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...

10hrs of trains and rail-replacement-taxis to get to the Celtic Media Festival and I have been rewarded with sun puddles, wildflowers and sea monsters

[CW: coercive control/abuse] Does anyone know of legal or other support services for women in Germany (specifically Berlin) who’ve experienced coercive control? A friend of a friend is in need of assistance in a custody case with an awful ex-partner. Any contacts would be appreciated

Spending billions on weapons so you can murder people abroad while you use austerity and hate speech to kill people at home, all the while annihilating wild lives with anti-planetary policy… Maybe the banality of evil does sometimes have a face. From here it looks a lot like Starmer

Politicians considering use of ‘chemical castration’ on people convicted of gender-based violence, but won’t do anything to address the causes of it (which are NOT ‘men wanting sex too much’. Seriously, come on). It’s nothing more than state-sanctioned human rights abuse from the far-right playbook

Some important work-related news from me: I have left The Open University to pursue research and teaching projects that are committed to social, political, and ecological justice. I will be working as a freelance researcher and welcome conversations with potential collaborators.

Shame on UCU managers for this brazen attempt to cover up bad employment practices. Whatever you call them - non-disparagement clauses, confidentiality agreements - these are NDAs. We all know conditions are stacked in the employer’s favour. Enforced silence is *always* violence.

New Writings event at the BFI Devil's Advocates: The Woman in Black with Mark Fryers Monday 28 April 2025 18:30 BFI Reuben Library whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/defau...

Every time someone uses GenAI to manufacture fake idioms about badgers we gain heat pollution and GHG emissions, and lose water (they may also lose my respect but that’s far less likely to bother anyone). Please - for the love of actual badgers! - stop

If you’re paying attention to the Supreme Court decision or Labour’s budgets or job cuts in UK universities or the creeping use of genAI in public life and you’re not already thinking about how we fight fascism then this is the time to start

Flowers blooming on cliff faces and in the crevices between rock pools are very much my vibe this week

The idea that genAI is intelligent is the hallucination -- ours. And we hallucinate that bc we are socially primed to value exclusionary definitions of "intelligence" as pattern-matching to uphold status quo.

A key question for universities is whether they are spaces of curiosity, creativity, and learning that enables people to think and act in new ways… or whether they only exist to serve job markets by churning out compliant workers.

Over the past year there have been whispers about 'protected conversations' being used to make job cuts by the backdoor in HE (it's closed to submissions but the our branch survey included them: shorturl.at/leLpn). Looking at interim survey results, it seems like we should all know about them.

Taking a day of holiday to go to Parliament for the UCU Stop the Cuts rally. I’ll be taking interim findings from my branch’s recent redundancy survey; ‘brutal’ is about right for higher ed right now. The stats speak for themselves. The fight is on to save the soul of UK universities

If you're interested in talking about the omnicrisis in #UKHE constructively rather than retrospectively, why not join the brilliant @aargatsbmatqmul.bsky.social (AARG is appropriate....) on the 20th of May in Mile End? Registration is free, but do sign up: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

I have resigned as honorary treasurer of UCU. I have spent the past 21 months trying to make UCU more transparent, its senior officers and officials more accountable, its practices more ethical and imaginative; I have tried to democratise its financial decision-making. [1/2]

Yeah, no, sure, using fascist tools that are intensifying climate change, putting people out of work, and affecting the quality of students’ work to snazz up your PowerPoint presentation sounds great. Can’t see any glaringly obvious problems with this at all

Thanks to @scientits.bsky.social for a brilliant session for the EIF network yesterday on how to get academic research in front of govt policymakers (and, importantly, how to convince people to act on findings). Not optimistic about this govt’s arts or environmental policies, but we have to try…

Sharing a recording of 'Lights, Computer... Action? The Environmental Impacts of Digital Filmmaking,' in case it's useful to anyone for research/teaching. I cover EIF project findings on practical vs digital fabrication, and suggest some greener practices and systems www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrM3...

Given the government’s preference for growing airport runways over nature, it’s hard to tell whether this headline refers to flytippers or members of the Labour cabinet www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

On ‘campus free speech’ I’m less concerned about students’ views and more worried about senior managers dictating what academics can and can’t teach. To address the academic freedom problem, we need collaborative and subject-specific pedagogy, critical thinking, creativity and job security

Yesterday I gave a research talk that included my surprise at/criticism of huge film shoots being allowed on SSSI sites (Natural England ultimately have to approve them). So I’m wholly unsurprised by this news. We urgently need to act to prevent further violence against nature and wildlife

This is what many of us have been screaming about for a year now. THIS is why many of us in higher ed refused AIs, and continue to be critical of its incursions into the already troubled, under-funded and under-staffed higher ed sector. This is an academic labor issue.

In case you feel inclined to ask your friendly local UK academic how they are. This has been our past fortnight... qmucu.org/qmul-transfo... 😵‍💫

Following awful encounters with corporate and policing powers last week, I spent some time mapping the Davos high street at the World Economic Forum. This local geography of capital reveals a lot about the worrying relationships between AI and authoritarianism www.writingonreels.uk/blog/little-...

I find initiatives like this interesting - there’s potential to address nature loss, food resilience, etc. But around 50% of land is ‘owned’ by less than 1% of a wealthy elite. Unless we address the problem of land rights first, how effective can this mapping be? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

I thought ‘spinning out’ was what people did in nightclubs in the 00s, but apparently no, it’s the term for Oxbridge disproportionately taking up space in every public, cultural, political, educational and media institution in the UK

Used the last day of our holiday in Switzerland to make a last-minute trip to Davos (if our presence made even one WEF attendee uncomfortable it was worth it). Can’t properly describe the sense of dread being in the midst of it all, or emphasise enough how hard AI was being pushed at every turn

Today I learned that the company providing my project’s web support has been outsourcing SEO ‘back link’ provision to a third party that’s used gen AI to create web pages and blog posts as if authored *by my project*. Not only are they factually incorrect, but also in ethical opposition to my work

Generative AI is theft. And this tech needs to be curbed now. The UK government has proposed a change to the copyright law which would benefit AI companies, meaning AI companies would be able to train on British copyrighted work without a licence. www.gov.uk/government/c...

A tl;dr version of our study on the environmental impacts of lightsabers (needless to say I had way more fun researching it than I did thinking about the results): societal-challenges.open.ac.uk/blog/a-force...

Everything about that final episode of Wolf Hall was perfection, wasn’t it? Damien Lewis’s chilling Henry, the back-and-forth perspective on Cromwell, that lack of an axe thud. Loved how much depth the adaptation added to an already rich text, too

Over the past year, we've been tracing the history of two lightsabers--a prop from A New Hope, and a common toy--to compare their environmental impacts. Including interviews and emissions data, our study explores the problems with IP - and what fans can do about it eifproject.com/lightsabers/