It seems a strangely low-key ISA this year, which comes with its own anxieties and commentary, but it has been an absolute delight so far to be able to catch up with so many friends and to hear about the incredible research people are still doing in often very difficult circumstances.

Messing around with some WVS data this afternoon and, sure, a lot of the variation here is about a hell of a lot of other things and the binary choice presented in the question is problematic etc. But... Maldives? Are you sure? Submerged this century Maldives? Cabinet meetings underwater Maldives?

So far in 2026 I have been blessed with three journal rejections and a conference rejection. The year isn't ten weeks old yet. Academia is great, because if you work really hard and put everything into ideas you really care about it might turn out you still suck and aren't very smart!

Decorating my office yesterday for the next few months of PhD writing. The teenage version of me who adorned his bedroom with posters of rock stars and action movies is reaching through time to raise his judgemental eyebrow at me.

Philadelphia got a few inches of snow this weekend which hasn't melted. Most of the paths have been cleared and people are getting on with their lives. But when I jog my sizeable backside around a little urban 5k loop this morning I'll feel like I'm in Rocky's training montage in Rocky IV.

As a Labour Party member I'm glad the NEC has blocked Burnham. Starmer has performed poorly in his first 18 months and we should consider whether a leadership challenge might be the way to go in May but there's no reason for the party to facilitate an opportunist to position themselves in advance.

Sometimes I walk by this building in Philadelphia and think "Oh sure, it's a nice idea but I've been to dozens of countries around the world and I just don't think it exists"

Looking at my Google Scholar this morning and feeling cheery after realising I got another citation!

Friends! Please consider signing this petition which needs (and deserves) a lot of attention to reach its target in the coming days. The Welsh government is making a monumentally poor decision that will have a detrimental impact on digital education in Wales. petitions.senedd.wales/petitions/24...

Just published at PNAS (@pnas.org): “Electing amateur politicians reduces cross-party collaboration” We show that districts electing first-time members of the U.S. House experience substantial declines in bipartisan representation in the subsequent Congress. 🧵1/4

Check out PWH postdoc @shanascogin.bsky.social's insight on Nepal's youth uprising here ⬇️

Super interesting new paper by Ben Francis, one of my graduate co-authors, who is writing excellent theoretical studies and doing important empirical work on gender, the ethics of positionality statements, and the environmental movement. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

New article out! 🚨 I analyze how peace scholars are using reflexivity & positionality statements. Their use is climbing, but approaches are varied. Our field is still shaping best practices. Open access in Peacebuilding. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Excited to be at LeHigh University today to do a guest lecture. Climate change is a gendered phenomenon, let's talk about it!

Be cautious of the white dude academic opining on distant events but I've worked in and cared about Nepal for many years and have spent today refreshing horrific social media updates from friends & former colleagues there. Sending solidarity to young Nepalis taking on a corrupt & violent government.

Interpreting submission guidelines and upload structures required for (some) journals is significantly more difficult a feat of problem-solving than any other part of academia. I feel I deserve two PhDs; one for my research and one for successfully navigating the Kafkaesque task of submitting it.

So almost a 30% reduction in jobs from last year's market which many people told me was a bad year itself. Not to worry, I'm going to take this PhD and deliver insightful lectures on climate politics while doing minimum wage service industry work. Destroy higher ed, but you can't stop me lecturing!

The absolute worst part about living 750 miles away from campus during the 5th year of your PhD is still getting the emails about the free food that's available after events. My grad student instincts are still strong. I still want the freebies!

The Fossil-Fueled Roots of Climate Inaction in Authoritarian Regimes The Fossil-Fueled Roots of Climate Inaction in Authoritarian Regimes By William Kakenmaster, University of Notre Dame Why do some authoritarian regimes contribute more to climate change than others? I suggest that climate…

Swearing repeatedly is a legitimate research technique and an effective coping mechanism

TIL that @rizahmed.bsky.social is pro-sortition (random selection of citizens to become politicians) 😱 youtube.com/shorts/M7oTO...

As an inexperienced grad student I'm going through only my 2nd ever R&R process at the moment and wondering - is it normal, at a certain point of making revisions, to decide that actually the whole paper is (and always has been) bad? It's happened to me both times. Is this just a me thing?

Took my wife to her first Man Utd game yesterday. I took care to explain that being a United fan would this season would almost certainly mean enduring frequent disappointment but that it was good practice for being married to me.

The sentence "How can you have progressive politics without any sense of progress" efficiently captures a huge chunk of the problem. It's 11 words doing the same job as I do over 3 or 4 pints and a tipsy monologue to whoever will listen.

My co-author only puts one space after a full stop. I type properly. I have begrudgingly agreed to her standard for our collaborative manuscript, though I did state for the record that one space was "woke nonsense" and I think this might be my descent into right wing politics origin story.

This morning while out with my research team collecting survey responses I was handed two fresh and delicious mangos by one of our survey respondents and fieldwork has never tasted so good!

Went to the @fifaclubworldcup.bsky.social in Philly today and, well, after spending ages trying to get near the stadium and then seeing lines of thousands trying to get in well after kick off, I gave up and came home. FIFA messing up the organisation of a soulless commercial exercise? I'm shocked!

Happy 18th birthday ggplot2! #rstats

It was a real pleasure to present at the @politicsgenderj.bsky.social conference at Rutgers last week & to catch up with a great group of friends from IQMR. Even as the current state and future of academia seems depressing, it's the wonderful community and scholarship that makes me want to do this.

So proud of my amazing wife who got to put on the fancy PhD robes and do the graduation thing last weekend ❤️

Submitting an article to a journal is, as a non-parent, how I imagine folks feel sending their kid off to school on the bus in the morning. Hoping they'll be lovingly looked after and well regarded by their peers. Secretly ok with the idea they might not be back home for quite a while...

The 1500 mile round trip drive was totally worth it to go to ISA in Chicago last week and find energy and community in very difficult times amongst masses of inspirational academics. None more so than the awesome peace scholars I was able to share a panel with.

Made it to Chicago for #ISA2025, I love this conference. Great minds, big ideas, incredible scholarship. And open bar receptions if you're lucky!

Beyond polarised narratives, district level factors influence the way Republican House candidates discuss climate and energy. Really happy to share this working paper.

While we understandably turn to social media frequently at the moment with the question "just how bad is the world getting out there?" I just want to interrupt the doom to say I volunteer to walk dogs during my fieldwork for a research project at the moment and this is Pearl and she's a sweetie.

Looking around at the climate vulnerability of various US states relative to their partisan lean it strikes me that "politicising disaster" is a really poor medium to long term strategy from the GOP. www.npr.org/2025/01/15/n...

Lowlight of my #SPSA2025 was when I attended an 8am panel and the presenter highlighted their method with the words "We used a trusty OLS here..." and my still-asleep brain googled "What is a trustee regression"

Excited to be in San Juan for SPSA2025. Good weather, beautiful locations, and a festival of political science. Let's get nerdy!

Excited to head to Puerto Rico tomorrow for a conference and then 6 weeks of work. Who else will be at SPSA? I'll be the weird British guy talking about environmental politics! #Polisky

I love walking past this piece of art every time I come into Drexel, where I'm fortunate to have a great affiliation in Philly. It's a beautiful reminder of the necessity of climate action and it makes me feel better that my tiny attempts to do work on climate politics everyday are worthwhile.

Man Utd objectively should sack Amorim immediately, he's proven his incompetence. The problem is the sunk cost fallacy that kicks in when you've just paid 8 figures for him 2 months ago. With PSR we'd need to replace him with someone available and cheap... The bring back Ole campaign starts here!

Ending my 2024 with good news! I'll be starting as an Assistant Professor at Indiana University-Bloomington SPEA (O'Neill School) in August 2026. I'm beyond excited to join the amazing folks at SPEA and continue my work on environ governance & disasters in Nepal and beyond.

Sometimes I'll come across a really interesting piece of published research and realise the authors have neglected a great opportunity to use a pun or pop culture reference in the title. I'll still read it, but I won't trust the findings. If they missed the title who knows what else they missed.

Really enjoying delving into this book by @hannahcknox.bsky.social about climate governance and reimagining climate futures in Manchester, a city that will always be very close to my heart.

Friends, forgive me this humblebrag but I have just finished the draft of a paper I'll be presenting at a conference 2 MONTHS IN ADVANCE. I think this means I win academia?

Today, I firmly entered the territory of middle aged Christmas wanker by buying a Christmas tree for the first time in my life. It's tiny, to reflect the level of Christmas spirit I'm allowing to pierce my Scrooge-like facade. But I kind of love it.

Fun fact: Rasmus Hojlund is now only one goal behind Dwight Yorke in the list of Manchester United's top European goalscorers.

Check it out: States sometimes unhelpfully instrumentalise their climate pledges as foreign policy documents. A piece I wrote on this phenomenon with my colleague Bill Kakenmaster has just been published on @duckofminerva.bsky.social www.duckofminerva.com/2024/12/clim...

I think I pay more attention to this stop sign than I do the real ones on the streets of Philadelphia. Anyway, R go brrrrrrr....

This week my own failure to write a tricky bit of webscraping code has led me to individually download about 3000 pdfs. I feel like I'm handwashing laundry in a river, mapping the stars with a sextant, and reprinting text with quill and ink. I am tradition manifest. Keeping the old ways alive.