William Carruthers @w_carruthers Twitter profile

Pinned Tweet

William Carruthers

2 years

Extremely excited to say that my book now has a (really great) cover! It will be published by @CornellPress in mid-November:

55

131

947

Last Seen Profiles

@xiobigng1

@CdEichhorn

@kanye_20247

@Terrapresta

@LanaStJames

@Daedalus_medio

@GabeRMurphy

@Commone63255185

@TinkTimeless

@LALabor

@yangdw4

@V_Baseball18

@WebDeA222

@Ben_Schreiber11

@nandwk4

@U3K9QQQLoG13U62

@takatakaprivate

@VictorYesufu

@EroticLeakss

@slowrespongeez

@tiago_sdf

@grandprairieisd

@Pamelamei99

@injeIo

@EHpHHnh8wybbpe2

@Ich_bin_dylan

@Ushyyy_

@azurite821

@queenofh3arts__

@jeongkwangie

@myizna_

@W4LLH4K

@OmMitrasya

@nalue253

@dul_turkporno

@Sujalsharma06

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

@JakeAnbinder Authors of books about boy wizards

80

48

4K

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

For God’s sake

94

65

2K

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

1 year

I’m really not sure if you finished a PhD before c. 2008 you can really, genuinely understand what things have been like for students since then even with the best of intentions.

46

129

2K

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 years

I sometimes think about the time when ‘getting a job as a university lecturer’ didn’t mean being a ‘word-leading academic star and future of the universe’ but simply meant ‘getting a job as a university lecturer’.

25

101

2K

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

I think academics would be better off admitting that a humanities PhD is (mostly) good training only for a career in the academic humanities. There are always exceptions, but the creation of ‘alt-ac’ is a symptom of a systemic failure, not a positive result of the current system.

50

66

1K

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 years

Filling out a job application form for an academic job that asks for my GCSE results. I've been a postdoc for seven years and took my GCSEs in the last millennium.

71

12

1K

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

5 months

Does the library have every conceivable review of this book? Yes. Does the library have this book? No.

13

50

790

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

4 months

All I want is the ability to comment on footnotes in Word

Tsarathustra

@tsarnick

4 months

Satya Nadella says Windows PCs will have a photographic memory feature called Recall that will remember and understand everything you do on your computer by taking constant screenshots

5K

4K

10K

20

62

759

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

1 year

Inevitably announcing this as Twitter dies, but here’s the proverbial personal news: I’ll be Lecturer in Heritage Studies at the University of Essex from September 1st. I am, as you might imagine, both very happy and massively relieved…

142

21

747

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 months

I got an academic job nine years post-PhD. It’s down to luck, postdocs, and the ability to hang on. At the most elite institutions people play ‘pedigree’ games—and it’s pretty clear that some places have nepotistic relationships with others—but when it really comes down to it…

21

29

587

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

My book arrived! It looks wonderful! Thanks @CornellPress and @BethanyWasik !

31

59

561

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 years

Very hard not to come back to the fact that Nadia Abu al-Haj almost lost tenure for writing a book about the history and politics of archaeology in Israel/Palestine

5

69

512

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 years

Is there a company that specialises in making university websites almost impossible to navigate?

24

23

446

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 months

Just found this on our library website

15

128

442

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

1 year

It’s all very well talking heads suddenly stating that museums need to catalogue objects when everyone knows that resources for just that have been lacking for years and it’s nowhere near as simple a process as someone says here.

‘Nobody was expecting it’: British Museum warned reputation seriously damaged and treasures will...

Experts say loss of 1,500 items reveals lax cataloguing and boosts case for returning objects to countries of origin

www.theguardian.com

14

61

403

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

1 year

Has anyone yet put forward a compelling argument as to why getting a PhD in arts and humanities is worthwhile even if the end result is not academic employment? Personal enrichment aside—and I think that can be valid—is there literally anything out there?

150

10

352

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

I've been going through my proofs for the past couple of weeks. Out in December with @CornellPress !

10

28

323

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

There is a type of academic who is convinced that their thoughts are just more interesting, more complex, than everyone else’s. That New Yorker article demonstrates very effectively why that is never the case.

5

17

297

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

I know the academic job issue is basically a systemic one, but the number of securely employed people prepared to suggest that you work for free for a while is sometimes quite astonishing.

11

21

280

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

1 year

This bio would not, I think it’s fair to say, be published today

22

16

250

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 months

1/ I do wonder if quite so many people would be up in arms if what had happened at Stonehenge yesterday had happened in other countries. Here’s a thread of recently destroyed heritage that has elicited no or much less reaction:

9

104

248

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 months

… people are kidding themselves if they think this process doesn’t rest on multiple, often unknowable moving parts and those other basic factors.

4

0

233

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

5 years

I’m sorry to get on my high horse here, but if this is ‘helping archaeologists’, then what is the difference between Quftis and archaeologists?

10

34

212

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

5 months

Sorry to be that person, but this is the first time I’ve actually found a physical copy of my book in a library

9

1

211

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

1 year

I'm genuinely pleased to have been elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society today: it awarded me various grants supporting my doctoral work (many years ago...) and is genuinely working to make history a more representative profession.

Royal Historical Society

@RoyalHistSoc

1 year

Today we welcome 315 new Fellows, Associate Fellows, Members and PGR Members to @RoyalHistSoc : The new Fellows and Members reflect the breadth of historical research and scholarship in the UK & overseas #twitterstorians

2

12

74

30

8

202

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 years

If I wrote a (book?) about how the history of archaeology in Egypt is, to a great extent, the history of the changing state's attempts to regulate a 'landscape' and ecology that is, in fact, itself constantly changing (often due to state intervention), would there be interest?

23

8

190

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

4 years

Patrice Lumumba's children visit the Cairo Tower, the Pyramids, the Gize Zoo, and meet Abdel Halim Hafez, 1962

7

55

162

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

Sorry to go on about this, but I’m told my book should start shipping in early November (discount code in the thread below)!

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

Extremely excited to say that my book now has a (really great) cover! It will be published by @CornellPress in mid-November:

55

131

947

6

25

153

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

4 months

I did not expect my most used sentence of feedback this year to be 'footnotes go after the punctuation'. What is going on?!

22

2

160

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 months

This is, obviously, a terrible system, which I think is probably designed not to look like ‘up or out’, which is part of the problem: it so obviously always has been.

1

0

158

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 years

Excited to announce that my book, 'Flooded Pasts: UNESCO, Nubia, and the Recolonization of Archaeology' will be published autumn/fall 2022 by @CornellPress ! With thanks to many people, but especially to @BethanyWasik , editor extraordinaire!

24

12

150

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 months

I have the publication record—I think—of a mid-career scholar, have finally been in a permanent academic job since last September, and am already starting to get close to aging out of mid-career grants in post-PhD years. This system makes no sense.

8

1

153

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

1 year

@arrieuking Yes. I finished in 2014 and think the situation is objectively worse now than it was even then.

1

148

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

@seeshespeak Presumably the old-school approach would have been to go for a drink…

1

0

142

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

1 year

It’s that time of year when you realise how many academics do crazy commutes

6

9

140

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

It exists!

Dr Hannah Pethen

@HannahPethen

2 years

@w_carruthers look what arrived this morning.

1

8

6

12

134

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

1 year

Perpetually excellent pair of signs

5

20

125

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 years

Is it just me, or has the pandemic accelerated the number of academic events partially because everything can go online? Workshops and conferences that previously wouldn’t have run etc. It’s never-ending.

10

3

125

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

I, er, seem to be on this list: "Books of the Year 2022" via @HistoryToday

Books of the Year 2022

www.historytoday.com

12

9

121

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

6 months

I'm giving a lecture in Edinburgh on March 13th. They're calling it a 'masterclass', which is flattering. Registration details here:

3

21

110

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 months

The problem with conversations about universities is the reluctance to admit that people might want to learn stuff unrelated to work whilst also wanting a degree to help get a higher salary. It’s not either/or and I’m not sure it ever has been.

2

12

107

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 years

Should I pay for an indexer for my book? I’ve done one before (and enjoyed it), but the difference now is a) I feel like i have less time b) I have a lot of unspent research money due to the pandemic.

63

2

105

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 months

Pleased to announce that I finally accidentally replied all to my department

8

1

101

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

I guess it's my turn to say this today: academic applications should just be a CV and a cover letter and avoid generic online systems meant for other types of job. The situation is bad enough as it is.

7

4

99

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

Very much at the ‘do I give this one last try or go and do something else entirely?’ stage of academic life.

11

1

97

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 months

6/ I will gladly add more examples, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what the connecting thread is here: ‘heritage’ outside Europe and North America seems to be out of sight and out of mind, as, much more distressingly, are people.

1

13

97

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

1 year

A job where the salary explicitly decreases

Architectural Humanities Research Association

@ArchHumanities

1 year

#JobAlert Senior Lecturer / Reader in Research Architecture at The Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. This post is offered at 1.0 FTE for two years, reducing to 0.6 after. Salary £59,561 to £66,572. Apply by 4 June 2023.

3

5

6

7

14

97

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

6 months

@HistoryNed And yet, ironically, I get the impression that many mature students/retirees would pay tuition to take courses on things like this. And there’d be a win in terms of older people’s mental health.

1

0

89

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

1 year

What I’ve noticed about this is that, despite elements of this situation being known for months, developments in the past week have actually made people not involved with universities take notice

The Guardian view on universities: arts cuts are the tip of an iceberg | Editorial

Editorial: Ministers are ultimately responsible for weakening humanities courses in universities. They are taking the country backwards

www.theguardian.com

6

26

81

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

6 years

Am I the only person who has trouble writing until I think I’ve done *all* the research? Suspect this does not make me oe of those productive and highly REF-able people

10

2

85

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 years

I know everyone says this, but inventing reasons to apply for massive grants is difficult when your actual research only requires a few thousand pounds each year.

3

4

86

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

4 years

@nycjim Did the chef just have them lying around, or..?

2

0

82

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

What are people who are on the border between ECR and mid-career with no permanent job meant to do, exactly? Go freelance?

8

4

79

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

4 years

I don’t normally subtweet, but I see the synchronous/asynchronous debate has started again and can people please stop: it’s December, it’s dark, everyone is doing their best and having another discussion about it is tedious.

2

4

75

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

I'll almost certainly regret posting this, but if, naming no names, your institution runs what turns into a near-six-month job search and then sends out a two-line rejection with no offer of feedback, it's doing it wrong.

9

2

75

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

1 year

What is bad about the BM is that it obviously has proclaimed how exceptional it is at various points, but this is a sector-wide issue internationally and it would be good if donors would just pay for essential work instead of whatever new flashy gallery.

3

5

74

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

@HMaloigne It's Brian Fagan...

6

0

71

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 months

2/ Fire at the Barbados archives two days (!) ago:

Historic documents destroyed in fire at Archives Department - Barbados Today

A fire sparked by a lightning strike just before midnight destroyed a two-storey block at the Archives Department which housed major historic documents. Chief archivist at the Barbados Archives...

barbadostoday.bb

2

6

68

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 years

My book has a website (although not a cover--yet):

Flooded Pasts by William Carruthers | Hardcover | Cornell University Press

Flooded Pasts examines a world famous yet critically underexamined event—UNESCO's International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia (1960–80)—to show how the project, its genealogy, and its...

www.cornellpress.cornell.edu

11

10

71

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

5 years

Do people still have an idea that museums possess archives that will magically reveal detailed histories of every object they hold? Because that is categorically not true and a huge part of the problem. Archives aren’t the magic bullet, even if accessible (which they should be)

3

8

68

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 years

1/ Very happy that this has been published: @bhajournal special issue on 'Inequality and Race in the Histories of Archaeology', featuring short pieces reflecting on those themes commissioned from an open call last year:

2

31

69

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

6 years

So in some professional news I was offered and accepted a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of East Anglia. I'm both surprised and--as anyone doing the early career rounds might imagine--enormously relieved.

14

0

66

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

5 years

@mattlodder @youngvulgarian It has made the lack of distinction between work and life in academia even worse, hasn’t it? (And even as everyone uses Twitter to encourage people to have a life outside work.)

0

1

66

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 months

3/ Continued demolition of Cairo’s historic cemeteries:

Burials stopped in Bab al-Nasr as another historic cemetery faces demolition

Cemetery caretakers at the historic Bab al-Nasr cemetery have been instructed to suspend burials.

www.madamasr.com

2

4

65

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 months

5/ Gaza:

The International Order Is Failing to Protect Palestinian Cultural Heritage

As Israeli forces destroy Gaza's sites and monuments, an archaeologist explains how international organizations should intervene—but have not.

www.sapiens.org

1

6

64

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

In other book-related news, I'm giving a talk @NVICairo on 12th January. It's called 'Creating Nubia: How Colonialism, Tourism, and Archaeology Made a Region, a Past, and a People'. More details here:

5

13

65

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

5 years

This is incredible

BBC Archive

@BBCArchive

5 years

#OnThisDay 1982: Bob Hoskins took Barry Norman on a riverside walk along the South Bank to illustrate his concerns about development in London.

41

471

1K

4

31

60

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

News! And can I add very many thanks to @BethanyWasik @CornellPress @HenkelStiftung @LeverhulmeTrust @ghilondon @ART_UEA without whom writing the book would have been impossible.

Bethany Wasik

@BethanyWasik

2 years

Great news, #Archaeotwitter & #twitterstorians ! The "Pre-Order" button is GONE from the @CornellPress book page for @w_carruthers ' brilliant "Flooded Pasts: UNESCO, Nubia, & the Recolonization of Archaeology." So, you can order it to ship NOW... I'll wait:

0

3

10

2

8

60

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

4 years

So @RoutledgeHist published the book I edited in paperback w/out telling me. "Histories of Egyptology" is now available for £30 featuring @photograph_tut @aliceestevenson @chebhocine @k8shep @GabeMoshenska @poisonchallis and others:

5

15

60

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

Sometimes job applications seem to want you to have the CV of a full professor for an entry-level lectureship: discuss.

6

0

62

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

@Egsaba_IA It's unbelievable

1

0

58

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

4 years

Did not know that Cairo University's Faculty of Arts has been digitising archival documents: here's Selim Hassan's report on excavations at Giza, 1935-36 (in Arabic) ( @fkeshk have you seen this?):

3

21

58

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

@maartenhorn Nope (2018)

1

0

60

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 months

4/ Sudan:

A War for Sudan’s Identity: The Loss and Destruction of Culture and Heritage - The Tahrir Institute...

Millions of people fled their homes in Sudan, leaving everything behind. TIMEP nonresident fellow Reem Abbas tells her story of personal and collective loss.

timep.org

1

6

58

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

1 year

Really don’t think I can stomach another academic job application

4

0

59

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

7 years

Have been having discussions with colleagues for years where people say “we’ve moved beyond Edward Said” and increasingly cannot see how this is the case at all. Surely we haven’t even begun to start thinking through the lessons?

3

12

53

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

One of the really weird thing about having been a postdoc for eight years is I think that people still assume you need the training someone straight out of a PhD might. You don’t! You need resources and stability.

0

6

51

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

1 year

Quite honestly, good. The Met has been a serial offender and everyone knows it.

‘The stuff was illegally dug up’: New York’s Met Museum sees reputation erode over collection...

An investigation identified hundreds of artifacts linked to indicted or convicted traffickers. What does this mean for the future of museums?

www.theguardian.com

2

21

52

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

6 months

It feels increasingly surreal to have started a permanent academic job this year

0

2

51

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

Sometimes I think it's helpful to view archaeology's 'turn' to its own history as further indication not of reflexivity but of increased lack of access to field sites in formerly colonised countries. So often claiming to do the work of representation while not really doing it.

2

4

50

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

4 years

Here’s looking at you, Egyptology...

5

11

51

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

4 years

I didn't think that this was being published until July, but I also have an article in this (happily published!) issue: "Records of Dispossession: Archival Thinking and UNESCO's Nubian Campaign in Egypt and Sudan".

Taushif Kara

@taushif

4 years

thrilled that this (very) special issue of IJIA on the ‘field as archive / archive as field’ (along with my contribution on architecture and history in Zanzibar) is now out!

6

4

42

3

16

50

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

5 years

Sorry to do this now, but I have an article out in @BASAS_SAS about Indian archaeologists working in Egypt in the 60s and why that matters: Archaeological (Non?) Alignments: Egypt, India, and Global Geographies of the Post-War Past

Archaeological (Non?) Alignments: Egypt, India, and Global Geographies of the Post-War Past

This article demonstrates how the politics of non-alignment and multilateralism intersected with the making of scientific knowledge about the past after the Second World War. The article shows how ...

www.tandfonline.com

4

8

48

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 years

Genuinely excited that I get to have footnotes and not endnotes in my book. I’m 39 next week, and it shows.

4

1

48

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 months

I want to coin a term: Schroedinger’s Academic, for when you’re simultaneously mid (years out of PhD) and early (years in permanent job) career…

0

4

48

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

Finally made it to Tutankhamun’s tomb in a church in Dorchester…

3

2

45

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

Flooded Pasts is officially out everywhere today! It has been shipping for a while from some places but this really is it! There are 30% discount codes for the US and everywhere else in the thread below. Makes an ideal present, I’m told…

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

Extremely excited to say that my book now has a (really great) cover! It will be published by @CornellPress in mid-November:

55

131

947

0

13

44

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

Home, jet lagged, to find myself on the front cover (well, bottom right-hand corner) of this month’s Apollo!

2

3

43

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

4 years

@mbarcia24 @PriyamvadaGopal To be fair, it’s probably the racism

0

1

38

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

1 year

Likewise, as an addendum: actually cataloguing objects well is one of the only ways questions about restitution will ever be resolved. In some ways it’s very telling that resources don’t go in that direction. Everyone knows the big objects, but that’s such a tiny proportion.

0

4

46

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

5 years

@AndreLegris @DrLindzyONeal I remember going to talk to a potential PhD supervisor and hearing them on the phone while waiting outside: ‘the appointment will only take ten minutes’, they said to a friend, and then proceeded to spend ten minutes telling me my project was pointless.

0

1

45

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

And a Bata! They were genuinely everywhere.

Mohieldin 🌺

@mohimg

2 years

An old HMV in Khartoum

2

9

48

2

44

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

Two months to go! (For the e-book; three months for print but I’m reliably informed it should ship well before that.)

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

Extremely excited to say that my book now has a (really great) cover! It will be published by @CornellPress in mid-November:

55

131

947

1

5

42

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 years

Our son’s nursery taught him Feliz Navidad but now he’s singing ‘Feliz Mummy Dad’ with quite some gusto

4

1

44

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

Just sent these—and the index—back. I guess this is really happening? (I highly recommend @khowaga as an indexer!)

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

I've been going through my proofs for the past couple of weeks. Out in December with @CornellPress !

10

28

323

3

0

44

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

3 months

@gsoh31 ‘Vegetarian curries’ is another ‘latte drinking metrosexuals’—out of time

1

0

44

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

4 years

The current demolitions taking place in the northern cemetery in Cairo (and the lack of acknowledgement from Egyptology that perhaps this is an issue) are, BTW, one of the reasons why I edited this book, which I had promised a thread about:

Histories of Egyptology: Interdisciplinary Measures

Histories of Egyptology are increasingly of interest: to Egyptologists, archaeologists, historians, and others. Yet, particularly as Egypt undergoes a contested process of political redefinition, how...

www.routledge.com

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

4 years

Has UNESCO made a statement? Have any Egyptological institutions? If their concern is really preserving the past of a country, regardless of period, then they need to.

2

10

28

1

8

43

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

I will say that despite everything (i.e. no longer having a job) getting nice emails about your work out of the blue is really comforting and an indication that it's not you.

1

0

41

William Carruthers

@w_carruthers

2 years

At what point did ‘the book’ become the key thing denoting academic humanities quality? What happened to people who didn’t want to write one? I’m asking this as someone who didn’t turn their dissertation into a book.

8

1

43