So tomorrow is results day, and with apocalyptic predictions in the press about numbers not hitting the grades they need for their 1st choice places, it's time for my annual rant about how Russell Group IS NOT A MARK OF QUALITY IT IS A MARKETING BRAND, 'prestige' universities... are not the be-all and end-all. A process of attrition, partly engineered by Tory policies, has led to a depts in some universities closing whilst the same subjects at other, usually RG, unis, take on inflated numbers of students which results staff being able to give less...

Leverhulme ECF applications: a thread. It's the middle of the hell that is Leverhulme ECF season for many early career researchers, so I'm putting together this thread in the hope that it will be useful and hopefully help shift a few common notions about this funding: By way of background, I'm c.20 months through a Leverhulme ECF, which I started at @EdgeHist and then moved to @StaffsUniHipo when I was offered a permanent lectureship there. This is unusual in the first place: very, very few Leverhulme ECFs go to post-92 universities, BUT...

Husband idly asked me a couple of hours ago 'what happened to the Gay Girl in Damascus guy?' Cue a wander round the web and HOLY SHIT EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY LET HIM BACK IN AS A PHD STUDENT A FEW YEARS LATER. WTAF? #thread For those who don't remember/didn't know about this scenario, in 2010/11 Tom MacMaster, an MA student at @EdinburghUni, invented a gay, Syrian woman called Amina. He blogged 'as' her during the early period of the Arab Spring in Syria, gaining press attention, writing...