Morwenna Ludlow

@morwennaexe.bsky.social

1216 Followers 2279 Following

Professor of Early Christian History at the University of Exeter; Canon Theologian at Exeter Cathedral. Crafter of prose, cushions and woolly socks. I lift my eyes to the hills.

Exeter Academics Elected to the British Academy Fellowship, 2026. We are all truly honoured by our election to the Fellowship of the British Academy. The recognition of our work from our peers means an enormous amount to us. It also reflects the wonderful, supportive and collegial environment of the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Exeter where we work. However, it's hard to celebrate when our University's management has decided to launch a devastating attack on humanities and social sciences at Exeter, putting nearly all the academics in the Faculty (including us) "at risk" of compulsory redundancy. These drastic, rushed and myopic cuts undermine the very environment in which our work was able to flourish. The targeted attack on Humanities and Social Sciences represents a catastrophic failure to understand the critical role of humanities and social sciences in public life, and why understanding human society and its history is more important today than it has ever been. Rob Gleave, Professor of Arabic Studies (Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies); Mark Jackson, Professor of the History of Medicine (Archaeology and History); Morwenna Ludlow, Professor of Christian History and Theology (Classics, Ancient History, Religion, and Theology) Jane Whittle, Professor of Economic and Social History (Archaeology and History)
'EXETER UCU: OUR SIX KEY MESSAGES 1. EXETER UNI'S FINANCES ARE STRONG. WE'VE LARGE CASH RESERVES (£200M IN 24/25). NEVER HAD A BUDGET DEFICIT. THIS 'CRISIS' IS MANUFACTURED. 2. EXECUTIVE PAY AT EXETER IS OUT OF CONTROL. IF JUST THE 16 HIGHEST-PAID EXECS CAPPED THEIR SALARY AT £120K, WE'D SAVE MORE MONEY THAN ALL THE CUTS TO ARCHAEOLOGY & HISTORY! 3. NO MEANINGFUL CONSULTATION, BUT A CONFUSED MESS: FAULTY AND INSUFFICIENT DATA, NO REAL DISCUSSION, AND AN IMPOSSIBLE, INSULTING AND UNREASONABLE TIMETABLE TO PUSH THIS THROUGH OVER THE SUMMER. 4. AN ALL-STAFF MEETING OF 600 STAFF RESOUNDINGLY VOTED NO CONFIDENCE IN VICE CHANCELLOR LISA ROBERTS (WHOSE PAY IS PUSHING £400K). WE BELIEVE THIS IS THE BIGGEST SINGLE VOTE BY ANY UNI STAFF IN THE HISTORY OF UK HE. 5. REDUNDANCIES ARE A MANAGEMENT CHOICE, NOT A FINANCIAL NECESSITY. THEY EVEN HAVE ALTERNATIVE COSTED PLANS WITH NO CUTS, BUT THINK IT'S EASIER TO GO FOR JOB LOSSES. 6. EXETER IS A FANTASTIC UNI, WITH WORLD CLASS RESEARCH, CREATIVE AND INSPIRING TEACHING, THOUGHTFUL AND IMAGINATIVE COMMUNITY OF STAFF AND STUDENTS. LET'S KEEP IT THAT WAY.' At the bottom of the poster: #DefendExeterUni Instagram handle @uniexeterucu QR link to sign the petition
Image of a computer screen showing a search engine. In the search box I typed the words “Weave what is plausible together with what is false”. The first result is an “AI overview”. This reads: “the act of weaving plausible, true sounding information with false details is a core characteristic of hallucination and confabulation in large language models (LLMS). The sophisticated fabrications often occur when a model encounters topics with sparse or contradictory training data leading it to construct detailed, convincing narratives that blend real, contextual elements with fabricated ones.
Screenshot of an advert preceding a video on YouTube: an image of a youngish man wearing glasses looking at a modern vase. Directly over his face is the message “curate for cash on <tradename>”
View from a GWR train window: red cliffs and sea at Dawlish. Sunshine, blue sky and a few white clouds. Glorious!
Photo of a very long, pebbly, almost empty beach on a sunny day under a perfect clear blue sky. The sea is mirror calm and a paler blue near the shoreline. Cliffs in the distance. Sadly no image of the seal, so you’ll have to imagine that.
Screen shot of BlueSky post by Glen O'Hara @gsoh31.bsky.social O’Hara writes: “First universities point in the Immigration White Paper: the government's going to steal some of our money to drive us deeper into penury. For crying out loud.” O’Hara then includes screenshot of two paragraphs from government white paper: 112. International students have a significant positive impact to the UK economy. In 2021, international students at UK universities generated an estimated £20.65 billion in exports through living expenditure and tuition fees, but it is right that these benefits are shared.48 The Government will explore introducing a levy on higher education provider income from international students, to be reinvested into the higher education and skills system. Further details will be set out in the Autumn Budget. 113. It is also essential that any individual that our country welcomes here to study is genuinely here to do so and is not using their application for a student visa simply as a vehicle to move themselves and their dependants to a new life in Britain Equally, the education providers responsible for offering places to these students must treat their roles as recruiting sponsors with the diligence and seriousness that those roles demand.
Design by Sonia Delauney. Sketch shows model wearing a multi coloured dress with knee length flared skirt, tight waist, straight fitted bodice with round neck and elbow length sleeves. Bodice is black down the left side and black marks the waist and black strips of colour radiate down from waist to hem of skirt. In between the black there are irregular polygrammatic blocks of colour in red, yellow, green, blue and orange.
Design by Sonia Delauney. Sketch shows model wearing an evening ensemble: strapless white dress shading to grey in the narrow long skirt. Over this the model wears a loose-sleeved long jacket in grey and black. Across the arms of the jacket and the bust of the dress are multi coloured letters reading “CETTE ETERNE FEMME”.
Design by Sonia Delauney: sketch shows model wearing an ensemble in red, black and sky blue. To the right it’s a red dress with A line skirt ending just above the knee; to the left a strapless dress in blue with skirt and also a trouser leg in blue. The join between the two is a black zigzag design which runs from the right shoulder of the red dress all the way down to the trouser leg on the left.
The green light of a pedestrian crossing. A green figure in 16th century scholar costume — Luther, we assume — hastening across the road.
The red light on a pedestrian crossing: the silhouette of the man waiting looks like that of portraits of Luther.
Boxes of bouquets of flowers at a market stall. Bright colours — red, and white; pink and white, and yellow. A hand-written sign reads 8€ / 2 = 15€
A box of 20 hyacinth bulbs in square pots of various colours — pink, white and blue plastic. The bulbs are sprouting green, but not yet in bloom. From a market stall.
The word “juvenile”
The inside of a beamed roof: two broad horizontal main beams, a steeply pitched roof with supporting beams. And a couple of strip lights. A picture with lots of angles!
Early image of three magi (in Phoenician bonnets and capes swooshing in the wind) advancing towards Mary with gifts in their hands. Mary is seated on a high backed basket chair with the Christ child on her lap. Behind her a figure (commonly assumed to be Barlaam) is pointing at a star. Image of the stone sealing the tomb of Severa, from the Vatican museums.
A red index card box full of cards indexing works by Gregory of Nyssa