No country for women.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/cm70lpg5z45go?at_medium=RSS

Women protest in the streets of Delhi after string of sexual assaults

BBC correspondent Azadeh Moshiri reports from Delhi, where hundreds of women are protesting.

bbc.co.uk

Thanks Lucy! I will never tire of the wonderfulness of my students, past and present. And it's not just in the classroom: many students of mine have appeared in book acknowledgements, too; they shape our research in myriad ways. A reminder that *we* are the university, not the bean-counters!

Lucy Gaynor@lucyjgaynor.bsky.social · 15h ago

"...Emile Chabal spoke to everyone who took his undergraduate course on France since 1940 not as a student, but as a fellow academic: something which I think about often as a turning point in which I thought that perhaps University was for me, and gave me the confidence to go further into an MA..."

Excellent article on British awareness of the Nazi death camps and ambivalence over Jewish refugees. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/s...

Britain knew about the Holocaust as it happened. A new exhibition reckons with that truth

Research draws upon reporting and witness testimony, while a permanent memorial is planned for London

theguardian.com

The politics of gender is key to electoral outcomes around the globe. Hmmm…now, where have you ever heard that before? www.theguardian.com/world/2026/s...

Meloni accused of ‘running scared’ with cap on foreign children in classrooms

Critics say decree also banning burqa in schools shows Italian PM worried about losing far-right voters in next year’s elections

theguardian.com

“The authoritarian turn, which can be understood as a process of fascisation, is enabled by crises internal to liberal democracies…” Everyday shows that a ‘fascist majority’ is a real possibility in the UK, too.

robin celikates@robin-c.bsky.social · 6d ago

I’m so angry I wrote an article: In Germany, fascist majorities are a real possibility again, but the centrist merger of a revived Red Scare with open racism shows that mainstream media & politics are unable or unwilling to comprehend the seriousness of the crisis tribunemag.co.uk/2026/09/germ...

‘We could be heroes…’ They are! Link: rnli.org/support-us/g...

Donate to the RNLI and help save lives at sea

Your donations really make a difference. We depend on your generosity to educate people to stay safe and prevent tragedies on and offshore. Donate here.

rnli.org

Nicola Kelly@nicolakellywrites.bsky.social · 2w ago

I have spent weeks shadowing the RNLI and I can tell you, they do it out of nothing more than compassion. Wrote about the heroes I've met over the years in this free-to-read post. nicolakelly.substack.com/p/the-rnli-a...

Yes. There’s a certain bizarre breathlessness and a palpable thrill even, in the media reportage on the far right. Frightening, really.

Aurelien Mondon@aurelmondon.com · 2w ago

It was confirmed yesterday that the centre left coalition won the election in Sweden As predicted, with the far right performing poorly, coverage has almost entirely vanished from international media

Everyday household names. “King James II… whose statue celebrating him as a “defender of the faith” stands in Trafalgar Square, London; the composer George Frideric Handel; and the philosopher John Locke, both shareholders in the Royal African Company (RAC).” www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-i...

Monarchs, MPs and merchants: the register laying bare Britain’s slave-trading past

Exclusive: New research identifies thousands who profited from trafficking enslaved Africans and traces some financial links to institutions still operating today

theguardian.com

‘At a time when many policymakers are concerned about strengthening public control, humanities and social sciences research is central to ask questions about how and in whose interests technology is being developed, how it can be adopted, deployed and governed’ ukri.substack.com/p/why-ai-wil...

Why AI will fail without the humanities and social sciences

AI can transform society. But only if society has a say in shaping it, writes Hetan Shah, Chief Executive of The British Academy.

ukri.substack.com

We’re witnessing colonialism in action in real time. That’s all.

A beautiful piece on knowledge, understanding and mathematical research as “ free creative art”—‘one of the rare remaining examples of unalienated labor’.

Boston Review@bostonreview.bsky.social · 3w ago

“Mathematics only makes sense as a gift economy. It has no trade secrets. Substituting a monetizable ersatz culture for the one evolved through historical experience is a particularly insidious form of knowledge collapse.” Mathematician Michael Harris on the AI companies coming for math:

“We saw our grandparents hold on to the keys of return…” “We need to prove we have the right to this land, because things could change drastically. There is fear of forced deportation, the expulsion of people from their homes and the permanent seizure of the eastern areas.”

The battle to prove who owns Gaza’s ruins

Under the Palestinian enclave’s rubble are papers showing to whom the land belongs

ft.com

“Reading is, for me, the most sacred relationship to a text. It is a sustained prayer to be *haunted* by a text: let it take me over, in an unanticipatable way.” Introduced movingly by Ranji Khanna, Gayatri Spivak on Jameson, the burden of reading, & “humanities as a weapon” 💙😭🙏

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: “Reading Jameson” | Fredric Jameson and the Future of Critical Theory

YouTube video by Holberg Prize

youtu.be

Plenty to reflect about re: the Arday affair, but I'm going to repeat this one thing. The playbook the right used here is effective even though it's not especially sophisticated, as it relies on the audience to do the dirty work. I've been calling it "Trojan horse propaganda", let's go with that. 1/

Now on my ‘teaching/reading’ list. @lsegender.bsky.social

Matthew Waites (he or they)@matthewwaites.bsky.social · 2mo ago

From years of collective work, Colonialisms and Queer Politics has been published! Presenting chapter analyses of 11 empires, and their colonial legacies, plus comparison of both legal and social regulation. #Colonialisms #Queer #LGBTIQ+ @uofgsociology.bsky.social global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Oh yes! In my case, it’s also a growing mountain of piled up LRBs. @lrb.co.uk

Craig Martin@craigxmartin.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Another Japanese word that perfectly captures a concept, and one I am sooo guilty of... www.openculture.com/2024/07/tsun...

Glad someone senior from the sector is pushing back. Labour MPs need to understand the serious real anger from graduates and the people who produce them. And the dangerous financial situation they have allowed to fester, or indeed worsened, in one of Britain’s leading sectors.

Labour has harmed universities as much as Trump, London School of Economics head says

LSE vice-chancellor Larry Kramer points to domestic student fees freeze, international student limits and rise in employers’ national insurance

ft.com

I had the pleasure of reviewing Nadine Attwell's wonderful Archives of Intimacy: Racial Mixing and Chinese Lives in the Colonial Port City, 1905–1949 (www.sup.org/books/histor...) and also writing about women seafarers. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Laleh Khalili · Canton Kitty: Seafaring

Seafaring is a bundle of contradictions. It is highly skilled labour, yet mostly invisible. Lower ratings of seafarers...

lrb.co.uk

The point isn't to produce essays, it's to teach students how to think for fuck's sake. The minute you automate that, it's over. You might as well close the course. Which they're also doing. This is an attack on learning, and everyone is just shrugging.

Arundhati Roy: “Just when hope seemed lost, they came. Young roaches riding in on the rain. The progeny of the unholy union between a judge and a joke.” m.thewire.in/article/righ...

Louis Althusser murdered his wife and “it took over 40 years for this murder to be recognised as a femicide, and only thanks to the work of feminists, researchers and activists who kept the story alive”.

Voxeurop – Independent European journalism@voxeurop.bsky.social · 2mo ago

On the femicide of Hélène Rytmann-Legotien: how Louis #Althusser killed his wife and ‘invented’ #masculinism article by @francesca-b.bsky.social with #PulsEurope voxeurop.eu/en/femicide-...

Arundhati Roy: “Just when hope seemed lost, they came. Young roaches riding in on the rain. The progeny of the unholy union between a judge and a joke.” m.thewire.in/article/righ...

It’s taken a quarter of a century to arrive here and will probably take a few more years for criminal charges, warrants…justice.

Boyd van Dijk@boydvandijk.bsky.social · 2mo ago

International court tells BBC of breakthrough in Sudan war crimes probe www.bbc.com/news/article...

Theory 101: “gender is a framework that’s been developed through the social sciences. A framework is not subjective. A framework is a way of framing knowledge and a mode of inquiry”. www.currentaffairs.org/news/judith-butler-explains-the-gender-panic

Judith Butler Explains the Gender Panic

The leading scholar and philosopher responds to critics of “gender ideology,” both from the right and left.

currentaffairs.org

Frantz Fanon born 20 July 1925. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Frantz Fanon’s Enduring Legacy

The post-colonial thinker’s seminal book, “The Wretched of the Earth,” described political oppression in psychological terms. What are its lessons for our current moment?

newyorker.com

Artists in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City paint a mural of Lamine Yamal (Omar Al-Qattaa / AFP via Getty Images)

Zohran Mamdani is beauteous on solidarity as a ‘strategy’ for universal justice without exceptions. “But justice is not measured by where we stand after history has issued its verdict. It is measured by where we stand when the verdict is still being rendered”. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Nelson Mandela held a mirror to humanity – and showed us what solidarity means | Zohran Mamdani

In a speech given on Wednesday in honor of Nelson Mandela Day, New York’s mayor reflects on what Madiba can teach us in a fractured era

theguardian.com

Congratulations to the government on saving 2700 jobs by nationalising British Steel. Now, about the 18,000 university jobs lost in the last 18 months, with more coming…

Of course, I like to be cited but for the things I’ve actually written! In the last few months I’m noting hallucinatory citations attributed to me, which I’ve no memory of ever having written. Can I say, the article titles are pretty unimaginative and quite rubbish, too. Oh well…

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 3mo ago

'There are...growing negative impacts of AI on research, such as its use to generate “more-or-less fraudulent or fake” publications to satisfy career demands....some people have warned...[of] a “tipping point” after which it will no longer be able to rely on research to provide useful evidence'. 2/3

Environmental nightmare for real. electricity, land and water. “By 2030, AI data centres could be using enough water to meet the basic needs of all 1.3bn sub-Saharan Africans”. Transparency and ethics…anyone?

The great AI data centre cover-up

Tech companies need to come clean about the mounting environmental fallout of their race to build more hubs

giftarticle.ft.com