Dr Nicola Sugden

Couldn't help quoting Charles West: "bear in mind that the heart may break, or the reason fail, under causes that seem to us quite insufficient; the griefs of childhood may be, in proportion to the child’s power of bearing them, as overwhelming as those which break the strong man down."

‘A Category for the Not-Yet-Known’: How Rheumatism Made Room for Winnicott’s Child Psychoanalysis Summary. Influential psychoanalyst and children’s doctor Donald Woods Winnicott (1896–1971) began his career in children’s hospitals and continued to work

"‘A Category for the Not-Yet-Known’: How Rheumatism Made Room for Winnicott’s Child Psychoanalysis'" is out now in Social History of Medicine: doi.org/10.1093/shm/.... First drafted as part of a PhD chapter c.8 years ago. It's never too late!

There's still time to submit to the our panel 'Caring for the Possible: In the Meantime of Healthcare’s Data-Driven Futures' at @easst.bsky.social 2026! (Extended CFP closes 9th March)

Technology and risk in healthcare’s move to digital: Five lessons from the history of technology and STS dare.ed.ac.uk/blog/2026/te...

Theorising the data-care-learning nexus, with a little help from celestial mechanics: dare.ed.ac.uk/blog/2026/da...

Our Zine About ICE Surveillance Is Here Download a PDF of our first ever zine here.

New: our zine about ICE surveillance is here! People who bought a custom printed copy will get in the mail soon. We're also releasing the PDF for free for anyone to download. Also releasing a version in Spanish so more people can read about the tech ICE is using. Get here: www.404media.co/icezine/

Here is the User Guide for ELITE, the Tool Palantir Made for ICE 404 Media is publishing a version of the user guide for ELITE, which lets ICE bring up dossiers on individual people and provides a “confidence score” of their address.

New from 404 Media: here is the user guide for ELITE, the tool Palantir made for ICE. A map shows people on a map; ICE clicks them, brings up their dossier. ICE uses to find which neighborhoods to target. We obtained it, you can now read the document for yourself: www.404media.co/here-is-the-...

ICE and Palantir: US agents using health data to hunt illegal immigrants US immigration agents are using an app developed by Palantir that draws on the health records of millions of Americans to find and detain illegal immigrants. The revelation comes as the US’s Immigrat...

This is worth paying attention to particularly for those who have concerns about Palantir's involvement in NHS data.... www.bmj.com/content/392/...

What happens to the promissory utopias of data-driven healthcare “in the meantime”? Join our panel at @easst.bsky.social 2026 to discuss 'Caring for the Possible: In the Meantime of Healthcare’s Data-Driven Futures': dare.ed.ac.uk/events/2025/...

Introducing ChatGPT Health A dedicated experience in ChatGPT designed for health and wellness.

thanks i hate it
openai.com/index/introd...

Societies & groups for historians, UK and Ireland Join the conversation

If you're looking for #history networks on BlueSky in 2026, our Starter Pack - recently updated - has details of 150 leading societies, organisations and groups active in the UK and Ireland bit.ly/4ptl0On

#Skystorians

You can find a précis of my talk on AI chatbots and mental health crisis in the DARE team's blog post about our recent @aies-edinburgh.bsky.social seminar: dare.ed.ac.uk/blog/2025/da...

I'll be sharing some thoughts on chatbots, therapy, and the mental health crisis next week:

I think I can send a chapter over! What are you looking for? (I just happened to be opening DiscoverEd for something else when this appeared at the top of my feed ^_^)

Autism ableism seen through research abstract contents: A mixed-methods analysis of language in NIH-funded genetic and genomic autism research

The absurdity card Fifteen years ago, a new incoming government swept away a policy its immediate predecessors had been pushing since shortly after the 2001 9/11 attacks: identity

netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/09/26/t... great overview of the history and evidence on ID cards by Wendy

2/ In 2001, Borsook said tech "libertarianism" reflected an adolescent mindset, with a craving for unchecked independence & resistance to constraint.

She warned that tech libertarians wanted an anti-human world that worked more like a computer. From "Cyberselfish," a book based on her 90s writing:

In case you were wondering, two of the thirteen projects funded by the NIH's $50m Autism Data Science Initiative (ADSI) talk about prevention in their project abstracts: dpcpsi.nih.gov/autism-data-...

My reflection on our paper: we don't know to what extent this is what researchers really believe about autism, or whether they feel they have to 'hype up' their work in order to get funding. Either way, ableist ideas should have no place in research.

Autism ableism seen through research abstract contents: A mixed-methods analysis of language in NIH-funded genetic and genomic autism research - Nicola Sugden, Lily S Barna, Kaylee Foor, John Kee, Chr... In recent years, genetic and genomic autism research has come under increasing scrutiny, moving to the center of debates about ableism, neurodiversity, autism a...

We also tentatively identified some concerning themes across the sample, with researchers describing autism as 'disastrous' and something that needs to be prevented: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Autism ableism seen through research abstract contents: A mixed-methods analysis of language in NIH-funded genetic and genomic autism research - Nicola Sugden, Lily S Barna, Kaylee Foor, John Kee, Chr... In recent years, genetic and genomic autism research has come under increasing scrutiny, moving to the center of debates about ableism, neurodiversity, autism a...

How do genetics and genomics researchers write about autism? Well... When we looked at abstracts for NIH-funded research and we found potentially ableist discourse and language to be ubiquitous: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

“Universities are in crisis and this inquiry couldn’t come soon enough.” @drjogrady.bsky.social

After sustained pressure from UCU, The Education Committee has launched an inquiry into university finances.

We’ll be submitting evidence. Full statement here: www.ucu.org.uk/article/1405...

Employment Tribunal rejects claims University and College Union discriminated against members on grounds of their gender critical beliefs The University and College Union has successfully defended claims against it in an Employment Tribunal from two UCU members who claim they had been discriminated against and harassed by the union beca...

Our branch stands firmly for trans inclusion and trans equality, and will not cease in protesting against discriminatory and inflammatory claims about trans people!

www.ucu.org.uk/article/1404...

The Pathways to Work Green Paper sets out plans to cut billions from health and disability benefits.

Instead of getting people into work, these cuts will push hundreds of thousands into poverty.

Our new report looks at the impact of cuts to PIP, UC health & scrapping the WCA (🧵)

Survey-based analysis of a science of science communication scientific interest group: member feedback and perspectives on science communication Coordinated attempts to promote systematic approaches to the design and evaluation of science communication efforts have generally lagged behind the proliferation and diversification of those efforts....

Excited to see the EMU’s work published yesterday in @jscicom.bsky.social! We studied the science communication (scicomm) landscape at NIH (obviously pre-2025). jcom.sissa.it/article/pubi... Congrats to AJ Hilliard, @nicolasugden.bsky.social, and Kristin Bass for their work on this.

So you think you know Roger Penrose? Be prepared to be shocked – Physics World Chanda Prescod-Weinstein reviews The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius by Patchen Barss

Honestly, this book broke my brain a little and my heart big time. physicsworld.com/a/so-you-thi...

#DataStudies and #HistTech folks! Check out @0404am.bsky.social's forthcoming workshop 'A Social Science of Databases: Building Metaphysical Machines' dare.ed.ac.uk/events/2025/...

There were times when I was frustrated at how slow and difficult the work felt. Now I'm seeing how easy it is to tear things down.

NHGRI Fires Dozens of Employees, Puts Acting Director Vence Bonham on Administrative Leave Employees of at least four branches of the National Human Genome Research Institute received layoff notices on Tuesday morning.

Most of the people I worked with in my 1st postdoc just got fired. They worked to promote public understanding of genetics and genomics and to make research and its benefits more relevant and equitable. For reasons why that work is important, see: modern history. www.genomeweb.com/policy-legis...

A Trumpian approach to sex and gender data The UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has published a Review of Data, Statistics and Research on Sex and Gender, a hangover from the former Tory government’s mission to add…

Some longer thoughts on the Review of Data, Statistics and Research on Sex and Gender 📝 kevinguyan.com/2025/03/19/a...