On the off-chance anyone is travelling between Cornwall and Leeds on Sun 12 July I have a train ticket that’s not being used anymore owing to a change of plans. It’s non-refundable, so at this point would be glad for someone else to get the use of it

Tech firms should release environmental data on AI and universities should measure use. But there's tonnes of research on the ecological impacts of gen AI and data centres already - PRODUCED BY ACADEMICS IN UNIVERSITIES. The evidence is not hidden, it's just that sector 'leaders' don't care

Listening to a BBC news report about racist riots in Belfast. Describing men as ‘dressed in black and wearing masks’ is a really roundabout way of saying ‘white’

Kier Starmer: “felt cute, might delete the university sector later 👁️ 👄 👁️ “

How anyone, let alone the CEO of Universities UK, can discuss young people’s disillusionment without addressing her peers culling 1000s upon 1000s of university staff is beyond me. They may not have oversight of loans but they are responsible for devaluing degrees www.theguardian.com/education/20...

With poor turnout expected for The Mandalorian and Grogu, I spoket to Hanna Flint alongside @clarisseloughrey.bsky.social for Hanna's deep dive on where Star Wars has gone wrong. (It may feel like homework because I'm mid-book, but the overproduction is very real) www.bbc.co.uk/culture/arti...

Having watched MAFS in the past, when a family teen started on the most recent series I tuned in so we could talk about what healthy, toxic, and abusive relationships look like because the show couldn’t be trusted to. I’m only surprised this hasn’t come out till now www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Probably my favourite thing about writing a book is taking hours of National Archives research on, say, the 1970s scrap metal industry in Britain, and turning it into one (1) sentence before realising there’s a related but distinct topic you need to discuss that you have no source material for

Wait til he finds out that loads of university managers have already stripped degrees of critical and creative material and turned them into debt-inducing technical proficiency pipelines to industry

Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Grogu

12 May is Mass Observation Day in the UK! If you want to be part of this cool ongoing social history project, read more here - massobs.org.uk/12th-may/

Just saw a Linkedin post in which someone's calculated the cost *to universities* of UK academics doing peer review work, as if any academic in the year 2026 is peer reviewing research during paid hours, or even at this point being paid at all

Saw these newt tadpoles feeding on a pond flower on my evening walk. Looking at the photo makes me feel we passed into a strange and murky netherworld. Like haunted Victorian spirit photography, but newts

“The suit, filed by actor Q’orianka Kilcher, alleges that Cameron ‘extracted her facial features’ and ‘directed his design team’ to base the key Avatar character Neytiri on her appearance after seeing her in an LA Times advert for Terrence Malick’s 2005 film The New World.”

Travelling down to Brighton for a research day at Sussex tomorrow on film and the environment, where I'll be talking about the practical and digital erasure of wild animals, plants, and fungi on Star Wars location shoots, and how animals are corporately re-branded as creatures to be exploited as IP

Browsing Met Gala photos and sooo many are like eliminated-in-week-5 Drag Race looks. If you're getting wrapped in celluloid at least go for an interesting silhouette?! Or say something about the (fossil, animal) material? Or the medium's political potential? That one really sums up the banality

Dead excited to share that my forthcoming book 'A Star Wars World' will be out next May with @bloomsburyacademic.bsky.social. It's an accessible/trade deep-dive into the labour, materials, designs, locations, and animals and plant lives that the franchise has depended on over the past 50 years

This May 4th, I’m very happy to launch the CFP for a major scholarly conference on Star Wars, which will take place at Durham University in 2027. Please share widely across your networks and indeed to anyone who might be interested! starwarsat50.webspace.durham.ac.uk

The Last Jedi is actually a pretty close remake of The Empire Strikes Back and nowhere near as radical or breakaway a Star Wars film as people like to think it is

For #Maythe4th 2026... All the Star Wars films, Ranked! The Global Heating and Jet-Fuel Shortage Edition i.e., I calculated the films' aviation emissions based on one crew member flying to all locations. Solo comes out least worst (breathe easy, you still don't have to like the prequels)

hard numbers here from @brodiewaddell.bsky.social are pretty sobering 1 PhD awarded for every 5.5 current staff in history departments in the UK. for all PhD students to take up a full time post this means a historian’s career should av. < 6 years postphd🗃️ manyheadedmonster.com/2026/04/23/h...

At the stage of book writing that feels something like Wake up: book. Work: book. Rest: But also book? The bit where you're dreaming in endnotes

Sometimes the ‘we are the university/managers are the institution’ dichotomy feels a bit glib. It’s not that simple. But having spent 3 days having animated, passionate, nerdy, technical chats with people about… well, everything, and hearing some fab research at #baftss2026 it certainly _feels_ true

In 2024 The Conversation had 8.3M in revenue and 7.8M in expenses and paid $0 to writers. Is that really ok with you? projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/o...

We should all know about the politically motivated arrest last week of activist Lisa Minerva Luxx (beyond The Greyzone sharing details, news outlets are, unsurprisingly, eerily quiet).

Arrived in Bournemouth a day early for the #baftss2026 conference. Hard to concentrate on finishing my presentation when sun and sea beckon

Current mood: recalling right-wing national newspapers and F*r*ge getting wound up about my research, and feeling even more proud of it being published as a result Artoo-Detoo’s Footprint: Star Wars and the Environmental Impacts of Practical and Digital Filmmaking 📽️ mediaenviron.org/article/1586...

I know the 'cutest' threatened species get the attention but knowing we've collectively driven emperor penguins to near-extinction hits hard. Short of systemic change I wonder what it will take to make us stop overproducing/consuming. Threads-style docs? Corporate and personal emissions rationing?

One example: there's a clause in ScreenSkills HE contracts that says students can't make films that harm business interests. The org has taken an anti-intellectual stance on degrees in evidence to govt. They charge ongoing fees for unis to get their industry-skills focused course accreditation.

I urge anyone who cares about their blood pressure on a Sunday morning not to read the Guardian piece on intellectualism in pop culture. I thought pitting ‘wearing pink’ against ‘reading books’, and ‘pole dancing’ against ‘intellectual thinking’ had fallen out of fashion but apparently not

The librarian in this case - curating work by queer, global majority, feminist, and neurodivergent authors - was no doubt beloved by the teens she supported. The bullying and censorship from school managers (some definite parallels with HE…) is chilling. She and the students deserve better

So the BBC adaptation of The Other Bennet Sister is bothering me. It has Female Friendships™️ that don't appear in the novel, yet cuts back on the complexities of women's relationships, and adds racialised Women In Competition™️ tropes. If I wasn't writing a book I'd be writing about why this sucks

Wait, what kind of beaver does he think we're talking about here

I had someone give me AI-generated feedback on an article. They proposed factually incorrect changes that countered their own earlier arguments! What really got to me was the over-confidence of it. LLMs generate text that reads like a royal asserting they were in a pizza restaurant, actually.

Just finished my Environmental Impact of Filmmaking project report for ResearchFish. I guess the first submission post-academic job is always the hardest? Anyway now I'm in my feels about the huge amount of work, the enormous potential to make a difference, and the unsustainability of it all

In just over a month I'm contributing to a panel at the @baftss.bsky.social conference on navigating research/pedagogy as an 'independent scholar'. I strongly dislike the term 'independent' and wonder about other possible terms. Has anyone come up with a better alternative?

🔴Families of Palestine Hunger Strikers Beg for Meeting With David Lammy as Their Conditions Deteriorate Ministers have so far refused demands to negotiate with the hunger strikers, as the risk of them dying in prison increases bylinetimes.com/2025/12/18/f...

New episode out today! We chat with @beccaeharrison.bsky.social about feminism, gender identity and representation in SW, from on-screen, to behind-the-scenes to fandom. Did you know that R2-D2 is on screen more than Leia is in ANH? skywalkingthroughneverland.com/star-warsolo... #starwars #feminism

The fourth (and final!) Environmental Impact of Filmmaking just dropped for anyone interested in how to minimise disruption to local communities and nature during film & tv location shoots. There are 6 recommendations for crews, policymakers, landowners and funders eifproject.com/star-wars-lo...

Over the past few weeks I’ve been covering some of the Lift The Ban campaign’s actions - it feels important to document what’s happening on the ground, with news reporting at many outlets pretty limited in this area. Here’s my second report for Reel News: reelnews.co.uk/2025/07/30/a...

Not sure if anyone's seen Harvest? It seems to have slipped through the cracks a bit. In any case, I've shared an in-person intro to the film as a blog post. It's about land enclosures, identity, nature, and what, despite everything that divides us, we could and should still have in common

Went for a spontaneous (much-needed) walk yesterday and gathered more footage for my wild lives film. Including a magical encounter with a hare, a red admiral fluttering in the wind, a (not pictured) slow worm, and a ladybird who changed their mind about the water

If you're longing for aircon and a film about the end of summer, join me at the @mediamuseum.bsky.social on July 24 for an intro to HARVEST. I'll be discussing the movie's land and identity politics, and the enclosures caused by film location shoots www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/cinema/cines...

‘We…condemn the UK Government’s plans to proscribe Palestine Action…& consider this constitutes a significant threat to freedom of expression & civil liberties…’ Over 750 academics launch open letter condemning moves to ban @palaction.bsky.social Read & sign: ucw4palestine.org/2025/06/27/d...

During my time on UCU’s higher ed committee I repeatedly suggested we take action (short of a strike) to dismantle REF. I’ve repeatedly argued people should not participate on REF committees, panels, etc. But so often people - usually profs - shut any potential action down as if it can’t be done

Last year we ran a survey on UK HE redundancies. Based on 349 responses, the UNIVERSITIES DEGRADED REPORT uncovers awful conditions, targeting of marginalised groups, & far more cuts than estimated. People's stories matter. We can hold leaders to account. Please share widely tinyurl.com/48nzf7ew

‘Publish AND perish,’ the gen-AI sequel to ‘publish or perish’ culture that no one asked for

After months of work, @davidharvie.bsky.social and I have finished a major report that centres people’s experiences of job cuts in UK HE - and exposes employer tactics in those processes. ‘Universities Degraded’ will be available in full next week. We hope it helps everyone fighting for change

If you have any kind of power in the screen industries and you’re not actively prioritising learning and action to reduce the ecological harms that your projects cause, then at this stage you deserve people organising to shut down down your productions via protest/disruption

Obv I’m glad that there’s more funding for ECRs. But the framing is eyebrow raising in the current HE environment. Fund the new ‘leaders of tomorrow’ to replace the last lot of ‘leaders of tomorrow’ who got made redundant yesterday! www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/news/5millio...