Proud to be a contributor to this documentary on C.S. Lewis’s Irish identity, which is presented by Ireland and Ulster rugby great Andrew Trimble and which airs on RTÉ One television at 10.15pm this evening (Thurs., 8 Oct. 2026)! about.rte.ie/2026/10/06/r...

Apropos of nothing in particular, here's a @micireland.bsky.social blogpost by my colleague Suzanne Egan on the benefits of reading to young children - for parents and caregivers, as well as the children themselves: www.mic.ul.ie/mic-insights...

Fantastic to see BBC covering this new exhibition in Liverpool! St Brigid's Arms explores the experiences of women of Irish heritage in the North of England It's free & open at the University of Liverpool's Victoria Gallery & Museum until 17 April 2027. https://ow.ly/pqQu50ZVLUA

A colouring sheet that came home in my son’s schoolbag. Uh… Kids, today we’re going to learn about sharing through the virtuous example of … (checks notes) … Lionel Messi & Cristiano Ronaldo!

#Spéirghorm, Your occasional public service reminder that the entire 11 seasons of Frasier are available on the much maligned RTÉ Player. Y’know, I don’t revisit it half enough.

Tom Roberts@tpgroberts.bsky.social · 3d ago

Just an absolutely delightful interview, just the sort of thing it's impossible to read without smiling. www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

Interesting, and a new addition to the burgeoning field of Post-Brexit Irish Passport Studies.

Clare Rice@clarerice.bsky.social · 4d ago

🎉NEW PUBLICATION 🎉 In this new article, co-authored with @meganannarms.bsky.social, we explore how the 2016 referendum that led to Brexit shaped how people in Northern Ireland felt, thought, and talked about their identity www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

We need to send a task force to Oileáin Chléire to figure out what they’re doing to be the only community in Ireland to lose less than 2 hours daylight. Must be a grant of some sort in this. #spéirghorm

Met Office - weather and climate@metoffice.gov.uk · 3d ago

Noticing the nights drawing in? 🌙 October brings a big shift, with most of the UK losing over 2 hours of daylight this month. Do you enjoy the cosy evenings or miss the longer days?

Gazan students’ visas must be granted before it is too late. A group of leading Irish academics write that the mass refusal of visas to Palestinian students makes a mockery of the Taoiseach’s speech to the UN General Assembly. www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/comm...

Gazan students’ visas must be granted before it is too late

A group of leading Irish academics write that the mass refusal of visas to Palestinian students makes a mockery of the Taoiseach’s speech to the UN General Assembly

irishexaminer.com

I was idly curious to see whether anyone had done research on this, and it turns out they have: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Driving Public Support: Support for a Law is Higher When the Law is Named After a Victim

Despite the potential symbolic, political, and practical importance of naming a law after a victim, it is unclear whether this practice influences public opinion about the law itself. I conducted a...

tandfonline.com

Louise@selkies.bsky.social · 4d ago

Is it controversial to say that I don't think we should be naming laws after real people in Ireland, is that not a bit overly sentimental for something like a law that should be cut and dry and unexciting

So grateful to hear the support for teachers work-to-rule in the media today. Nobody wants things to get to this point but needs must. The INTO and public sector unions have been looking for a negotiated pay agreement since June. Schools are underfunded, we are still seeing supersized classes of 30+

#digitalpicket

Marc Scully@marcscully.bsky.social · 5d ago

It would, I think, be worthwhile if those of us engaged in the work stoppage today, and the forthcoming strike days on the 14th & 21st (if they go ahead), were to observe the digital picket during those times. Posting is public engagement, and public engagement is part of your job. #digitalpicket

It would, I think, be worthwhile if those of us engaged in the work stoppage today, and the forthcoming strike days on the 14th & 21st (if they go ahead), were to observe the digital picket during those times. Posting is public engagement, and public engagement is part of your job. #digitalpicket

Mary Gilmartin@marygilmartin.bsky.social · 5d ago

Members of my union, IFUT, will have a one hour work stoppage today, from 12-1, as part of the broader public sector union dispute. Read about it here: www.ifut.ie/content/ifut... - solidarity welcome on World Teachers Day

I really must try and visit this. Anyone want to provide me with a work reason to visit Liverpool in the next six months? I could do my single transferable talk on Brexit, passports, citizenship & identity. @irishinstitute.bsky.social #irishstudies

Victoria Gallery & Museum@victoriagallery.bsky.social · last wk.

A first look inside St Brigid's Arms 🍀 Months of collaboration, creativity and storytelling comes together at VG&M. 📅 Opens Saturday 3 October 📍 VG&M 🎟️ Free exhibition See you at St Brigid's Arms! #StBrigidsArms #IrishStories #VictoriaGalleryMuseum #LiverpoolCulture #DiasporaStories

Catching up on #celebritytraitors: if we’re looking at the performance of the celebrity academics over the two series to provide an answer to the question “what provides greater insight into the human condition, the humanities or STEM?”, then it’s not looking good for the historians.

Dawn in Cork just now, almost making up for yesterday.

Today was the day I finally admitted defeat and looked up what the word ‘stochastic’ means. (I’m a little underwhelmed, tbh).

Behavioural Science in 2026.

Kieran Healy@kjhealy.co · last wk.

RIP to everyone’s favorite p<0.05 factory

Evergreen post, I see.

Marc Scully@marcscully.bsky.social · last yr.

*So* much of the pedagogical advice on dealing with GenAI and assessment is based on an assumption of relatively small class sizes studying a specialist topic. Even among sympathetic voices, there tends to be a dismissal of broad 'Introduction to...' modules. But someone does need to teach these!

It is ASTOUNDING that this apparently needs saying.

Dietram A. Scheufele@dietram.bsky.social · last wk.

"[W]e call on the behavioral sciences to pause the use of LLMs as subjects [...] The use of synthetic samples misleads researchers, distorts the published record, and will impede the very science that these studies claim to advance." www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.... #AI #socialscience #scicomm

Ah! I must revisit ‘Constructing the Subject’. I talk about the ‘triumph of the aggregate’ a little in my opening applied social psychology lectures. (As ever, I’m grateful to Susan Condor for pointing me in the direction of Kurt Danziger, Fran Cherry, and many others).

Des Fitzgerald@desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 2w ago

I only realised now, while prepping notes for students, that Kurt Danziger died last month. Danziger was not only one of the most influential historians of psychology but also an anti-Apartheid activist and, before that, a child refugee from Nazism. A great loss. humanities.uct.ac.za/department-p...

Robert Eggers should adapt Disco Pigs, mostly so we can enjoy articles that say things like "he will film it in the original esoteric language of late 20th Century Cork" and "will recreate Sir Henry's and Mangan's with complete authenticity."

Wondering now whether the psychological inoculation ‘prebunking’ techniques that have been developed against disinformation would be transferable to ragebait. See here, for instance: www.cam.ac.uk/stories/inoc...

How to 'inoculate' millions against misinformation on social media

Short animations giving viewers a taste of the tactics behind misinformation can help to “inoculate” people against harmful content on social media when deployed in YouTube’s advert slot, according to...

cam.ac.uk

Neil Jackman@neiljackman.bsky.social · 2w ago

How do we resist the catnip of a contrarian columnist writing things to deliberately annoy/upset/outrage people? How can we stop the reflex action of saying "look what this notorious wanker has done now" Can we learn to deprive them of the oxygen of provocation, by refusing to be provoked?

Marching through Catholic areas is not just a spatial impostion but also involves attempted domination through sound. www.researchgate.net/publication/...

(PDF) Listen to the band! How sound can realize group identity and enact intergroup domination

PDF | Recent research suggests that sound appraisal can be moderated by social identity. We validate this finding, and also extend it, by examining the... | Find, read and cite all the research you ne...

researchgate.net

Sarah Kay@k-interarma.bsky.social · 2w ago

I see “human rights monitor” vests on CCTV, unsure who they are (would have loved to join!), and I hope there are enough of them given the size of the crowds. Garvaghy Road residents started blocking the road around 4am.

Your occasional reminder that it’s quite easy to identify conspiracy theories when they’re aimed at other people’s prior assumptions, confirmation biases and sense of grievance and more difficult to do so when they’re aimed at our own.

I hope they're negotiating a difficult situation with love and respect for each other, and I hope the country feels the same.

It’s not easy and it isn’t their fault. They didn’t want this. And now they’re just a bunch of young men left alone with their obligations and their consciences. And what a credit to them that their conscience weighs so heavy in the first place.

Where are people getting the updates from the Irish squad in Debrecen? Twitter?

Which is another reason why “this is more of a comment than a question” is far preferable to everyone sitting in silence after a talk.

Joe Noonan@joenoonan.se · 2w ago

One tip to new PhDs. You probably are worried that an audience member will "catch" some fatal flaw in your research. You should be more worried that five minutes in everyone is answering emails on their laptop. If people are engaging (even critically), it is better than not paying attention.

Some of the lads from the english department heard you made a light, passing reference to intertextuality in your sociology paper and want to talk about it