Second time I am getting “invitations” from “book clubs” (aka AI scams) and it’s the second time they can’t get the name of my book right lol. I guess having a long title and subtitle helps!

I am sorry, but even Stalin didn’t try pulling this shit

A similar process happened in the 20th century Soviet Union: people started using prison slang (of Yiddish-Romani origin) and now most don’t even know what was the origin of the words they say.

Did someone say carnival?.. We should have written a foreign policy chapter, @bganesh.bsky.social

That was me and @chenchenzhang.net two years ago when we organized the EWIS workshop! Unfortunately, Schengen visa troubles prevented us from making an actual photo…

The state of the world is terrible, but on the plus side sloths exist

Contesting Imperialism(s) - Central and East European ISA conference in Sarajevo, BiH, June 17-19, 2026. Deadline for proposals - April 10, 2026. There will be a pre-conference workshop for young scholars. For info, please visit: ceeisa2026.com

Four years ago today, we went to bed only to wake to the sound of explosions the first many of us had ever heard. We woke up to war. ​Since then, the war has been with us every second. No one is truly safe, no one is okay, and the future remains uncertain. Even when we laugh,

When my students enrol into Russian Politics and Society course, they see a photograph of Nikolay Komyagin from a Russian art-punk band Shortparis. Not another picture of St. Basil's cathedral or nesting dolls. You can take a song from Shortparis and literally teach post-Soviet Russian politics 🧵

First seminar on Russian politics and culture of the semester: ended up analysing Ilya's Russian monologue from #heatedrivalry with the students. If that's not something that will get the kids to class I don't know what will!

Bonus: @greenleejw.bsky.social ‘s drawings work really well as embroidery patterns!

How do Russian political and cultural elites legitimize the war on Ukraine, three years into what was supposed to last only a couple of days? And how do these justifications change over time? Elizaveta Gaufman (@lisares.bsky.social) has a couple of ideas on this: open.spotify.com/episode/36CY...

New preprint is out! Focusing on Russia, this paper asks what happens when disinformation awareness itself becomes a tool of authoritarian rule. We often assume that learning about disinformation increases resistance to propaganda. But what if the regime weaponises it? 1/7

Funded collaborative PhD opportunity on contested memory with me in @oupolitics.bsky.social and Arthur Dudney at Arcadia: granduniondtp.web.ox.ac.uk/contested-hi... Deadline 7th Jan, please share!

Come work with me! 👩🏻‍💻

You know who else called the EU the fourth reich? People (and trolls) who opposed Ukraine’s signing of Association agreement in 2013. Somebody even wrote a paper about this!

Which is exactly where the article comes into play: rule following is masculine coded *in settings where the superiors issuing orders are expected to be men.* In schools, where most of the teachers are women, it's seen as normal and expected for boys to be unruly or outright defiant.

“If civilization is what counts … the likelihood of violence between Ukrainians and Russians should be low. They are two Slavic, primarily Orthodox peoples who have had close relationships with each other for centuries.”

Do you want to know how Trump won? You love reading about the Middle Ages and hate racists? I have an OPEN ACCESS book for you! www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

And if you respond with scientific articles about stochastic parrotry and bullshit, these kinds of people get VERY aggressive…

I will show this to the next person who says that “AI is unbiased”

Another day, another mediocre uninformed man tries to mansplain and insult. Oh the fun of being a woman in academia!

📣 Nieuwe column voor @groene.nl. Deze week over het fenomeen "pinkwashing": het strategisch verpakken van extreemrechtse politiek in een feminien jasje. 👇

Plenty of sequel material for Carol Cohn’s article “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals". Some things never change (apart from the intellectual part)

Please retire the label “populist”. She is a white nationalist and Qanon/pizzagate believer among other things. Just call a racist spade a spade.

Kiddo came home saying that everyone in his class voted for #D66 apart from 2, who voted for “Partij voor diertjes” (which is apparently a party he would vote for). He was worried that the “Pif” party might still win, “because they want to send all the foreigners out and we are foreigners”.

With the official prognosis giving one additional seat to PVV and one to FvD compared to the ext poll, the narrative should really not be that the Netherlands/Jetten has beaten the radical right. The far right bloc remains remarkably stable.

Ten years ago today I defended my PhD dissertation “Enemies at the gates: existential threat narratives in Putin’s Russia”. I had chapters on Ukraine, the West, homophobia, migrants and “spiritual bonds”. And the argument still freaking holds, damn.

As I was giving feedback on a clearly ChatGPT generated lit review, I realized that I am just feeding new prompts to the student to feed to his genAI. It’s exhausting and meaningless.

Always a surreal feeling to hold the printed words in your hands. #propaganda #war

Had a blast synergising @deconspirator.bsky.social and ARM project with @mariellew.bsky.social at the @clingendael.bsky.social REKA conference. Discussed current approaches to #FIMI and the challenges European democracies face. Despite our happy faces, we were not always optimistic...

🚨 Publication alert 🚨 I went to the depths of despair and analyZed Russian pro-war poetry with Alsu Buiting: "Teaching to Love the Mother(land): Russian Z-poetry, Gendered Rhetoric and the Legitimization of War" in link.springer.com/book/10.1007... A quick 🧵 on our main findings

Here is a little story 🧵 about a late night satirical show cancellation for some reason #Colbert

For no discernible reason, I will be re-reading this excellent article “Cucktales: Race, Sex, and Enjoyment in the Reactionary Memescape” by @ubaspehlivan.bsky.social academic.oup.com/ips/article/...

Tested out a Russian (pre-war) “patriotic education” board game with my students, but they didn’t come away loving the Motherland too much. What I am doing wrong?* *that was sarcasm. I know what I’m doing

It's eugenics. It's all eugenics, folks.

Kremlin trolls are posting about kefir these days! Resurrecting my #EatingIdentity hashtag

3) Moving right on immigration normalizes the radical right, their positions and rhetoric. Normalization is a key precondition for electoral expansion of the radical right. Programmatic accommodation and collaboration normalize the radical right and open new segments of the electorate for it.

I love how finding out the head of HHS doesn't believe in germs isn't the craziest part of that fucking sentence

AG Bondi: “In accordance with Due Process, we gave the toddler 24 hours to file a habeas corpus petition.”

Geen studentensportvoorzieningen meer. Geen studium generale meer. Geen universiteitsmuseum meer. Geen publiekslezingen meer. Geen hortus meer. Dan ook geen Bildung meer. Geen universiteit meer. Eppo maakt echt alles kapot. 🤬 delta.tudelft.nl/article/kabi...

Gisteren staakte Wageningen tegen de roekeloze bezuinigingen op het hoger onderwijs, en morgen gaat de estafettestaking door in Maastricht! Laat ook je stem horen, vóór de toekomst van Limburg, om 12:30 op het Vrijthof. Zie ik je daar? #KabinetSlooptHogerOnderwijs #WOinActie

I’m sorry but if your students use AI to write papers and you use AI to grade them zero school is happening. You are running together on a hamster wheel

It’s a deeply authoritarian mindset to think that people don’t protest for free. Putin also thinks that all protests in Russia have been paid by the State Department!

Great discussion last night! @seldridge.com talked about his new book and engaged the audience with provocative questions about the role of journalism in a fractured society, followed by a panel w/ @lisares.bsky.social & @sikkom.bsky.social’s Willem Groeneveld, moderated by @joelleswart.bsky.social.

The logic of filling in public swimming pools with dirt or cement instead of racially integrating them, applied to the whole country

Well...THAT's certainly a great image. Nothing historically reminiscent going on there.

The 66-year-old woman kicking this guy’s ass is a retired professor of medicine with 16,000 citations on Google Scholar Goals

Als je wil weten hoe belangrijk vrije wetenschap is voor democratie, hoef je maar te kijken naar hoe belangrijk autoritaire regimes t vinden om universiteiten onder de knoet te krijgen. Zie als voorbode daarvan ook de radicaal-rechtse omgang met universiteiten daar waar ze (nog) niet almachtig zijn