Anna Alexandrova

@annaalexandrova

Philosophy of science, methodology of social sciences, wellbeing, evidence based policy, measurement. Professor @hpscambridge.bsky.social Fellow @kingscollege.bsky.social Russian Brit She/her

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Anna Alexandrova@annaalexandrova· 6d

Kilmainham prison museum in Dublin

Letter to mother on the eve of execution, 1916 Dear Mother
I am now
awaiting the supreme penalty
at 10 in the morning But I am perfectly happy, because I’ve seen the priest and I am going to die a good Catholic and a soldier of the Irish Republic. Dant worry or any for me, but pray for the repose. of my soul and my three comrades asked to see you, but they said they would see what they could do. Ask all my friends and comrades to pray or me and Dickand my other two comrades Mother I would fust love one lock at all the faces at home, yours above all, but seemly that is denied me I get everything I want now, wich as you know is the wait stant, Mother, my heart groves for one look at your dear face But phase ford I will meet you, and them all in heaven, I picture hour this will affect you, but Mother don't fet for remeber am happy. The priest here is going to get me, I to hear my confessin and I will recive at the altar in the morning Lord Jesus give me courage in my last moments. If S had only. got told of my sentence would have been well prepared beforenow Oh Mother if I could only see you, just again. Dont pret Mother because I am happy. To my Mother whom I dearly love yoodye Goodbye goodbye We will meet ins heaven please god. Mother
: fod sergited you in ardeal
Mother
Litir ó Jam
Jane, 16 S Ina litir dhe
James Fish
chéile

Black and white photo of two very stylish prisoners with cigarettes in their mouths

Anna Alexandrova@annaalexandrova· 29d

Looking after my 97yo father in law today. To pass the time I am reading to him his own memoir. This excellent story is from his travels in Yugoslavia in 1950

In the course of the tour made friends with another English student who suggested when it ended that we carry on on our own. So we got on a train headed for Dubrovnik. On, not in, as there was no room inside and we had to hang onto the couplings outside to start with, until some of the people got off and we were able to squeeze inside. Hanging on outside wearing big rucksacks would have been dangerous in the many tunnels, so we had to pass them in through a window to be looked after by the other passengers until we could get in to join them. These people were very poor indeed, and the contents of our rucksacks would have been big money for them, but when we got in we found not a single thing was missing from them, not even my precious camera. This was in marked contrast to two years later, in America, the richest country in the world, where when I put my camera down beside me on a bench at Niagara Falls it was nicked within seconds; and another I bought to replace it was nicked a few weeks later from a locked suitcase in my hotel room in New York.

Anna Alexandrova@annaalexandrova· Jun 27

Enjoying philosophy in the beautiful Rijeka

Doorway to a modern building with the sign Filozofski fakultet

27 TH EDITION OF THE INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM: CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES
26TH AND 27TH JUNE 2026
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:
Anna Alexandrova (University of Cambridge)
Gabriele De Anna
(Bamberg University, University of Udine)
Robert Northcott
(Birkbeck, University of London)
Department of Philosophy, FFRI, University of Rijeka

Anna Alexandrova@annaalexandrova· Jun 19

In memory of the great David Hockney here’s his 1971 drawing of the anthropologist Edmund Leach of @kingscollege.bsky.social I love the focus on the frames of his glasses

Anna Alexandrova@annaalexandrova· May 22

I love that Harry Maguire had his mum and brother moan on the internet on his behalf for not being picked for the England World Cup squad

The former Sheffield United and Hull City defender's mum also took to social media to
react to the decision, she wrote on
X: "Absolutely disgusted."
While Maguire's brother, Joe, also had his say, he added: "This might possibly be the worst decision I've ever seen in my life. No words."

Anna Alexandrova@annaalexandrova· May 1

Freud on how he felt leaving Vienna in 1938: « I saw the scientific society I had founded dissolved, our institutions destroyed, our printing press taken over by the invaders, the books I had published confiscated or reduced to pulp, and my children expelled from their professions »

Entrance to the Freud Museum in London on a sunny summer day, blue plaque with his name on the right

The original psychoanalysis couch and Freud’s green chair brought to London from Vienna in 1938

Anna Alexandrova@annaalexandrova· Apr 30

Here they are again, so lush

Anna Alexandrova@annaalexandrova· Apr 10

Exquisite @privateeyenews.bsky.social

Thought for the Day The Revered J. C. Flannel Does God believe in William?
"Well, you know, in a real sense, I think God is coming to terms with the apparent contradictions inherent in the so-called existence of Prince William. I mean, there's the Old Testament William who fought with his brother and smote him, according to Chapter 4 of the Book of Harry, which some people feel is apocryphal, and he has always been quite a vengeful Prince with his unforgiving attitude to his uncle who has admittedly followed an unrighteous path, but who one might feel has been punished enough, and then of course there is the New Testament Wills, who is much more compassionate and concerned for the future of the planet and all who dwell on it and who seems in a very real sense to embody some deep spiritual desire while his divine wife is miraculously omnipresent on all pages of all newspapers at all times which suggests... continued until the weather at 7.58am.

Anna Alexandrova@annaalexandrova· Apr 9

The staging of Summerfolk was fantastic. The play itself is long repetitive, heavy on revolutionary agitprop. Gorky tried to parody Chekhov but kinda parodied himself. Flashes of brilliant dialogue though, which ring unsettlingly prescient today as they were in 1904

Anna Alexandrova@annaalexandrova· Apr 9

View from the balcony of NT last night, St Paul’s gleaming in the background. On a warm evening like yesterday southbank is heavenly…

Night time view of London south bank on a warm evening. Party crowd in the foreground St Paul’s Cathedral in the background

Anna Alexandrova@annaalexandrova· Apr 6

Ich wurde sagen ich ware stolz, aber eigentlich bin ich einfach nur suchtig

Anna Alexandrova@annaalexandrova· Mar 26

For my fellow Wordlers. Anthony Lane has so much fun writing this short crime story about the tyranny of five letter words

SHOUTS & MURMURS

MURDER MOST WORDLE
1. Cruel month. Sharp mists float round river banks. Mutts scour trash. Winds drone. Weary music plays after hours. Gloom rises.
Night falls.
Awful human cries.
2. "Hello, Chief."
"Crime scene?"
"Along there. Empty street."
"Noted. Shoot."
"Knife wound, fatal, quick."
"Heart?"
"Aorta. Hence blood surge."
"Print check? Teeth marks, semen, hairs?"
"Zilch."
"Leads?"
"Usual crowd: bogus vicar, crack
fiend, angry medic, local creep.
Poets."
"Nasty world. Smoke?"
BY ANTHONY LANE
"Fresh stiff. Found below train
lines."
"Kaput?"
"Worse. Cleft."
"Twain?"
"Roger."
"Clues?"
"Words."
"Words?"
"Scrap paper, inked, drawn.
Funny stuff."
"Which words?"
"'Quoit, dryad, azyme, nymph, alack. Okapi, mambo, aeons, phyla, sough. Excrescences, all of them. Gangrenously indefensible. Damn them straight to hell'"
"Weird."
"Crazy times, right?"
3. Early lunch. Pizza, pasta, Lousy steak. Lager. Latte. Phone rings.
"Sorry, Chief."
"Again?"
4. Shops close. Tired, ratty folks mosey about. Foggy chill. Faint miaow.
"Hello, Chief. Third death.'
"Natch. Gimme."
"Toxin. Maybe venom."
"Where?"
"Spicy prawn gumbo."
"Yikes. Snack joint?"
"Shady place. Grits, chili, booze."
"Owner?"
"Heavy party named Chuck
Glass. Moron. Earns extra dough tying flies. Limps."
"Lover?"
"Olive Smith, forty-three. Widow.
Twice."
"Doozy?"
"Tough broad. Kinda lofty. Super
smart."
"Gabby?"
"Shtum. Total."
5. "Ready?"
"Ready."
"Names?"
"Olive Mercy Smith."
"Alias?"
"Daisy Hazel Baker."
"Fixed abode?"
"Sixty-seven Lower Maple
Drive."
"Daily grind?"
"Sales clerk. Shoes."
"Hobby?"
"Tried doing haiku. Prose poems.
Short novel."
"Tried?"
"Trash."
Pause.
"Alibi? Think, Olive."
"Dance class."
"Samba? Rumba? Waltz?"
"Tango. Seven until eight."
"Dance buddy?"
"Never."
"Truly?"
"Girls alone."
"Tripe. Spill, Olive ... Olive?" Chaos. Furor. Crash, smash, thump. Olive grabs prece, fires, yells aloud:
"Motherfuckers! Verbalist dicta-tors! Lexical-patriarchal neo-imperialists! Five-letter fascists! Scum!"…

Anna Alexandrova@annaalexandrova· Mar 21

Granchester on this sunny afternoon

View of the river Cam from its grassy banks

Church graveyard at sunset daffodils in the foreground

Anna Alexandrova@annaalexandrova· Mar 13

Absolutely divine GISELLE Marianela Nuñez ALBRECHT Patricio Revé

Anna Alexandrova@annaalexandrova· Mar 13

Giselle at the Garden! Marianela Nunez replaces Natalia Osipova, but I’ll take it.

Stage and orchestra pit at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden

Anna Alexandrova@annaalexandrova· Feb 26

Came across some holy texts today

First page of an early edition of Hume’s Inquiry

SECTION VII.
Of the IDEA of NECESSARY CONNECTION.
PART I.
THE reat a morage of the mathematical fcience
above the moral confifts in this, that the ideas of the former, being fenfible, are always clear and determinate, the fmalleft diftinction between them is immediately perceptible, and the lame terms are Itill exprellive of the tame ideas, without ambiguity or variation. An oval is never miftaken for a circle, nor an hyperbola for an ellipfis. The ifofceles and İcalenum are diftinguifhed by boundaries more exact than vice and virtue, right and wrong. If any term be defined in geometry, the mind readily, of itfelf, fubititutes, on all occafions, the definition for the term defined: Or even when no definition is em-ployed, the object itfelf may be prefented to the fenfes, and by that means be fteadily and clearly ap-prehended. But the finer fentiments of the mind, the operations of the underftanding, the various agitations of the paffions, though really in themfelves diftinct, eafily efcape us, when furveyed by reflec-tion; nor is it in our power to recal the origina object, as often as we have occafion to contemplat it. Ambiguity, by this means, is gradually intro duced into our reafonings: Similar objects are readil taken to be the fame: And the conclufion becom

Anna Alexandrova@annaalexandrova· Feb 12

In place and very excited. Two and a half hours with no interval. Bring it on Boris

A program for the Royal Opera performance of Boris Godunov in the foreground and the stalls of the ROH in the background

Anna Alexandrova@annaalexandrova· Jan 24

The snowdrops are back!

A bunch of snowdrops growing out of rocky soil with more such bunches in the background

Anna Alexandrova@annaalexandrova· Jan 1

dusk at Mill Road cemetery. May we all stay safe and healthy in 2026!

View of a cemetery with grey headstones at dusk with a rising moon. Red hawthorns berries in the foreground

Anna Alexandrova@annaalexandrova· Dec 25

My 15yo gave me a very useful Christmas present. You are welcome to it, my old friends

Anna Alexandrova@annaalexandrova· Dec 24

Read in one breath. Thank you for sharing your story. I hope you do return. Here’s an amusing titbit from the history of #f9lc written by Stephen Cherry, our Dean

a 'nine lessons.
Philip Ledger, who was in post from 1974 to 1982, also made many arrangements, such as 'A Spotless Rose, 'Adam lay ybounden, 1 Saw Three Ships' and 'Stille Nacht. He also set his own descants, only to be rebuked by a chorister, 'we sing Mr Willcocks's descants here' It was in Ledger's time (in 1979) that the service was first transmitted in the United States, by Minnesota Public Radio. Its following in the United States is huge, and many involved in its first transmission still gather for breakfast and to listen and join in together, following closely the order of service which they print from the College website.
Today MPR relays the programme to approaching five hundred other stations across the United States.

Anna Alexandrova@annaalexandrova· Dec 23

This year’s Lyndewode Road Carols were the biggest I’ve ever seen. Hundreds of people all bellowing oh come all ye faithful. The rain started just as the final note was sung which is clearly the atheist’s nightmare

À crowd of people on a residential street in the dark, singing

Anna Alexandrova@annaalexandrova· Dec 20

A sunny morning in Wicken Fen. Very muddy boots…

Sign saying The National Trust Wicken fen with reeds by the side of a canal

Two white swans swimming in the canal, reeds on the banks

Anna Alexandrova@annaalexandrova· Dec 7

Went for a walk in the rain to Granchester and back

A white swan on still water with raindrops making circles around the swan

Anna Alexandrova@annaalexandrova· Dec 1

Delighted to receive my own copy! Here is the press site where eventually the volume will be available as open access mitpress.mit.edu/978026255224... well done again @adrian-currie.bsky.social @phieveigl.bsky.social