Drops today: this week's ARB @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social podcast features Rian Thum, author of “Islamic China: An Asian History” @harvardpress.bsky.social asianreviewofbooks.com/podcast-with...
We miss you too! All the very best with your campaign.
I put on my lawyer hat for this piece on time limits under Indian citizenship legislation, and ongoing constitutional challenges in the Indian Supreme Court for Statelessness and Citizenship Review:
statelessnessandcitizenshipreview.com/index.php/jo...
Mike is a former colleague and will be an amazing councillor. This is very exciting!
A square image with a pink background. The logo for Democracy Classroom is in the bottom right-hand corner. In the bottom left is the title "A roadmap to votes at 16". From the title is a snaking path which has groups of cartoon people clustered along it. Some groups are holding discussions; one is in a classroom; one is on a protest; and the final is queuing at a polling booth.
Another pink square with the democracy classroom logo. There is a large block of text which says "Launching the roadmap to votes at 16, a shared vision to support young people to engage in democracy". There is a smaller cartoon image of two women helping each other carry a large object up a flight of stairs.
🚨 Launching: A Roadmap to Votes at 16 🚨
Kaat Smets and @jamessloam.bsky.social contributed to A Roadmap to Votes at 16 🗳️ - a report co-created with organisations, teachers, youth workers and young people to make Votes at 16 a success.
👉 Read the full report: docsend.com/view/9nnhamt...
In recent years, Jinal Parekh and @antaradatta.bsky.social have published on aspects of the ‘virginity testing’ practice that had not been studied explored yet. For example, they wrote about the Indian response in this article for @globalhistjnl.bsky.social
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Shame on all those news channel that would quote the death tolls with the caveat: ‘according to the Hamas controlled Gaza Health Ministry’ to cast doubt.
The teenager who once asked me if I had ‘ever heard of a cricketer called Rahul Dravid’ has also just asked me if I’d heard of the Weimar Republic…?!
A colleague introduced me to Gill Sans MT and now it’s my default font on Word. I think it’s both pretty and readable.
Like with everything else it sort of depends on the baby. One of mine would have loved it, the other would have hated it.
After my time. My friends have sworn by it. And in the newborn phase it has helped them a lot. It is also mega bucks so…(my most expensive purchase was my lightweight Bugaboo and frankly we used it every single day for both kids…).
This is the saddest day of my professional life. Today is not only the final recording of the latest series of The Infinite Monkey Cage, it is my last ever Monkey Cage. I never thought that I would have to leave the show. I always imagined going on until | dropped dead under the studio lights due to a brain aneurysm caused by my final attempt to understand notions of quantum gravity or the shock of being told about fly maggot infestations in the sacks of macaque monkeys. I resigned in September, after sixteen years of dedication to the show, A show that I named and helped develop over all those years. Unfortunately, my opinions outside the BBC have been considered problematic for sometime, whether it has been voicing support for the trans community, criticism of Donald Trump, numerous other outlandish opinions, including once gently criticising Stephen Fry. These things were considered to conflict with being a freelance BBC science presenter
In a recent meeting where BBC Studio executives again voiced problems with me, I realised my choices. Obedience and being quieter to remain making Monkey Cage, or 'Resign and have the freedom to speak out against what I believe are injustices'. • I chose the latter. It broke my heart. I love this show and I love the audience, and it is because of the audience in particular, that this decision was so difficult to make. I kept thinking about all the extremist voices promoting hate and division. They are being given so many platforms, while voices that represent kindness, open mindedness, empathy seem to be scarcer and scarcer. I felt I couldn't pamper myself with the luxury of silence. One of my many privileges is that I am able to resign and I can speak out even if it is to the detriment of my career.
I have thought a lot about my heroes, Sinead O Connor, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and so many more. I think of Sinead's words, "the job of an artist is to be themselves at any cost". James Baldwin said prejudice was really just a word for cowardice. Audre Lorde, viewing her life, wrote that her only regrets were her silences. I think of my father as I resign, he brought me up to believe in fairness , justice and kindness. Though my heart is broken, it is also full of fire. I apologise to our incredible listeners for my departure, your love of the show means a great deal. I am so sorry to let you down. I hope that you can understand my reasoning. I have to accept that I am not what the current BBC expects of their freelance presenters.
Despite this I should add that I have always worked far more than my contracted hours to try and ensure the show was always the best it could be, as well as making myself accessible and responsive to the audience wherever and whenever I met them. Every night, we have recorded, I have been filled with determination to make the best show possible. This was not "just a job" I hope that with my departure I can be a better ally to the LGBTQ community, to the neurodivergent community, to activists fighting against those who aim to brutalise society, to those currently in prison on hunger strike, and to all those who fight for a more inclusive world. From many conversations, I know there are many Monkey Cage listeners who support these communities and activists too. The strawberry is dead. Long live the strawberry. B
Very sad that I felt I had no choice but to resign from The Infinite Monkey Cage - a victory for the transphobes and other bigots - I did it because so much of the media has chosen to believe the kind and empathetic people are a fiction - they are real and so often unrepresented.
If handing someone their arse, was a video clip
Excited our department seminar tomorrow is @duncanbell.bsky.social on #Socialism and #Telepathy: Group Minds and Freedom in Interwar British Political Thought. The talk takes place 1-2pm in McCrea 2-01, all welcome.
Apparently my copy is on the way! Congratulations @kalathmika.bsky.social!
In NICUs we generally don’t stay overnight. We could visit any time we wanted though in the two hospitals we were in. Funnily enough he’s now 8 (and absolutely fine- all hail modern medicine) and still hates bed sharing…🤣
You have to stay and sleep with your child in the general paeds wards and despite the generally excellent care, it is usually hell. (Not to mention that you have a sick child…).
Yes so again pumps are available but we often have to rent hospital grade ones (I did). And yes there are chairs but sitting in those for hours is impossible. I’ll be honest and say I have found the NICUs to be relatively better equipped than the paeds wards.
As a former NICU mum of a 26 weeker, a lot of the money we raise provides for what I suppose are deemed extras- incubator blankets, parents’ coffee rooms, nicer reclining chairs for breastfeeding etc.
New on advance access: "Air Travel, Statelessness, and the Rights Claims of Ugandan Asians, c.1973"
by @riakapoor.bsky.social (@qmul.bsky.social)
#OpenAccess
doi.org/10.1093/past...
And also helped me think through something I am writing about repatriation at the end of WW2 and thinking through the state’s intransigence versus the refugees’ creative use of their circumstances.
I read it yesterday and really enjoyed it. Particularly the contrast between the state’s pejorative view of queue jumpers and ‘shuttlecocking’ versus how the displaced saw these as opportunities.
UK universities claim to be reckoning with their imperial and colonial pasts, but refuse to see their implication in the genocidal settler colonialism of the present – so how serious are these exercises? wrote about this for @versobooks.bsky.social blog
www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/...
🚨Hiring a fully funded (3.5 years) PhD for the @ldnsocmedobs.bsky.social to research social media and politics. Candidates should have quantitative/computational skills and/or be interested in content curation/moderation. UK home candidates only unfortunately. www.royalholloway.ac.uk/media/hquftp...
A superb special issue on caste and Indian diplomacy. Well done @kalathmika.bsky.social and the other editors! brill.com/view/journal...
I have. I did a single seminar for PhD students. For organisation I showed them what my practice was in a very granular step by step way. And took suggestions from them (younger, technically more competent?) about what I could do better. Or how they would improve my practice.
Congratulations to my lovely colleague Andreu @andreucasas.bsky.social on his fellowship- keep an eye on all the stuff he’s going to be doing!
‘The conditions in the hotels are very bad: most residents share rooms with complete strangers, have no laundry or cooking facilities, no choice about when or what they eat, with any visits strictly policed by security.’
Helen Charman on ‘our girls’ vs asylum hotels: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/se...
Come to our lovely campus to hear about how @danielalai.bsky.social, Will Jones, Ibrahim Halawi and Mohammad Kalantari and I have been re-designing our ‘intro to IR’ class over the last five years.
I once got asked for it by an officious bus driver when my younger one wasn’t even six. She kept saying: how do I know he isn’t 11? Because he’s half the size of his brother who is 10????! But to be fair that was the only time…
