Kate Spowage
@katespowage.bsky.social
Critical interdisciplinary sociolinguist working on the politics of language, capitalism, and colonialism. Shamelessly plugging Language as Statecraft, which thinks about all those things. Lecturer at the University of Leeds. Own views, reposts ≠ agreement
Whenever scandal engulfs a humanities prof, some say "why are my taxes funding this?" - but rest assured, they really aren't. The national AHRC research budget is around £80m, about £1.10 per person per year. As a taxpayer you contribute far more to the royal family than to the arts and humanities.
Delighted to say that my mum found this readable, which is a serious endorsement. It was great to do the first of the new interview series for @r-williams-soc.bsky.social, and I hope that it includes useful stuff for others who want to think about capitalism and culture as intertwined ✊
Hayley G. Toth@tothhayley.bsky.social · 4w agoEnjoyed speaking to @katespowage.bsky.social for @r-williams-soc.bsky.social a few weeks ago. Essential reading on the state's 'trial and error' approach to governance, and the ways ordinary ways people can and do challenge the status quo. 27 min. read for your lunch break... 🥯🥗☕
We’re looking to appoint two lecturers in School of English @universityofleeds.bsky.social: 1) Lecturer in Creative Writing: jobs.leeds.ac.uk/AHCEN1086 2) Lecturer in English Language (with expertise in DH): jobs.leeds.ac.uk/AHCEN1087 Happy to provide more info if you're interested
Job Opportunity at University of Leeds: Lectureship in Creative Writing
Ranked 29th in the world (QS 2026), the School of English at the University of Leeds operates at the leading edge of recent developments in literary studies and creative practice. Located within the F...
eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com
🚨 Job Klaxon🚨 at UofLeeds we are advertising for a permanent lecturer in English Language! Interesting people please join us! Please share 🙏🏽 Link aqui: jobs.leeds.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx... #linguistics #sociolinguistics #appliedlinguistics #digitalhumanities #academicjobs #discourseanalysis
Job Opportunity at University of Leeds: Lectureship in English Language
Ranked 29th in the world (QS 2026) English Language at the University of Leeds has a strong reputation for the quality of both its research and its teaching. Based in the School of English, the Englis...
jobs.leeds.ac.uk
Excited to share this interview I recently did for the Raymond Williams Society: "We shouldn't comfort ourselves that our work is outside of social struggles". I'm not really quoting myself, it's the title. First in a new series for the @r-williams-soc.bsky.social! 💬💬💬
Raymond Williams Society@r-williams-soc.bsky.social · last mo.🚨🚨Check out the first instalment of our new interview series. @katespowage.bsky.social talks about language, politics, video games, and, of course, Raymond Williams. Enjoy! raymondwilliams.co.uk/2026/07/10/w...
In 1872, the Chicago Evening Post published an absolutely brutal editorial mocking people who objected to sharing public spaces with Black people. Still some dated language but a remarkable piece. “Hire a carriage and you can sit all alone by your own sweet self for $2 an hour.”
Language, labour, and workers, my triad of obsession 🛠️ 👇🏽
Journal of Sociolinguistics@jslx.bsky.social · 3mo agoLooking for some reading to celebrate #internationalworkersday #MayDay? The Journal of #Sociolinguistics has a brilliant back catalogue of research on #language, #labour and #workers 💪 Take your pick from the suggestions below, or visit our website for more!
May 1 🌹 Whatever rights you have, they did not come automatically. Someone fought for them. Join a union. Contribute. Benefit.
The Open Library of Humanities Open Access Award 2026. Applications for OLH funding of up to £500 are welcomed from individuals or organisations and may be used to help fund events, projects or activities on OA or with an open access component. Deadline 30/06:
The OLH Open Access Award 2026: call for applications
The Open Library of Humanities (OLH) is proud to continue its work towards its open access mission across the globe with the OLH Open Access Award 2026, a fund dedicated …
openlibhums.org
This is horrific. A U.S. citizen describes the facility in Arizona that her husband was brought to while he waited to be put on a deportation flight. Dozens of people were crammed into tiny cells, there was a "chain of people vomiting" from filthy toilets, no medical care, and only one meal per day.
Many, many brave people are fighting to stop this, and also—our collective failure to stop it from getting this far will haunt us for the rest of our lives.
Smell of feces, vomit fills crowded ICE facility, detainee's wife says
Conditions at the ICE facility in central Phoenix mirror the conditions at a Mesa facility, where people were being treated worse than "animals," lawmakers said.
azcentral.com
It's 2033 and the apocalypse is here. An advert in the ruins of a fashion boutique sparks a conversation, and a longing for the abundance of capitalism. The past seemed to be an era of food, fashion, coffee, and - of course - the lesbian paperback. The message is clear: 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴.🧵👾
Zack Polanski’s Bold Politics Requires an Even Bolder Economic Vision
Zack Polanski’s Bold Politics Requires an Even Bolder Economic Vision: The Case for Democratic Public Finance
by Rob Hawkes The Green Party of England and Wales is attracting new members in unprecedented numbers and achieving polling percentages that would have seemed impossible a year ago. However, tensio…
moneyontheleft.org
Individually one cannot, but it is striking (in a way that really advocates the old Marxist in me) that socially we can only really see a technology that saves a bunch of labour without generating replacement level jobs as a disaster. This is because we are *so* sure the profit will be privatised.
Stephen Bush@stephenkb.bsky.social · 6mo agoThe two types of AI denialism: the people who look at this and go 'nah, the machines will never get that smart' and the people who say it and talk like it is a thing you can meaningfully prepare for.
Very interesting analysis - at least partially the result of obsessive austerity policymaking since 2008, and the straightjacket provided by the political economic discourse on debt and investment.
Dr Corinne Painter@corinnepainter.bsky.social · 6mo agoThe problem at its heart is "an oversupply of graduates relative to the numbers of well-paid professional jobs in the economy. Elsewhere in the world, robust increases in the population of graduates have been matched by skilled job creation."
I don’t think most people realize just how little the United States has traditionally spent on public media.
LPE Blog@lpeblog.bsky.social · 6mo agoToday, @victorpickard.bsky.social argues that American media is not experiencing a single crisis, but rather cascading layers of capitalist, oligarchic, and authoritarian capture.
A court has ruled that the government's authoritarian ban on Palestine Action was unlawful. Time to stop criminalising the people protesting a genocide - and start ending the UK's complicity.
The first article in our collection 'Gaming & the Humanities: Interdisciplinary Essays on the Last of Us' is out! Bob Yeates deftly critiques the biopolitics of race in #TLOU. It will be followed by work on objects, muscles, infrastructure, linguistic landscapes, and more! 🧟♀️ Congrats Bob👏🏼
Robert Yeates@bobyeates.bsky.social · 7mo agoVery happy to say my article on The Last of Us and race has been published by @openlibhums.org, part of their special collection on Gaming and Humanities edited by @katespowage.bsky.social and Adrienne Mortimer: doi.org/10.16995/olh...
Very happy to say my article on The Last of Us and race has been published by @openlibhums.org, part of their special collection on Gaming and Humanities edited by @katespowage.bsky.social and Adrienne Mortimer: doi.org/10.16995/olh...
Racialized Contagion and Defensive Biopolitics in <em>The Last of Us</em>
In the opening moments of the video game The Last of Us Part I, players are introduced to an emerging pandemic via Austin’s Texas Herald newspaper. Below a headline warning of mass hospitalizations fr...
doi.org
Dear Labour: Not all women are transphobic. I'm not sure why your party has such difficulty with this very basic concept.
Jeffy 🌿@jeffreon.bsky.social · 7mo agonew euphemism for racism just dropped: 'moral seriousness' oh yeah, and of course it's also terf o'clock:
AOC: I want to remind you where the real crime is. It's in the oligarchs taking $170 billion of our money from health care and food assistance and public programs and taking that and funneling it into a secret police program.
Starbucks’ CEO makes 6,666x what the average @sbworkersunited.org barista does. It’s unconscionable. As baristas at corporate stores fight for a fair contract and against Starbucks’ union-busting and greed, they have the solidarity of all 15 million members of America’s unions.
Starbucks Workers United@sbworkersunited.org · 8mo agoBaristas on ULP strike are braving the cold at Starbucks's Nevada distribution center to send a message loud & clear: Wherever Starbucks is, our picket line will be there, too. We need the company to finalize contracts and resolve all unfair labor practices! #NoContractNoCoffee
Write like no one will read it. Edit like everyone will quote it. You'll be unstoppable! 🚀 #WritingCommunity #AmWriting #AmEditing #BookSky #WriteSky
Once every 20 years or so, the director-general of the BBC is forced to resign for being insufficiently rightwing. Alastair Milne in 1987. Greg Dyke in 2004. Tim Davie in 2025. The great irony is that the BBC was in all cases profoundly biased towards established power. But just not biased enough …
11. Regaining the freedom we’ve lost is much harder and less likely than defending the freedom we already possess. We must do all we can to stop governments with autocratic tendencies from winning elections and reasserting the old order. Lose it once, and it might be gone forever.
A family friend was telling us about what her husband shared about his experience in Broadview before he was deported back to Mexico. She's been sharing to friends and family because she's just in disbelief & horror what her husband told her. She wasn't able to talk to him until he was in Mexico.
"An organized urban wing of the [Underground] railroad called vigilance committees focused on protecting, supporting, and learning from fugitives." Jesse Olsavsky for @hammerandhope.bsky.social's latest, just released issue hammerandhope.org/article/unde...
The Black People Who Fled Slavery Had a Lot to Teach Their Northern Allies
Black-led vigilance committees not only protected and aided fugitives but also learned from the formerly enslaved as they built a movement pedagogy together.
hammerandhope.org
The university is not a skills machine and neither should politicians think of themselves of oiling the gears of economic performance. Politics is not just about adapting populations to fit labour market demands.
