Dr Amanda Dillon
SFF, gothic, time&gender&history, Victoriana. Time travelling women historians are my jam.
UEA History, sometimes UEA LDC. FHEA, Expat PA/VA. Wrangler of academics, books, & words. Sometime flutist. #wiasn Views own; she/her.
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonAnd I'm also not in charge of the university, but I also feel like maybe the people who are in charge of making financial choices for the university should be the ones who face the consequences of these horrible decisions. Not staff, not students, not faculty, not the community.
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonThis is horrific. Docking all pay for refusing to reschedule teaching due to strike action (for which pay has already been docked).
- Well that’s me locked out. No pay for the foreseeable future, all because I refuse to reschedule lost teaching, for which I have already lost pay as part of the strike. Please donate to support @sheffielducu.bsky.social members like me at www.gofundme.com/f/heubvb-sup...
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonSince yesterday, many people have DM’d to say that they were strongly affected by my essay & wished they could share it. So I've revised, expanded, & posted it for free on both Substack & Patreon. Please feel free to share. www.patreon.com/posts/this-i... catvalente.substack.com/p/this-is-wh...
- I don't talk about my 'other' job publicly very much, because I work as a managing editor for an academic journal, and honestly there's not much to talk about - it's very task-and-finish, and I obvs sit in an odd position re: for-profit publishing, as it *pays my rent*. But today was reject day.
- I hate reject day. Lemme back up. One of my jobs on the journal is to send out the desk reject emails. As a working and publishing academic in addition to being a managing editor, I am keenly aware that these emails go to human beings, and that I'm about to make their day very bad indeed.
- I don't *make* the decision: I only communicate it with a few keystrokes. But it's a task that weighs heavily on me, because I've had rejections of all sorts over the years, and I know how much it can sting, particularly if you really, really thought the piece had found its home.
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View full threadTL;DR: If you don't want to be part of reject day: submit something good to the right journal. I can't promise it'll work - some journals just can't consider every submission - but the vast majority of rejects I do are neither especially good, nor fit the journal's remit.
- Reposted by Dr Amanda Dillon
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonBecause it's absolutely true: if there's no point in doing anything at all, why would you do it? It's humans who make meaning. The events are just events. We make them mean something. What that is is entirely up to us. Story is uniquely human. Story is our one superpower.
- Reposted by Dr Amanda Dillon'Despite all their difficulties, universities remain an enormous and irreplaceable national asset. As well as educating millions of people, they generate about £24bn in export earnings, which is about 1% of GDP – more than aircraft manufacturing and legal services combined'. 1/2
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonImagine running a higher education system/country so badly that you actually can't afford, or refuse to fund, research that is *literally defined as* "internationally excellent". Stupid, stupid, stupid country.
- Reposted by Dr Amanda Dillonhappy ‘i will reply to your email on my return’ day to all who celebrate
- I don't really do end of year/ start of year anythings, but I did a bit of a 'best books I read in 2024' last year, and thought it'd be fun to do another this year. So - without further ado - my favourite reads of 2025. (No particular order.)
- I'll say to start that overall, I was unimpressed with most of my new reads in 2025. Publishing has gotten very samey, a little dull, and there's a lot of books that are just not delivering on their promises or I am bouncing right off of despite all the plaudits they attract.
- First up: Of Monsters and Mainframes (Barbara Truelove). I picked this up in the US as a gift-for-doing-book-proofs because it sounded bonkers, and I was not wrong. It is bonkers. It is JOYFULLY referential and thoughtful. Its fantasia on Lovecraft made me kick my feet in joy.
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View full threadThat's my top... 9 for the year. A lot of everything else was either deeply disappointing, mediocre at best, or re-reads. I have not YET read (but expect to enjoy) Katabasis, Helm, The Everlasting, Ripeness, and Paris Adrift.
- Reposted by Dr Amanda Dillon🤖🫧💥
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonJust making sure that 2025 is definitely over
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonStarting your "research" with ChatGPT is like filling the foundations of your house with cotton candy or building your menu around radium.
- I’ve had flu, so I missed it yesterday, but! 28 December was my book’s OFFICIAL birthday. Metafiction and Narrative Worlds in Science Fiction: Prism, Mirror, Lens (‘PML’ for short) was a labour of love, and is published by @livunipress.bsky.social . Available wherever you buy your books.
- Her BEAUTIFUL cover was created by the genius who is @melipenco.bsky.social . Thanks to @christabelscaife.bsky.social and the series editors for believing in this little thesis that could. ❤️
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonThis is a great expression of the thing I keep saying about text-generating algorithms: “Hallucination” isn’t some kind of glitch. ALL their responses are hallucinations. Sometimes they align with reality, sometimes they don’t.
- Reposted by Dr Amanda Dillon
[This post could not be retrieved] - Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonThe contempt that university managers have for their academic staff here in the UK is *off the scale*.
- Ongoing decimation of British universities part 252: Apx. 1000 academic staff at University of Essex just received formal ‘risk of redundancy’ letters via email. Please share @ucuessex.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonIf handing someone their arse, was a video clip
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonOh, even just for the comments below 🍿
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonA few doctors striking for a few days will not be what causes the collapse of the NHS. Years of chronic underfunding and mismanagement will do that for you.
- Reposted by Dr Amanda Dillon1/ The universities crisis is basically about varieties of wishful thinking: that student numbers would keep growing; that international students would continue to arrive; that interest rates would stay at crisis-driven all-time lows; that a Labour government would prop the sector up if it had to.
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonWhen will this crisis get any attention whatsoever!? A THOUSAND ACADEMIC STAFF AT ONE INSTITUTION SERVED REDUNDANCY RISK NOTICES! And that's not counting what's surely being visited on professional services staff too. This is an economic catastrophe, to say nothing of the intellectual catastrophe!
- Ongoing decimation of British universities part 252: Apx. 1000 academic staff at University of Essex just received formal ‘risk of redundancy’ letters via email. Please share @ucuessex.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonOngoing decimation of British universities part 252: Apx. 1000 academic staff at University of Essex just received formal ‘risk of redundancy’ letters via email. Please share @ucuessex.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk
- Reposted by Dr Amanda Dillonapparently there's 'falling growth' in the 'scientific research' sector, and yes, that is what will happen if you slash jobs in universities
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonBritish Library staff asked for a decent pay. Instead they got ‘a few money-saving present ideas’, such as ‘consider not giving presents this holiday season’. They are on strike this week. I wrote about it for @lrb.co.uk. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/de...
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonI do not like ChatGPT, Not when it’s paid, nor when it’s free. I will not use it for a thing, Especially not for referencing. It cannot help me with email, It’s law advice can lead to jail. It cannot bring back my late Nan, I do not like it, Sam-Alt-Man.
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonIf we really want to screw with AI scrapers, we should start punctuating along Victorian models, w/commas for emphasis, sometimes between subjects & verbs or just for whimsy, colons where no one'd use them today, and a shockingly free hand w/semi-colons. Not to mention the fantastic :— construction
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonUsing AI tools to make your own work easier is cognitive fly-tipping. That work is just unloaded onto someone else downstream of you who will spend far longer sorting out your mess than you saved avoiding doing the work in the first place.
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonBy the way everyone, what right-wing politicians say about immigrants is literally also what they believe about you. You having an ordinary job is a kind of favour your generous employer and the nation has done you, allowing you to reproduce your existence despite not being AN ENTREPRENEUR
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonAnyone who thinks immigrating is easy has never been through the system. Even under the best circumstances, it's a confusing, lengthy process that often requires expensive legal advice. This is unconscionable. Shame.
- Read this: www.wgbh.org/news/local/2...
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonMy dad abhors any negative comments about immigrants. Asked him recently why he’s so strong on it: ‘Because we’re always happy to take the rich and clever ones. Which means it’s not about disliking immigrants. It’s about disliking the poor and vulnerable. And that’s a bad human instinct.’
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonWhen I arrived in the UK 25 years ago I had a job at a university that paid £21k. I could barely make ends meet but I worked hard and eventually I succeeded. I guess this Labour government considers young broke hardworking me a “taker”? Fuck this.
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonEspecially grim because this is a Labour government doing it, and there is no meaningful opposition. We have been deep in National Front Trumpy territory for many years now, no help is coming for a long, long time and what comes next will be much worse and uglier than this is.
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonThis is why it's important to have Arts/Humanities courses AND STEM courses. It all fits together, they compliment each other. There's no such thing as useless education.
- I intend to do a full-on photo shoot with these when I have some free time, but for now, this will do - author copies of my first book, Metafiction and Narratice Worlds in Science Fiction ( @livunipress.bsky.social ) have arrived! Over the moon, and can highly recommend LUP as publishers.
- Also. I CAN spell my title. Auto-cucumber, on the other hand…
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonAs promised, here are the slides I shared with students to convince them to NOT use chatGPT and other artificial stupidity. TL;DR? AI is evil, unsustainable and stupid, and I'd much rather they use their own brains, make their own mistakes, and actually learn something. 🪄
- Reposted by Dr Amanda Dillonaaaaaaaand it turns out the answer to "how TF did some guys with a ladder steal the French crown jewels" is "cuts to arts funding mean the Louvre is massively understaffed"
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonAnd I will tell you flat out, there is a HELL OF A LOT BETTER-QUALITY ACTUAL TEACHING involved in getting a good degree out of a student who came in with BCD than there is getting one from an A*A*A student.
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonWe all know that the UK could have a well-funded university system without heaping debt on the heads of students, if politicians wanted it to. That's the only thing to say, really. Every dysfunction is a choice. A choice made by politicians, not by lecturers or students.
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonI remember once at an office job I had, I was really struggling with a big awkward box of files and paper up some stairs, and my boss came past me and said "oh let me help you" and took ONE SHEET OF A4 PAPER off the top. Anyway, in completely unrelated news.....
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonApparently university finances have already been stabilised. So speedily some of us must have missed it. 2/x
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonYou do realize that not adjusting for inflation has been unsustainable for over a decade? That cost of living applies to faculty and staff as well who don’t get pay rises in part because universities have been getting less money from fixed fees every year.
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonPair with: "we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. ...realists of a larger reality." www.ursulakleguin.com/nbf-medal
- ‘We all know that stories can be used to entrench prejudice and suspicion... [But] calling lies lies will not suffice. Only more stories, illuminating, reinvigorating, exploratory, different stories, can oppose the disinformation and rumour-mongering’ Marina Warner FBA on.ft.com/47uubZ0
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonWhen we refuse to hold people accountable for atrocious actions, we should not expect better behavior, or even just the same behavior. We should and arguably must expect worse after every time we make this same mistake.
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonHere's the thing: Everything is Gamergate because no one with any power to actually hold people accountable took this seriously. The same will be true if every time something atrocious happens like this and no one is held accountable. They are only further emboldened.
- Well OneDrive has eaten my 1/3 done index. I wasn’t enjoying it THAT MUCH, universe. Fuck’s sake.
- Reposting this to see if I reach anyone who knows what I’m referring to here. It’s driving me nuts.
- Indexing is really the most chaotic thing. ‘These are the things I think are important and the way I see them connecting. If you don’t like it, tough bunnies.’ There’s legit no real rules. I weirdly enjoy it.
- Proofs and proms today (yes, well after the fact; I just want something on in the background). I had not realised how the BBC had turned it into a sports event. The commentary is… no. Just no.
- Goths! Academics! I have possibly made this up (irony), but I am reasonably sure I read something in the last few months that said LLMs are essentially gothic in nature. Sound familiar to anyone? Any idea what it might have been? Probs just a thread, but might have been a substack…
- That sound you are hearing is my jet lagged brain slowly creaking back into teaching mode.
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonMajor yn Englisshe: • focused readinge & writinge prepare you for anythinge • research, communicacioun, creativitye, and interpretacioun will be needed for careers not even invented yet • meaningful engagement wyth big ideas and textes that will staye wyth you forevir • it ys awesome • books!
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonThere's lots more to say about @davidharvie.bsky.social and my findings. Please read the report to support union action & honour those who shared experiences. I'll finish with an eyeopening stat: the hidden, 'backdoor' redundancies affecting *11,500* people. 11,500 HIDDEN job cuts. This must end.
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonQueen
- First morning back in Britain: cold*, wet. Trying to figure out how to get the washing to dry. Welcome home to me. ❤️ *it was well into the mid 20s and above in the US. 12 may as well be winter to me right now.
- Also my cabbie from the station was a full on lefty and the sigh of relief I let out was incredible. The US was not, shall we say, comfortable over the last week and a bit. (NB not my family - just the overall vibe.)
- Found out when using my brand spanking new British passport for the first time this morning that apparently you need to thwack them to get the chip to work correctly. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, as a friend put it.
- Reposted by Dr Amanda DillonMore prosaically, as someone pointed out to me recently: LLMs are *always* hallucinating. its just that sometimes their hallucinations appear to map our experienced reality. But the map is never *of* our reality, just *like* it. So the words don’t describe it. 4/4
- Haven’t had a single serving friend on a flight in… 15 years? 20? Nice to pass the time with someone way too happy to chatter for a change.
