'What is perhaps remarkable about the Exeter cuts is that they are targeted at some of the university’s most successful departments, many of which turn over a profit even after they have made enormous and increasing contributions to the central university budget.' Read, rage and weep.

Finally recovered from ICA Cape Town! Hosted an awesome pre-conference on discourses of racial inequality and presented my and @francescaorfw.bsky.social book about what @ica-lsi.bsky.social can bring to studies of race and communication! A link to the book!: www.peterlang.com/document/131...

My article "Gender Uptake: Theorizing the Semiotics of (Un)Doing Gender" received the Outstanding Article Award from the SSSP Gender, Sexual Behavior, Politics, and Communities Division AND an Honorable Mention for the Best Paper Award from the ASA Ethnomethodology & Conversation Analysis Section! 🥳

What Reform have successfully done is to make the floor of open racism in England much higher than I have seen it in several years. I don’t know what their peak will be but they have normalised something that I haven’t seen here since the mid-1990s, and that is already dangerous enough.

This was a great event. Excellent papers and discussions in the most amazing setting. Another fine entry in the annual New Developments in Ethnomethodology series. Thanks to the organisers! To Joburg in 2027.

🎉 my employer in the news 🎉 1. narrative being peddled by the university mgmt - "do nothing" vs "do our cuts" - is a false choice that rests on (ahem) "unusual" modelling reverse engineered from surplus targets 2. they need better PR people ("DISAPPOINTED!" youtu.be/y6EDlD_fWn0?...)

This really was great! So much to think about and so lovely to catch up with EM folk.

Easily the most intense rescue I’ve been involved in… Called to a Casualty hanging inverted from top of cliff after falling and left leg catching a tree root. Amazing teamwork from all Central Brecon MRT colleagues to secure, lower, treat, and evacuate. #EMCA #Fieldwork #MountainRescue

Just out! Very happy with this one. Combines Goffman and Collins to push interaction ritual theory forward. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Ah - but the real magic happens when the post-it notes get stuck to a piece of A3, and five bits of be-post-it-noted A3 are blu-tacked to a whiteboard, and then people stick stars on them.

we're just doing ELIZA again and again it makes the ACM decision to generate "podcasts for papers" look even more stupid

Here’s a video from the same podcast as linked in my previous post where you can hear the audio too. I love this because it really lays bare how LLMs fool us - but really they’re just slotting words into linguistic patterns that we’re familiar with. Genres like a podcast or LinkedIn post.

A paper on Simmel and Ethnomethodology as non-dualist approaches to foundational issues of subjectivity/objectivity, practice, and social order. With Chiara Bassetti, Erik Boström, Ken Liberman, @jakubmlynar.bsky.social and @dirkvl.bsky.social #EMCA #Sociology link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Ah. www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...

Of four free speech cases highlighted here, fully three of them concern self-described "gender critical" academics, while the fourth is a guy opposed to BLM and the concept of strutural racism - if anyone is in doubt about that this is for. www.bbc.com/news/article...

The worldliness of EM phenomena is reintroduced to me as I update a lecture on instructed action. My wife calls up from downstairs. She has all the parts of the IKEA cabinet, but their order is elusive. She can’t find the hammer. I muse on instructions in the midst of making the bloody thing. #EMCA

⏳ Tick tock, tick tock… 2 weeks left to submit to this special issue. @suewiddicombe.bsky.social and I are looking forward to contributions that engage with the theme and push the conversation forward. If it’s on your list, now’s the time to get it over the line 👇 Spread the word!

Out today! A great collection of studies of the organisation of the senses in interaction. Our chapter looks at visual and haptic aspect shifts in an orienteering race. Plenty of other settings and sensings to be found within! #emca #interactionism #sociology www.routledge.com/Sensing-Life...

First time back at the BSA conference in a long while to speak on a panel launching this lovely collection of walking essays. I’ll be speaking briefly on walking as organised practice of care in the search for missing persons. 1600 in room 4.206. @britsoci.bsky.social #sociology #britsoc26

Applications for the ESRC WGSSS postdoctoral Fellowship are now open. If you have recently completed a PhD in the U.K. and are interested in coming to Cardiff to work with me and the small, but lively and lovely, CEEIT research group, do get in touch. wgsss.ac.uk/fellowships/ #EMCA #Ethnography

Such a good couple of days of talking through different approaches to language and interaction in Macau. Highlights were learning about developments in Chinese social and digital media, and drawing from an abundance of positive energy from a special bunch of local and Hong Kong PhDs. #EMCA

And on to Macau for a workshop on EM/CA, discourse, and ethnography. #EMCA

Two days of data sessions and dim sum in Hong Kong.

Many thanks to Andrew Carlin and Marek Czyżewski for inviting me to contribute to the special issue of Przegląd Socjologiczny dedicated to the work of Harvey Sacks. Special issue - part 1: t.ly/GLUVh Special issue - part 2: t.ly/ZI7mP My paper: t.ly/-O1ei #EMCA #HarveySacks #Sociology

The cracks are where the light gets in, and shines out.

Loreen Chikwira of the Kings Fund & I wrote this protocol paper for using Praxeological Analysis and Critical Praxeological Analysis: www.frontiersin.org/journals/psy...

Hello #EMCA community! There's been another Bluesky influx - to find #ConversationAnalysis #DiscursivePsychology #MCA #Ethnomethodology use these Starter Packs. Let me know if you'd like to be added (check you're not there first) and repost this! 1. go.bsky.app/DHMkXcX 2. go.bsky.app/6p8x2UZ

We need a Strava-like app for marking season motivation. Kudos! You’ve marked five essays! Elapsed time: 90mins Grade Adjusted Pace: 3 hours Calories burned/consumed: +300 Recovery time: 1hr

Three short paragraphs, and you've got the whole mind-bending mess that is #UKHE finance & governance neatly laid out. This is why it's all so exhausting: our managers declare there's only one static frame, while we know their framing is part of the issue. 💡 www.hepi.ac.uk/2026/01/10/w...

Website and call for papers for the 2026 EUSSSI conference launched. As reflected in the Symbolic Interaction journal and CfP, welcoming of work in EM/CA related to conference theme. #symbolicinteraction #groundedtheory #emca www.sv.uio.no/iss/english/...

Just published. My chapter is based on resolving the three complaints of the novice fieldworker. “I didn’t know what to write because”: 1) no one was doing anything! 2) people were doing too much! 3) I didn’t know what to call the thing I was seeing! tinyurl.com/5n7w84hk #ethnography #emca

Delighted to receive this in the post - 'Bigfooters and Scientific Inquiry' by @drjamielewis.bsky.social and Andy Bartlett. This book is in the finest STS tradition of showing how an apparently marginal or obscure scientific practice opens up an entire epistemological world.

There isn't a single problem "solved" by edtech that couldn't be fixed with smaller classes led by well-paid teachers given real academic freedom

Symbolic Interaction, Vol.48 No4 is out - it's a special issue on "The (Re)Production and Navigation of Social Asymmetries‐in‐Action" co-edited by Catherine L. Tam @cathtam.bsky.social & Robin James Smith @robinjsmith.bsky.social congratulations, both co-editors and authors #sssi #emca #interaction

“Every single moment is implicated in all of time” A real treat, as usual, to welcome Barbara Adam back to Cardiff. Essential ideas for thinking open futures.

As a result of working through my degree and some of my postgraduate, I can size a suit for someone by eye, measure and pin for tailoring, and know how to measure for a kilt. Should have written about it. The ethnography would’ve been called Measurement and Method…

Among our growing list of “other duties” in our job spec, it seems we’re now supposed to be part of the marketing department. We understand the shifting recruitment landscape, but it’s yet another problem we’re expected to solve by ourselves. Not to mention the risks that come with the exposure.

2.5 million people with HIV have lost access to life-saving treatment as a result of Trump’s cuts to the global HIV programme. It’s estimated that this has already resulted in an additional 100,000 AIDS deaths this year.

Awesome talk from Dr Patricia Jimenez at the EMCA Doctoral Network. Patricia did an amazing job at penetrating the question of why we do membership categorisation analysis and how it can help us understand members' situated sense-making practices. Great data on classrooms and lay definitions of AI

Dr Patricia Jimenez presenting on the uses and troubles with MCA across her projects on members’ sense-making practices. Questions of producing adequate descriptions of occasioned patternings of categorial orders. #EMCA #MCA

All set for three days of Intro to MCA (sponsored by the WGSSS) and a meeting of the EMCA Doctoral Network. Huge thanks to Patrik Dahl for his organisational prowess. Schedule includes bonus pun for the MCA heads. #EMCA #MCA

A great write up on the life and liveliness of the “Manchester” EM Reading Group. As Phil says, it’s rare to find space to really talk and think in modern academia. I don’t get to go as often as I’d like, but like any favourite place that one has, knowing it’s there makes things a little better.

Words matter. Language matters. Languages matter. @spencerhazel.bsky.social on how universities cut their language degrees, AND stress the importance of language, AND use language poorly and offensively in communicating their decisions ("marketing-infused slop"). #AcademicSky #Universities

I learnt so much from this project, the reviewers, contributors and especially from @robinjsmith.bsky.social. Thank you all! @dollyeldritch.bsky.social @emma-richardson.bsky.social @lizstokoe.bsky.social @daniellarafaely.bsky.social @laalaajenkins.bsky.social #EMCA

Bo and I wrote a little piece on Jeff Coulter for The Psychologist @psychmag.bsky.social

The introduction to our special issue on the (re)production of asymmetries-in-action. It’s been a pleasure working with @cathtam.bsky.social and our contributors in demonstrating EM/CA approaches to various “isms” and some of sociology’s “Big” concerns. #emca onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Finally, I know of at least one case where the letter writer, deep into an episode of AI-induced psychosis, asked the LLM why scientists were not responding. The machine suggested that perhaps the scientists were trying to steal his discovery. This will get someone killed sooner or later.

This! If you’ve spent any time with “most students” (which seems to be the operative category for management), you’d know this to be the case.

Come and work with my wonderful colleagues @lsepbs.bsky.social! Assistant Professor in Social #Psychology / Environmental Psychology #AcademicSky jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...