🚨 Job Alert 🚨 We are seeking to recruit an Assistant Professor (Tenure Track) in Political Science – Ecological Transitions in / of Europe and the EU. Applications welcome until February 5 (4 PM, Paris time). Full Job Description and Recruitment Process ⤵️ #AcademicJobs #PolSci

Europe faces a pincer attack from White House ideologues backed by Silicon Valley and its far-right proxies. My op-ed for @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

British woman left stranded in Hungary after the Home Office refuse to let her bring 13-year-old niece to the UK. The girl, who was abandoned by her parents, could now end up in state care, following the Home Office's decision bylinetimes.com/2026/01/08/b...

Secession also from IBPES, IUCN, UN Oceans and UN Water...

We need a European conversation on critical IT infrastructure and whether it is either reasonable or acceptable to be so dependent on US platforms - as the US increasingly becomes an aggressive economic and strategic adversary. Especially tough debate in Ireland - but also all the more necessary.

Grok is awful; it's the very worst example of what running AI without any guardrails and concern for harm looks like. But let's not forget that it's people - and let's be clear here, those people are men - who are telling Grok to make those images.

I am extremely confused as to why the UK government and police are saying Grok’s mass-scale CSAM generation is an issue for Ofcom. This isn’t about X failing to moderate CSAM, which is an Online Safety Act issue. It is about the company and its technology being actively involved in its generation.

How is environmental governance in the UK doing you ask? Well. JNCC scientists spent years and 140+ pages advocating for updates to protected species list. Review finished in 2022. Finally, a response. But what a response! www.endsreport.com/article/1944...

It really says a lot that peaceful protest in public spaces can get you arrested in the UK but the Twitter situation is viewed as completely okay. Americans take a very absolutist view of free speech which comes with real trade-offs. But this state of affairs completely inverts them! Deranged stuff.

As we've been saying for a while: the "backlash" against climate policies has been wildly, absurdly overstated. This new survey shows how UK MPs badly understate support for climate policies www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Playing whack a mole or... Continuing to not do what it committed to and trying to keep up with more rules while having failed to do so with previous rules already?

Europe’s failure to condemn Trump’s illegal aggression in Venezuela isn’t just wrong – it’s stupid. My piece @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

New year, new opportunity to make plans! Do submit your contributions to our learning and teaching track at @uaces.bsky.social Prague this September

If you're around Ormeau, can you look around for my friend's cat, Chorizo? He has disappeared over Christmas.

After this, the EU should absolutely proceed on the assumption that Trump meant what he said about Greenland. Nothing is off the table anymore.

A vulnerable child was groomed and trafficked and then subjected to the most shocking experiences imaginable including the deaths of her babies. Instead of taking responsibility the British establishment stripped her of her citizenship and dumped her like old rubbish. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

My wish for 2026 is that Europeans will be as critical and vigilant about authoritarianism and racism in their own country as they are about them in the U.S. and that Americans will be as critical and vigilant about authoritarianism and racism in the U.S. as Europeans are.

The takeaway is not that journalists make absurd predictions. This was a blunt, but reasonable headline in 1996. It's that outcomes that seem highly unlikely/wildly optimistic do happen occasionally due to agency. Bulgarians and Europeans took forks in the road over the yrs that made today reality.

Who would have thought that 💥blanket media coverage of Farage/Reform & other far-right narratives, 💥a daily update on how many migrants have crossed the channel, 💥 tiny protests outside hotels housing asylum seekers at the top of the news would have caused this increase in far-right views.

🚨 We’re hiring an Assistant Professor in Political Science ⏰ Deadline 4th January 2026 🙋‍♀️ Any questions, please reach out 👇

Best of 2025: The student experience crossed a troubling threshold, as student numbers rose by 15.5 percent while their term time employment hours soared by an astonishing 79.6 percent.

As with Brexit 'cut EU red tape' frenzy... Businesses prefer adapting to rules they don't like, knowing that rule is here to stay v. having to constantly adapt to new rules and not knowing in what direction it's going...

Brussels says it is answering the wishes of businesses for less paperwork and fewer legislative constraints. But for many of them, the frequent introduction, pausing and rewriting of EU rules is just making life more complicated.

Russian troops invading Ukraine are "main obstacle" to peace in Ukraine, says mostly everyone else

This is literally what the Telegraph campaigned for.

'We don’t really know how AI reaches its conclusions – even the programmers admit as much. Nor can we verify its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI’s advice, we are not guided by reason. We are back in the realm of faith.'

Soda bottles labeled as “made with recycled plastic” could soon have more virgin plastic than you might think, thanks to a new pitch by the European Commission.

This thread perfectly explains why AI has little value for qualitative research. Yes, large language models can find patterns in qualitative data. But, they're trained on what we already know. So, they won't find anything surprising. And, surprise is qualitative research's primary value-add.

Wishing all our authors, reviewers, and readers a Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year from the Contemporary European Politics team. 2026 holds some exciting things for CEP. Looking forward to working with you all then. Thank you for being part of our community this year. 🎄

And we go back, almost full circle, to 2016 and Boaty McBoatface. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Recent research said one in four teenagers have used an AI chatbot for mental health support in the last year. In that context it’s worth reading @henrymance.ft.com’s assessment which I would abbreviate as: LLMs are too obsequious to be therapeutic. But read the piece! www.ft.com/content/8b6e...

Academics now need a section of their cv for heavily cited papers by them that they did not actually write.

THREE satellite-tagged White-tailed Eagles disappear in suspicious circumstances in England, Wales & Scotland - two tags had been cut off. Press release from Isle of Wight WTE Project Team & additional commentary from me ⬇️⬇️ #RaptorResearch #WildlifeCrime raptorpersecutionuk.org/2025/12/17/t...

Nearly 7 months have passed since the UK-EU Summit in May 🇬🇧🇪🇺 In this explainer, @husseinkassim.bsky.social and @cleodavies.bsky.social outline: 1️⃣ What was agreed at the summit 2️⃣ Who are the key negotiators 3️⃣ What has happened since 4️⃣ The key points of contention 🔗 ukandeu.ac.uk/explainers/t...

Let's go through the Eramus statement together 1/ ec.europa.eu/commission/p...

📣Come and be my colleague! We are hiring two new Assistant Profs in the Dept. of Phil. at Trinity College Dublin: in Value Theory, and in Hist., Phil., and Ethics of Science. I can’t recommend working here enough! Please share with anyone interested – any questions, do get in touch. Ads below!

"It’s within our ambit to defeat the idea that Ru can’t be beaten on the battlefield, and by Ukrainians, no less. Putin will keep thinking he’s winning if we keep thinking he’s bound to win. Ru’s continued failure to conquer Ukr should make us think otherwise." www.policymagazine.ca/russia-has-f...

@marcusolang.substack.com, brilliantly, on the coloniality of ling. education and AI: "The irony is maddening: You spend a lifetime mastering a language, adhering to its formal rules with greater diligence than most native speakers, and for this, a machine built an ocean away calls you a fake."

Grading and googling hallucinated citations, as one does nowadays, and now that LLMs have been around for a while, I've discovered new horrors: hallucinated journals are now appearing in Google Scholar with dozens of citations bc so many people are citing these fake things

How about a nice pointless tweet thread? OK.🧵 So, Trump said some ugly & horrible things about Rob Reiner on Truth Social. I have been watching with fascination as several Republican policymakers -- & even commenters on Truth Social! -- reacted with horror. It has brought to mind ...

Teaching Slavery: New Approaches to Britain's Colonial Past is now available as individual (free to download) chapters from JSTOR (no subscription needed). The first set of chapters deal with historical perspectives and the second set with pedagogical perspectives. 1/2

I’ve said this before, but it’s really something when what you thought was rock-bottom turns out to be rock-middle

What has happened to British chemicals regulation since Brexit? Thousands of harmful chemicals are used by all of us in products and processes every day. Our Legislation and Governance Unit's latest briefing looks at how the new British system has been working. 📝Read more:

⏩It's been 2 years since we called out #greenwashing recycling claims made by Danone, Coca-Cola & Nestlé. Despite some progress, misleading claims like 'made of 100% recycled plastic' & '100% recyclable' persist on many plastic products🧵 www.beuc.eu/news/recycli...

So much of the commentary on the FWS judgment has been driven by reflexive responses to the outcome, but there are so many gaps and leaps in its reasoning that it will spawn litigation for years to come - @aoifemod.bsky.social and I flag some failings in judge craft: nilq.qub.ac.uk/index.php/ni...

As @nesrinemalik.bsky.social states, we know what to do, we choose not to: "He draws his power not from the sheer force of his arguments and personality, but increasingly just how recklessly the immigration issue has been handled by the political establishment" www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

This is devastating. It’s hard to absorb such an awful end to such an extraordinary, creative and generous life. www.theguardian.com/film/2025/de...

Did you know that the Member of the European Parliament in charge of dismantling the Green Deal is also the lobbyist for companies benefiting from this deregulation? Complaint lodged with @president.europarl.europa.eu cc @ombudsman.europa.eu #CSRD #CSDDD

I got visited by three ghosts last night, who were all experts in English grammar.

Great article on impact of AI on teaching, but also incredible 'author with cat' picture!