Liam Stanley

crazy to me that no one at youtube or google is ever even, like, asked about this stuff anymore, let alone pushed to take responsibility. regardless of whether a PRMC/moral majority-type campaign would be a good idea, is the respectable center really so anemic/captured that it won't even try?

Fun & Games: Call for Papers for a special issue of New Formations Fun and Games  Call for papers for a special issue of New Formation: a Journal of Culture / Theory / Politics ( New Formations is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal that has been publ…

Fun and Games - call for papers for a special issue of @newformations.bsky.social on games, gamification, game culture etc: jeremygilbertwriting.wordpress.com/2026/02/17/f...

The Berkeley School: Critical Theory, Political Economy, and the Future of Intellectual History by Jonathon Catlin This essay is part of a JHI Blog forum: “The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History.”

This is a very illuminating essay on the intellectual genesis of Samuel Moyn's particular liberal anti-liberalism

www.jhiblog.org/2026/02/16/t...

The wonderful @maltelaub.bsky.social and I are hosting a workshop on the theme of Austerity Militarism at EWIS 2026 in Izmir! If you are working on these themes then please consider submitting an abstract! We'd love to see you there.

The link to submit is here: eisa-net.org/ewis-2026/ab...

The UK student loan system — and its danger for Labour Growing anger among millions of graduates who face decades of debt is causing unease in Westminster

“I graduated with £42,000 of debt and even though I’m paying it off, it’s now £72,000.”

It's truly an abomination: On a normal job you keep paying forever. 40 years!

“Why would I trust a government that mis-sold me a loan when I was a child?” is a very good question.
www.ft.com/content/7bf5...

I've written an essay on the politics of neurodiversity, drawing on the vital books by @drrobertchapman.bsky.social and @dr-nicky.bsky.social. I hope it will serve as a primer for anyone new to the topic (and maybe prompt questions for those who know it well)

journals.lwbooks.co.uk/newformation...

Super interesting reading, drawing on the work of @drrobertchapman.bsky.social and @dr-nicky.bsky.social

Neurodiversity Politics
By Liam Stanley
liamstanley.blog/2026/02/04/n...

Good essay by @liamstanley.bsky.social, exploring the evolution & political aspects of #neurodiversity theory through an analysis of my work & the work of @drrobertchapman.bsky.social.

Unpaywalled version available here:
liamstanley.blog/2026/02/04/n...

#neurodivergence #neuroqueer #consciousness

A wonderful review essay by @liamstanley.bsky.social that we recently published in @newformations.bsky.social

This is really good, I'm equally worried about the pushback and stigmatising of anti disability sentiments coming out daily in news. ⬇️

An ungated version of the essay is available here: liamstanley.blog/2026/02/04/n...

I've written an essay on the politics of neurodiversity, drawing on the vital books by @drrobertchapman.bsky.social and @dr-nicky.bsky.social. I hope it will serve as a primer for anyone new to the topic (and maybe prompt questions for those who know it well)

journals.lwbooks.co.uk/newformation...

‘If I think about what this means, I want to cry’: what happens when a city loses its university? When Essex University’s Southend campus opened, it was a message of hope for a ‘left behind’ UK seaside town. Its closure will be felt far beyond its 800 students, some of whom will not get their degr...

A sad story that is unfortunately likely to recur, possibly many times, in the year ahead

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Chartbook 432 "Writing column. Talking w peril" - polycrisis or stroke? Why do people, more specifically, rich, famous and powerful men, do the things they do?

Tooze's latest Chartbook on Epstein, Summers, the crisis of liberalism is extraordinary. Don't miss it. adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-...

Who leaked this Number 10 discussion to Jeffrey Epstein? And are there consequences for the leaker?

It’s an internal discussion re. getting markets moving in the aftermath of the financial crisis. No doubt of great interest to Epstein and his financial market clients.

Now available for pre-order and we're open for book talks to students, workshops and conferences, organisations etc.
press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

The dilemma a place like UCL faces is that it can open a new MA and the following year it will have 50 students, mostly paying ~£20k a year. There is no incentive not to do it, and the ‘student experience’ in many cases is appalling.

In discussions of "weaponised interdependence", higher education obviously isn't the biggest issue. Yet through a potential exit power, China basically has the capacity to cause a serious crisis (or worse) in UK HE.

Matt Goodwin? The columnist for the magazine available only in departure lounges for private jets?

This is a really useful article for anyone researching British capitalism, especially on the intellectual currents and political contexts of Starmer's political economy.

Agentic AI and Social Science Research Practice Generative AI that follows rules to produce executable statistical code will change social science research practice, for the better and for the worse.

Reading quant social scientists on Claude Code is fascinating. It seems like a crisis is coming to that world, whether that's a crisis of overproduction (of potentially comic proportions) or a crisis of skills devaluation. Or both.

tompepinsky.substack.com/p/agentic-ai...

The Chinese restaurants surrounding our most sensitive military bases The Daily Mail can reveal a bizarre anomaly in the distribution of Chinese restaurants across the country.

how advanced is your nation's sinophobia? very? extremely? you are like baby, we are inventing sinophobia the likes of which cannot be dreamt of

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...

Out now!

I've edited a special issue of New Political Economy on 'Centring exploitation in global political economy'.

Link to the intro:
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Other articles (all brilliant!) and a short summary 👇

1/

In the Land of the Data Blind, by Jason Blakely Why political science can’t grasp Trumpism

I'm a bit late to the game on this, but this is exacting overview of the problems with US-style political science is compelling and well-worth reading. But rather than a lack of interpretation, I'd say the major issue is a lack of history (or historicism).

harpers.org/archive/2026...

When U.S. President Donald Trump first ordered strikes on Venezuelan ships in September, it was purportedly to intercept drug traffickers. Three months later everyone, including the president himself, acknowledges the role Venezuela’s oil and its fraught relationship with U.S. oil companies over the years plays in the United States’ invasion of the country. But Drilled reporting shows that U.S. oil majors don’t necessarily want back into Venezuela’s declining and decrepit oil fields so much as they are eager to protect their interests in neighboring Guyana, home to one of the world’s most productive oil fields, which Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro has aggressively been trying to claim as his own over the past decade.

I found this article very illuminating on the resource geopolitics underpinning the Venezuela crisis

drilled.media/news/guyana-...

👏 2025 Outstanding Reviewer Prize Winners

• Naomi Head: University of Glasgow (UK)
• Niels Spierings: Radboud University Nijmegen (Netherlands)
• Liam Stanley: University of Sheffield (UK)
• Sabine Volk: University of Tübingen (Germany)

This is by some distance the best thing out there on this subject

This book is now out: www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?b.... A successor to the very much liked book of the same name edited by Andrew Leftwich. very pleased to be in the new one, edited by Colin Hay, with a chapter on 'politics as crisis management'.

The Trump Supremacy Opponents in disarray, allies in line, followers enthralled — the US president is already on his way to building a new world order

It’s now clear that there is no going back to “normal” democracy in the US. Even a post-MAGA democratic restoration will likely need a protracted and toxic process analogous with post-WWII denazification

on.ft.com/49pPufE

A thread of inspirational quotes from two of my idols: Kemi Badenoch and Ange Postecoglou

(uh-oh, I may have gotten some mixed up... or have I??)

🧵