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Will Clement

@historywill.bsky.social

1.1K followers 1.4K following 340 posts

Historian of Modern Europe | poverty & inequality, centre & periphery, health & housing in c19 France🏠🏚️🇫🇷 | Tired dad | posts represent my views | He/him https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/persons/will-clement

research.manchester.ac.uk

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · Aug 28

Publication day for "State-Making in an Age of Revolution, 1830-1880"!

The full book - including my chapter "‘A Dead Letter in the Hands of Local Authorities’? Implementing Public Health Legislation in French Provincial Cities, 1850–60" - is here www.jstor.org/stable/jj.31...

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 22h

“Sure the cost of living is increasing, but also this means less of a scramble for parking spaces at Waitrose”

Reposted by Will Clement

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Sep 6

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
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Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

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Reposted by Will Clement

Alex von Tunzelmann @alexvont.bsky.social · 1d

“The researchers aim to show that the ‘inevitability’ of AI is just a marketing frame perpetrated by the industry and that pushback is a lot more possible than we often see.” Yes!

Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 2d

‘Study after study shows that students want to develop these critical thinking skills, are not lazy, and large numbers of them would be in favor of banning ChatGPT and similar tools in universities’, says @olivia.science www.ru.nl/en/research/...

‘Opposing the inevitability of AI at universities is possible and necessary’ | Radboud University

Since the widespread release of ChatGPT in December of 2022, AI has taken over much of the world by storm – including academia. Most of this happened with very little pushback, despite a myriad of iss...

www.ru.nl

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Reposted by Will Clement

Sophie Michell @sophiemhistory.bsky.social · 2d

In Jan 1875, a young servant asked for and was given a Friday night off.

She went home to see her boyfriend, who had five days leave, and he said... you should have more time off.

Harriet, the servant, agreed. She wrote to her employer and said "I will be back on Monday"

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 2d

Congratulations, Doctor!

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Reposted by Will Clement

Verso Books @versobooks.bsky.social · 3d

Today is David Harvey's 90th birthday! To celebrate, preorder his upcoming book The Story of Capital and take 30% off all of his previously published works

David Harvey: Radical Marxist Intellectual

October 31st is David Harvey's 90th birthday. To celebrate, preorder his upcoming book The Story of Capital and take 30% off all of his previously published works. Be sure to check out David Harvey at...

www.versobooks.com

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Reposted by Will Clement

Stephen Collins @stephencollins.bsky.social · 3d

If you're a National Trust member, it's that time of year again: Midnight tonight is the deadline. It's a shame people have to keep doing this to keep a toehold on historical truth in this country, but here we are. Voting link: www.nationaltrust.org.uk/who-we-are/a...

[Scene is the entrance cabin to a NATIONAL TRUST PROPERTY AND GARDENS]

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NATIONAL TRUST EMPLOYEE [inside cabin]:

Hello there

2
[A young family - two parents two kids - have arrived at the front desk].

DAD:

Hi - do you have an activity trail, for the kids?

3
NT EMPLOYEE:

Of course – you’re just in time for the Autumn Gammon Trail!

4
MUM:
That sounds fun, doesn’t it kids?

5
NT EMPLOYEE [handing an activity sheet and pencils to the kids]:

Every autumn, the Reform Trust gammons flock back to the National Trust for the AGM. Just follow the trail round the grounds, and see how many you can spot!

6
NT EMPLOYEE [hearing something in the gardens]:

Listen - that's their call

[Calls emanating from the landscape]:

tut-tut
woke-woke

7
NT EMPLOYEE [showing the family an apparently empty fenced enclosure with some bushes in]:

They are extremely sensitive and fragile...
But you can bring them out of hiding if you put a little sign down mentioning slavery.

8
KIDS [pointing]:
There they are!

[Some little red faced PEOPLE wearing Barbour jackets and gilets emerge cautiously from the bushes. They are creeping towards a TINY SIGN in the middle of the enclosure].

[Little people noises]:
woke-woke
tut-tut
woke-woke

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[Close-up of the TINY SIGN - we can read that it says]:

Slavery had a bit to do with building this massive house.

[Noises from the little people again as they inspect the tiny sign]:

tut-tut
woke-woke

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MUM [pointing]:
What's that one doing there?

NT EMPLOYEE:
Oh, that's so sweet…

11
[We see that one of the people is sat on a rock, with a little laptop open on a tree stump, and they are furiously typing away].

NT EMPLOYEE:
I think he's writing a column for the Daily Telegraph…

12
[We see close up to the little person’s screen, it is a word document reading]:

Are National Trust scones secretly WOKE?

[ends]

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 4d

This is definitely an idea that they should have left back on the drawing board

Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 5d

Ha yes we have this with our six year old too. Her legs hurt because of all the gross burps, we have been told

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Reposted by Will Clement

Dave Andress @davidandress.bsky.social · 6d

I am pleased to unleash upon the world my latest attempt to persuade people that the French Revolution was a very complex set of events that happened to a very complex society in ways it's best to try to understand as such.

The Language of confiance and the French cahiers de doléances of 1789 | The Historical Journal | Cambridge Core

The Language of confiance and the French cahiers de doléances of 1789

www.cambridge.org

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 6d

Clearly an early morning post -- doubled up on 'agents' there...

Reposted by Will Clement

Josiah Mortimer @josiah.writes.news · 7d

Politico: "MPs should consider deleting X, according to a committee led by Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle...

"On social media, the report said MPs should feel “empowered to step away from platforms that pose more harm than benefit.”

Absolutely. Please get on with it.

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 6d

This came through the door agents yesterday from two local estate agents. I’m going to keep it and set it as a primary source on the History of Housing/Tenancy module I’ll design one day. Easy 1,500 word assessment on the context, authorship, intended audience, symbolism of this.

A pamphlet designed to look like a post Brexit UK dark blue passport. “Renters’ Rights Bill: your passport to a reassured future”

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 7d

Grim. Today = 1. sat on P&R bus for 15 minutes waiting for it to leave; 2. Driver tells everyone the bus has broken down so for everyone to get off; 3. Bus actually starts and lurches forward as the staircase is full of people trying to get off. 4. Journey resumes

Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 7d

"In 2023, 3.8 million dwellings failed to meet this ["decent"] standard. Private rented dwellings were most likely to be classed as non-decent - in all 21% were."

Over one in five privately rented dwellings as 'non-decent'

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Awaab’s Law: Why so many UK homes still have a mould problem

Despite outcry over a British toddler’s death, mould remains a problem in many homes - so are new law changes enough?

www.bbc.co.uk

Reposted by Will Clement

Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 10d

As I considered Hegel’s remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice, I couldn’t help but think that he forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

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Reposted by Will Clement

Municipal Dreams @municipaldreams.bsky.social · 10d

2/ ... which houses one quarter of the city's population:
municipaldreams.wordpress.com/2023/07/04/m...

Municipal Housing in Zurich

If you think of Switzerland (beyond cowbells and cuckoo clocks), you probably think of it as one of the richest countries in the world – correctly so given that one in fifteen of its citizens are m…

municipaldreams.wordpress.com

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Reposted by Will Clement

Municipal Dreams @municipaldreams.bsky.social · 10d

1/ Interesting piece by @PeteApps on cooperative housing in Zurich. Switzerland is a country which shows how well high quality public housing serves a mixed community. See also the next tweet in which I write about Zurich's municipal housing ...
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Could Zurich’s housing cooperatives be the solution to the rest of Europe’s housing crisis? | Peter Apps

One in every five citizens in the city has bought a share in the company that built and owns their apartment block, says Inside Housing’s Peter Apps

www.theguardian.com

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 13d

The students *loved* it. One said it was the best thing they've read at university. It is extremely teachable, especially alongside/against some of the more traditional Terror primary/secondary stuff.

Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 17d

Very excited to teach the Terror next week to my Level 3 students, using Michaela Kalcher's brilliant @historyworkshop.org.uk article as key reading

doi.org/10.1093/hwj/...

Reposted by Will Clement

Greg Jenner @gregjenner.bsky.social · 13d

Thrilled to say I'm a judge for the first ever Inspiring History Teaching Awards, in association with Historic Royal Palaces. Do you know a great history teacher in the UK who deserves to go down in history? Nominate them here bit.ly/42yhGZP

Inspiring History Teaching Awards

Created by Historic Royal Palaces, these awards celebrate teachers who make history exciting, inclusive and meaningful. We want to recognise the impact that great teachers can make by bringing the pas...

bit.ly

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Reposted by Will Clement

Tom Hulme @tomhulme.bsky.social · 13d

Really cool work here… returning to a time and place that was a foundational moment not just for urbanising Britain but also for the discipline of urban history and using new techniques to challenge a deeply embedded viewpoint!

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

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Reposted by Will Clement

Ospreys Rugby @ospreysofficial.bsky.social · 13d

Cofio Aberfan 🖤

We will never forget those that tragically lost their lives on October 21, 1966.

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 13d

Congrats @emvchung.bsky.social for this guardian coverage of your new @historicaljnl.bsky.social article. Can’t wait to set it for first-year historians at @manchester.ac.uk to read alongside Engels on our course on capitalism

Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 13d

'Chung’s research...finds that more than 60% of buildings housing the wealthiest classes also housed unskilled labourers. In Manchester’s “slums”, more than 10% of the population was from the better-off, employed classes.'

Friedrich Engels ‘took creative liberties’ with descriptions of class divides in Manchester

Cambridge historian Emily Chung finds philosopher’s blistering depictions of segregation may have been exaggerated

www.theguardian.com

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 14d

It might be a stretch for 41-year-old Adam Driver to play a 26-year-old, but I'm surely not the only one who thinks he would be a perfect casting for Saint-Just, right??

Portrait of a young man with curly brown hair

Photo of a similar looking man in a suit

Reposted by Will Clement

Neil Mackay @neilmackay.bsky.social · 17d

My intellectual and emotional response to reading this is that I want to get a hammer and physically destroy every AI machine on the face of the planet. It is a fundamentally anti-human device and its purveyors are as great a danger to our shared future as any gang of criminals or terrorists

How generative AI could change how we think and speak

Over-reliance on chatbots could be eroding our language and critical thinking skills.

theconversation.com

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