very happy to see a new review of our #PhotoDemos book ‘Citizens of Photography: The Camera and the Political Imagination’ (DUP, 2023) by Gabby Moser in History of Photography www.tandfonline.com/eprint/9C6Y4... the book can be found OA here: read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/3...

Gaza and the Problem of Moral Stupidity - Abdaljawad Omar: 40 years after Edward Said demanded ‘permission to narrate’, the truth from Palestine has never been more widely known. And yet the annihilation continue www.equator.org/articles/mor... via @equatormag.bsky.social

Jesus. 35 UK universities quietly- without debate - joined the Ministry of Defence’s “Battlefield Alliance” which seeks to “reorientate academia towards Defence and National Security” They’re destroying the social sciences and humanities while militarising the institutions

new report from the International Truth and Justice Project on the Chemmani Mass Grave ‘We Are Still Searching’ itjpsl.com/reports/chem... #SriLanka

Let's remember for a sec the role of philosophy in one of Dundee's (and the world's) greatest scientists in the 20th century: D'Arcy Thompson. This mindless vandalism of academia needs to stop

Looking forward to welcoming the speakers, discussants and audience of the Endemic Transformations workshop tomorrow morning @standrewsanthro.bsky.social for 2 days of discussion on how approaches to diseases as "endemics" has transformed social and multispecies relations since the 19th century

@peninternational.bsky.social raises concern over Sri Lanka using national security, customs & public order provisions to censor literary & journalistic works and calls on authorities to release all remaining copies of P. Theepachelvan's books. www.pen-international.org/news/sri-lan...

"The arts and humanities are fundamental to the flourishing of our society; knowledge gathering, critical thinking and creativity should be defended as sacred things” www.theguardian.com/education/20...

delighted that the @himalsouthasian.bsky.social Southasia Review of Books podcast with @shwethasrikanthan.bsky.social is back! | Joe Sacco discusses ‘The Once and Future Riot’ and the controversy surrounding Penguin India’s decision not to distribute his book www.himalmag.com/podcasts/joe...

Vandalism against HE in the UK escalates with a speed and viciousness that leaves no doubt as to the ideological motives behind it

could not have envisioned a better reviewer for ‘A Volatile Picture' than Shyam Tekwani who has lived this book & its photos. Enormously grateful for these words 🙏🏽 | How Photographs Defied All Attempts to Bury the Memory of Sri Lanka's War thewire.in/books/how-ph... @thewire.in

on researching difficult pictures in post/war Sri Lanka, how photographs are used in the fight for truth and justice, and the “volatile” nature of images, whose meanings and political uses shift over time uwpressblog.com/2026/06/22/t... @uwapress.uw.edu

Read our Q&A with Vindhya Buthpitiya @vindi-b.bsky.social, author of A VOLATILE PICTURE, on photography as witness and weapon amid civil war. She shares more about her in-depth fieldwork in Sri Lanka and reflects on the "volatile" nature of images, whose meanings and political uses shift over time.

Phase 3 / Day 31: The total number of skeletons identified at Sri Lanka's largest mass grave in Chemmani surged to 412 on Monday (22), following the discovery of 7 more skeletal remains by the forensic team working under Prof. Raj Somadeva.| 📷 © Sumithi Thangarasa

Phase 3 / Day 27 As 14 more bodies were discovered from the Jaffna mass burial site by the forensic team led by Prof. Raj Somadeva on Wednesday (17), Chemmani-Siththupaththi has now become the LARGEST MASS GRAVE ever found in Sri Lanka, with 380 bodies. | 📷 Kumanan Kanapathipillai

It’s ‘A Volatile Picture’ day!   This is a book born out of war, and its pages are steeped in immense pain and loss which continue to haunt my home. I did not set out to write with hope or to gesture towards resilience and reconciliation.

Congrats to @vindi-b.bsky.social on the publication of this path-breaking book on how "in the context of Sri Lanka’s protracted civil war and its turbulent aftermath, photography has become bound to the Tamil political imagination"

happy Friday ☺️ A Volatile Picture: War and the Political Work of Photography in Sri Lanka uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295... (US/Canada - summer sale!), liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/... (UK/rest of the world including Sri Lanka).

the book has made it home (house, family and island 🥹🙏🏽♥️) to Lanka - hard not to get a bit emotional 😭

Got my hands on @vindi-b.bsky.social’s book! 📖✨ Less than a week to go until publication day. Order your copy of 'A Volatile Picture': uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295... @uwapress.uw.edu + liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/... @livunipress.bsky.social

more marvellous tetrapod reptile material from Deraniyagala! 🐊

'If you use AI, it reveals your orientation toward writing. Do you want to make art, or just turn in text? Do you want to actually learn how to write, or just pretend to do so?' www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

starting 🐊 summer with this beautiful 1939 first edition of ‘Tetrapod Reptiles of Ceylon’ by Deraniyagala 😍

Very happy to be sharing the programme of the "Endemic Transformations" workshop held on July 9-10 @standrewsanthro.bsky.social - Registration (free & in person only) is open till June 26 www.st-andrews.ac.uk/social-anthr...

‘A Volatile Picture’ month at last! The book is shipping out in the US via @uwapress.uw.edu (summer sale on now! ) / UK distributor @livunipress.bsky.social Out in the world on the 16th of June uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295... | liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/...

Syria’s Damascus rose has survived empire, crusade, and civil war. Now it faces a heating planet, and the question of who gets to claim it. atmos.earth/art-and-cult... via @atmosmag.bsky.social

Very happy to be sharing this conversation about my new book "How Plague Got Rats: Mastering a Zoonotic Pandemic" @hopkinspress.bsky.social with Miranda Melcher on @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social newbooksnetwork.com/how-plague-g...

Such appalling way to treat staff and run Universities - all boiling down to the disastrous neoliberal dogma of approaching education and research in market and entrepreneurial terms

we really are sitting atop a lit pyre - how dire the situation in UK HE is cannot be overstated. | Squadrons of Pigs - Stefan Collini www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4... via @lrb.co.uk

My book Coolie Migrants, Indian Diplomacy is available online now through @academic.oup.com. If you have institutional/library access to Oxford Scholarship Online, do check this out! If you're interested in reviewing the book & would like a copy, feel free to get in touch! doi.org/10.1093/oso/...

please do share widely | University of St Andrews Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) PGR Scholarship www.st-andrews.ac.uk/study/schola...

Offering some reflections on the exception-banality tension of cruise ship outbreaks from the third plague pandemic to the current hantavirus outbreak @mitpress.bsky.social: "Pleasure, Plague, and Panic: Why Cruise Ship Outbreaks Still Haunt Us" thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/pleasure-pla...

with thanks to Miranda Melcher / @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social, and of course @mythrijega.bsky.social for the wonderful words pictured below and on the cover!

On @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social, Vindhya Buthpitiya @vindi-b.bsky.social discusses A VOLATILE PICTURE (June 16)—on Tamil photographic practices in Sri Lanka and the making and moving of images across borders, communities, and generations. Listen to the interview: newbooksnetwork.com/a-volatile-p...

What happened with Nazir’s winning story is not only a scandal about AI fraud, but also a revealing episode in a much longer history of how elite, metropolitan literary institutions have read—& misread—writing from the postcolonial world africasacountry.com/2026/05/how-...

So happy to see my new book "How Plague Got Rats: Mastering a Zoonotic Pandemic" published today with @hopkinspress.bsky.social! #histmed #histsci #plague #rats #pandemic www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/... The book is also available Open Access via Project MUSE: muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/oa_mon...

St Andrews University academic on Gaza aid flotilla intercepted by Israeli forces: Geography lecturer Dr Antonis Vradis joined a boat believed to have been intercepted off the coast of Cyprus. www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/politics/...

URGENT - UCU St Andrews Member - Antonis Vradis is on the Qannir La Cirena boat in the Global Summid Flotilla which has been intercepted by Israel Contact your MP and MSP Contact the Principal Please share

our St Andrews colleague Antonis Vradis who bravely joined the Global Sumud Flotilla has also been captured by the IOF in international waters - please share / write to your MP/MSP www.writetothem.com

Sameera Mehboobdeen, a Sri Lankan citizen/medic, who courageously joined the Global Sumud Flotilla, an international effort aimed at delivering aid & breaking the siege in Gaza, has been abducted in intl waters by the IOF www.instagram.com/samm_deen/re... | www.dailymirror.lk/news-feature...

horrified that people are making AI videos of Mullivaikkal. Extraordinary Tamil photographers witnessed & documented the mass atrocities committed by the state & the immense suffering of those who were being bombarded in the NFZs. Honour their work. See: itjpsl.com/reports/war-...

17 years. in memory of the tens of thousands of Tamils massacred by the Sri Lankan state. in solidarity with those still denied justice, dignity and freedom and those who continue to fight for truth and accountability amid ongoing violence and persecution 🪔 #mullivaikkal

‘Three great figures – Scholem, Brecht and Adorno – tried to save Benjamin, and all failed. Benjamin understood our times in terms of ruins, remnants, still-warm embers, not in the terms dictated by the victors.’ www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ma... via @lrb.co.uk

don't usually write academic book reviews, but I loved 'Redacted: Writing in the Negative Space of the State,' edited by Lisa Min, Franck Billé & Charlene Makley so much that I did. The book can be found open access here: punctumbooks.com/titles/redac... Review: brill.com/view/journal...

and me. I for one will actually quit academia if this becomes normalised as a part of the job, because goodness knows institutions are setting themselves on fire for profit now. | Meet the academics refusing to use generative AI www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Suriya, Friend & Comrade by Manel Fonseka www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/su...

every year since, fatal reminders emerge pointing to the fact that people learned *absolutely nothing* from the covid-19 pandemic.

+ universities- incredulous that this is normalised. | What Will It Take to Get AI Out of Schools?: The tech world assumes that AI-aided education is necessary & inevitable. A growing number of parents, educators, & cognitive scientists say the opposite. www.newyorker.com/culture/prog...

On April 29, 2026, Sri Lanka lost one of its steadfast and longest-serving advocates for human rights, Suriya Wickramasinghe, best known as the face of the Civil Rights Movement (CRM), of which she was a founding member and secretary. www.sundaytimes.lk/260503/sunda... by Renuka Senanayake

Rest in peace, Suriya. | Sri Lanka has lost one of its most courageous & enduring voices for human rights & social justice. Suriya Wickramasinghe was a courageous activist who stood up for political prisoners & a silent but unwavering advocate for the disenfranchised groundviews.org/2026/05/01/s...