the corner, never speaking. We shouldn’t do this to men.
November 9, 2025 at 12:39 PM
I always remember old Mr Pink in the early 1980s who had been a Japanese POW. He just used to sit in the corner, never speaking. We shouldn’t do this to men.
I am putting a new blind up, with a drill 💪🏼
November 9, 2025 at 10:07 AM
I am putting a new blind up, with a drill 💪🏼
Reposted by Dr Rachel Pope
The authors ignore James Watson’s behaviours, before, during, and after the discovery of the double helix while trying to downplay his wrong doing. instead they make it clear, Watson had access to her crystallography without her permission. He also had access to her notes and data and thoughts…#1
Here’s the Nature paper: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
What Rosalind Franklin truly contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure
Franklin was no victim in how the DNA double helix was solved. An overlooked letter and an unpublished news article, both written in 1953, reveal that she was an equal player.
www.nature.com
November 9, 2025 at 5:32 AM
The authors ignore James Watson’s behaviours, before, during, and after the discovery of the double helix while trying to downplay his wrong doing. instead they make it clear, Watson had access to her crystallography without her permission. He also had access to her notes and data and thoughts…#1
A really positive grass roots democratic space. Just to report that at this level it’s very clear that transphobia isn’t welcome and wouldn’t be part of any party policy.
Right, I’m off to a Your Party town square thing. Will report back.
November 8, 2025 at 3:53 PM
A really positive grass roots democratic space. Just to report that at this level it’s very clear that transphobia isn’t welcome and wouldn’t be part of any party policy.
Right, I’m off to a Your Party town square thing. Will report back.
November 8, 2025 at 10:44 AM
Right, I’m off to a Your Party town square thing. Will report back.
@lesleymcf.bsky.social @markknight63.bsky.social 👀 “landscape sound postcards” : @radiolento.bsky.social
November 8, 2025 at 10:19 AM
@lesleymcf.bsky.social @markknight63.bsky.social 👀 “landscape sound postcards” : @radiolento.bsky.social
Reposted by Dr Rachel Pope
Rosalind Franklin went to the same school - St Paul‘s in Brook Green, West London - as Cecilia Payne, who wrote the most important astrophysics PhD of the 20th century and discovered what the Universe is made of. Payne’s name is largely unknown, though she became the 1st woman professor at Harvard.
Raising a glass for Rosalind Franklin tonight. James Watson absolutely did her dirty.
But beware...
But beware...
November 8, 2025 at 8:43 AM
Rosalind Franklin went to the same school - St Paul‘s in Brook Green, West London - as Cecilia Payne, who wrote the most important astrophysics PhD of the 20th century and discovered what the Universe is made of. Payne’s name is largely unknown, though she became the 1st woman professor at Harvard.
Here’s the Nature paper: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
What Rosalind Franklin truly contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure
Franklin was no victim in how the DNA double helix was solved. An overlooked letter and an unpublished news article, both written in 1953, reveal that she was an equal player.
www.nature.com
November 8, 2025 at 8:45 AM
Here’s the Nature paper: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
It was learning about Rosalind Franklin’s story at Cambridge that prompted me to consider the impact of 1950s academic misogyny on the intellectual development of the field of archaeology: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Processual archaeology and gender politics. The loss of innocence | Archaeological Dialogues | Cambridge Core
Processual archaeology and gender politics. The loss of innocence - Volume 18 Issue 1
www.cambridge.org
November 8, 2025 at 6:58 AM
It was learning about Rosalind Franklin’s story at Cambridge that prompted me to consider the impact of 1950s academic misogyny on the intellectual development of the field of archaeology: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
A new paper [2023] based on long-lost documents confirms that DNA discoverer Rosalind Franklin should be credited for discovering the double helix.
www.livescience.com/health/genet...
www.livescience.com/health/genet...
Rosalind Franklin knew DNA was a helix before Watson and Crick, unpublished material reveals
A new paper based on long-lost documents confirms that DNA discoverer Rosalind Franklin should be credited for discovering the double helix.
www.livescience.com
November 8, 2025 at 6:46 AM
A new paper [2023] based on long-lost documents confirms that DNA discoverer Rosalind Franklin should be credited for discovering the double helix.
www.livescience.com/health/genet...
www.livescience.com/health/genet...
Reposted by Dr Rachel Pope
Rosalind Franklin was born #OTD in 1920. Her X-ray diffraction work was critical for establishing the helical nature of DNA. 👩🔬 🧪
Work carried out by Franklin (with doctoral student Raymond Gosling) was given to Watson and Crick without her consent.
Image: Vittorio Luzzati / Jewish Women’s Archive
Work carried out by Franklin (with doctoral student Raymond Gosling) was given to Watson and Crick without her consent.
Image: Vittorio Luzzati / Jewish Women’s Archive
July 25, 2024 at 2:13 PM
Rosalind Franklin was born #OTD in 1920. Her X-ray diffraction work was critical for establishing the helical nature of DNA. 👩🔬 🧪
Work carried out by Franklin (with doctoral student Raymond Gosling) was given to Watson and Crick without her consent.
Image: Vittorio Luzzati / Jewish Women’s Archive
Work carried out by Franklin (with doctoral student Raymond Gosling) was given to Watson and Crick without her consent.
Image: Vittorio Luzzati / Jewish Women’s Archive
Reposted by Dr Rachel Pope
My ask of any science enthusiasts who tell the story of Rosalind Franklin:
Don't make her life be about the DNA debacle. She died far too young, but she was a promising scientist in her own right, a mentor and scientific author.
Not for Watson or Crick, but for her legacy.
Don't make her life be about the DNA debacle. She died far too young, but she was a promising scientist in her own right, a mentor and scientific author.
Not for Watson or Crick, but for her legacy.
Her sister wrote my favorite essay about her. She points out that RF would have been famous even if she'd never looked at DNA
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
Remembering my sister Rosalind Franklin
Rosalind Franklin died of ovarian cancer in 1958 aged 37 years. Sympathy and feminism
have combined to give us her familiar image as a downtrodden woman scientist, brilliant
but neglected, a heroine t...
www.thelancet.com
November 8, 2025 at 2:17 AM
My ask of any science enthusiasts who tell the story of Rosalind Franklin:
Don't make her life be about the DNA debacle. She died far too young, but she was a promising scientist in her own right, a mentor and scientific author.
Not for Watson or Crick, but for her legacy.
Don't make her life be about the DNA debacle. She died far too young, but she was a promising scientist in her own right, a mentor and scientific author.
Not for Watson or Crick, but for her legacy.
Reposted by Dr Rachel Pope
Thinking only of Rosalind Franklin today, and what was stolen from her (and so many other female scientists alongside her).
Rosalind Franklin and the damage of gender harassment
Spurred by a recent report on sexual harassment in academia, our columnist revisits a historical case and reflects on what has changed—and what hasn’t
www.science.org
November 7, 2025 at 7:58 PM
Thinking only of Rosalind Franklin today, and what was stolen from her (and so many other female scientists alongside her).
Presumably knowing that his ‘greatness’ was built on the theft of a woman’s work.
Saw Watson give a lecture in 2001 and he managed to spend an astonishing proportion of it complaining about women
Hey folks, as news of Watson's demise spreads, please don't set aside his weighty legacy of misogyny and racism. He was truly among the worst of us. www.vox.com/2019/1/15/18...
November 7, 2025 at 9:59 PM
Presumably knowing that his ‘greatness’ was built on the theft of a woman’s work.
Reminder.
"All right, class, who knows what Watson and Crick discovered?"
"Rosalind Franklin's notes."
"That's correct."
"Rosalind Franklin's notes."
"That's correct."
November 7, 2025 at 9:53 PM
Reminder.
Reposted by Dr Rachel Pope
"Now on ITV: 'Peer Review' - hosted by Mary Beard. 15 senior academics locked in Piddleston College, Bantshire University seek to find which of them is actually Reviewer Number 2"
Now do the show but only with senior academics.
The Traitors is a very different game when the players are either friends already or in an industry where, if you’re making a project together, you are used to quickly bonding and making fast friends for the duration.
November 7, 2025 at 10:12 AM
"Now on ITV: 'Peer Review' - hosted by Mary Beard. 15 senior academics locked in Piddleston College, Bantshire University seek to find which of them is actually Reviewer Number 2"
Catching up on #RiotWomen and actually ‘pleased’ to see portrayal of the extraordinary violence that surrounds girlhood/womanhood.
November 6, 2025 at 8:59 PM
Catching up on #RiotWomen and actually ‘pleased’ to see portrayal of the extraordinary violence that surrounds girlhood/womanhood.
This.
...and in great news - this is what £250,000 can buy you in a museum.
We could get FOURTEEN of these for one £3.5 million payout to a detectorist & landowner for their lucky Tudor Heart locket find... 🤔
#Archaeology 🏺
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
We could get FOURTEEN of these for one £3.5 million payout to a detectorist & landowner for their lucky Tudor Heart locket find... 🤔
#Archaeology 🏺
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Peterborough Museum gets £250k for Bronze Age project
The two-year initiative will explore the discoveries made at Must Farm in Whittlesey.
www.bbc.co.uk
November 6, 2025 at 6:03 PM
This.
Today is working with brilliant PhD students, working out how we can get to past gender. Archaeologically. I love my job.
November 6, 2025 at 11:15 AM
Today is working with brilliant PhD students, working out how we can get to past gender. Archaeologically. I love my job.
Brits. Can’t find it in full yet, but the Mamdami speech seems a good watch. Looks like there’s a new warrior on the block.
November 5, 2025 at 5:04 AM
Brits. Can’t find it in full yet, but the Mamdami speech seems a good watch. Looks like there’s a new warrior on the block.
The trotters completely transform the recipe. Must be the marrow. This is Michelin standard broth now!
So, I finally found pigs’ trotters (Gloucester services) to make authentic Northumbrian broth. On making, I couldn’t see really why in particular they were chosen for it (other than cheap). Left the broth on low overnight and they’ve entirely fallen apart into the broth. Perfect.
November 4, 2025 at 5:05 PM
The trotters completely transform the recipe. Must be the marrow. This is Michelin standard broth now!
So, I finally found pigs’ trotters (Gloucester services) to make authentic Northumbrian broth. On making, I couldn’t see really why in particular they were chosen for it (other than cheap). Left the broth on low overnight and they’ve entirely fallen apart into the broth. Perfect.
November 4, 2025 at 6:09 AM
So, I finally found pigs’ trotters (Gloucester services) to make authentic Northumbrian broth. On making, I couldn’t see really why in particular they were chosen for it (other than cheap). Left the broth on low overnight and they’ve entirely fallen apart into the broth. Perfect.