NEW from me - NSF cancels grant scheme for social science research. Seems the NSF quietly archived ALL calls for DDRIG grants in the SBE directorate. This is a massive blow for PhD students wanting to do cutting-edge social science research. 🏺🧪

Important thread regarding NSF's conditions of funding & the choices scientists are being forced to make.

Update 6 (October 2025) of the ARC Bibliography is now live, with several dozen new sources on the main bibliography and an ever-growing list of digital security resources on their own page. Check it out! We'll be adding more over the coming weeks, so feel free to suggest new, relevant pieces here!

As government human rights reporting becomes less comprehensive, historian Elliott Young's applied scholarship fills critical information gaps with rigorously documented country conditions research. Listen to our conversation here: austinkocher.substack.com/p/in-convers...

The administration just cut the IRB at CDC. How does research proceed without an IRB? What happens to ongoing studies? Suppose there is significant complication for a patient, or malfeasance identified, who is that reported to? Who ensures that research is done safely and ethically?

Not ethnography: 1.) Two-week long field visit 2.) In-depth interviews 3.) Intermittently scanning social media 4.) Being professionally employed before grad school and later writing it up as "research" for a dissertation

Are you interested in research on corruption/illicit finance/kleptocracy? We are hiring a Research Fellow at @acdatacollective.bsky.social: acdatacollective.org/wp-content/u... Please share in your networks, this could be a great gig.

On writing, reporting, and crossing the US border as a non-citizen.

Individual scholars will have to make decisions a/b how they engage w/ programs like Fulbright going into future cycles, if they even continue to exist. But the message being sent by the admin, & that the Board is calling out directly, is that only politically approved projects will go forward.

And also 1 permanent lecturer in economics: www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/117209-...

Department of Political Economy at King’s College London is hiring 2 permanent lecturers (teaching-focused) in political science: - Research methods: www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/117268-... - Comparative politics: www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/117245-... Application deadline: June 29, 2025

Political Science job alert! UK based, Oxford, IR, lectureship.

Every single researcher should be up on digital privacy and basic anti-surveillance protocols. Wired has a good intro here. More on the ARC Bibliography.

Apropos of absolutely no contemporary issues with archives, libraries, or ethics...

NEW: The NIH has begun terminating grants for active projects studying gender identity, DEI, environmental justice, climate change, among other topics. At least 16 termination letters have already been sent — and hundreds more are coming, people inside NIH tell me. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

DOGE is now reviewing every NIH grant that goes out, I reported last week. That review is AI-driven and is screening for DEI, trans health, China, vaccine hesitancy, and the institutions to whom Trump has blocked funding, @hannahnatanson.bsky.social reports. Gift link: wapo.st/3HhnPSt

This is especially important: “We call upon our fellow institutions of higher education in the United States to declare their willingness to facilitate the immediate co-enrollment of Harvard’s international students, including formal acceptance of transfer for immigration purposes.”

Recovering from my shock at seeing this.. I'm thinking about the dire implications for fieldwork, ethnography, anthropology, and basically any field of study that is predicated on TALKING TO ACTUAL PEOPLE.

"Conflict, autocracy, censorship, poverty, inequality, disciplinary imperatives, and institutional interests all shape research opportunities and agendas...The Spring 2025 issue of Dædalus explores how ethical standards can be developed and applied to improve the quality of social science research"

Call for applications! ARC mini-course to be held at St. Hilda's College, Oxford, UK, September 23-26 2025. Due date for applications: May 31, 2025. advancingconflictresearch.com/summer-program

If you are doing international fieldwork for a dissertation or research project this summer, please, please educate yourself about your rights at *all* borders and your obligations under ethical frameworks such as the Institutional Review Board. Employ proper digital security practices. Full stop.

One great set of reasons not to use duplicate apps when conducting fieldwork. Signal is secure because of its original functionality, which TeleMessage's features negate.

So much wrong here, starting w/ a non-consensual, deceptive researcher intervention into an online community that could have permanently shifted that community's dynamics & caused multiple harms. There are ethical ways to use deception, but consultation, debriefing, & do no harm are paramount.

Do Customs and Border Protection officials have the authority to search your phone at the border? Short answer? Yes. Here’s what you can do to protect your digital life while at the US border.

On the degradation and destruction of data in the US

POSTDOC OPPORTUNITY! "The position is based at ETH Zurich and is supervised by Prof. Livia Schubiger. The candidate will work with the IRDS group on projects...related to gender-based and other forms of violence, as well as avenues to reduce such violence." jobs.ethz.ch/job/view/JOP...

ARC has added four guides to securing private/academic/journalistic data for border crossings to our digital security page. Materials from CUNY Clear, Wired, The Guardian, & the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Minerva grants terminated, including projects focused on the intersection of climate and security and on online threats.

How do you protect yourself online? In this video we’ll walk you through some steps we take to protect our online safety, and give you tips on how to strengthen yours… www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9uF...

Using Signal on an iPhone 15/16? Siri & AI now have the capacity to read Signal messages. 1.) Disable AI under Settings; or 2.) Go under Siri & disable for Signal (& other messaging/etc.). Settings › Siri › [scroll down to Apps] › Signal › turn off "Learn from this app" and the other settings

Relevant to scholars in political science, history, and international relations.

Heads up re: access to federal data for reseachers

As Syrians free prisoners from over 100 different regime-run detention, torture, and prison sites, we're posting this piece on the Assad regime's use of violence against dissidents, opposition, and everyday people.

Maybe we'll try posting some interesting, non-academic reads re: war/violence/etc. along w/ pieces that go on the ARC Bibliography. We find this one particularly relevant to how we as scholars, & especially as social scientists, conceptualize violence & destruction, as well as the legacies of war.

Apropos of nothing, we're thrilled to share our ever-growing resource list focused on digital security! Check out the ARC Bibliography for more general resources on research methods, ethics, and practicalities.