I always tell students if you ask a good question the article will write itself

CFP: Society for the Study of Measurement will be held at the University of Edinburgh June 22-25, 2026. Submit proposals for papers, symposia, & poster on any topics in the theory, history, philosophy, & application of measurement by January 15, 2026 app.oxfordabstracts.com/stages/80364... #HPS

📢 New publication – and a great way to end the year In this study, we use MAIHDA (Multilevel Analysis of Individual Heterogeneity and Discriminatory Accuracy) to study who is most at risk of violence victimisation in England and Wales. Paper: doi.org/10.1177/1748... 1/n

What can 40 years of song lyrics tell us about society? I analysed the lyrics of 1,600 pop songs going back to 1985. Our music appears to be getting gloomier, less future-looking and more self-obsessed 1/6

📻Our @annabarker.bsky.social appears on BBC Radio 4's Living and Light, explaining how urban lighting affects safety and accessibility for women and girls, and the role lighting has been found to play in making these areas more accessible. Listen👇 tinyurl.com/3aakjy87 (Clip starts at 22:00)

The story of Farage and Putin, told by British-Ukrainian soldier Shaun Pinner on a destroyed apartment block in Kyiv.

🚨 New preprint 🚨 We present the decisions-from-experience database (DfE-DB), including data from 168 studies. The data are currently shared with the original authors and made public upon publication. 🔗 Database: github.com/dwulff/dfe-db 🔗 Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

It is infuriating that not only is this tone & quality of debate Lords make but also is entirely predictable from a former head of Met police. We have huge numbers of drivers on our streets driving illegally, without any enforcement, and millions nationwide without licence, insurance &/or MOT etc.

Time to remove the police from planning decisions / consultations.

🚨 I’ve been keeping this under wraps until published and it’s out today. Do judges with background in law enforcement act differently at bail time? Our groundbreaking NYC study estimates that when they set bail, it is a full 32% higher on average compared to other judges. Check it out and share.

2001 Leeds supertram approved 2005 Leeds supertram cancelled 2012 Leeds trolleybus approved 2016 Leeds trolleybus cancelled 2024 Plans for 2 tram routes by early 2030s 2025 Plans delayed until late 2030s Meanwhile, we all struggle with a congested, polluted city. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Data isn't just about numbers An important paper that shows ethnic disparities in sentencing vary - but we don't know *where*. Which means we don't know *why* they vary nor how we could improve outcomes Every data point is a person; the better our data the more we know abt real living human beings

Here's really hoping that this is true and done well. It is a joy having European students join us for their studies abroad, and likewise, our students enjoy their time studying abroad. #Erasmus #StillEuropean www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

New preprint: "Widening the Lens: Exploring Ethnic Disparities in Sentencing in the Magistrates’ and Crown Courts" www.crimrxiv.com/pub/9a70adbm... Led by @eoinguilfoyle.bsky.social, with Ana Morales & Sara Geneletti. We compare the Crown Court and the magistrates' courts for the first time...

Creative parking at the University of Leeds, where we keep subsidising car dependency.

Most researchers find their motivation in their love for their subject, the pursuit of knowledge, or the desire to change the world. In my case, most of it is just pure undistilled spite from reading things like this in peer-reviewed journals (from a paper on crime prevention):

For children walking or cycling to school, "outside the school" is the least dangerous part of their journey. Children need 20mph limit protection on the whole of their home to school route. 20mph "just outside schools" contemptuously disregards duty of care on child mobility

“Why did arrest counts arrive clean and whole, while use-of-force data arrived fragmented and disordered, unfit for analysis? … police differentiate potentially embarrassing data on police actions from crime data …to support dominant narratives about policing” www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Today I had just one meeting and received only 15 emails - none of them urgent. The rest was 'me time' to write about cars and crime. I'll miss this job when it is gone.

Today's email to an associate editor, declining to review for a big corporate publisher. This one focuses on Nature Publishing Group's practice of funneling rejected manuscripts to their newer journals with hefty APCs.

So today I found out that my TED talk ‘This is What a Digital Coup Looks Like’ was TED’s most watched talk of the year. It’s sort of amazing & terrifying. Because this *is* what a digital coup looks like. www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZOo...

FIFA: peace prize. UEFA: hold my beer.

The best example I have of real cross-disciplinary research. I got stucked writting this paper countless times. I just reached the limit of my knowledge repeatedly and could not take it forward. Might have abandoned it altogether without Peter (Epidemiologist) and Melissa's (Lawyer) contributions.

Seems like a good time to remind my fellow Europeans that there are alternatives to US oligarch technology european-alternatives.eu

In my paper Sample Size Justification I discuss 6 approaches to justifying sample sizes. The focus of the paper is to teach people the tools they need to be honest when they explain where their sample size comes from. I know, so radical ;) online.ucpress.edu/collabra/art...

I've been exposed to enough peer review that I think we can look at two classes of reviewers: 1. Constructive peer review 2. Adversarial peer review I'm looking at this mostly from a psychology/methodology perspective (but wonder what other fields experience) 🧵 1/

car dependency is crippling the UK theconversation.com/how-the-uks-... "for the UK to be more like Singapore, the government needs to make motorists pay much more for their car use. To be more like the Netherlands, it must take away their space"

Starmer gave a talk in my school when he was Brexit shadow secretary. He described how on the wake of the referendum he went to hug his daughter to tell her how the world had changed for ever, and went on to defend international cooperation, and encouraged us all to fight for it. Duplicitous fuck.

El martes tenemos esto

Trial by jury in England & Wales has a mythical status. It's seen as the pinnacle of adversarial justice: a judge decides the law and 12 jurors decide the facts. But in reality? Jury trials account for less than 1% of criminal cases.

Britain has lost over 75% of its informal meeting spaces since 1980, pushing people into isolation, more time spent online, and towards the far right. Can new policy 'Pride In Place' turn it around? politicalquarterly.org.uk/blog/what-is... By Sam Taylor Hill

@openresleeds.bsky.social, let's do this in Leeds!

Came across this based on our latest paper: odysee.com/@crimconsort... It is truly amazing how much better these LLMs are at explaining ones own ideas. I was recently given 90 minutes to present this paper, yet I bet had I played this 6 minutes clip that would have been way more effective.

This (free) event may be of interest our members: “Towards new horizons of scholarly publishing” in Nijmegen on 5-6 February '26. Topics: future of academic publishing, Diamond Open Access, and challenges ahead. See: www.horizondiamond.nl

#AcademicSky #PsychSciSky Not read yet, but this paper looks of interest to people in my orbit. Questioning the practice of throwing every covariate under the sun into your models. Here, in a legal context, which is interesting.

80% of UK women have experienced public harassment, yet 75% report that no one stepped in. Dr @annabarker.bsky.social's research has helped hundreds of park staff and volunteers across the UK to be trained in how to spot, safely challenge, and prevent harassment. Read more👇 tinyurl.com/99px5urh

Fewer workers. Fewer international students. More people leaving. A "step in the right direction" according to the PM. Impossible to take PM/govt seriously on growth if they are deliberately reducing it (and making the fiscal position worse) *as a matter of policy*. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

#CriminalJustice and #Legal scholars working on #empirical topics, do submit your work here. I had a fantastic experience, thorough reviews, short waiting time, great communication with the editorial team, and it is all 💎OA, so my university doesn't have to send £3K to Springer Nature stakeholders.

'Estimating Discrimination in Sentencing: Distinguishing between Good and Bad Controls', with Melissa Hamilton & @pwgtennant.bsky.social, just out at the European Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. publicera.kb.se/ejels/articl...

09.26 in the morning and I have already been asked to verify my OneDrive and Outlook account 5 times. No one does productivity like Microsoft.

"Que factores influewn en las sentencias judiciaeles? Las sentencias penales como objeto de investigación criminológica", (www.youtube.com/live/94S9Al_...) desde la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, con Laura Arantegui, Daniel Varona y Josep M. Tamarit.

HYBRID EVENT: 'Introduction to Quantitative Bias' with Rachel Hughes on Monday 1st December at 10am-12pm UK time. For those near Leeds, bring your laptop and enjoy this as an in-person session! Sign-up before 9am on Thursday 27th via: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/introducti...

We're organising a webinar on 18 February to mark the end of my @adr-uk.bsky.social Fellowship on school absences and crime. With talks from top-notch colleagues including @iainbrennan.bsky.social, @foxnic.bsky.social, Mark Mon-Williams, and many others! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/from-schoo...

*pinches bridge of nose* Rachel explain to me again how the university funding model works

U.K. universities have seen a drop in overseas students. Plus many have a budget shortfall, so the impact is on staff redundancies resulting in larger tutor groups, loss of non academic staff, loss of facilities, loss of spending in uni towns and cities, loss of innovation support locally.

The UK's anti-migrant mania is destroying the health system with a 26% rise in overseas-trained doctors quitting the UK in 2024 www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Our paper, that we worked hard to produce before the second wave, estimated that 21,000 excess deaths were caused by the 1 week delay in lockdown. The paper was held up & eventually rejected by the Lancet. By the time it came out it could only offer a post mortem. journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...