This is a shocking but brilliant original study by Dr Margie Cheesman of how refugee women in Jordan are forced to use blockchain to access aid. With bad results. It raises huge Qs about tech fetishisation and magical thinking - 'conjurings': tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

My new paper lifts the bonnet on humanitarian tech adoption. What happens when an aid organisation experimentally applies a blockchain pilot in refugee camps? I argue this innovation comes with genuine promise, authentic expertise, but also blind faith & strategic ignorance.

New government, new opportunities, means: reading on a Sunday morning.

Iris Marion Young on the #normative potential of #narrative in democratic politics. (Though next subheading suggests some dark clouds)

In our new article for European Journal of Cultural Studies (EJCS) Isaac Hoff and I explore the changing meanings and uses of the term ‘crisis’, from a decisive moment to something more permanent which produces massively unequal impacts. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13…

My coauthor Adam Lerner has another paper out: Cognitive Entanglement and Individual Responsibility for Structural Injustice - how can we disentangle ourselves from institutions to hold them to account? Preprint, coming out in Polity: osf.io/preprints/soca…

Strategic ontologies summit meeting.

New from my colleague Tom FA Watts: Are popular culture stories about #AI useful for how we consider the uses and regulation of AI? Does Tom Cruise help our tech literacy? autonorms.eu/mission-imposs…

Should #Starmer be more like Batman? Can he create a compelling #narrative for the UK public? My 800 words: theconversation.com/starmer-is-the…

I wrote this before considering who'd be Robin. Ideas welcome:

My short film about anxiety and what smartphones do to our memory, perception of our own past, and to how we interact with the world around us has been published by BAFTSS in OpenScreensJournal. It includes a voiceover by the talented Matthew Flacks doi.org/10.16995/OS.97…

I love everything temporality in IR and this is an important contribution but almost all chapter authors are men. It is 2024.

THE #DEADBOT SOCIETY 🙂 AI and the End of the Human Past School of Social & Political Science Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh tinyurl.com/rhp5efke

Do #BokoHaram and journalism gain mutual benefit from spectacular terrorism? New in MWC Journal: Performing terror, communicating fear: Analysing terrorism as performance of violence, by Dr Mercy Ette. Read here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

ICYMI my article on nuclear narratives and Oppenheimer is out now in the September issue of MWC Journal

#softpower An abandoned sports centre that escaped demolition after being turned into a backup #Covid #morgue could be in line for a new role as the UK’s first national skateboarding park. 🛹🏅theguardian.com/sport/article/…

New out: The paradox of international reparations, by Adam Lerner and Pauline Heinrichs. An empirical, archival study of why the reparations process produces unintended effects and doesn't always work. Read here: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

WELCOME TO THE DEADBOT SOCIETY **AI and MEMORY** New Gold Open Access Original Article in Agenda Setting Cambridge Memory, Mind & Media doi.org/10.1017/mem.20…

CfP AI and Memory, in Journal of Memory, Mind & Media Memory, Mind & Media, with first article already out, by Andrew Hoskins. Explore here: cambridge.org/core/journals/…