Last week, Lorraine Lim, a Birkbeck colleague and friend, passed away surrounded by her partner and family in Singapore. I can still hardly believe, or accept, that I’m writing these words. And I’m not sure my blog is where I should be writing them. But over the last few days, as I’ve debated this in … Continue Reading
Archives
New academic posts announced at Birkbeck
Today a series of new academic posts at Birkbeck have been advertised, on the Birkbeck jobs website (which is due for an upgrade, don’t be put off!) and elsewhere, such as the Times Higher Education website. These look to be a great set of positions, many focusing on globalisation and the transnational, very apropos of … Continue Reading
New Mediapolis essay: ‘Small-gauge as environmental and ordinary’
Over at the Mediapolis journal, I have published a short essay as part of a roundtable on the emergent notion of ‘small-gauge’ scholarship. The notion of small-gauge was alluded to in the founding mission statement of this new and experimental journal, and has since generated some substantial interest and debates. This roundtable tries to tackle … Continue Reading
The identities and expressions of ‘academic Twitter’: presentation / live streaming
I just caught wind of a very interesting looking presentation taking place 3pm GMT today at the London School of Economics by Bonnie Stewart. Stewart will be discussing “the intersection of Twitter and higher education, and how ‘academic Twitter’ cultivates scholarly identities and forms of expression that differ from conventional institutional practices.” I have pasted … Continue Reading
Good blog post on my BISR seminar
The great interns at BISR have written an excellent post on my seminar on ‘the networked academic’ which I think captures the event really well, in terms of content as well as the audience’s contributions (which I regret not allowing more time for at the end). One small correction – where I was referring to … Continue Reading
BISR seminar on ‘The networked academic’
This Thursday 2nd May from 12.30-2.00pm I will be giving a seminar for the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research (BISR) on ‘The networked academic: social media and your research identity’. It is part of BISR’s ‘Developing Your Research Career’ seminar series, and will comprise both a (partial) survey of various social media platforms currently being … Continue Reading
Social media as academic environments: how we think, do and say
When I first inaugurated this blog, way, way back in the salad days of early 2010, I had a fair range of ideas about why I was doing it. Partly, I thought, it would be a platform on which I could work through ideas, and perhaps tease out conceptual and theoretical questions that I was … Continue Reading
Hobsbawn reflects on his career at Birkbeck
One point of pride for me being based at Birkbeck is that it was the home of renown Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawn for 65 years. Just one month before he passed away, he sat down with David Latchman, the Master of Birkbeck, to discuss the ways in which his research career intersected with the peculiarities … Continue Reading
Two positions on the UGRG
The RGS-IBG‘s Urban Geography Research Group (UGRG) is now in the process of filling two positions on its committee: the Secretary; and the Treasurer. It seems like a long time ago now, but I served five years on the UGRG (2003-08) – technically one year beyond the normal four year term – first as a … Continue Reading
Harman’s politics of particularities?
I am a fairly regular reader of Graham Harman’s blog Object-Oriented Philosophy. Partly, of course, because his philosophy interests me, especially its implications for thinking about media, even though I certainly couldn’t claim to be doing object-oriented media research (there’s a lot of that, e.g. soon-to-be-former Birkbeck student Paul Caplan, and several of the contributions … Continue Reading