Elizabeth Boyle
banner
thecelticist.bsky.social
Elizabeth Boyle
@thecelticist.bsky.social
Historian/writer • @maynoothuniversity.ie • executive committee @mediumaevum.bsky.social • board member @dublinnorthwest.bsky.social • Fierce Appetites (Penguin, 2022) • rep'd by Robert Caskie • extreme metal fan • she/her
Reposted by Elizabeth Boyle
Wow!
NEW Have archaeologists identified the largest nucleated settlement in prehistoric Ireland and Britain? Survey at Brusselstown Ring, one of the largest hillforts in Ireland, found evidence for potentially hundreds of occupied roundhouses!

Learn more 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

🏺 #Archaeology
November 26, 2025 at 10:53 AM
Reposted by Elizabeth Boyle
www.museum.ie/en-IE/About/...

AKII role @nmireland.bsky.social - Antiquities Division with a focus on Dublin Excavations - Viking Dublin.
Vacancies | National Museum of Ireland
Welcome to the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin & Castlebar covering Archaeology, Decorative Arts, Folk & Country Life, & Natural History.FREE Exhibitions
www.museum.ie
November 27, 2025 at 6:31 AM
Reposted by Elizabeth Boyle
The MHR is looking for a new Editor-in-Chief.
Would you like to gain valuable experience in #publishing by managing an established open-access journal?
Would you like to help more postgrad students and early career researchers take their first steps into publishing?
Interested? Drop us an email ⬇️
November 27, 2025 at 9:13 AM
This is one of the funniest, most brilliantly-written, and most insightful bits of political writing I've read in ages (plus there's RFK Jr's blow job poem). Seriously, grab yourself a coffee, put your feet up, & prepare to snort the coffee out of your nose as you laugh uproariously at this. 👇🏻
November 27, 2025 at 9:33 AM
Reposted by Elizabeth Boyle
𝗗𝗶Ⓐ𝗴𝗻𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 21
Since the summer, the DiⒶgnostic team have been meeting weekly or biweekly to read critically a recent PhD on dialects in Old Irish.
This has given us a lot of food for thought, on the one hand regarding the methodology that is necessary to approach the topic, but also about...
/1
November 25, 2025 at 5:13 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth Boyle
Oh hell, Jimmy Cliff has passed. I can’t overstate how important this man was to much of the music I love, both with his own work and with his influence. Without him, the soundtrack of my life would be much less joyous. Rest in power.
Jimmy Cliff, Jamaican reggae singer, actor and cultural icon, dies aged 81
Star of The Harder They Come had hits including You Can Get It If You Really Want and I Can See Clearly Now
www.theguardian.com
November 24, 2025 at 12:45 PM
"Tartu University is analysing other historic artefacts ... including an 800-year-old cross depicting genitalia that makes a sound when worn.
The metal cross has a hinged piece in the shape of a vulva that covers and knocks against an engraved penis design when moved around." #MedievalSky
DNA reveals stone age teenager as chewer of 10,500-year-old ‘gum’
The prehistoric birch tar found in Estonia contained traces of saliva that were analysed by genetics experts
www.theguardian.com
November 24, 2025 at 9:21 AM
Reposted by Elizabeth Boyle
The Guardian’s investigation into the Free Birth Society is a clear example of a closed, high-risk counterpublic. It can be examined directly through the lens of disordered discourse described in my work.
demos.co.uk/research/ver...
November 22, 2025 at 11:53 AM
Reposted by Elizabeth Boyle
@dublin2029.bsky.social interesting essay
Finally out into the world, the labour of many months. My long essay in the inaugural edition of the Alter Magazine on the pasts, presents, and futures of Indian science fiction.

“The Secret History of Indian Science Fiction” —

altermag.com/articles/the...
The Secret History of Indian Science Fiction.
Before Asimov, there was Rokeya.
altermag.com
November 22, 2025 at 9:24 AM
CW: child loss

This is horrific but utterly vital investigative journalism. So many layers - the brainwashing power of social media; the transition from feminist to tradwife via flat-earthism; the distrust of life-saving medicine - but at the heart of this is avoidable tragedy & unfathomable grief.
Influencers made millions pushing ‘wild’ births – now the Free Birth Society is linked to baby deaths around the world
A year-long investigation reveals how mothers lost children after being radicalised by uplifting podcast tales of births without midwives or doctors
www.theguardian.com
November 22, 2025 at 9:25 AM
Reposted by Elizabeth Boyle
How have books shaped the way we think? In January Anna Somfai will teach an online short course on books about science and philosophy in the Middle Ages. Book now 👇 #MedievalSky @ies-sas.bsky.social @warburginstitute.bsky.social @sas-news.bsky.social palaeography.uk/study/short-...
Medieval Philosophical and Scientific Manuscripts – an online short course taught by Anna Somfai
This course will run online from 14:00-17:00: Monday 26 January – Thursday 29 January 2026. The course explores medieval Western philosophical and scientific manuscripts produced over the spa…
palaeography.uk
November 21, 2025 at 10:39 AM
Reposted by Elizabeth Boyle
Glad to have written the opening chapter of this important volume. Nice to be asked to write something so close to home, the typos notwithstanding!
November 21, 2025 at 10:04 AM
Reposted by Elizabeth Boyle
It’s also the 83rd anniversary of this diary entry from James Lees-Milne about a feeling many of us recognise. (And I think we can all agree it’s better the other way round – when you get fuck all done, but don’t care)
November 21, 2025 at 9:58 AM
"It’s now so successful that it is redefining what “Irish music” even is, as doors open to musicians once left out of the country’s cultural conversation."

#Spéirghorm

www.theguardian.com/music/2025/n...
‘We’ve got to release the dead hand of the past’: how Ireland created the world’s best alternative music scene
Irish indie acts used to be ignored, even on Irish radio. But songs confronting the Troubles, poverty and oppression are now going global – and changing how Ireland sees itself
www.theguardian.com
November 21, 2025 at 10:13 AM
Reposted by Elizabeth Boyle
Bígí linn | Join us for the next Early Irish & Celtic Studies research seminar. Thursday 27 November at 17:00, Room 2.31 IONTAS.

*Three Women, Three Pregnancies, Three Punishments*
Dr Riona Doolan (Maynooth University)

Fáilte roimh chách!
November 18, 2025 at 1:59 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth Boyle
Lecture alert @celticuu.bsky.social!
🗓️ Seán Ó Hoireabhard (@hoireabhard.bsky.social @scs-dias.bsky.social): Is the Irish Book of Rights a useable medieval source?
📍 Utrecht (Utrecht University Centre for Medieval Studies), Thursday 11 December
🔗 www.uu.nl/en/events/le...
Lecture Seán Ó Hoireabhard: Is the Irish Book of Rights a useable medieval source?
Seán Ó Hoireabhard discusses whether the medieval Irish Lebor na Cert ‘The Book of Rights’, with its many flaws, can be regarded as a reliable historical source.
www.uu.nl
November 20, 2025 at 9:04 AM
'“Migration has always been a survival strategy for humanity,” says Bersoza.'

www.thejournal.ie/mexico-city-...
'We live in limbo': Venezuelan migrants seeking safety at Irish-supported shelter in Mexico
The Cafémin migrant shelter is supported by UNHCR and the Irish embassy in Mexico City.
www.thejournal.ie
November 20, 2025 at 5:44 PM
"He understands, as Mexicans do, that it is a miracle that the country exists at all, especially when one considers that the very diverse people who have called Mexico home have coexisted there for five centuries ... We have also tolerated 200 years of relentless U.S. bullying."
It’s a Miracle That Mexico Exists at All
www.nytimes.com
November 20, 2025 at 10:27 AM
'Ravn began as a poet, and even in English this lineage is clear. Her work asserts that knowledge inheres in objects, comprehension through smell and taste and blood and guts; through metaphor. “How do I know this?” demands the wax child, at one point. “It is like a gash in me to know it.”'
The Wax Child by Olga Ravn review – a visceral tale of witchcraft
The author of The Employees goes back to 17th-century Denmark for an intensely poetic portrait of everyday sorcery and female solidarity
www.theguardian.com
November 18, 2025 at 5:13 PM
"It was 1968 and the Irish labourer had barely a pound to his name but he believed that if he stayed underground in a coffin longer than anyone else the world would remember his name."

#Spéirghorm

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...
Incredible story of Irish labourer buried alive in coffin for 61 days told in new documentary
Mick Meaney made global headlines when he beat world record in 1968, but returned to Ireland penniless
www.theguardian.com
November 17, 2025 at 4:00 PM
"... it’s easy to assume today’s pagan revival is linked to nationalism and Sweden’s new anti-immigration sentiment, & it’s impossible to know how many heathens hold such sympathies. Officially, Forn Sed is openly antiracist ..."

Something for #MedievalSky & those interested in modern medievalisms.
Here in Sweden, the Vikings are back. And this time they’re searching for stability in a chaotic age | Siri Christiansen
I joined a ‘sacrifice’ ritual outside Stockholm – and found that the revival of Norse paganism reflects broader battles over identity and climate anxiety, says investigative journalist Siri Christians...
www.theguardian.com
November 17, 2025 at 12:47 PM
'... he used to borrow books from the library to read while he was waiting for orders to come through. “My favourite author is Dostoevsky, who I call the ‘magician of writing’. ... but I don’t read any more because I’m too tired. This work has just drained everything out of me.”'
Life as a food delivery worker: ‘Sometimes men open the door naked’
To earn a living as a delivery rider, some work 10-12 hour days, contending with low pay, exhaustion, accidents, injuries and harassment. Is this a new form of modern slavery?
www.theguardian.com
November 16, 2025 at 11:23 AM
Yesterday I was at the Tionól, the annual conference of @scs-dias.bsky.social. The final 2 papers happened to be by 2 of my favourite scholars of medieval Ireland - @dhaydenceltic.bsky.social on Cath Maige Tuired & early medieval medicine; & Conor McDonough on medieval Irish exegesis! #MedievalSky
November 16, 2025 at 10:05 AM
Reposted by Elizabeth Boyle
Did an Irish 'nation' ever exist? Who were the Scotti? The Féni? The Gaels? Dr Patrick Wadden, DCU & Belmont Abbey College, provides a masterclass on the written sources and how Irish authors conceptualised Irishness in the early Middle Ages. @maynoothuniversity.ie open.spotify.com/episode/40rP...
Irish national identity in the early Middle Ages with Dr Patrick Wadden
open.spotify.com
November 14, 2025 at 9:58 AM
Hot off the press! Exciting new arrival 📚

#MedievalSky
November 15, 2025 at 11:59 AM