New BISA WG! 🎉 Critical Alternatives for World Politics - fostering a welcoming space for experimental, creative & non-mainstream research and researchers at the margins of International Studies - join today! 🌟 Info here 👉 buff.ly/1Pxr7Bz @nataliejester.bsky.social @ubaspehlivan.bsky.social

🖖Hi people! We are launching our new BISA working group, Critical Alternatives for World Politics! We have been working on this for a while now :) It will be a great space to experiment with and create new methods and approaches to IR. Please make sure to follow and join us :)🥰

Drawing on surrealism & anti-colonial thought, Sara Wong’s new open-access article in @risjnl.bsky.social offers an interesting engagement with aesthetic politics. She argues for shift from representation to “what aesthetics do or could do.” www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I got interviewed about my PhD thesis on the relationship between neoliberal social media and the normalisation of far-right fantasies by @reacpolrn.bsky.social the Reactionary Politics Research Network. Many thanks to @aurelmondon.bsky.social for conducting the interview!

🏆 We are pleased to announce @alvinahoffmann.bsky.social as the author of the Best Article in the European Journal of International Relations. Congratulations! 👏 Honorable mention to Alexander Cooley, John Heathershaw, Ricardo Soares De Oliveira 🔗 buff.ly/hqpQJSz

Check out my dear and awesome friend Charlie's new piece on the silly/serious politics of digital reaction! 👇👇

🎉 Best Article in the @risjnl.bsky.social winner this year was @ubaspehlivan.bsky.social for: 'Theorising the memescape: The spatial politics of Internet memes' with judges finding the 'theoretical approach original & highly relevant' 🌟 Summary - buff.ly/Rvd09Wk DOI -

Have you read the 2024 winner of the RIS Best Article Prize? Uygar Baspehlivan's article "Theorising the memescape: The spatial politics of Internet memes" is #OpenAccess, and a must read for anyone interested in visual IR! 👉 buff.ly/fZmc0Ch

🚨 Launch of the first MA in International Political Sociology at @qmpoliticsir.bsky.social, starting September 2025. Applications are now open for 2025-26. The programme adopts a problem-driven approach, bridging disciplines to address complex challenges in World Politics. More information here:

Our 11th joint winners were Anne-Marie Houde and Ugyar Baspehhlivan of the Emotions Working Group Prize – best PhD thesis in Emotions and Politics and IR 🎉 #BISA2025

Our fourth winner was Uygar Baspehlivan🎉 Uygar Baspehlivan won the Review of International Studies: Best Article Prize for his article 'Theorizing the memescape: the spatial politics of internet memes' 📝 #BISA2025

🏆🏆Absolute pleasure to be awarded the: -RIS Best Article Prize for "Theorising the Memescape: The Spatial Politics of Internet Memes -Honourable Mention for BISA Michael Nicholson Best Thesis Prize @MYBISA -BISA Emotions in Politics and IR Working Group Best Thesis Prize

I enjoyed this talk by @robtoes.bsky.social on the rhetoric of reactionary digital politics. I liked the idea of 'ambient extremism.' I think it's very useful to understand how reactionary rhetoric leaks into our daily conversations by blurring boundaries. I also liked+ www.spui25.nl/programma/am...

📣Applications for the second Reactionary Politics Summer School are open📣 The summer school provides a space to develop key skills for the research of reactionary politics. It will be hosted hybrid and attendance is free. Bursaries are also available. Sign up below! reacpol.net/summer-schoo...

My review of The Technological Republic by Palantir CEO Alex Karp and exec Nicholas Zamiska is out. They call for Silicon Valley to re-align with the Pentagon, where democracy is obsolete, engineers shift from apps to weapons, and code becomes law. Tech is no longer just for profit. It’s for war.

Incredibly honoured to have received BISA Emotions in Politics Working Group's Best Thesis Prize! And to share it with the lovely @annemhoude.bsky.social! Double the honour 😊😊

A whole new issue! Check out Volume 51, Issue 2 on our website now! All articles are free to read until the end of the month 🥳

Following the outcome of the recent regional elections and in response to the rising tide of fascism in the region (and beyond), we've sent a letter to the VC asking Durham University to publicly commit to the safety and wellbeing of its international/migrant staff and students. Excerpts below:

We're hiring! I'll be co-supervising a PhD at Utrecht University on the global governance of socially disruptive technologies. Political philosophy/ethics project focused on legitimacy & good governance. More info: edu.nl/9admd Deadline: June 3, 2025 (apologies for the short notice!)

Are you a graduate student who presented at the 2025 ISA in Chicago? If you were part of a panel sponsored or co-sponsored by the IPS section, consider applying to the 2026 IPS Graduate Student Paper Award! Self-nominations are encouraged!

My article is finally out w/ Rethinking Marxism! Thankful to all my colleagues who provided feedback at different stages including @kaibosworth.bsky.social & Uygar Baspehlivan. Super grateful to the editors too, they’ve been very generous and encouraging. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

*seeking diabetic people based in the UK* Great opportunity to help researchers who are seeking to design better diabetic food tracking technology! Please share. Expression of interest here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Working on my presentation for the Spinoza/Marx conference this Friday and coming back to my central point that all attempts to derive a theory of ideology from ultimately become about the relation between minds and bodies, and how one reads EIIP7 www.unemployednegativity.com/2024/04/one-...

my hard pivot to environmental (still digital) politics going strong. really enjoyed Ted DeLay's Future of Denial, this one's going super well too 😇

Interesting piece on memes and international politics here www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

A great discussion and fantastic questions! These @mybisa.bsky.social working groups aren't just good fun, they're great spaces to share and develop ideas in a friendly academic space. 10/10 would recommend. Thank you for organising @epir-bisa.bsky.social and @annemhoude.bsky.social !

📢We had a fascinating concluding event for the year today with @epir-bisa.bsky.social ! 👉📚Topic 'Emotions and the right – navigating feeling in the study of populism and reactionary politics' w/ @theoaiolfi.bsky.social @charlieprice.bsky.social @ubaspehlivan.bsky.social and Elisabeth Mörking

Don't forget to join us tomorrow!

Juliana Gleeson and I will be speaking about our books on sexual liberation histories later this month. The event will be live-streamed on YouTube, 27 May, 5pm BST. Registration link here: www.eventbrite.com/e/1342159758...

Labour cabinet meetings be like

George W. Bush was the worst President of the last few generations and it's really not close. what we in the US are (rightly!) up in arms about is that Trump is the worst President for us, specifically - which is a different thing

we all fail rather frequently in different aspects of academic work - but we rarely talk about it check out this🔥@ispjournal.bsky.social forum on understanding, reflecting, and coping with failure @meibauir.bsky.social @ncrenic.bsky.social @jrodehaun.bsky.social academic.oup.com/isp/article/...

The many, many people who said in their own ways — from ordinary concerned liberals to wild post-structuralists — that television was an evil technology that, whatever its benefits, would also radically distort reality for commercial profit and derange society were completely and inarguably correct.

🔥Tune into the latest #EISAVoices episode. 🎤Featuring Rahul Rao (@rahulraothariel.bsky.social) in conversation w/ Polly Pallister-Wilkins (@pollypw.bsky.social) on his new book: ➡️📕"The Psychic Lives of Statues: Reckoning with the Rubble of Empire" Out now w/ @plutopress.bsky.social.

"Capitalism has entered a radical and apocalyptic phase. There is no utopian vision in any of this." Interview ⤵️

🏆New @bisa-ecpwg.bsky.social prize🏆 'Early-Career Environment and Climate Politics Paper Prize' To honour the best environment or climate politics postgraduate / early-career paper presented at the BISA Annual conference. details - buff.ly/yYqV0eZ @ckweatherill.bsky.social @ctmcateer.bsky.social

I am finally sitting down to think more carefully about potential book series to submit my monograph to, which will be based on my PhD thesis, Meme-ing Global Politics. I would love some series/publisher recommendations that are open to critical theoretical research on digital politics.

CFP: Join us for The Art of Politics - a workshop on the aesthetics of repression, resistance & reparation, co-convened by Melissa Chacón, @sara-de-jong.bsky.social, @drharrietgray.bsky.social & me for the inaugural BISA/ISA workshop. All details below 👇 www.isanet.org/Conferences/...

Powerful message from yesterday that @uniofbath.bsky.social students and staff support trans rights - hope senior management and HR are paying attention

This looks incredible! I'm sure this will be essential reading for anyone interested in the politics of digital-cultural aesthetics. Pre-ordered. www.versobooks.com/en-gb/produc...

The decision by Gregg Popovich to step down as head coach of the San Antonio Spurs brings back a very fond memory. I got a kind note from him a few years ago as he was reading my book *The Slave Ship*.

You don’t win politically by winning over your opponents, but by building a political bloc that can defeat them.

This is why the geographic dimensions of extremism stressed by scholars like @milleridriss.bsky.social are critical. The far-right has spent over a decade operating in key youth spaces almost unopposed, letting them frame the debate however they choose. We need to meet these kids where they are.

Excited to share The Palgrave Handbook on the Pedagogy of International Relations Theory, ed by Jamie Frueh, Jacqui Ala, Michael P.A. Murphy & Paul F. Diehl. A comprehensive guide on teaching IR theory. Interested in reviewing for our newsletter? Email: [email protected]

daily tunes: open.spotify.com/album/4gqGuq...

Bristol Antifascsists, South West Antifascist Action, Bristol Against Hate and SUTR are calling for people to oppose Nick Tenconi's rump UKIP in Bristol City Centre on Saturday 17th May, 11.30am. Last year we stopped a lynching at the Mercure Hotel. Let's run these fuckers out of town.

the poor, degraded image has become the aesthetic norm of this administration. they render all serious political desires and imaginaries in a coat of silly aestheticisation to keep up with the zany and the interesting and the cute which Ngai diagnosed as the primary forms of late capitalism.

I will be talking about reactionary politics and (in)convenience as an ordinary affect of contemporary reaction on the 13th of May with some great company! Don't forget to sign up 😇!