This is today! Sign up now and I can probably still grab you the link...

So, uh, the makers of Threads REALLY went for it, eh. Glad I watched it but probably never again!

Looking forward to watching Threads at @wshed.bsky.social this evening. Don't know much about it, so I can only assume that it is a nice, gentle film about sewing, and I will leave feeling all happy inside

Really enjoyed this workshop with Lisa Trainor today. Grateful to my UoG colleagues Ruffin and Sabina for organising it!

Over on Threads a woman is live-posting her first watch of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She is on season five and now knows about Dawn. From what I can tell, she is only a few episodes away from *that* huge surprise 😞 I am tense on her behalf!

Join us for our next @cawpbisa.bsky.social event! Title: Unsettling feelings: colonial archives, decolonial possibilities Speaker: Alice Finden (if we're lucky co-author Kavi Abraham will join, too) 2.00-3.30pm 23 June, online Register: www.bisa.ac.uk/members/work... @mybisa.bsky.social

🚨ONE MORE WEEK till our book launch for Military Humanitarianism!🚨 @briandrohan.bsky.social 5.30pm — 17th June — Bristol We’ll be joined by fantastic speakers to celebrate, @asobocinska.bsky.social, Grace Huxford and @bennetthuw.bsky.social 🙌 Register here: www.eventbrite.com/e/military-h...

That's a wrap on our first @mybisa.bsky.social conference as @cawpbisa.bsky.social! 10+ panels, lots of chairing, endless wonderful people and lots of ideas for next year. It has been a joy, though I may need a little while to recover...

Super excited for @mybisa.bsky.social conference this week. I'll be speaking at the ECR day on Tuesday and chairing a few @cawpbisa.bsky.social panels (in addition to co presenting my own paper on sexuality, militarisation and secrecy). Do say hi if you see me!

We at @cawpbisa.bsky.social are hugely excited to be holding a symposium titled '(En)countering violence: critical approaches to studying and representing violence, and dangerous and disposable subjects'. EoI deadline is 19 June, to be held 9 and 10 September in London - full details below!

🚨 Should children be banned from social media, and on what legal, scientific, and democratic basis? The European Journal of Risk Regulation is calling for submissions on one of the most contested regulatory debates of our time and soon will publish a Special Issue www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Really enjoying the @astropoliticswg.bsky.social event this afternoon! It's titled "Holding up the skies: is Starlink occupying low Earth orbit?" (by Mia M. Bennett and Zachary Cudney), and can be found here, for those interested: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I resisted the urge to work over the bank holiday, when I absolutely needed to rest instead. Please clap

Saw a preview of Sheep Detectives today and I absolutely loved it. Silly, weird, heartfelt fun - absurdly good cast, too. Would recommend! Two facts: 1) the sheep are CGI (not AI) and they used real reference sheep to design them; 2) it was written by Craig Mazin who also wrote... Chernobyl.

We have a new article! 'Doing world politics and social media: Digital practice and open education in international relations' in @epsjournal.bsky.social Written with the fantastic @apapamichail.bsky.social, @mlebourdon.bsky.social & @louisepears.bsky.social

There is still time to sign up for this - rebellion is a really important topic at the moment!

The next @cawpbisa.bsky.social event features the brilliant @crossdale.bsky.social! It is on 25 March at 2pm, online. To read more and register, follow the link below www.bisa.ac.uk/members/work...

Exciting news! The University of Gloucestershire has joined forces with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research to launch a Master’s programme in sustainability. I am v excited to be part of this team. Do share with your networks! www.glos.ac.uk/content/uog-...

Happy International Women’s Day! Please enjoy this article I wrote with Rosie Walters in 2024. We explore the IWD communications from arms manufacturers, arguing that these function as a form of gender washing (whereby discourses of progress obscure violence) doi.org/10.1093/ips/...

From tomorrow, Friday 30 January, ballot papers will start to arrive by post for VP (HE and FE), and several key positions on our NEC. We're supporting our own @markpendleton.bsky.social for VP (HE) and independent @suzitoole.bsky.social for VP (FE) & lots of other great people. Please share! #UCU

Watching The Muppet Show and eating garlic bread: the perfect evening.

📢📢We are very excited to announce our first virtual seminar as a BISA working group! 📢📢 Join us for this excellent talk with Dr Shadi Mokhtari on her current book project examining the human rights politics surrounding Iran’s 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement.

I've thought a lot about whether or not to post this, because I wasn't sure it was my place, but it occurred to me that people may never know otherwise: I'm very sorry to say that my wonderful colleague Vicky Randall passed away unexpectedly recently @vrandall.bsky.social

I'm doing a writing retreat and have reached my writing goal a day early! My chapter now stands at 8,025 words. I guess tomorrow can be an editing day now!

Starting 2026 as I mean to go on: by watching Muppets Treasure Island

Happy new year from the UK! My next new year's resolution is to eat pasta shapes I have never tried before (suggestions welcome...)

Please enjoy this outstanding fact

Out now! This new article, by @veronicabarfucci.bsky.social is well worth a read, I highly recommend it: Militarizing Femininity on Social Media: Female Empowerment and Heteronormative Logics in the Representation of the Japan Self-Defense Forces doi.org/10.1093/ips/...

Google Scholar tells me that I've just reached my 150th citation 😃

I think this post nails the actual problem, for researchers at least—AI hallucinations would simply not be a problem in academic work if we’d not normalized citation-as-signaling rather than actual engagement—you can only cite a fake paper if you’re not in the habit of reading the papers you cite

Merriam-Webster’s human editors have chosen ‘slop’ as the 2025 Word of the Year.

Please enjoy the Christmas decorations on the @wshed.bsky.social tree

One more day of writing retreat left and it needs to be a good one 😬 4,000 words written so far!

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Didn't win the research award I was nominated for, but I did get something better: a Students' Union award for exceptional support beyond teaching, decided upon following nominations from students across the whole university! 🥹

This sounds very cool!

Voluntarily inducing Whamageddon myself today, because Last Christmas is an excellent song and I will not stand for any anti-George Michael sentiment in this house

Dear Microsoft Word, If I start to type "cal" in the font box, I do not want Calibri Light. I have never wanted Calibri Light, which is inferior to its Calibri sibling. Love, Me

I've been shortlisted for a University of Gloucestershire Staff Award by my colleagues and the statement is really lovely 😭

RED ALERT: the University of Nottingham is threatening to close its Department of American Studies, putting all staff at risk of redundancy, and ending any American specialist knowledge in the Faculty of Arts. Sign the petition here to save jobs: www.change.org/p/save-ameri...

Yesterday was a University of Gloucestershire open day, and it was lovely!

Alice Wong was one of the most effective people challenging the Whiteness of disability communities and its many flaws, but who believed fiercely in us as a community, in disabled people as oracles. Alice brought so much to so many of us, it’s hard to measure the kind of gratitude I have for that.

This is devastating news. Alice Wong was such a fantastic thinker and advocate for disabled people. Like others, I learned a lot from her, and the world is a lot poorer without her

It's a lifeline, not a comprehensive solution to the crisis, but if you're a UK-based PhD (or equivalent) in a SHAPE subject within 10 years of your viva, do join the British Academy's ECRN. It's free, has resources & you don't need to be employed in research or academia to be a member. 3/3

Ah, we've reached the time of year when UK trains are all cocked up. Almost all my journeys recently have been late and absolutely rammed full of people. Not what you want after a three hour class.

When I submitted a paper to AI & Society the email confirmation sent me to a website that told me my language quality score was only 3/10 but RUBRIQ could fix it. I study this stuff, so uploaded my paper to RUBRIQ, which proceeded to introduce scientific fabrication and change scientific terms.

Huge thanks to our wonderful audience (and BISA staff) for making this such an enjoyable event. We're so excited to be convening this working group and hopefully there are lots of good things to come...

This is today! Come say hi! If you've not yet registered, we can probably sort out a link for you

“The Gaza of maps and memories is gone, replaced by a monochrome landscape of rubble stretching flat and still…. there's almost nothing left to orient you here, or identify the neighbourhoods that once held tens of thousands of people”. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...