Blog | Professor Joe Cain

Vegetables and Fruit in a Market in Malaga, Spain 2025

Agricultural Business Management Class Notes 1991

For many years, Professor Jarvis Cain taught “Agricultural Business Management” as a semester-length class (AREC414) at University of Maryland College Park (UMCP). ABM now is a larger programme at the university. This class continues under a different focus and […]

Bikini Atomic Test 1946 Coverage in LIFE magazine

Bikini Atomic Test 1946 in LIFE magazine

Atomic testing on the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands in June-July 1946 as Operation Crossroads were the first “public” tests of American atomic weapons. These were public in the sense that they were covered widely by […]

What’s This? It’s Erasmus Darwin’s Sitting Chair

You never know what you’ll find searching through storage spaces at UCL. I previously wrote about some medical data cards re-discovered. Last year, I was invited to help sort through some historical materials in storage managed […]

Film Night at the Grant Museum, ten years

For about 10 years, I was part of a collaborative project, “Film Night at the Grant Museum”. Partners included Jack Ashby, Mark Carnall, and Dean Veall. Jack promoted the films as “On the Big Screen” events. Each quarter, […]

Graduates celebrating after UCL ceremony.

Letters of Reference and Recommendation

Students ask for letters of reference and recommendation. Writing them is an important responsibility for tutors. It’s something we take extremely seriously. But what goes into a letter of recommendation? Top Tips When Requesting References […]

Clarity at last! Use this hierarchy of elements in podcasting

Vague terminology in podcasting confuses expectations and ambitions. A proposal to “make a podcast” can sound simultaneously daunting and simple. One person might describe a short mp3 dictation of a story as a “mini podcast”. […]

Top Tips for Induction Week: Software Discounts

Professor Joe Cain shares a practical money-saving tip for students joining the Science Communication MSc program at UCL. He highlights how students can access major educational discounts on software suites, focusing on the Adobe Creative […]

Sample Medical Card for Croydon Schoolboys 1920s-1930s

Medical Cards for Croydon Schoolchildren 1920s-1930s

Historians must make more – and more creative – use of AI technologies for data analysis as well as for routine task of data sorting and transcription. To create a simple example, I have put […]

Proceedings of the Seventh International Genetical Congress held in 1939 and published in 1941.

International Genetical Congress (1939, Seventh): Queries using LLM

What work can large-language models (LLMs) do for historical researching? They offer tools for voluminous compilation of data ready for complex human analysis. They can organise and reorganise data. They can extract data from source material. They can be set to search for trends. We’re coming to grips with LLM tools for historical researching, and we’re quickly moving well beyond the LLM-as-author model so distrusted in our community. Historians must push ourselves to be as creative and demanding of LLM resources as those in our sister disciplines.

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Student Recording of Teaching Sessions and Presentations

ProfJoeCain’s policy on recording teaching sessions and presentations.

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