This week, 'Material Crimes' focuses on the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Formerly a vibrant mining region, it is now home to immigration detention centres. Tune in as Ari Jerrems explores empire, extractive industries and violent systems of detention

Location, Location, Location (Ari Jerrems)

Material Crimes · Episode

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Registrations are open for our 7th September event at BLOC, Queen Mary Uni of London, on ‘French Theory in British Culture’. Join us for a for a one-day programme of readings and discussions on the reception of French theory in Britain curated by our Fellow Dr. Colm McAuliffe.

7th September Workshop: French Theory in British Culture

Join us on 7th September at BLOC, Queen Mary University of London, for a one-day programme of readings, discussion and performances on the reception of French theory in Britain and its legacies.

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Shuttle trading emerged as an alternative livelihood after the fall of the Soviet Union. @ceggart.bsky.social explores how geopolitical transformations are felt at the local level, through the bodies of women shuttle traders

Lived Geopolitics. The Production of Unorthodox Scalar Connections through Trade

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How do departments determine which colleagues should be made redundant? Often the criteria used to make such decisions are based on 'merit'. Lorna Finlayson examines how measuring academic performance undermine, discriminate & reduce staff to arbitrary metrics

Weakest Link

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@ersjournal.com has published a review forum for my @stanfordpress.bsky.social book, Neoliberalism and Race Contributions are by Arun Kundnani, Siddhant Issar, and Hasret Cetinkaya, followed by my reply www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Race, neoliberalism and ideology critique

In this response to the book symposium on Neoliberalism and Race, the author explains what intervention the book aims to make, explores the value of ideology critique when studying the role of raci...

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"They started kicking everybody, including women & elderly people, to throw them inside the...boats, even a 2-month-old baby." A year after Frontex boss Hans Leijtens said abuses like these kept him "awake at night", plus ça change... For @lemonde.fr w/ @grillmeier.bsky.social tinyurl.com/2b4dpkh5

Frontex continuing mission in Greece despite serious violations of migrants' rights

How long will Frontex tolerate the growing violations of migrants' rights in Greece? A Le Monde investigation documents the many warnings issued by the Fundamental Rights Office of the European agency...

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🎙️Season 3 of Material Crimes launches today! This podcast explores how infrastructure is made by global systems yet experienced and contested in locally. This week's episode - the legacy of the “Cape-to-Cairo” railway and the fight from activists today for a united Africa https://bit.ly/4prFjxe

We’re live: Watch online at www.youtube.com/live/bI1d6iV... #GenerativeJustice #ISRFbooklaunch

Generative Justice - ISRF Book Launch

YouTube video by Gresham College

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Independent Social Research Foundation@isrfoundation.bsky.social · 3w ago

There’s still time to join us on July 16th for the book launch of ‘Generative Justice’ edited by Professor Mary Corcoran, Professor Fergus McNeill & Professor Beth Weaver! Join us online or in London for a conversation with the editors, Anne Fox & Ella Simpson.

Join us in London at BLOC on September 7th for our "French Theory and British Culture" event. Curated by us and Dr McAuliffe, this will be a one-day programme of readings, discussion and performances focused on French theory in Britain and its legacies. More speakers tba.

French Theory in British Culture | 7th September 2026

A one-day programme of readings, discussion and performances focused on the reception of French theory in Britain and its legacies.

f.mtr.cool

There’s still time to join us on July 16th for the book launch of ‘Generative Justice’ edited by Professor Mary Corcoran, Professor Fergus McNeill & Professor Beth Weaver! Join us online or in London for a conversation with the editors, Anne Fox & Ella Simpson.

Generative Justice | 16th July 2026

An in-person & online book launch and conversation with Professor Mary Corcoran, Professor Fergus McNeill & Professor Beth Weaver, editors of 'Generative Justice'.

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Delighted to share research I've worked on with @katefoxwriter75.bsky.social & George Watts exploring Neurodivergent Affirming Spaces. Join them for findings, poetry, a zine and chat. And best of all, it's free! Register here: www.eventbrite.com/e/presenting... Or scan the QR code below!

ISRF Newsletter - July 2026 Featured in this edition of the newsletter is a Director’s Note on the ever changing debates around AI. Also included: upcoming book launches, Dispatches and news from our Fellows.

ISRF Newsletter – July 2026

Featured in this edition of the newsletter is a Director's Note on the ever changing debates around AI. Also included: upcoming book launches, Dispatches and news from our Fellows.

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Our Fellow Adam Hanieh's latest book “Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market” explores how capitalism centres oil in our energy and financial systems, and what it becomes once extracted. The interview about it with Imraan Valodia is now on our blog bit.ly/4eEsmMX

🔔 Upcoming event! Defining Neurodivergent Affirming Spaces, a project by @drhelenkara.bsky.social, Dr Kate Fox and @autgeek.bsky.social. Funded by @isrfoundation.bsky.social. Free online webinar on Thursday July 16th, 6:30pm-7:30pm BST. Register here: www.eventbrite.com/e/presenting...

Presenting our Neurodivergent Affirming Space Research & Definition

With Dr Kate Fox & George Watts

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What is the human impact of the current crisis in UK higher education? Bethan Evans draws from the experiences of academics with energy limiting conditions to show how universities function as an 'exhaustion economy' Check out the latest from our Dispatches series

The exhaustion economy: Seven illustrations of life at UK universities

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Universities across the UK have been subjected to Outcomes-Based Performance Management, a system used to evaluate academics against arbitrary targets. Nick Megoran outlines how staff at Newcastle took collective action to resist such efforts

Target culture and how to defeat it

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New publication! Earlier this week, my new paper was published in @mihjournal.bsky.social: 'Fossil Neoliberalism: Towards an Intellectual History of Neoliberal Climate Change Denial' It's Open Access! 1/ doi.org/10.1017/S147...

Check out 'Locating the Geopolitical', a recent special issue published by @anthrotheory.bsky.social. Co-edited by ISRF Fellow @ceggart.bsky.social, it brings anthropology in conversation with geopolitics. More about the series can be found below 👇

In this new series on 'Locating the Geopolitical' we argue that anthropology is particularly well equipped to study the geopolitical - not as an abstract domain of global affairs, but as something co-produced and rendered meaningful from within concrete locations and experiences. shorturl.at/yOLYQ

Presenting the results of the research project “Fiction as Memory: Youth Engagement with Yugoslav Wars Through Literary Fiction” at the confernece “The Age of Trauma and Memory: Literature’s Role in Shaping (Post) Conflict Narratives and Meanings @ifdtbeograd.bsky.social @isrfoundation.bsky.social

There's still time to join us this evening for or the launch of 'Taming Egg Donors' by @anna-molas.bsky.social. Join us online and in person for a conversation with Molas, Chandra Kala Clemente-Martínez and Laura Perler on Spain's egg donation industry https://bit.ly/4tx5xzB

The latest Education Committee report underlines the dire financial realities that UK universities are navigating. Yet it fails to address a fundamental driver of the current crisis - the marketisation of higher education. James Brackley & David Yates explain further

Letting Universities Fail Won’t Solve the Higher Education Funding Crisis

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Myself and colleagues from across Higher Ed have gathered under the auspices of @isrfoundation.bsky.social to think about new models for Higher Education... We'll be adding pieces as we go, and we've already published quite a few. We can't go on like this, and we shouldn't. isrf.org/projects/rec...

Reconstructing the British University

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Universities often encourage academics to leave their ivory towers. Yet such work is veiled in risk assessments and reputational management. In this Dispatch, Eric Lybeck argues for the slow and uneven practice of meaningful civic engagement

What Makes Public Engagement So Difficult (and Why It Still Matters)

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Restructuring continues to be the proposed solution to the financial crisis of British universities as academics face the risk of redundancy. What does it mean to live under a constant cloud of uncertainty? @gsoh31.bsky.social explores further in our latest Dispatch

What Does It Feel Like to Live Under the Threat of Redundancy?

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If you liked Collini's slam of UK uni managerialism, here's Frederick Attenborough on "enjoying the newfound thrill of executive power, not unlike the prison guards in Zimbardo’s ... experiment, ... intoxicated by the petty sovereignties and sanctioned cruelties" cafeamericainmag.com/the-hollowin...

The Hollowing Out of Britain’s Universities

Some Personal Thoughts on Collini’s “Squadrons of Pigs” Essay

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Fiction as Memory Work workshop @ifdtbeograd.bsky.social supported by @isrfoundation.bsky.social

ISRF Newsletter - June 2026 Featured in this edition of the newsletter is a Director's Note on building alternative futures through research. Also included: upcoming book launches, Dispatches, blogs and news from our Fellows.

ISRF Newsletter – June 2026

Featured in this edition of the newsletter is a Director's Note on building alternative futures through research. Also included: upcoming book launches, Dispatches, blogs and news from our Fellows.

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Hosting this Event for #GRT History Month at the University of Manchester. Please come along! www.ticketsource.com/the-universi...

"One thing for sure is that British universities are on a fast-moving trajectory, and one that is not positive for the human experience" - David Yates in our latest Dispatch on how accerlerationism shapes UK universities

The University: Another Victim of Accelerated Existence?

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ISRF's Dispatches series--views on university crises from academics--continues with a piece on curricular and teaching coercions that come from a seemingly neutral European-wide practice called constructive alignment. troubles of false neutrality. mailinglist.isrf.org/p/pedagogica...

Pedagogical State Apparatus

Lars Cornelissen argues that the theory of constructive alignment is not a neutral guideline, but rather centres a particular philosophy of learning & teaching which foreclose alternative pedagogies.

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