Yet another example of why studying historical contexts and understanding political/cultural sensitivities is so important. Human reactions matter and what seems relevant to an AI/LLM may be received very differently by actual publics. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

How a Starbucks marketing stunt spiralled into mass boycotts in South Korea

A botched tumbler promotion on the anniversary of a pro-democracy massacre unleashed a boycott, police investigation and political firestorm

theguardian.com

On the rich and complex intersections of faith, gender liminality, sexuality and 21st-century social change in SE Asian Bugis communities. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/05/w...

The Priests Revered in the Land of Five Genders

nytimes.com

Yes. Using a computer now feels like this at all times.

Pavel@spavel.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Thinking about why women might not want to use a product that has forced itself into every software interface to confidently shout things that are wrong

Göttingen und seine akademischen Buchhandlungen. ❤️

Always a highlight of my academic year to chair the Lincoln Model United Nations General Assembly. Simulation-based learning is such a powerful part of the IR curriculum at the University of Lincoln and students gain both deep disciplinary knowledge and vital career-relevant skills.

"Anthropic is the clean coal of AI. And clean coal doesn't exist" - Karen Hao speaking at Hay yesterday.

Wrote a thing on why buying into the “generative AI is inevitable so we need to stuff it into all crevices of higher ed” narrative is not only bad pedagogy, but bad Political Science. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Generative AI in the Political Science Classroom: Bringing Politics Back In

Large language models (LLMs) have disrupted higher education, prompting a wave of scholarship on generative AI in the Political Science classroom. This emerging literature largely converges in argu...

tandfonline.com

In this post, through my recollection of a very funny event in a Nigerian court, I explore how language use and language dominance carry more than syntax in them. Power, justice and history converge in the colonial court, and justice loses. folukeafrica.com/an-anticolon...

An Anticolonial Lawyer in a Colonial Court

Of language, shady translations & distorted justice

folukeafrica.com

As has become traditional on polling day, here's my poem in the style of Philip Larkin on the small joys of UK democracy (and I know, I know, he might well have voted Reform)

In this #newblogpost I extend my arguments about the (im)possibility of decolonial GenAI. I specifically focus on the points of divergence between GenAI reliance on colonial structures of flattening what makes us human and decolonisation's refusal of those structures folukeafrica.com/being-human-...

Being Human Once More: Some reflections on decolonisation and GenAI

Is GenAI’s future humanity inevitable, or is ours in jeopardy?

folukeafrica.com

Ahead of the release of my (nearly completed) review essay on "Soundtrack to a Coup d'État" (2024), I am sharing my reflections on the life, words and death of the late Patrice Lumumba of Congo. May Africa one day soon breathe the air of freedom. folukeafrica.com/patrice-lumu...

Patrice Lumumba: May Africa breathe the air of freedom

Prime Minister of Congo June-Sept 1960 (Assasinated)

folukeafrica.com

“Last month, 14 children died from severe acute malnutrition at Bay Regional, Doctors Without Borders wrote to us…The world’s richest man is preventing lifesaving aid from reaching the world’s poorest children, closing off their future as he fantasizes about another.”

Hari Kunzru@harikunzru.bsky.social · 4mo ago

“Children and adults were laid on makeshift gurneys …These human caravans walked for hours in up to 104-degree heat in an attempt to reach medical treatment” Musk and Doge have so much blood on their hands www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

"A history professor course could not allocate instructional time to the Stonewall riots or the gay rights movement. If a U.S. history textbook includes a chapter on the AIDS crisis, the professor must skip it." www.erininthemorning.com/p/texas-tech...

Texas Tech Issues Ban On Students Writing On LGBTQ+ Topics

The ban applies to theses and dissertations, and is expected to begin going into effect on a rolling basis.

erininthemorning.com

New policy briefing aimed at #museums and the cultural sector working with sensitive histories, #colonialism and #empire. Want evidence to share with funders/politicians/bosses to explain why anti-racism activities are needed in your org? This short, visual booklet helps! radar.gsa.ac.uk/10825/

With US aid suddenly cut off, LGBT groups are in freefall, and millions will suffer.

African LGBT Groups Have Been Thrown Into Chaos — Queer Majority

With US aid suddenly cut off, LGBT groups are in freefall, and millions will suffer.

queermajority.com

Back in 2020 we published a special issue of "Critical perspectives on AI in education" in Learning, Media & Technology - now we've got a call out for a follow-up that I hope really advances fresh forms of AIed critique @lmt-journal.bsky.social think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issu...

A reflection on the first session of our Groundings workshop series is up on our Substack! We discuss a wayward reading of Sylvia Wynter’s “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom” via zuri arman. open.substack.com/pub/decoloni...

Democracy, Gender, and the Overrepresentation of Man

Reflection on Session 1 of Groundings: An Intro to Decolonial Feminism

open.substack.com

‘That afternoon, most of my friends were at the café. Seeing them again after forty days I felt not quite joy, not quite grief, but something suspended between the two.’ Raha Nik-Andish in Tehran, after the ceasefire, from the blog. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ap...

Raha Nik-Andish | After the Ceasefire

Last Friday afternoon, two days after the ceasefire was announced and two days before the peace talks in Islamabad...

lrb.co.uk

Highly recommend for readers in French. I subscribe to the metaphor of ‘continuités souterraines’ to describe coloniality. Loan from uni library, can’t pencil in for notes.

#MorningReads Japanese SGM millennials face substantially worse health than nonSGMs. Victimization explains most disparities vs socioeconomic factors & healthcare access. Authors suggest reducing structural stigma & strengthening legal protections may be key to improving health equity. #SOGIData

Health gaps by sexual orientation and gender identity among Japanese millennial generation: A decomposition analysis

Sexual and gender minorities (SGMs) have been found to experience poorer physical and mental health than non-SGMs. This study aims to identify health …

sciencedirect.com

'Discarding the language of empire was personal before it was political.'

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, writer, 1938-2025

The Kenyan won both acclaim and enemies for works that explored empire, power and language

ft.com

A farewell symphony for our own boy and his many beautiful, sexy and necessary stories. For many queer folk, his novels were a guide to our cullture and history, well before we gained, through him and others like him, the courage to write our own chapters. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

Edmund White, novelist and great chronicler of gay life, dies aged 85

The American essayist, playwright and author of books including A Boy’s Own Story and The Married Man has died

theguardian.com

What a loss to scholarship and activism, but what a mighty example of a life purposefully lived. So many of my students have relished engaging with his intellect and wisdom. www.euronews.com/culture/2025...

Celebrated Kenyan author and dissident Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o dies aged 87

Widely regarded as east Africa's most influential writer, Ngũgĩ’s fiction and nonfiction books traced his country's history from British imperialism to home-ruled tyranny and challenged not only the s...

euronews.com

Why Gen X is the real loser generation economist.com/finance-and-... from The Economist. Sigh.

Why Gen X is the real loser generation

Don’t cry for millennials or Gen Z. Save your pity for those in their 50s

economist.com

Study in a truly walkable city - the MA International Relations at the University of Lincoln - a perspective from the US: www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1c3...

MA International Relations | Student Story | University of Lincoln

YouTube video by University of Lincoln

youtube.com

This #newblogpost is a reflection on the nature and state of African history, a quiz and a reading list. My hope is that it is a reminder that the failure to study the history of humanity, is an act of self-destruction, and that African history is world history. folukeafrica.com/african-hist...

African History Quiz I: Pre-colonial Years

Can we study ourselves out of perdition?

folukeafrica.com

Will the Humanities Survive Artificial Intelligence? www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Will the Humanities Survive Artificial Intelligence?

Maybe not as we’ve known them. But, in the ruins of the old curriculum, something vital is stirring.

newyorker.com

Anyone with knowledge of HIV, PEPFAR or development could have told Mr Musk he was wrong. But the callousness, disregard for life, rejection of expertise and capricious misinformation are the point. This would be shameful. If the man had the capacity to feel shame. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Opinion | Musk Said No One Has Died Since Aid Was Cut. That Isn’t True.

A journey through the front lines of global poverty shows that when the world’s richest men slash aid for the world’s poorest children, the result is sickness, starvation and death.

nytimes.com

The Pentagon has marked 26,000 photos for deletion to purge evidence of diversity. The photos include the 1st black pilots in WWII, the 1st women to pass infantry training & the plane that dropped the Hiroshima bomb because it’s called the “Enola GAY”. This is real. We’re living in a horror story.

War heroes and military firsts are among 26,000 images flagged for removal in Pentagon's DEI purge

References to a World War II Medal of Honor recipient, the Enola Gay aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan and women and minorites are among the tens of thousands of photos and online posts ma...

apnews.com