Pippa Sterk

zine on growing group care Liliana Bounegru, Pippa Sterk and I recently organised a project on “growing group care”. As part of the project we cocreated a zine with our students - Abi Abosejo, Adja Seck, Cong Fu, Ellie Jennings...

how to support care in group learning? @lboungr.bsky.social @pippasterk.bsky.social and I co-organised a project on “growing group care” and cocreated a zine with our students Abi Abosejo, Adja Seck, cong fu, Ellie Jennings, Kesara Ariyapongpairoj & Louis Saha 🌱✨ jonathangray.org/2025/11/25/g...

Same tactics all the way down:

-complain that there's no evidence base to prescribe young people puberty blockers.

-get puberty blockers banned until evidence is available.

-argue that any puberty blocker study would be inherently unethical.

It's not about 'evidence' and it never was.

It put the burden of proving innocence onto the person who is deemed aberrant, while also making any 'proof' impossible or highly degrading to obtain. It's criminalisation by the back door, for the crime of simply existing in a public space as a member of a marginalised group. Truly ASBOs for terfs.

Gonna need the general public + journos to properly reckon with how much of the social/legal policing of space is done purely on vibes. Invoking a 'common sense' approach to who deserves to be in a space, only serves to reinforce who is thought of as the 'common' body and who is seen as aberrant.

If we want students to make informed decisions, we need to actually INFORM them of the consequences of their decisions and the context in which they make their decisions. Not just go with what's popular and easy now, because the alternative would be too difficult.

Students are understandably confused about what AI is and how they can/can't/should/shouldn't use it. It doesn't help them to tell half the story, give definitions that misrepresent what AI does, and ignore all the inequalities that are fundamental to these technologies.

Nobody can ever give me a good answer to how 'ethical' use of AI takes into account environmental and labour concerns. It's always 'something to consider' but nobody ever genuinely considers it! Nobody is willing to admit that they just don't CARE enough about these concerns to reject convenience.

If you think that extraction is worth the convenience it brings, you can make that decision. Everyone makes these decisions all the time, that's what happens under capitalism. But don't dress it up as 'ethical' use, when it's just a matter of choosing convenience.

Furthermore, these technologies are made by for-profit companies. Striving towards ethical AI use is like striving towards ethical coca cola consumption, or ethical iphone ownership. These are products that are created within systems of EXTRACTION. This extraction has material consequences!

AI doesn't autonomously 'reason' or 'think' or 'make decisions', it responds to input in the way that it is programmed to. Those responses may change over time, or be so complex that it is difficult to trace how and why these changes occur, but they still change through HUMAN decision-making.

one of the most difficult things about teaching in a world of AI is getting students (but also fellow scholars!!) to understand that AI is firstly an entirely poorly-defined 'field', and secondly have profoundly human input in the form of datasets and codes.

Calling a decision 'informed' or 'ethical' doesn't make it so! You have to consider why you are making your decision, what its impact is, and what alternatives exist, AND THEN re-evaluate your decision in light of this information. You can't just do what you wanted to do anyway and call it a day.

It is so frustrating to see so many alleged initiatives for AI 'literacy' / ethical AI use in academia essentially equate to 'the robot is your trusted friend/pet/servant who's here to help you 😀 talk to it, and see what it says 😀'

KCL AI policy defines AI as "any technology or system that can reason and/or adapt, sometimes on its own" which is kind of like saying that airplanes can fly 'on their own' because the pilots are not physically pushing the vehicle forward flintstones-style.

'ESEA' events with only
people from one country / the Sinosphere / East Asia / your buddies / light skinned people / people who were part of the upper class in their home coutries, moved in their 20s, and are now shocked to find that structural oppression exists.... It's embarrassing!!

Nobody is forcing you to call something ESEA when it isn't! If your panel is 5 people from China just say it's about China! If your event presumes that nobody Asian was raised in Europe, don't say it includes the diaspora! Just say what you're actually doing 🙏🏽

This ESEA History Month, let's all do a fun little thing where we're honest and realistic about who events / scholarship / communities are actually for! I know calling something ESEA looks nice on funding applications but some of you are absolutely kidding yourselves

What is desirable about an interaction that you can turn on or off at will, with not long term consequences? What is interesting about an entity that you can continue accessing no matter how badly you treat it? Who will always tell you what you want to hear? Is this not just a desire for control?

People having 'real' connections with AI use does not mean that these connections are healthy or outside of politics. If anything it should cause us to think twice about the way we think about human connections.

'people were truly sad when ChatGPT updated, we need to take this grief seriously'

yeah and I feel uneasy when Sainsbury's changes the layout of the aisles. That doesn't mean the bok choi basket is actually sentient. How I feel about something is unrelated to whether the thing itself has feelings.

When people talk about the 'sentience' of AI, it just sounds to me like they're admitting that they think of other people as controllable entities that they can feed an input in order to gain a predictable output. Real pickup artist mentality, very gross!

Our first podcast - defending the spirit of youth work. Thanks to "It's Just Research" team for lovely conversation on youth work, policy, social haunting, and creative collaborative research.

www.kcl.ac.uk/its-just-res...

@kingsecs.bsky.social @pippasterk.bsky.social @liamciniodwyer.bsky.social

It's Just Research, Season 2 Ep 6: Defending the spirit of youth work In this episode, hosts Sara and Pippa interview Dr Tania de St Croix and Louise Doherty about their research on measuring the impact of youth work.

📢 NEW PODCAST EPISODE 📢

We talk to Dr Tania de St Croix and Louise Doherty about their collaborative research project that sought to address the impact of rising evaluation of youth work and how policy threatens the spirit of youth work.

www.kcl.ac.uk/its-just-res...

Andrion - Queer Ancient Greece and Small Press Publishing #16 Queer Pages · Episode

Queer Pages is back for Pride month!! In this episode we discuss the joys of reading work by independent publishers, through the novella Andrion.

We're getting back on the podcasting horse, so subscribe to hear about new episodes!

@knighterrantpress.bsky.social

open.spotify.com/episode/6iDL...

If you enjoyed my presentation, I literally JUST had an article out about my research with LGBT+ volunteers in Higher Education, and how the rise of academic transphobia lays bare the unjust foundations of Higher Ed altogether

Please have a read here:

www.emerald.com/insight/cont...

Had a great time presenting at the UCU LGBT+ research conference last Friday, catching up with colleagues I hadn't seen in-person for a long time, and meeting new scholars doing LGBT+ related research 🌈 📚

And as educators, is 'realistic' really the best we can do?

Many students are disappointed by fellow coursemates using genAI to write their assignments for them. Many students WANT to learn the skills that genAI supposedly makes redundant. Students WANT to learn how to engage with and create complex texts. Acknowledging this drive is also being 'realistic'.

absolutely wiiiild how often pro-genAI positions within pedagogy are framed as just being 'realistic'. It speaks to such a lack of imagination, trust, and accountability, when it seems a foregone conclusion that students WILL use genAI and there is no way we can put up even the slightest boundary.

Not In Our Name: Feminist Academics and Educators Speak Out Against Transphobia We call on all trans-inclusive feminist academics and educators to sign this statement: ‘Not In Our Name’ We are non-trans feminist academics and educators. We write in support of trans rights, tran...

STATEMENT: 'Not In Our Name: Feminist Academics and Educators Speak Out Against Transphobia'
Read the statement online here: tinyurl.com/mud7va29
Co-sign the statement, fill in this form: forms.gle/oDYgnobrMiSc...