*NEW ACADEMIC JOB MARKET REPORT* If you missed the launch of the new #Politics #Academic #Job Market Report at #PSA26 it's now online. Authored by @ralphscott.bsky.social, @lawrencemckay.bsky.social & Dr William Allen in collaboration with PSA ECN @psaecn.bsky.social ➡️ Read report buff.ly/q8IwqWj

We're doing a series of interviews with former PMs (to be published in the coming months!) and one of them said exactly this: the job is so varied, and you can't pick and choose the good bits of the job - you *have* to do them all.

This kind of thing is taken to absurd levels at US airports, where ime you can easily miss your flight if you don't pay for queue jumping privileges

Keeping this for the future: Orbán on TV saying that the election results are painful but clear. This feels momentous. #Hungary

Good thread summarising excellent analysis of the grim state of the politics academic job market

We published a report that used web archives, email digests, and university staff statistics to track the UK academic job market in political science and IR since 2012. It’s part of a broader problem we need to address w/ structural solutions without losing sight of its personal impacts. #polisky

truly one of the best to ever do it, right on the intentional/unintentional border

What I find fascinating about this plot is how political science receives very little public funding relative to other disciplines--but it has the *highest* technical reproducibility rate for published papers. Way to go guys!! #1 in reproducibility 😎

Probably says something about me that I loved Arrival and found PHM just too silly and lacking in real peril

'The report for the Political Studies Association, shared exclusively with Research Professional News ahead of its publication on 31 March, analyses trends in politics departments between 2012 and 2025....it says the field has developed acute problems with jobs and student numbers.' 1/3

🚨New PSA report on Politics & IR job market trends shows evidence of falling opportunities particularly for emerging scholars in UK Higher Education @mybisa.bsky.social @uaces.bsky.social @britishacademy.bsky.social @acadsocsciences.bsky.social @stianwestlake.bsky.social @ukri.org 👀👇

New report spotlights collapse in politics researcher jobs and risk of "lost generation" for discipline. "While we knew the current situation was bad, the most surprising thing is just how bad," says @ralphscott.bsky.social, one of the authors. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-u...

🚨 NEW REPORT! 🚨 What is the state of the UK academic job market in politics, and what does this mean for the field and #highered? In a new @psaecn.bsky.social report, @lawrencemckay.bsky.social @williamlallen.bsky.social and I find worrying trends in job adverts and HESA data from 2012-25 #PSA26

Don't forget to join us for the roundtable discussion on the academic job market in politics where the new report by @lawrencemckay.bsky.social, @ralphscott.bsky.social and @williamlallen.bsky.social will be launched. The #PSA26 event starts 12:30 at the East School (Examination Schools). /1

That’s a v nice service to the discipline. Unsurprisingly, the numbers are brutal. Too many things have gone wrong in the past decade. If only we had the institutions with the willingness to change them.

Rough reading, but great work by @ralphscott.bsky.social, @lawrencemckay.bsky.social, and @williamlallen.bsky.social. Things are not ok out there! www.psa.ac.uk/resources/ac...

Coverage of today's report in RPN: Collapse in politics researcher jobs paints ‘troubling picture’ www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-u...

Mid- & senior-level colleagues: if you’re at all concerned about the situation our job market candidates face, or it’s been awhile since you yourselves were applying, read @ralphscott.bsky.social’s summary of our new report. And come to our launch, 12.30 today in Exam Schools (East) #psa26 #polisky

🚨 NEW REPORT! 🚨 What is the state of the UK academic job market in politics, and what does this mean for the field and #highered? In a new @psaecn.bsky.social report, @lawrencemckay.bsky.social @williamlallen.bsky.social and I find worrying trends in job adverts and HESA data from 2012-25 #PSA26

If you’re on a permanent contract, are hiring postdocs or fellows on the basis of a shiny new grant (hello ERC or UKRI FLF!), advise PhD students, and/or have any sort of say on hiring within your department, you should attend our report launch examining the UK politics/IR job market #psa26

If you are currently planning tomorrow's #PSA26 conference day, consider joining us for two exciting events: Meet the editors (11:30-12:30) and our job market roundtable (12:30-13:30). Both take place in the "Examination Schools – East School", so you don't even need to switch the venue. /1

Hope to see some of you in Oxford tomorrow!

“Made-up quotes,” as Mrs Thatcher put it, “are the giveaway sign of someone using ChatGPT for research.”

try and imagine a bigger W as an academic

Greater Manchester Police has found "no evidence of any intent to influence or refrain any person from voting" in the Gorton and Denton by-election, after Reform made a complaint over alleged "family voting" The investigation looked at potential offences under the Representation of the People Act

The Times on MattGPT. It seems Goodwin doesn't understand the concept of English as an additional language (EAL). www.thetimes.com/article/ecc0...

In spite of all the talk of Claude Code and Codex meaning the end of humans writing code, software job adverts are actually going up, according to @jburnmurdoch.ft.com's crunching of millions of job ads for this week's The AI Shift www.ft.com/content/7325...

My English local election net seat gains/losses projections for May 2026: Con -1010 Lab -1900 LD +200 Green +450 Reform +2260 electionsetc.com/2026/03/25/l...

We're launching this report at PSA conference next Tuesday! Come along if you're in Oxford and want to hear more/vent about just how bad the current academic job market in politics is

Recent elections (DK, NLD, SLV, CZE) don't make much of a dent in my population-weighted moving average of European elections Conservative 23.9 (+0.4 vs March 2025) Right-wing/far-right 23.6 (-0.1) Social democrat 21.0 (-0.7) Liberal 12.3 (+1.0) Socialist 7.5 (-0.4) Green 4.5 (-0.1)

YouGov's first MRP of the 2026 Senedd election shows Plaid Cymru on course to be the largest party PC: 43 (+19 from 2021*) Ref: 30 (+30) Lab: 12 (-32) Grn: 10 (+10) Con: 1 (-25) LD: 0 (-2) *notional results had the last election been conducted on the new system based on data from Dr Jac Larner

Big row developing between two of Reform's leading public figures:

Important report out today. Child poverty isn't just bad, it causes a lasting earnings penalty. Perhaps some gap is not so surprising. But I was shocked by the scale of the penalty persisting even for children who go to university, get the same degree and work for the same firm.

Goodwin's new book has even been slammed by The Critic. It must be truly dreadful. thecritic.co.uk/suicide-of-a...

Once again reminding all academics in the UK that they really, really, really, really should sign up to @alcs.co.uk Lifetime membership is £36 and they take it out of the money they collect for you so it really is "free money". I'm getting a little over £100 *every year*. Do it!

I clicked through to the HEPI report. It's amazing the disconnect between the headline claim ("public patience with universities is thin as populist sentiment rises") and the content of the report ("the data tell a curious[!] story... most people still like the idea of universities")

Forthcoming in AEJ: Applied Economics “University as a Melting Pot: Long-term Effects of Internationalization” Debates on international students often focus on capacity, funding, or competition. My paper shows the main effects on natives are not academic or economic, but social.

It's politicians that need to restore legitimacy with the public, not universities. Only 9% trust politicians but 82% trust academics

Nice list of papers on survey response rates over time.

VICTORY! Government to open up the Land Registry - bringing to an end a thousand years of secrecy shrouding who owns England. I’ve been campaigning for this for ten years: the new Land Use Framework, published later today, makes it government policy. 1/ www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The call for papers for #EPOP2026 in Liverpool (17–19 September) is now open! We welcome submissions across all areas of research on elections, public opinion and parties. Deadline: 26 April Submit your proposals here: www.liverpool.ac.uk/politics/eve... @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social

Political Science's academic job market having its worst post-Covid year -- almost 20% fewer jobs than at the same point in the previous cycle (which itself was bad!) Data scraped from APSA ejobs pdfs.

The UK decline (shown below) is particularly marked. It's surprising to see a decline to below levels of the 1970s, when there was (for example) internment without trial in parts of the UK (1/2)

V-Dem v.16 is now released, w. updated scores for 2025. Most countries remain stable from 2024, but some clear improvements (on diff’t democracy indices), incl. S. Korea, Sri Lanka & Mauritius. Largest declines came, by far, in the US. This figure shows 10-yr changes on the Liberal Dem. index.

The new V-Dem report was released today. There are dramatic declines in democracy in the US. Much worse than during Trump I.

Genuinely just bonkers to watch the USA do this to one of the most successful and innovative hubs of scientific research the world has ever seen. All those years of Free Speech On Campus debates and it turns out they actually wanted less cancer research. Absurd.

As a connoisseur of a high street tax dodge story, my gut instinct is your average “Turkish” cash only barber shop is not necessarily compliant with PAYE and VAT legislation… but is way more likely than people suspect to be a proper functional business with real customers.

This seems like a relatively unprecedented aspect of our new fragmented politics - politicians of the same party who barely know one another yet are forming administrations

Are you going to #psa26 @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social? Looking for local/independent cafes in Oxford? The coffee scene has changed a lot in the 16(!) years I've lived here. So as that shameless baking and coffee guy, here's a current map of my favourites for your use: www.google.com/maps/d/edit?...

The ‘we need to rethink our approach to the North Sea’ is dumbest conversation in UK politics Expensive to extract- much of it now owned by small producers - that goes into global market Good to jobs in Aberdeen, not much else *mad* we’re not talking about energy security + renewables every day