Robert Dingwall
@rwjdingwall.bsky.social
Consulting sociologist, researcher, writer and entrepreneur. Medical sociology; sociology of law; STS; ethnomethodology; CA. Re-post does not imply endorsement.
A quick and rather personal reflection on #wildfires, here there and everywhere makingsciencepublic.com/2026/08/16/m...
Making extreme weather personal, again: Wildfires in the US, the UK and Germany
On 4 August a wildfire started near where my sister lives in New Mexico. This was not unprecedented. Indeed I have written here on the blog about fires there in 2011 and in 2022. What was unprecede…
makingsciencepublic.com
If you MUST message me about a national emergency DON’T SAY I “should not undertake any activity that could start a fire” SAY “do not do anything that could start a fire” You’re not drafting legislation, you’re talking to people many of whom have a reading age of 6.
gov.uk
Well, well, well. Just come across this passage, written in 1842, by Belgian statistician Adolphe Quetelet, published in English as A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842). The real criminal is 'society'. Robert Owen had similar thoughts a little earlier.
UK: Fuck off foreigners. Do not come here. We will treat you appallingly. We will blame you for everything. We will charge you a fortune for impossible admin processes. There is nothing for you. Do NOT come here! Also UK: Why will no one come to our universities? www.theguardian.com/education/20...
UK universities face ‘financial crisis’ amid collapse in international students
Higher education figures call on Labour to reverse tax on fees and warn institutions at risk of ‘going under’
theguardian.com
For thousands of years, a solar eclipse has been a prophetic harbinger of a spectacular, epoch-making event. Just saying. #VoteBinface #Clacton
New Issue of Symbolic Interaction - Vol.49 No.3 Table of Contents - onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/15338665... #sssi #interactionism #emca
Symbolic Interaction: Vol 49, No 3
Click on the title to browse this issue
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Written in response to the Wall Street Journal but also relevant to the Arday fall-out... Why Sociology Should Not Be Liquidated www.socialsciencespace.com/2026/08/why-...
Why Sociology Should Not Be Liquidated
“Once again the season of the anti-sociologists is upon us…[a]curious admixture of illogic and sentiment…makes up the creed and canons of anti-sociology.” Those words come from Robert K Merto
socialsciencespace.com
For weekend readers my contribution to the AI 'going rogue' controversy, through the lens of metaphor analysis, focusing on the metaphor scenario: container-journey-container #AI #metaphor #scicomm #linguistics makingsciencepublic.com/2026/08/07/a...
AI, metaphors and control
In the early 2000s, during the dramatic but now almost forgotten outbreak of foot and mouth disease in cattle, I wrote about war metaphors and the issue of projecting control over an ‘out of …
makingsciencepublic.com
I struggled a bit with writing about the AI 'going rogue' incident, but here is my take, using the concept of 'metaphor scenario' to gain some insights #Ai #metaphor #AIMetaphorObservatory makingsciencepublic.com/2026/08/07/a...
AI, metaphors and control
In the early 2000s, during the dramatic but now almost forgotten outbreak of foot and mouth disease in cattle, I wrote about war metaphors and the issue of projecting control over an ‘out of …
makingsciencepublic.com
Opinion: “My investigation into alleged plagiarism was undertaken seriously – journalistic enquiries should not be a matter for Scotland Yard,” writes Times Higher Education (THE) journalist @jgro-the.bsky.social on the Jason Arday case #edusky #highered https://ow.ly/list50ZwHI8
As usual @apsmunro.bsky.social is a model of good sense More Fuss About Filters open.substack.com/pub/alasdair...
More Fuss About Filters
A new RCT of air filtration devices gets heads spinning...again
open.substack.com
Cambridge have been left holding the parcel for failures elsewhere. How many appointment boards would read the PhD thesis of a candidate for a chair rather than trusting the examining university's award? The papers should have been read but this may say more about standards in the field.
Des Fitzgerald@desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 2w agoI very much wish there was more focus on C*mbridge University in this discussion, as an unabashedly colonial institution trying to make individual scholars symbolically remediate its own dreadful relationship to the world. But of course individuals cannot possibly play this role, and here we are.
Well said, Lewis. @chrischirp.bsky.social post rests on a lot of shaky assumptions about the effectiveness of interventions. They do not acknowledge the risks of abuse or mental disorder from home confinement. Why no case control study of key worker children in school vs kept home children?
Lewis Goodall@lewisgoodall.com · 2w agoThere are working class and vulnerable kids who will never have the life they should have had because of school closures. Let’s address that too, shall we?
Devastating news. Where will the residents of Belmont now go for breakfast and sugar rush?
Chicago Tribune@chicagotribune.com · 3w agoRestaurant news: Ann Sather opens new flagship after 81 years of cinnamon rolls in Chicago
Good point about mining & hockey pucks, but can we predict the trajectory of future jobs in the same way that expert eyes can predict a puck's trajectory? And what's happened to 'transferable skills' in the new 'skills'-fixated discourse? The 'transferable' addressed the unknown trajectory issue.
Chris Dillow@chrisdillow.bsky.social · 3w agoIf this had been policy in the 70s (as it partly was), towns would have produced lots of mining engineers & metallurgists just before pits & steelworks closed. As the yanks say, you should skate to where the puck's going, not to where it is. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
You're going to hear a LOT today about kids being trained up at school for local jobs, "vocational" work (building, scaffolding, security, care home staff) Just remember they're talking about YOUR kids. Not theirs. THEIR kids will absolutely still be going to University.
Anyone who actually knows about qualitative research knows that the interview was always a small element. Its expanded role is recent thing, driven partly by cost and partly by the ethics police.
The Sociological Review Foundation@thesociologicalreview.org · 3w agoWhat if qualitative research could expand beyond the interview? Join Professor Les Back for a two-part online workshop exploring Live Methods - creative, contemporary approaches to qualitative research. 📅 4 & 18 Aug 💻 Online 🎟️ Register by 1 Aug: buff.ly/csttcLH
George Arnald, View on the Ouse at York, 1803 https://botfrens.com/collections/14375/contents/1111808
This anthology of climate change blog posts seems strange in the context of a world on fire. We tried so hard to communicate, but.... #climatechange #pyrocene makingsciencepublic.com/2026/07/24/c...
Climate change and language: An anthology of blog posts
I have been interested in climate change and climate change communication for a long time, most recently as part of a Leverhulme Trust funded ‘Making Science Public’ programme of research (2012-201…
makingsciencepublic.com
Two choices do seem to be particularly worth discussion, perhaps reflecting my sociologist’s interest in the nature of order: the “law of Zeus” and the treatment of women.... www.socialsciencespace.com/2026/07/the-...
The Odyssey and the Social Order
A clunky booking website and my failure to check dates before pressing ‘buy’ meant that I saw Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey on its opening night here in Nottingham. I have since had a lot of
socialsciencespace.com
I have reviewed two manuscripts today, both of which include huge block quotes that span nearly an entire page, followed by no analysis. Your quotes illustrate your points; they don’t make the points for you. ANALYZE the data; don’t just show it to readers.
Course: Understanding the Media: A Starter Guide for Scientists July 15, 2-3 pm ET This 1-hr course teaches scientists the basics: the news landscape, what makes a story newsworthy & how to talk to reporters. www.sciline.org/learn/media-...
sciline.org
For weekend readers an anthology of blog posts about #synbio, #scicomm, #RRI and, of course, #metaphor makingsciencepublic.com/2026/07/10/s...
Synthetic Biology and Language: An anthology
The blog posts assembled here were inspired by working on two projects. Between 2014 and 2016 I was part of a Synthetic Biology Research Centre project funded by the BBSRC focusing on bringing resp…
makingsciencepublic.com
With the roll-out of Making Tax Digital going ahead, HMRC must provide an in-house, government-developed, fully-functional software that allows easy and confident compliance with MTD. Self-employed people should not be obliged to hand data to private companies. petition.parliament.uk/petitions/76...
Petition: Create a government-owned, free software for Making Tax Digital (MTD)
With the roll-out of Making Tax Digital going ahead, HMRC must provide an in-house, government-developed, fully-functional software that allows easy and confident compliance with MTD. Self-employed pe...
petition.parliament.uk
Umeå University is advertising two assistant professor positions in the humanities: www.umu.se/en/work-with... I was a postdoc at Umeå and it's a great place to work! @ethannowak.bsky.social would back me up on this.
Two positions as Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities
umu.se
The Vikings were more than bearded marauders but Scandinavia’s national museums continue to project that image theconversation.com/the-vikings-...
The Vikings were more than bearded marauders but Scandinavia’s national museums continue to project that image
The Vikings are big draw for tourists and museums struggle to balance the real history.
theconversation.com
'People who speak more than one language seem to have younger brains and the more languages you speak and the earlier you speak them, the better, according to findings from a study being presented at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies conference in Barcelona.' 1/2
Learning another language appears to slow brain ageing, scientists say
Study finds those who speak two languages have brains that appear around six years younger than those who speak one
theguardian.com
