Jonathan Westaway
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jonwestaway.bsky.social
Jonathan Westaway
@jonwestaway.bsky.social
1.1K followers 660 following 120 posts
Cultural and environmental historian/geographer. Mountain and polar regions. Cryohistories. Indigenous knowledge. Island Studies. PL AHRC 'Other Everests' network. uclan.academia.edu/JonathanWestaway
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Reposted by Jonathan Westaway
Hey #EnvHum folks and #archaeologists! Are you involved in archaeological research into the history of forests? Then this call for papers might be of interest to you. Take a look:
projektwald.hypotheses.org/527

#WoodStory #ProjektWald #Forstgeschichte #Archaeology #Archäologie
Reposted by Jonathan Westaway
The Victorian Hand's #handoftheweek is all about the fingerprint and the handprint and roots in racialised ideologies. Do check it out and follow us!
In colonial India, William Herschel introduced fingerprinting in the 1850s to authenticate identity on legal documents.

Influenced by colonial ideologies, his experiments laid the foundations for modern forensic identification, codifying the hand as a scientific marker of identity.

#handoftheweek
Reposted by Jonathan Westaway
A great review of my film, which plays today at @celluloidscreams.bsky.social in Sheffield followed by a conversation about the Christmas ghost story.
Reposted by Jonathan Westaway
New in 'Transactions': 'Possible Maps: Newfoundland, 1763–1829' bit.ly/4oygf5V

@julialaite.bsky.social shows how overlapping maps highlight complexity of encounter with place over a coherence of colonial ideologies. What were peripheries of some people’s empires were centres of others' worlds 1/2
Reposted by Jonathan Westaway
As the UK Nature’s Rights Bill is unveiled today in the House of Lords, explore how recognising nature as a legal entity could transform conservation.

🪶 Our Rights of Nature page offers blogs, context & resources:
🔗 naturerecovery.ox.ac.uk/toolkits/rig...

#RightsOfNature #NatureRecovery
Rights of Nature
A shift from anthropocentric legal systems to an ecocentric framework where nature has independent rights to exist and flourish
naturerecovery.ox.ac.uk
Reposted by Jonathan Westaway
One of the crazier stories in my book is that of Amar Nath Dutt, who tried to blackmail some of the Indian revolutionaries in Paris. His bluff was called and after a brief prison term, he left for Argentina to become a magician, later going by the name Linga Singh. thewire.in/books/servan...
Reposted by Jonathan Westaway
CfP: Russia and the appropriation of the Arctic. Interests, instruments and identities from the late Tsarist period to the present day.
International Workshop, Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich
12–14 March 2026, Deadline: 30 November 2025
URL: mwsosteuropa.hypothe...
Reposted by Jonathan Westaway
The Society now invites applications for its Workshop Grants programme 2026: bit.ly/4oPyUdZ

Grants provide funding for groups of historians to come together for a day event to work collaboratively on a shared project.

Closing date for applications: Friday 23 January 2026 #Skystorians
RHS Workshop Grants, 2026 - call now open to fund day events on historical projects - RHS
The Royal Historical Society is pleased to announce the next call for its RHS Workshop Grants for projects to take place in 2026. This scheme provides funding of £1,000 per Grant to enable historians ...
bit.ly
Reposted by Jonathan Westaway
In the @nybooks.com, a review by Verlyn Klinkenborg of all three books of the 'Other Minds' trilogy, plus David Scheel's octopus book and one by Craig Foster (of 'My Octopus Teacher').
Quite an armful. (Image by Jason Logan.) 1/
www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
‘Such Flexible Intensity of Life’ | Verlyn Klinkenborg
Their striking intelligence makes octopuses tempting subjects for wishful anthropomorphism and uncanny reminders of nature’s mysteries.
www.nybooks.com
Reposted by Jonathan Westaway
Reposted by Jonathan Westaway
🔔 Event reminder!

🗻 Conference | Mountains of Greece: Heritage narratives from the past for a sustainable future
📆 22-24 October 2025
❗ fully booked in-person
🌐 online registration still available: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...
@mountainsofgreece.bsky.social
Reposted by Jonathan Westaway
Reposted by Jonathan Westaway
New to the series | Sports and sociability in Britain in the long eighteenth century edited by Alexis Tadié and Caroline Bertonèche. Find out more, and purchase directly for 20% off RRP: bit.ly/SportsandSociability #EighteenthCentury 📖
@voltaire.ox.ac.uk
Reposted by Jonathan Westaway
Reposted by Jonathan Westaway
One reasonable explanation for spending so much money on AI is that it's the vehicle for the last gasp of fossil fuel expansion
billmckibben.substack.com/p/hey-grok-w...
Hey Grok, What's a Waste of Energy?
AI amidst the climate emergency
billmckibben.substack.com
Reposted by Jonathan Westaway
OTD in 1945, delegates from across the world gathered in Chorlton-on-Medlock Town Hall in Manchester to take part in the Fifth Pan-African Congress.

Theo Williams on Black and anti-colonial politics and British radical memory.
The Fifth Pan-African Congress, 1945: A Landmark Moment in British Radical History
In October 1945, delegates from across the world gathered in Chorlton-on-Medlock Town Hall, half a mile south of St Peter’s Field, to take part in the Fifth Pan-African Congress.
www.historyworkshop.org.uk
Reposted by Jonathan Westaway
Lady Ottoline Morrell ('A walk near Gastein')

by Philip Edward Morrell
vintage snapshot print, August 1908
NPG Ax140006
shorturl.at/BtfFO
Reposted by Jonathan Westaway
'Under the Master of Trinity's recreations appears "Ascended Monte Rosa 1861, Parnassus 1862, Sinai 1863" - one expects "ascended into Heaven 1864" as the only natural climax.'

A. C. Benson's Diary, 25 February 1907

pallasathene.co.uk/shop/bensond...
The Benson Diary: 1885-1925, by A. C. Benson
Benson’s controversial diary was sealed up after his death. Only now can his acute judgements, and the story of his life, be fully appreciated.
pallasathene.co.uk
There is a whiff of an Edward Gorey illustration about this photograph - 'Julia wore her yeti-fur stole, silently fearing she might become the very thing she now wore. Leslie, sensing the long recessional of religious faith and the protracted exposure time of the camera, leant against a pillar...'
Reposted by Jonathan Westaway
Julia and Leslie Stephen in a churchyard, Grindelwald, Switzerland, 1889

by Gabriel Loppé (1825-1913)

Mortimer Rare Book Collection, Smith College.

www.smith.edu/libraries/li...