Francesca Soliman

Our social sciences and criminology colleagues are ready to welcome prospective students at Edinburgh Napier University's Open Day 2025. Come see us at Sighthill Campus between 10am and 3pm #MustBeNapier

A beautiful black and white cat sleeping curled up on a grey blanket, while a webcam watches him from a nearby desk.

Thank you Andy, Bob was such a valued member of our family, but also had so many friends and fans. Looking through old photos I found this memory from lockdown, when I would set up a webcam for him so he could join our daily PhD writing retreats and bring his trademark aura of calm to the community.

A beautiful black and white cat lying on a red blanket and resting his head on the arm of a person who is trying to type on a laptop

An absolutely stunning black and white cat lies belly up with his eyes closed on a wooden table, soaking up the sunlight

A gorgeous black and white cat is lying on a person's lap and meowing while looking at the camera

Grateful also to panel chair @vcanning.bsky.social who kindly let me present and answer questions first, so I could run off to call home while my beloved cat was put to sleep. Bob was 19 and chronically ill, but we were still unprepared for his sudden loss. Always loved, forever missed.

A woman standing in front of a screen showing a presentation titled "Decriminalising terror: for a zemiology of counterterrorism".

Another excellent @europeangroup.bsky.social conference this year in Malmö: programme packed with critical and radical voices and clear commitment in support of Palestine. Grateful for the kind and attentive audience listening to my and @dinesson.bsky.social's paper on zemiology of counterterrorism

Our colleague Dr @kir-anderson.bsky.social was discussing her recent book "The Barlinnie Special Unit: Art, Punishment and Innovation", the first detailed analysis of a unique time in the history of Scottish prisons. The book is available here: www.watersidepress.co.uk/books/barlin... #EdBookFest

Packed room for the "Unlocking the arts" event at the Edinburgh Book Festival this afternoon, with the wonderful Kirstin Anderson and Lady Unchained discussing art, incarceration, and how to think of possible ways forward to both mitigate and prevent the harms of criminalisation.

My brilliant colleagues' recent funding successes have opened up 2 fixed term positions in our criminology team at @edinburghnapier.bsky.social; if you are an early career researcher, or you are finishing up/just out of a PhD, we would love to hear from you.

You can't swing a cat in Napier's crim team's offices without hitting a successful colleague in the face, and I am beyond delighted to see the latest success of all-round excellent human being @kir-anderson.bsky.social, I can think of no better person to conduct this important project.

A much needed (and excellently timed) resource produced by my esteemed @edinburghnapier.bsky.social colleagues, looking forward to taking my students through this work. This really couldn't have been written by more diligent hands, absolutely delighted to see it out into the world ⚖️ 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

And of course, great to see that "Decriminalising terror: for a zemiology of counterterrorism" by @dinesson.bsky.social and myself is settled in its new home: bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/view/journal...

I really love this journal, yet another incredible issue featuring cutting edge critical and radical scholarship, and a great bonus is that so many articles are open/full access. Looking forward to sinking my teeth into this one.

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

Against the Latin American Current? Decarceration in Chile While Latin America has seen a significant rise in incarceration rates over the last 30 years, Chile has experienced a 33% drop. Why?

June 25, 4pm BST (UTC+1), online

Against the Latin American Current? Decarceration in Chile

Javier Wilenmann, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile

From @thesccjr.bsky.social

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/against-th...

#Penology #Criminology #Chile

...found it useful to "practice" this kind of F2F interaction before they find themselves in their first job interview(s). Changing assessments takes time and lots of thought, particularly about what the assessment is actually for, but given current HE challenges it's a conversation worth having.

It's a work in progress, but I had the chance to co-design the assessments with students (particularly those with disabilities/learning difficulties) and that has really helped make the assessment less burdensome for students and reduce anxiety; fourth year students in particular have...

That is very true, not every assessment format will fit every student. My assessments now have a written component, a dialogical component, and a Q&A: this means students are not just expected to jump into the unknown on the day of the assessment, but can rely first on some pre-prepared material;

I have switched to oral assessments over the past year and found they are no more time consuming than marking; in fact, they are often much faster, especially when genAI use (or even "traditional" plagiarism) is suspected. In addition, they allow students to better articulate their learning.

"Kirstin Anderson opened by pulling no punches". I have zero trouble believing that! As always, here's @kir-anderson.bsky.social taking hard questions head on and leading exactly the kind of conversation we should be having about prisons: about social harms, academic pavidity, and lessons unlearned.

This past year it has felt particularly important to connect with all my students individually, and work my hardest to help them bring their experiences and understanding of the world into the classroom. I am truly SO thankful for this "Best Lecturer" nomination, perhaps I might be onto something.

Please do consider signing the petition and forwarding this message @bschcnetwork.bsky.social @europeangroup.bsky.social @iliadou.bsky.social @frasoliman.bsky.social @mfbosworth.bsky.social @inquest-org.bsky.social @debcoles13.bsky.social

The petition to #FreeFatou is here - please sign if you can 👇🏽https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-deportation-of-our-sister-fatou-her-life-is-in-danger-if-she-is-deported

"The term is being misused" the term is being used exactly as intended.

"The law is being misused" this is the point of the law.

Great to see a shout out to #Zemiology, key to understanding the full impact of technology abuse.

Did you know? We now offer 3 #masters degrees as part of our subject area's masters suite: in criminology, in joint criminology and forensic psychology, and in social research. All 3 programmes focus on applied learning and offer an optional work placement 💼

Check out the information below 👇

@ologies.bsky.social would be my top suggestion

Utterly delighted to see this MSc out in the world after so much hard work went into its design. Come study #criminology (and #zemiology) with us at @edinburghnapier.bsky.social, you couldn't find a better team than the outstanding scholars and educators I have the pleasure of calling my colleagues

Excited to give a SASO guest lecture on the Barlinnie Special Unit tomorrow evening, 4 March 2025, at the Edinburgh Sheriff Court, 17:30, free, open to all interested and no registration needed @socscinapier.bsky.social www.sastudyoffending.org.uk/attachments/...

The She Made Him Do It Theory of Everything The rhetoric and logic of the abuse of power operates similarly at all scales, which is why I've found feminism such useful equipment for understanding authoritarians in public and political life. Bec...

These stories amount to "the left was so annoying about pronouns or liberals made people feel so guilty about plastic straws they had no choice but to get on board with the second coming of the Third Reich and the destruction of the planet."

Zombie criminology and disciplinary maintenance: How living-dead explanations that eat your brain, preserve the criminological status quo, and shape the criminological paradigm This manuscript introduces zombie criminology (ZC). ZC draws upon zombie arguments made in other disciplines (e.g. physics), and makes reference to historical/cultural meanings associated with zomb...

Unlike the author I think research on the aetiology of crime should be abandoned altogether, but the questions raised in this enjoyable article are pertinent: why do we teach and legitimise causal claims we know to be rubbish, perpetuating criminological myth?
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Can't claim credit for this as @kir-anderson.bsky.social did the organising and I did the tagging along, but it was interesting to see what students made of the process (especially those who remembered me saying in class "when you want to bury an issue and avoid accountability, launch an inquiry")