Loving the Panel Lead/Co-Lead musical chairs on IIEMCA submission day…! Sounds like there are some fantastic panels being put together, so look out for calls down the line. And there’s the open paper call coming up in September. Hope to see lots of you in Jo’burg next year! #EMCA #IIEMCA27

'What is perhaps remarkable about the Exeter cuts is that they are targeted at some of the university’s most successful departments, many of which turn over a profit even after they have made enormous and increasing contributions to the central university budget.' Read, rage and weep.

The Crisis in Britain’s Universities

The cuts that have been proposed at the University of Exeter demonstrates the crisis of purpose in Britain’s universities. Should not universities also be places to prepare for "eternal dwellings"?

johnheathershaw.substack.com

Finally recovered from ICA Cape Town! Hosted an awesome pre-conference on discourses of racial inequality and presented my and @francescaorfw.bsky.social book about what @ica-lsi.bsky.social can bring to studies of race and communication! A link to the book!: www.peterlang.com/document/131...

My article "Gender Uptake: Theorizing the Semiotics of (Un)Doing Gender" received the Outstanding Article Award from the SSSP Gender, Sexual Behavior, Politics, and Communities Division AND an Honorable Mention for the Best Paper Award from the ASA Ethnomethodology & Conversation Analysis Section! 🥳

What Reform have successfully done is to make the floor of open racism in England much higher than I have seen it in several years. I don’t know what their peak will be but they have normalised something that I haven’t seen here since the mid-1990s, and that is already dangerous enough.

This was a great event. Excellent papers and discussions in the most amazing setting. Another fine entry in the annual New Developments in Ethnomethodology series. Thanks to the organisers! To Joburg in 2027.

Jakub Mlynář@jakubmlynar.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Honoured to have hosted the New Developments in Ethnomethodology 2026 conference with Philippe Sormani and Clemens Eisenmann on “Hybrid Studies”. Many thanks to the nearly 40 international participants for coming to Sierre and engaging in 3 days of lively discussions. More info: t.ly/vQMXS #EMCA

🎉 my employer in the news 🎉 1. narrative being peddled by the university mgmt - "do nothing" vs "do our cuts" - is a false choice that rests on (ahem) "unusual" modelling reverse engineered from surplus targets 2. they need better PR people ("DISAPPOINTED!" youtu.be/y6EDlD_fWn0?...)

Hercules - DISAPPOINTED! (High Quality)

YouTube video by OddTomato

youtu.be

Channel 4 News@channel4news.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Nottingham university staff strike over plans to cut jobs and programmes www.channel4.com/news/notting...

This really was great! So much to think about and so lovely to catch up with EM folk.

Jakub Mlynář@jakubmlynar.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Honoured to have hosted the New Developments in Ethnomethodology 2026 conference with Philippe Sormani and Clemens Eisenmann on “Hybrid Studies”. Many thanks to the nearly 40 international participants for coming to Sierre and engaging in 3 days of lively discussions. More info: t.ly/vQMXS #EMCA

Easily the most intense rescue I’ve been involved in… Called to a Casualty hanging inverted from top of cliff after falling and left leg catching a tree root. Amazing teamwork from all Central Brecon MRT colleagues to secure, lower, treat, and evacuate. #EMCA #Fieldwork #MountainRescue

Just out! Very happy with this one. Combines Goffman and Collins to push interaction ritual theory forward. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Between Two Rituals: Face and Effervescence as Moments of Social Life - Anders Vassenden, Nicholas Hoynes, Taylor Price, Iddo Tavory, 2026

Many of the social outcomes and patterns located at the very center of sociological inquiry are grounded in interaction ritual dynamics. Yet, while broadly used...

journals.sagepub.com

Ah - but the real magic happens when the post-it notes get stuck to a piece of A3, and five bits of be-post-it-noted A3 are blu-tacked to a whiteboard, and then people stick stars on them.

Emmet Ó Briain@emmet.quiddity.ie · 3mo ago

counterpoint: sitting groups of people at tables in a large room and asking them to write random thoughts on post-its is not a good use of anyone's time or money

we're just doing ELIZA again and again it makes the ACM decision to generate "podcasts for papers" look even more stupid

Jill Walker Rettberg@jilltxt.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Here’s a video from the same podcast as linked in my previous post where you can hear the audio too. I love this because it really lays bare how LLMs fool us - but really they’re just slotting words into linguistic patterns that we’re familiar with. Genres like a podcast or LinkedIn post.

Here’s a video from the same podcast as linked in my previous post where you can hear the audio too. I love this because it really lays bare how LLMs fool us - but really they’re just slotting words into linguistic patterns that we’re familiar with. Genres like a podcast or LinkedIn post.

A paper on Simmel and Ethnomethodology as non-dualist approaches to foundational issues of subjectivity/objectivity, practice, and social order. With Chiara Bassetti, Erik Boström, Ken Liberman, @jakubmlynar.bsky.social and @dirkvl.bsky.social #EMCA #Sociology link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Simmel and Ethnomethodology: Foundational Sociological Issues from a Nondualist Perspective - The American Sociologist

Georg Simmel, despite being a founding father of sociology, is often excluded from the list of the discipline’s principal founders. This neglect of Simmel’s work was perpetuated in ethnomethodology ev...

link.springer.com

Ah. www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...

Of four free speech cases highlighted here, fully three of them concern self-described "gender critical" academics, while the fourth is a guy opposed to BLM and the concept of strutural racism - if anyone is in doubt about that this is for. www.bbc.com/news/article...

New university free speech complaints system to come into force this year

Universities could face fines of £500,000 or 2% of their income if they are found to have failed to protect free speech.

bbc.com

The worldliness of EM phenomena is reintroduced to me as I update a lecture on instructed action. My wife calls up from downstairs. She has all the parts of the IKEA cabinet, but their order is elusive. She can’t find the hammer. I muse on instructions in the midst of making the bloody thing. #EMCA

⏳ Tick tock, tick tock… 2 weeks left to submit to this special issue. @suewiddicombe.bsky.social and I are looking forward to contributions that engage with the theme and push the conversation forward. If it’s on your list, now’s the time to get it over the line 👇 Spread the word!

Out today! A great collection of studies of the organisation of the senses in interaction. Our chapter looks at visual and haptic aspect shifts in an orienteering race. Plenty of other settings and sensings to be found within! #emca #interactionism #sociology www.routledge.com/Sensing-Life...

Sensing Life: The Social Organisation of the Senses in Interaction

This book showcases the critical contribution that scholarship in the field of social interaction can make to the study of the senses. Centred on an understanding of the senses as interactionally conf...

routledge.com

First time back at the BSA conference in a long while to speak on a panel launching this lovely collection of walking essays. I’ll be speaking briefly on walking as organised practice of care in the search for missing persons. 1600 in room 4.206. @britsoci.bsky.social #sociology #britsoc26

Applications for the ESRC WGSSS postdoctoral Fellowship are now open. If you have recently completed a PhD in the U.K. and are interested in coming to Cardiff to work with me and the small, but lively and lovely, CEEIT research group, do get in touch. wgsss.ac.uk/fellowships/ #EMCA #Ethnography

Such a good couple of days of talking through different approaches to language and interaction in Macau. Highlights were learning about developments in Chinese social and digital media, and drawing from an abundance of positive energy from a special bunch of local and Hong Kong PhDs. #EMCA

And on to Macau for a workshop on EM/CA, discourse, and ethnography. #EMCA

Two days of data sessions and dim sum in Hong Kong.

Many thanks to Andrew Carlin and Marek Czyżewski for inviting me to contribute to the special issue of Przegląd Socjologiczny dedicated to the work of Harvey Sacks. Special issue - part 1: t.ly/GLUVh Special issue - part 2: t.ly/ZI7mP My paper: t.ly/-O1ei #EMCA #HarveySacks #Sociology

The cracks are where the light gets in, and shines out.

Loreen Chikwira of the Kings Fund & I wrote this protocol paper for using Praxeological Analysis and Critical Praxeological Analysis: www.frontiersin.org/journals/psy...

Frontiers | Praxeological analysis (PA/CPA) for stigma, health inequalities, and coercion in women’s services

This paper sets out a practical, interview-free protocol for studying how stigma, inequalities, and restrictive practices are done in women’s mental health, ...

frontiersin.org

Hello #EMCA community! There's been another Bluesky influx - to find #ConversationAnalysis #DiscursivePsychology #MCA #Ethnomethodology use these Starter Packs. Let me know if you'd like to be added (check you're not there first) and repost this! 1. go.bsky.app/DHMkXcX 2. go.bsky.app/6p8x2UZ

We need a Strava-like app for marking season motivation. Kudos! You’ve marked five essays! Elapsed time: 90mins Grade Adjusted Pace: 3 hours Calories burned/consumed: +300 Recovery time: 1hr

Three short paragraphs, and you've got the whole mind-bending mess that is #UKHE finance & governance neatly laid out. This is why it's all so exhausting: our managers declare there's only one static frame, while we know their framing is part of the issue. 💡 www.hepi.ac.uk/2026/01/10/w...