Incredibly moving and inspiring history of workers’ collective action followed by delicious local craft beer in Gdánsk shipyard. Just what I needed at the end of a long summer of UCU work ✊🍻

I feel so proud to work alongside these amazing, eloquent and inspiring colleagues 😍✊ The closure of the Geography programme is a loss for the whole Penryn campus, and for young people in Cornwall.

University and College Union (UCU)@ucu.org.uk · 3w ago

The UK is in its fifth heatwave. Wildfires. Drought. Record-breaking heat. Exeter University’s response? Close Geography in Cornwall and put vital climate expertise at risk. We need this expertise more than ever. #DefendExeterUni

I've just heard that the BA/BSc Geography programme is to close at the University of Exeter’s Centre for Geography and Environmental Science (CGES) in Cornwall. This programme was made up of excellent modules with original and content, taught brilliantly—often with real innovation—by extremely 1/9

Yikes. Women accounted for all of the job losses and all of the labor force decline in July, according to @nwlc.org

This is devastating. Working myself in a smaller, "second" campus, I fully empathise with how staff and students in Southend must have felt. The down-sizing and/or closure of universities in smaller, "peripheral" locations will have huge impacts on these communities www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

University of Essex's Southend campus shuts and staff say goodbye

The university says the closure is due to financial pressures, leading to 400 staff redundancies.

bbc.co.uk

“proposed cuts of 28 per cent of staff in the department” of history at Exeter.

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · last mo.

And not just Exeter. At least 2 History Leicester FBAs have had to leave the University to stay in the profession due to risk of redundancy, and they won't be the only ones. The much broader issue affects thousands of excellent academics across a spectrum of disciplines (including STEM ones). 1/2

Just signed a contract with @edinburghup.bsky.social for our volume "Rethinking Regimes: Time, Space & Governance in Contemporay Politics" with my fab co-editors, Licia Cianetti & Gianni Del Panta! Appearing Autumn 2027, it offers a new framework to understand political regimes in the 21st Century 🥳

Just listened to part 2 of a 3 part "Culture Power Politics" podcast series on "Universities in Crisis". Fully agree that universities have lost the battle with corporate interests over the production of knowledge as a public good. culturepowerpolitics.org/2026/07/16/u...

Universities in Crisis (part 2)

How have universities changed in the eras of Fordism, post-Fordism and Platform Capitalism?

culturepowerpolitics.org

PSA, BISA and UACES joint letter in support of my own discipline at Exeter, currently facing decimation.

Letter of support: Proposed changes at the University of Exeter

Letter to the University of Exeter from PSA, BISA and UACES concerning proposed PIR redundancies.

bisa.ac.uk

Cuts are currently planned at the University of Exeter, including deep cuts at the Institute of Cornish studies which will do great harm to #Kernewek - the Cornish language. Please sign the open letter and petition. docs.google.com/document/d/1... www.change.org/p/stop-redun...

📣📣Calling all Falmouth and Exeter UCU members! Our Fal-Ex trade union day of action is tomorrow! Members and colleagues in the morning in the Woodlane campus, and all interested members of the public in the afternoon. Let’s fight for jobs and universities in Cornwall!

🚨 PLEASE SHARE WIDELY 🚨 If you are an Exeter alumnus, and wish to express your horror at the proposed cuts to the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, please sign the Google Doc petition below. Not an alumnus? You can still help by signing the Exeter UCU petition at c.org/msXfsb2g5b 🗃️

Alumni petition against the cuts to the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

Any Exeter alumni who wish for their names to be added to the petition below should please complete the form at this link: https://forms.gle/SpdYvmmsCaJbmZft6. If you are not an alumnus, but still wis...

docs.google.com

An exhilarating few days of exchange of ideas & research at the Exeter Fudan Global Thought Network symposium, exploring how ideas & materiality spread across contexts, acquiring new meanings in the process. The network is going from strength to strength! @exeter.ac.uk @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social

This is nearly *everything* - humanities and social sciences AND applied fields. Uni Chicago is suspending PhD admissions in: English, classics, art history, linguistics + Crown School of Social Work, Harris School of Public Policy + Social Sciences, including anthropology and political economy.

Sarah T Roberts, PhD@ubiquity75.xyz · 3mo ago

Just a reminder that all those LLMs are built on the pilfered vast libraries of humanistic and social scientific knowledge production. Good luck, society. You’re gonna need it. www.hpherald.com/evening_dige...

Good news! Ministers have finally given green light to new #NaturalHistory GCSE. We’ve campaigned so long for this! Big hats off to tireless advocate Mary Colwell 🙌 Now our young people will have a chance to get to know & love the natural world, to feel awe & wonder, & gain skills to protect it 🌷🌳🦡

Natural history GCSE to teach teenagers to plant wildflower-friendly gardens

Long-awaited course to examine human effects on natural world and explore everyday ways to aid biodiversity

theguardian.com

My partner, working in the private sector, just received a surprise cream tea through th post as part of his company's wellbeing week, encouraging him to take time to enjoy it today! Mind = blown. What a difference compared to HE where wellbeing basically involves signing up to another online course

I'm a trustee of this wonderful charity, having volunteered with them in 2011. They do essential work training English teachers & facilitating cultural exchange for rural communities & disadvantaged children in Kyrgyzstan. If you can donate to help sustain their future, please do erayim-aid-trust.uk

Interesting article on Area Studies in China. While there surely are plenty of mediocre outputs resulting from this Party-driven push, colleagues across China I've met working on post-Soviet region are deeply knowledgeable, providing a fresh, non-Eurocentric perspective jamestown.org/beijings-reg...

Beijing’s Regional Studies Push Risks Campaign-Style Overreach - Jamestown

Executive Summary: On March 10, the People’s Daily ran an article by Jing Ge (靳戈) of Peking University’s Institute for Area Studies on how the “regional and country studies” (区域国别学) discipline should ...

jamestown.org

Absolutely this.

Paul Bernal@paulbernal.bsky.social · 3mo ago

No, @zackpolanski.bsky.social , you must *not* listen to Reform voters’ concerns. The opposite. You must challenge them. Fight them. Oppose them. Stand up for the truth and for what’s right. Don’t make the same mistake Labour did. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

The situation for the political theorists at Essex in a travesty. Please read and share.

Britain and Ireland Association for Political Thought @biapt.bsky.social · 3mo ago

We have released a joint statement (below) with @psapolthought.bsky.social to express our alarm about the compulsory redundancies @universityofessex.bsky.social Business School. Please share widely if you share our concerns.

What to do when you see the sector you devoted your career to dying by a thousand cuts? www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Stefan Collini · Squadrons of Pigs: Bonfire of the Universities

The problems with Britain’s universities are systemic and deep-rooted, not just local or contingent. Yet political and...

lrb.co.uk

Looks like we've passed peak academia. www.ft.com/content/8097... via @data.ft.com

The seagull nesting on the roof opposite our house is really struggling in the heatwave. She looks like she’s panting 😮‍💨 I’m thinking of scaling the building and positioning a small parasol over her till her chicks arrive.

Just installed '10 Blue Links' Google Chrome extension and it has removed all the AI junk at the top of the page that had been obscuring my search results. Hooray! Recommend💯

If you want to know how and why we've ended up in a situation where tens of thousands of people rally in support of a far-right influencer, backed by wealthy North American fascists, I just wrote a book about it. uk.bookshop.org/p/books/if-w...

If We Tolerate This: How the British establishment made the far right respectable

How the British establishment made the far right respectable

uk.bookshop.org

A very good afternoon to the absolute hero who organised and parked this beauty in the middle of little Tommy’s far-right hate march. ❤️

Stumbled upon these stunning fossils at Kilve beach in north Somerset at the weekend. Like delicate fragments of golden lace. What a find!! 🤩

Very happy to have my latest research with my excellent co-author and dear friend, Xuan Qin at Fudan University, into the lasting effects of China's zero-COVID policy on its grassroots governance published in the China Journal!

Chicago Journals@chicagojournals.bsky.social · 4mo ago

China's governance has changed due to their zero-COVID policy: increased information gathering and surveillance, and greater hierarchical bureaucracy. This article from The China Journal highlights how "biosecurity" policies led to lasting "political security" policy https://ow.ly/A9CG50YUzWk

A South West Coast Path scratch off map - a fantastic idea! Only downside is that you have to walk it in the stretches they suggest, and it’s virtually impossible to backfill with the bits you’ve already done. Still, a super cool idea in principle 👍

after a long wait, our forum article on the uses and abuses of the anticolonial in global reactionary politics is finally online! academic.oup.com/ips/article/... for the IPS @20 special issue