"What no competent government can deliver is Scandinavian levels of welfare provision sustained on American levels of taxation, with immigration reduced. Yet since [Brexit], this has been the quixotic demand of the UK electorate." Me, on Starmer, Burnham and Brexit: www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/...

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

Who doesn't love a bit of gossip?

#OpenAccess - Ritual, emotion, and change in world politics - https://cup.org/4bpYz8z "we introduce and build on existing scholarship that presents emotions as central to how rituals create a sense of collective unity" - Emma Hutchison & @bleiker.bsky.social #FirstView

The justices that upheld birthright citizenship in 1898 were racist men in a racist era who still could not avoid the plain text of the Constitution. What changed between is that the GOP now sees multiracial democracy as a threat rather than an ideal or aspiration www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

What would Adam Smith say about tech oligarchs, finance bros and the global super rich? On BBC Radio 4 at 9pm tonight, I answer: "break up their monopoly businesses and ban their corrupt rent-seeking." www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Wealth

Can the accumulation of wealth be ethical and what can we learn from Adam Smith's enquiry?

bbc.co.uk

All Souls College, Oxford, is seeking 5 Postdoctoral Research Fellows in - Asian and Middle Eastern Studies - History of Art/History of Music - Law - Life Science - Theoretical Computer Science These are 5-year appointments starting autumn 2027. Deadline: 4 Sep 2026 www.asc.ox.ac.uk/post-doctora...

Thank you so much for the productive conversation! It was a genuine pleasure and privilege speaking with everyone...🙏

BISA - British International Studies Association@mybisa.bsky.social · 2mo ago

📣We are delighted to announce that we have kicked off the annual virtual lecture from @epir-bisa.bsky.social! 👉Today we are joined by Ty Solomon (@glasgow.ac.uk) who will explore the gendered and affective dimensions of the decline of the liberal international order.

🚨🚨 Italo Brandimarte and I have a new article out in International Political Sociology! It is part of the IPS@20 Anniversary Special Issue and is open access at: academic.oup.com/ips/article/.... We call for de-centering the human in temporal world political analysis via 'Deep Global Futures'. ⬇️⬇️

Thank you for the invitation! Looking forward to the conversation...

Emotions in Politics and IR (EPIR) BISA Working Group@epir-bisa.bsky.social · 3mo ago

🚨 ANNUAL LECTURE🚨 👨‍🏫 We are excited to invite you to attend the our annual lecture for 2026: ‘Masculinity, micropolitics, and global (dis)ordering’ By Professor @tsolomon.bsky.social (University of Glasgow) 📆 Thursday, 28th May, 4pm BST (Online) 🔗Register here: www.bisa.ac.uk/members/work...

Completely unsurprising to anyone who's thought about this for even two minutes

Albert Pinto@70sbachchan.bsky.social · 3mo ago

now thats an anecdote with a punch, from Gillian Tett www.ft.com/content/c0ae...

I'll be presenting my ongoing work on security and Existentialism in the Anthropocene at the University of Tübingen next week! 🤗 🎉 Wednesday, 13 May, 4pm CET. Anyone can join - Zoom link below 👇

Next week, my younger brother Craig will attempt a massive physical challenge by climbing 36 Munros (Scottish mountains with a peak over 3,000ft/914m) over 6 days while carrying an additional 36lbs of weight. Why would he do that, you might ask? Good question! Read on...

🎧 Reminder: RIS has a podcast! 🎧 We now have EIGHT episodes of the Review of International Studies podcast - well worth a listen, friends! buff.ly/CJdduct

A brilliant, if sobering, piece from my former Essex sparring partner, Adam Wright. It captures something uncomfortable about UK higher ed over the last decade: those who cared enough to question relentless expansion were often the ones pushed aside for doing it: wonkhe.com/blogs/someth...

Something fierce. What Essex tells us about the fate of the plate glass universities

The plate glass universities were founded on intimacy, radicalism and community. Adam Wright asks whether an obsession with growth has made those promises impossible to keep

wonkhe.com

I gave a campus talk last night on Trump's first 100 days for the WUD Society & Politics group. A student asked me if I thought that, at some point, we might start to describe the US as a competitive authoritarian regime. I said that we were already there, it's just that most folks haven't noticed:

Students: if you really think that generative AI can do things better than you - not just quicker, but better - then why would anyone hire you? It is such a huge gamble to take that these tools will be around in this form in 2, 3, or 4 years and that you will never be in a work situation where you

New paper! academic.oup.com/isagsq/artic... What does “taking back control of borders” feel like when you are the one being bordered?

In the Shadow of the Damoclesian Border

Abstract. In the contemporary international order, control of borders is the central totem of statehood. The call to “take back control” of borders was the

academic.oup.com

It’s a good un

Poem about ‘relentlessness of the news cycle’ wins National Poetry Competition

Judges praised the ‘emotional stakes’ of Partridge Boswell’s poem The Gathering, which took the £5,000 top prize

theguardian.com

The Poetry Society@poetrysociety.org.uk · 4mo ago

Partridge Boswell is the first prize winner of the National Poetry Competition 2025 for 'The Gathering'.

It is really unbelievable in the literal sense.

Phillips OBrien@phillipspobrien.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Watching Trump teeter on the edge of blowing up the world economy because of a combination of hubris, strategic incoherence, mendacity and outright stupidity, might be the most extraordinarily depressing thing I have observed in my entire life, or read about in any other period.

Thank you @hist-isanet.bsky.social! 🙏 @harokarkour.bsky.social and my paper on racial justice and the national interest in classical #realism won the Merze Tate Prize for the Best Article in Historical IR @sussexfss.bsky.social Find the article here (OA) 👇 academic.oup.com/isr/article/...

Toward IR’s “Fifth Debate”: Racial Justice and the National Interest in Classical Realism

Abstract. This article addresses growing calls for a fifth debate on international relations’ (IR) “race amnesia.” The central argument is two-fold. First,

academic.oup.com

Historical IR Section (ISA)@hist-isanet.bsky.social · 5mo ago

🏅 Merze Tate Prize for Best Article in Historical International Relations Committee: Justin Rosenberg (Chair), Jaakko Heiskanen, Andrea Paras The award goes to ... 🥁 Haro Karkour and Felix Rösch (2024) "Towards IR’s “Fifth Debate”: Racial Justice and the National Interest in Classical Realism"

We are living through an era of imperial polycrisis much like the one Smith tried to make sense of. Here at @uofgsocsci.bsky.social, our program of conferences, exhibits and interactive experiences on “The World in 1776/2026” begins in June: www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/briti...

The World in 1776/2026: The Wealth of Nations at 250

This conference examines the continuing relevance of The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, highlighting how his Enlightenment ideas about freedom, empire, and political economy shaped modern debates on...

thebritishacademy.ac.uk

250 years ago today, Adam Smith published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Contrary to popular belief, it is not a proto-libertarian paean to free markets, but a blistering critique of vested interests, corporate power and the British Empire. Some favorite bits:

Fascinating, and sobering, exploration of how most of us no longer see the stars, and why that matters for how we see ourselves... www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03...

Stars are disappearing before our eyes — and something in us is shifting

For most of human history, the night sky has been a shared inheritance, a source of wonder. Now, more than a billion children see barely any stars in the night sky above their homes. So what does that...

abc.net.au

📚Book promotion day 📚 Here is a 30% discount code for my book AND the first chapter is ungated to read for free.

🚨🚨 The launch of Military Victory Beyond the Battlefield: Outside Wartime will be on 3 March 2026, 5.15pm @qmulsse.bsky.social Chuffed to be joined by Aggie Hirst, Paul Higate, Kim Hutchings, @therealisthom.bsky.social, and @debbielisle.bsky.social. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/book-launc...

Just got my grubby hands on a hard copy of this gorgeous book, in which I'm grateful to have a chapter. Kudos and thanks again to @simonkoschut.bsky.social and @andrewagross.bsky.social for corralling us together to accomplish this!

2025 was a terrible, depressingly relevant year to be a scholar of technology and corporate power. Some of us tried to make sense of WTF happened here (free to read): doi.org/10.1017/S026...

Farewell The Hayseed Scholar podcast has come to a close. In this farewell episode, Brent's brother Kyle hosts it and they chat about the podcast and why Brent is closing it down. Two friends of the pod, Matt McDonald and Jelena Subotic, also join to mention what they liked and what they…

Farewell

The Hayseed Scholar podcast has come to a close. In this farewell episode, Brent's brother Kyle hosts it and they chat about the podcast and why Brent is closing it down. Two friends of the pod, Matt McDonald and Jelena Subotic, also join to mention what they liked and what they (Jelena) did not like about the podcast. Brent closes by asking Kyle, who is a LinkedIn rockstar, about the changing landscape of social media and reaching beyond an academic audience, before the two of them sign-off for good.

duckofminerva.com