I often think about all the books in our new library, in their tightly packed climate controlled shelves, that don’t turn up in the searches that don’t use the perfect search terms just for them, and thus never get borrowed, because nobody can accidentally encounter them.

Democracy under threat via the "empirically observable breakdown in the interactional practices that constitute democratic accountability between media and state power." Wayne Martin Mellinger on Steve Clayman's decades of #EMCA research 👇 doingmodernity.blogspot.com/2025/11/demo...

I had a look at a press release about job cuts from a nearby large university . I was struck by how each paragraph started off positively but then lapsed into treacly platitudes. So I thought I'd help them out with their argument structure.

Really terrible news from the University of Nottingham. The idea you can have a comprehensive university without language and music is absurd. Higher education serves society and you can't have a society with imagination and purpose if the people in charge decide creativity is worth nothing.

Compulsory team teaching on every module is perhaps the biggest ever threat to the quality of teaching in UK universities. It causes chaos on the ground for timetabling, ruins course coherence and turns lecturers into permanent supply teachers. It is pedagogically incoherent… 1/

This is absolutely appalling. "The UK will not contribute to a flagship fund for the world’s remaining tropical forests, in a bitter blow to the Brazilian hosts on the eve of the Cop30 climate summit." Absolutely pathetic. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The only reason why international talent still moves to the UK is the language.

if you're using LLMs to generate (aka "write") papers or reviews, you are undermining your own value as a researcher #chi2026

This comes as no surprise for those who have gone through the process. The health surcharge is scandalous, especially considering the current state of the NHS.

The first School of Social & Political Sciences Research Seminar of the new Academic Year is underway. Thanks to our colleague @fferrazdealmeida.bsky.social for speaking about his research on Police Vloggers

Colleague: I'm always making sure my students design their research to answer 'why' something happens, not simply 'how'. Who cares about the process? That's how you provoke an ethnomethodologist 😅

Many of my undergraduate students want to do primary research for their dissertations. Talking to colleagues, some question the value of doing so if there's data available out there - other surveys, interview transcripts, etc. - implying that there's no point in redoing what's already been done.

Today the School of Social & Political Sciences hosted the inaugural session of its MA International Relations Public Lecture Series organised by Marianna Charountaki & moderated by @drnickcowen.bsky.social. Thanks to Alam Saleh, Christos Kourtelis, Nasasra Mansour & Lesley Masters for participating

It’s Welcome Week at the Uni of #Lincoln & today the School of Social & Political Sciences organised a quiz for staff & new students. Do you know in which county Chequers is located& which UK city was the first to install traffic lights? How about the prison population in England?

#1 Following on from my earlier thread about claims of “bias” in universities (link below 👇), I was struck by James Marriott’s column in today’s Times. It’s full of anecdote & caricature. The real story of UK universities is structural, financial, and political. 🧵 👉 bsky.app/profile/prof...

So glad we are scorching the Earth so that a computer can, maybe after many tries, tell a guy how to make a Sandwich.

Terrific day visiting my alma mater to present our new research project. On top of that, it has been an absolute pleasure to listen to so many innovative and exciting talks. #EMCA research in police and legal settings continues to flourish.

Now comes the hardest part: making sure Parliament doesn’t approve any sort of amnesty for him or his peers.

Academic authors, here's a peek into the black box of journal publishing from an journal editor if you can bear it:

🚨 new #emca paper klaxon 🚨 on-duty police regularly have to deal with recording bystanders. if they decide to open interaction, how do they do so? Uwe and I investigate 🕵🏻 in Language in Society 🔓 OA: www.cambridge.org/core/service...

A Modest Proposal. The OfS must spearhead a dilution of the UK’s lavish student experience www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/ofs-...

Decades of mechanistic talk about university degrees as if they were bundles of 'skills' and 'prep' are about to be proved completely wrong (obviously). Want to get a real boost? Do History or English.

Well, yes, wouldn't it be nice if you knew the answers in advance, and could predict precisely which ideas will turn out to be enormous breakthroughs and which lead to dead ends... BUT THAT'S NOT HOW RESEARCH WORKS. *face palm*

There are reasons that most UK universities are in trouble which have nothing to do with them. The managers have a hard job. However, some are in over their heads, putting out corporate statements about a "clear vision and plan" which no one has seen

Universities do research that may not be commercially viable now but will be transformative down the line. They correct for market failure. If all they do is think like enterprises then they become a part of that market failure.

Listening to Rest is Politics, Rest is Politics US, and reading respected commentators, it's striking how 'left-wing bias' in universities is now taken for granted. That matters, especially in the US, where academia faces political attack. Thoughts from having worked in US/UK universities. 🧵

In a time when people are obsessed with big data and statistics, this is a must-read!

A year ago our faculty commissioned & adopted guidance on GenAI and research integrity. Preamble below, pdf at osf.io/preprints/os..., text also at ideophone.org/generative-a... Key to these guidelines is a values-first rather than a technology-first approach, based on NL code of research conduct

It is great to hear about our PhD students' research projects at the UoL PGT event👏👏

It's that time of the year when undergrads start panicking about their dissertation. Today, one of them sent me a draft chapter and asked for my feedback. The email ended with 'good luck'. Not exactly what a supervisor would expect (or like to read) 😅

If you are interested in historicising, contextualising, or rewriting #truecrime, join @lizzieseal.bsky.social and me to reflect on ways in which true crime narratives are deployed! The CFP is live and the proposals can be submitted via this form: forms.gle/U1hHhpWQh9u8... The deadline is 16 May!

Every piece of quantitative data rests on a qualitative 'moment' where an observation was categorized, then counted.

LLMs are great if all you want is write mediocre prose and think mediocre thoughts

A question for #emca people: On the promise of ethnomethodological work studies (+ CA work) to practitioners... Do work studies offer "significant discoveries" of interest to practitioners or is "helpful therapy" as good as it gets? (I think "helpful therapy" is actually pretty valuable)

I co-convene the Law and Linguistics Interdisciplinary Researchers' Network (LLIRN). In 2024, we started a series profiling network members' work across different themes. The first was on Language and Criminal Justice ft. @fferrazdealmeida.bsky.social @katesteel.bsky.social & @cornerbus.bsky.social

Storm Darragh is not stopping my Social & Political Sciences colleagues - Henry, Kim & Aris - from meeting all our visitors to the last University of Lincoln Open Day of 2024. A great turnout despite the weather. Thanks to everyone who came to see us today

Good news this morning: our article on how the ICC produces and assesses evidence on spiritual beliefs has now been published open acess 🔓 We combined #EMCA and linguistic anthropology to study key topics in legal theory: agency and criminal responsibility.

I just wish this had come to light earlier so I could have used it for my Intro to CJS module to discuss the implications of "no comment" police interviews.

It seems that this platform is growing fast. Let's just hope it does not become a new LinkedIn - where there's no place for discussing, disagreeing, and learning.

Here's an #EMCA #conversation analysis and #ethnomethodology #StarterPack #AcademicSky Please RT and QT and add more to grow our community on here! 🦋 go.bsky.app/DHMkXcX

We are kicking off today's Forensic Conversations in Criminal Justice Settings symposium at Loughborough and online! http://dlvr.it/TD5V6z

Fabio Ferraz de Almeida, Sigurd D’hondt & Elena Barrett, in the second talk of the day on interaction during trial procedures at the International Criminal Court argue that "CA provides a tool for making this mutual constitutiveness visible in real-time courtroom interaction"

Here again, giving another chance to this platform.