Part 1 of this is a very clear and useful historical and policy analysis of how we got here. Part 2 is more "epochal diagnosis", perhaps more open to quibble, but still very good. Hopefully part 3 is the 5-step "what is to be done" we all need.

Barry Langford@barrylangford1999.bsky.social · 3w ago

Anyone who cares about, or wants to understand, the spiralling crisis in UK universities should listen to this - lucid, rigorous, and quietly (and rightly) furious. Well done as ever @jemgilbert.bsky.social @profafinlayson.bsky.social 👏 podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/p...

Has anyone else taken a decades' long delayed gratification strategy to music? e.g. I've spent 20 years looking forward to getting into Jimi Hendrix and Pet Shop Boys later in life. Not sure why, but I feel like it might finally be time for me to get into my New Wave of British Heavy Metal phase.

The problem is that there a long history of the methods of textual analysis, knowledge production, and information retrieval central to the humanities that was practiced in completely non-pedagogical contexts, like government & business, that is consistently obscured in these discussions.

What might the UK Government's new 'priority pathways' measure mean for the creative industries talent pipeline? In this new blog, Policy Director Bernard Hay reflects on the need for a more nuanced approach to creative higher education, drawing on Creative PEC and wider research. 👇

Measure what matters: Priority pathways and Creative Higher Education - Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre

Bernard Hay, Creative PEC's Policy Director, investigates the surprising absence of creative subjects from the DfE and DWP's new 'priority pathways'.

pec.ac.uk

People like to have a go at the algorithm don't they. But tiktok has introduced me to Maddie Ashman's glitchy microtonal folk, which is pretty successful niche-targeting if you ask me. open.spotify.com/album/7EJGHA...

Her Side - EP by Maddie Ashman | Spotify

Maddie Ashman · EP · 2026 · 7 songs

open.spotify.com

"If using AI to write is, at its worst, an industrialization of the mind, then AI detection, at its worst, becomes a surveillance system for thought." Great read and really useful reflections as coursework tumbles in (here in Germany anyway).

Eryk Salvaggio@eryk.bsky.social · 3w ago

Will’s is paywalled, but I wrote on the subject of the “It’s not X, it’s Y” and AI detection last month - and in one week it became the most widely read piece I’d ever written for my newsletter (ie, six years!). mail.cyberneticforests.com/its-not-just...

While public tastes are moving away from tighter regulation and audit culture in the information sphere, higher education moves inexorably towards it substack.com/home/post/p-...

The Rest is Academic Research

What happens when Gary Lineker comes for the universities?

substack.com

You can access the analysis here - three briefings on the key findings, an explanation of the policy context, and of course, a map for you to explore. www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/policy-and-r...

Sarah Cowan@sarahcowan1.bsky.social · 3w ago

If words could accurately capture how hard this data has been to wrangle, they would be NSFW. Coming tomorrow is 10+ years of SHAPE staff data tracking number, contract & employment type, seniority etc to finally give an accurate picture of the cost of closures www.theguardian.com/education/20...

It seems ages ago since we finished it, but @fintechcapital.bsky.social, by @paullangley.bsky.social and me, is now out: published today in the US by @princetonupress.bsky.social. It’s published in the UK in about six weeks or so press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Fintech Capital

A thorough examination of the worldwide digital transformation of people’s everyday monetary and financial relations driven by the emergence of FinTech

press.princeton.edu

"I don't like maths. They always ask us: blipblop buys 25 bananas & bloopy buys 32 bananas; what's the difference between blipblop & bloopy? But why should I get all up in their business? They can buy as many bananas as they like. Not my business." When did you realise YOUR 8yo was a libertarian?

It’s incomprehensible to me that universities imagine their decimation of humanities follows “market forces” when they are so manifestly behind the curve of even the most corporate decisions. Universities are stuck in spent logic of “we must embrace AI” when frontier labs are hiring philosophers 1/

My latest weekly roundup of reading and listening recommendations, taking in Britain's political economy, Northeast African politics, and Latin American politics, among other themes. 🧵

Stop, Look, and Listen #61

A round-up of what I have been reading and listening to this past week.

academicbubble.substack.com

www.gregorylee.net/what-i-came-...

André Gorz and self-limitation

I'll be "away from my desk" for the next week or so, but before I go, I just wanted to say that the revised, expanded version of André Gorz's text L'Immatériel has finally been published twenty...

gregorylee.net

"The AI build-out... is increasingly financed not by selling overpriced equity but by contracting future cash flows and borrowing against hardware.... That is not the architecture of 2000. That is the architecture of 2008." www.groundbrkr.com/p/the-second...

The Second Derivative: Why No One Understands the AI Boom

The market misremembers 2008. That same blind spot sits at the center of the AI boom.

groundbrkr.com

of course someone wrote a paper on bairenfan! Digital gastronationalism: how “white people food” discourse constructs national identity on Douyin: Social Semiotics: Vol 0, No 0 - Get Access www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Digital gastronationalism: how “white people food” discourse constructs national identity on Douyin

This study investigates the “white people food” (白人饭) meme on Douyin as a manifestation of digital gastronationalism. Through critical discourse analysis of comments on a viral video, the research ...

tandfonline.com

I really don’t understand some people’s assumption that if you do a degree in the humanities you will suddenly become an enlightened, civic individual. How many Philosophy, Politics & Economics graduates do we need to dispel that myth?

A very lovely and apt tribute to he much missed Caspar Melville at SOAS this evening. Someone who showed how important it is to use a university as a tool to make things happen for people, and to be generous and open and human while you're at it.

I totally understand the temptation to read tea leaves here. But I am still withholding judgment. Some things may simply be insoluble. And I think the situation, which this exchange both illuminates and complicates, is vexed enough to show why “ridicule as practice” is a bad way to go.

Will Oremus@willoremus.com · last mo.

Jamir Nazir was accused of using AI to write "The Serpent in the Grove," a short story that was named a regional winner of the Commonwealth Prize. This week, he won the overall prize after an investigation concluded he didn't use AI. I talked with him about it: www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

A very lovely and apt tribute to he much missed Caspar Melville at SOAS this evening. Someone who showed how important it is to use a university as a tool to make things happen for people, and to be generous and open and human while you're at it.

British Academy President's statement on the UK's higher education crisis, July 2026.

British Academy President: UK higher education crisis risks irreversible damage

As course closures, shrinking provision and widening regional inequalities threaten the future of UK higher education and research, President of the British Academy, Susan J Smith calls for an immedia...

thebritishacademy.ac.uk

Interregnum still ongoing, symptoms still morbid

Dan Davies@dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 6mo ago

"everyone has to get back to the office because the important thing about business is human interaction" is dying, but "white collar jobs will be replaced by AI agents within 18 months" cannot yet be born; in this interregnum a variety of morbid symptoms appear.

Saddened to hear this. An influential writer for me. And the post is a useful reminder - for those who would want to make grander claims about the way of the world - of the difference between (i) the world of work and management, and (ii) what management thinkers want us to think about that world.

Jason Read@jasonread.bsky.social · last mo.

Reposted in memory of Peter Fleming who I just learned passed away. www.unemployednegativity.com/2015/10/what...

"So no: we are not living in a time where the algorithm has rotted creativity and culture has come to a standstill. We weren’t in 2001, we weren’t in 2010, and we’re not now." This is so obvious it shouldn't need saying. And yet here we are, still bemoaning "the slow cancellation of the future".

UK Prime Minister@joemuggs.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Got something that's been bugging for a while (25 years!!) off my chest for @thelineofbestfit.com There are musical revolutions bigger than punk and acid house happening in front of our eyes and the culture press just shrugs.

I wouldn't mind this job. I kind of want to administrate things in an office again.

Leverhulme Trust@leverhulme.ac.uk · last mo.

📣Vacancy at the Leverhulme Trust We're hiring a new Administrative Officer, on an 18 month contract, to provide support in managing and processing grant applications and current awards. Closing date: Monday 6 July 2026. More details here: www.leverhulme.ac.uk/news/adminis...

"So no: we are not living in a time where the algorithm has rotted creativity and culture has come to a standstill. We weren’t in 2001, we weren’t in 2010, and we’re not now." This is so obvious it shouldn't need saying. And yet here we are, still bemoaning "the slow cancellation of the future".

UK Prime Minister@joemuggs.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Got something that's been bugging for a while (25 years!!) off my chest for @thelineofbestfit.com There are musical revolutions bigger than punk and acid house happening in front of our eyes and the culture press just shrugs.

An interesting set of reflections on intersections between cultural industries, geopolitics, mobile policy and the services sector. To me making the point that economic policy is not about 'copying' successful policies from elsewhere but relational positioning to benefit from that success

Toby Bennett@tgpb.bsky.social · last mo.

Is there anything worth reclaiming from "Soft Power"? The idea had a resurgence recently, in commentaries both in the UK and China, so I tried to work out what that means in 2026. Part of my regular effort this year to think out loud in real-time. tgpbennett.wordpress.com/2026/06/23/s...

...and the third: bsky.app/profile/tgpb...

Toby Bennett@tgpb.bsky.social · last mo.

Part III. Making the case that an "industrial humanities" exists, within and without the academy (whatever's left of it anyway), which we would benefit from bringing together. And suggesting that's what media and cultural studies was doing all along. tgpbennett.wordpress.com/2026/06/25/s...

...the second one: bsky.app/profile/tgpb...

Toby Bennett@tgpb.bsky.social · last mo.

Part II: An attempt to work through the "conjectural paradigm" of AI rhetorics and their associated value panics - and the need to replace Sherlock's magnifying glass with Adorno's splinter in the eye. tgpbennett.wordpress.com/2026/06/24/s...

There’s a permanent modern British history post going at Manchester 🎉Come and join a great department and please share with anyone who might be interested. (Don’t let the short deadline put you off). #skystorians 🗃️

Lecturer in Modern British History (post-1800) at The University of Manchester

Apply now for the Lecturer in Modern British History (post-1800) role on jobs.ac.uk - the leading job board for higher education jobs. View details.

jobs.ac.uk

I'm always suspicious of binaries so I want more cultural materialism and material culture-ism. But I absolutely agree we need more criticism that isn't entirely reduced to pessimism. This is really generative.

Lee Vinsel @leev.bsky.social · last mo.

Some months ago, I began typing an email to my friend historian Richard John and quickly realized I was writing an essay I had wanted to do for years. I published it this morning and call it, "Two Forms of 'Technology' Criticism: Cultural Pessimism Versus Materialism." Link below.