Given the Guardian best books brouhaha, here's a thing I wrote (in 2012!) about lists and literary taste. Still kind of stands up. The history bit is interesting if I say so myself 🤔 wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/51...

No shade on the research itself which no doubt is careful and rigorous on its terms but I always find coverage of studies like this a bit depressing. As if we're only allowed beautiful things when there is a grimly utilitarian reason. www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

And people say this platform is in decline.

My latest cartoon for @newscientist.com

God bless the cultural intermediaries, I say.

We conclude with reflections on what the evidence tells us. Notably, it indicates that challenging conditions of creative work are not inevitable. If states consider the creative economy important, then there are routes to supporting this work and these workers. www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edi...

This makes me happy and incredibly sad for what we let go … for how impossible it would be to set up anything with the intellectual, pedagogic, democratic vision of the OU now www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Out today, from editors Bård Kleppe, Jaka Primorac, Mikka Pyykkönen and me. The book combines cross-national writing teams and focussed case studies across Europe to examine the rhetoric and reality of creative work. A contents thread 👇 www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/1...

I think we need to do an edgy, single-take Netflix drama, set in a school in the north of England, about the online radicalisation of Nick Robinson

Thanks to our contributors, reviewers and to @bookseditorial.bsky.social and team at @routledgebooks.bsky.social for their help. If you work at a university, why not order a copy for your library? And if you don't, and you want to read anything, drop me a line. www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/1...

Out today, from editors Bård Kleppe, Jaka Primorac, Mikka Pyykkönen and me. The book combines cross-national writing teams and focussed case studies across Europe to examine the rhetoric and reality of creative work. A contents thread 👇 www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/1...

Fully-funded AHRC Collaborative Doctoral PhD Studentship at UCL and the V&A: 'Invisible Hands: Migrant Labour and British Craft in the 18th Century' Ignore the 'top ten' hype; focus on the ace resources, environment and support. Deadline 15 April. #Skystorians

This is a really important point. No-one has been able to explain to me how we can fairly and consistently distinguish between an AI generated essay (formulaic and generic in its structure, phrasing and contents) and...

If you’re wondering what the big deal is about Jürgen Habermas (who died yesterday), or if you’ve never heard of him until now, you’re not going to learn much from the short newspaper obituaries, which are focusing on more on what he said about current events than his philosophy. 1/

Burnden Park, Bolton, 1946: the deal that cost father and son's lives in 'forgotten disaster'. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

"Why are creative graduates willing to do this? It’s because – and this is a critical point for all graduates and, indeed, any human being – money isn’t necessarily the only reward from work." wonkhe.com/blogs/creati...

'Let’s return to that question about the supposed poor returns for creative arts graduates. The answer lies in the fact that they are effectively subsidising the creative industries that they’re working in – they are...selling their labour for less than they might earn in other sectors'. 2/3

This forgets there were serious attempts to replace Churchill with an otter after Dunkirk

This is cruel to the young people concerned, self-destructive for the UK and will not win over a single Reform voter.

I am very much on this bus.

Pleased to hear Drs. Melanie Stavrou, Hao Xie and Younggeon Byun talk about their work on Decolonisation as Cultural Justice.

Great to see this article from our PhD student Pengyun Lu now out, open access, in @ejcs-journal.bsky.social "Between ‘audience lords’ and ‘rich fathers’: Triadic relational labour and contingent moral improvisation among Chinese tech creators on UGC platforms" journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

These were great. And in the end, weirdly hopeful. I learned a lot. And I bet the Christmas parties at the Centre for Existential Risk are pretty fun.

"no longer be accepting AI art, including on bottles and pump clips, in order to try to protect local artists from losing out on work." www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Fascinating discussion around class on Radio 4's Free Thinking feat. @adellestripe.bsky.social www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Another example (just like the Essex campus closure) of how refusing to have a structured and effective HE policy destroys the rest of the government’s place-based goals www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Excellent. I always preferred 'morbid symptoms'. And it's a much better name for a pub quiz team.

Going live for our CDI stream on digital intimacies.

Collaborative PhD on art and/as R&D with me and the Serpentine gallery - tracking how value, labour, knowledge and resources move through art-technology production networks. I'll happily chat to anyone you think would be good for (and would benefit from) this. www.westminster.ac.uk/study/postgr...

The BBC coverage is absolutely terrible. It leads on "sharply contested narratives" It has a dramatic skew to the US government It has posted the video but has failed to report on what it shows: it shows the US govt account is untrue

Thrilled to share some brilliant news 🎉 Ulster University has been awarded an AHRC Creative Communities Co-Lab Policy Network Award 2026 Huge thanks to Arts & Humanities Research Council, @northumbriauni.bsky.social and our incredible partners across Northern Ireland More soon!

Looking forward to working, as part of the AHRC Creative Communities Co-Lab Policy network, on Strengthening the Cultural Foundations of the West Midlands creativecommunities.uk/research_art...

And that is: asking a student to do a literature review isn’t really about the output, the final product. It’s about learning the process - assessing the quality of the evidence as you read it, learning how your question may evolve as you engage with the literature, learning how to spot SALIENCE 1/2

'“Embedded precarity” in higher education is diminishing research quality as staff on short-term contracts favour “safer” work to secure future employment, according to the author of a new report.' Royal Geographical Society maps important connections between precarity and research topics. 1/3

‘There’s a sort of alarming and mysterious aspect to this wave in AI: that thing about the nature of the black box. We don’t know why it’s coming to the conclusions it’s coming to.’ John Lanchester on the AI bubble, on the podcast: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/w...

My cartoon for the latest @newscientist.com

Globally, the cultural and creative industries contribute to 3.1% of GDP and 6.2% of employment. Yet we can't think of them only as an industry. Great to speak last month at #CIMAM to museum curators and artists about our work on Public Value of the Arts. Watch the keynote ➡️ buff.ly/yUF9QFO

How do small, focussed-arts activities change how people relate to a place and to one another, and what gets lost when cultural value is judged only by scale, numbers, or economic return?

EXCL: An agreement to rejoin Erasmus – the EU’s student exchange programme – set to be announced on Wednesday as part of UK government’s drive towards closer relations with Brussels. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

Trump sues the BBC is the stupidest story ever Of course, cover it but please, please point out - early - how stupid it is. And don’t put it at the top of the news. Because it’s really, really stupid.

Stuart Hall on teaching 💛 “Let me put it this way: you have to be sure about a position in order to teach a class, but you have to be open-ended enough to know that you are going to change your mind by the time you teach it next week” (Hall, Essential Essays vol. 1, p. 245)

NEW on Wonkhe: For Mollie Etheridge REF is a missed opportunity to recognise and reward early career researchers buff.ly/C8IKo7z

🌍 Want to shape the future of film, TV, games & immersive media? Creative Bridges CDT offers fully funded PhDs tackling sustainability & diversity in the UK screen industries #CreativeBridges #PhDResearch 👉 creativebridges-cdt.ac.uk

Read a new paper in @ejcs-journal.bsky.social from our excellent colleague Cecilia Ghidotti. 'On Quitting Cultural Work'... journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Our Art, Enterprise and Development students enjoyed their recent trip to #coventrybiennial and @the-herbert.bsky.social. Thanks to Ryan Hughes for the tour.

What we're seeing is exactly what we saw in the late 1940s, the late 1960s and the mid- to late 1970s: a concerted and hysterical campaign to delegitimise a Labour government, and indeed the very idea of Labour governments at all.

🚀 Applications are OPEN for Creative Bridges CDT, a pioneering PhD programme to diversify talent in the screen industries! Fully funded studentships available. Apply by 20 April 2026 👉 creativebridges-cdt.ac.uk #PhDOpportunity #ScreenIndustries #DiversityInMedia

The sheer scale of media outrage this week about plans to lift hundreds of thousands children out of poverty, by taxing millionaire homeowners, tells you everything you need to know about the real priorities of the British press www.adambienkov.co.uk/p/the-real-b...

Really thrilled to be working with @joannegh.bsky.social, Anamika Saha, Sanjay Sharma, @cimethods.bsky.social and our industry partners on this. Have a research project that can shape the future of the screen industries? Come and join us! 👇👇