Nicholas Loubere

A graphic advertising a collection of commentaries in Area on the topic of 'Open Access Book Publishing: A Forum for Debate' with contributions from Andrea E. Pia, Clancy Wilmott, Frank Houghton, Gerda Wielander, Jenny Lunn, Julie Cupples, Kate Lajtha, Matthew Gandy, Nicholas Loubere & Simon P.J. Batterbury. These names appear as a list on the pages of an open book with a black background and the Area and Royal Geographical Society logos at the top.

Discussion forum in Area:

'Open access book publishing: A forum for debate'

Read 5 responses to Matthew Gandy's 2023 commentary on OA book publishing and the neoliberal academy, with a further reflection by Gandy on the issue two years on ⬇️

rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1...

Google’s AI Is Destroying Search, the Internet, and Your Brain Google’s AI Overview, which is easy to fool into stating nonsense as fact, is stopping people from finding and supporting small businesses and credible sources.

Google's AI summaries are
- killing traffic to legitimate sites
- producing summaries that can be wrong
- in the long run probably making you a dumbass

www.404media.co/googles-ai-i...

This week it will be mine!!! 😂

The latest issue of the @madeinchinajournal.com is out. As always, fully open access. Read and share widely, there are fantastic pieces in here.

We have met regularly since 2023, but we finally are also visibile on the web! We are a group of @lund-university.bsky.social researchers focusing on extractivism. Keep an eye on the webpage for future events! www.keg.lu.se/en/research/...

The new issue of GCP is out! How is Mandarin evolving in a changing world? Our contributors explore its transformation at China’s frontiers and beyond—where state control meets public innovation, and global encounters spark new hybrids. Download for free at globalchinapulse.net/global-china...

From the 19th-century gold rushes to the current scramble for lithium, Chinese labour and capital have been key to the making of the global capitalist system.

Join us in Lund from 16-19 June for the 2025 Global China Summer School. Deadline 14 March, apply here: www.ace.lu.se/article/glob...

Check out this online open lecture by Lizhi Liu as part of the Perspective Asia Lecture Series here at Lund University. It's open to all, just register at the link.

www.ace.lu.se/calendar/cli...

Approaches, Methods, and Challenges in Chinese Studies This module offers some perspectives on the challenges of doing research in and on China these days, specifically the ways in which various authors have grappled with the ethical and epistemic dimensi...

Our new module is up! In it, we offer some perspectives on the challenges of doing research in and on China these days, specifically the ways in which various authors have grappled with the ethical and epistemic dimensions of studying China.

The latest issue of Global China Pulse is out! This one delves deep into the online scam industry, and the human trafficking and cyber slavery that accompanies it. As always, it is fully Open Access and free to download. globalchinapulse.net/global-china...

a very klingon festivus

Excellent essay. Data loss is a real concern also for China scholars, incredibly rich sources from the late 1990s, then the 2000s and 2010s gone in the blink of an eye, and who knows who saved what when it was still available.

Ball-Ache, Cow Pussy, and Dick Hair: Vulgarity in Chinese Internet Language In July 2024, ByteDance’s Douyin app—the Chinese version of TikTok—introduced a system through which live streamers are ranked on a six-tier scale of ‘health points’ (健康分 jiankangfen), with the platfo...

Vulgarity has a long history in China and three decades of internet development have only amplified its relevance. In this essay in Global China Pulse, Gabriele De Seta describes how different registers of vulgarity overlap across Chinese everyday life and media contexts.

Mycket tal om desinformation i sociala medier just nu. Det är rimligt och viktigt.

Men vi ska inte glömma när ett fullständigt medialt simulacrum skapades av myndigheter och respektabla medier om att svenskar var följsamma mot FHM:s smittskyddsråd.

Detta var en luftskapelse.

Överdriver jag?

This is appalling

This is peak something. I'm not really sure what, but definitely it is peak something...

Honestly, the insanity of the healthcare system and the evilness of the private insurers was a key reason that I decided to leave the USA (where I was born and raised) nearly two decades ago and never think once about returning to live in the country.

After Art: Precarity and Expulsion in Songzhuang | Made in China Journal Wang Chunchen’s 2010 monograph on the changing role of art in Chinese society opens and ends with accounts of the forced resettlement of artists and the sudden demolition of their studios in Beijing’s...

Despite its decline in recent years, Songzhuang Art Village on the outskirts of Beijing continues to be one of the most significant art spaces in the world. However, its history remains under-researched and is often misunderstood, writes @gstrafella.bsky.social.

Playing with the Rules at Duck Express: Workplace Banter at a Chinese Restaurant in Nairobi ‘I’m getting good at dealing with these Chinese guys,’ Grace (a pseudonym, as are all other names of people and businesses in this essay) told me one day after joking around with a customer. Grace was...

At Chinese restaurants in Nairobi, interactions between Kenyan employees and Chinese customers are often tense, hampered by language barriers. In this essay in Global China Pulse, Amanda Kaminsky recounts an example where pidgin English facilitates fleeting moments of affinity between strangers.

as said many times before, campism is incredibly West-centric bc it's never concerned in the slightest with the agency of non-western peoples, reducing struggles elsewhere and everywhere to a fake anti-imperialist analysis centering US foreign policy

Really very, very grim stuff here. And important to remember that the Swedish pandemic experiment and subsequent refusal to acknowledge what a disaster it was has played a key role in legitimising this kind of thing.

Everyone using a breaking news cycle in a 'far away' place to make a point about whatever thing they are focussed on is another indication that this site is replacing Twitter 🤣

Koreans have fought many times against military dictatorships in pursuit of genuine democracy and have paid a heavy price—in Jeju and Gwangju. Today, we see them again show the power of the people and that it is always through mass action that democracy is enacted as a practice. Solidarity!

Constructing a De-Ethnicised Inner Mongolia | Made in China Journal ‘Northern frontier culture’ (北疆文化, umrat khiliin soyol) has recently become a trendy term in propaganda texts and academic publications in and about Inner Mongolia. Numerous activities, including cult...

‘Northern frontier culture’ has recently become a trendy term in propaganda texts and academic publications in and about Inner Mongolia. In this piece, an anonymous scholar discusses how this discourse ends up marginalising and deterritorialising one group: ethnic Mongols from the region.

Evidence abandoned: Trump’s cabinet and the fallout for science Trump’s presumptive cabinet raises fears for population health given its anti-science bias. Christina Pagel and colleagues argue that the UK scientific establishment should practice solidarity and res...

“All scientists in the US will face choices. Both history & contemporary experience in authoritarian regimes tells us that many will acquiesce. Some, seeing opportunities for funding & career enhancement, will become cheerleaders for the new regime”

Already happening 😢

www.bmj.com/content/387/...

Module: Internationalist Activism and Solidarity | Made in China Journal This module revolves around one of the key themes we covered in our publications, that is, internationalist activism and solidarity, notably the ways in which Chinese activists, both abroad and within...

Over the past decade, we have published hundreds of essays. Rather than letting this material rest in our archives, we have decided to draw from it to offer a series of ‘modules’ on key topics. Here's the first one, on internationalist activism and solidarity. 1/

“realists of a larger reality”

In Sweden, you know it's almost December when supermarkets prompt you to top up your saffron supply at the register.

The Political Economy of Ethnic Armed Organisations in the China–Myanmar Borderland: Opium, Gambling, and Online Scams On a sweltering day at the start of 2018, I was in Nansan, a town on the Chinese side of the China–Myanmar border. Adjacent to Myanmar’s autonomous Kokang region, Nansan remained peaceful despite the ...

In this essay, Xu Peng examines the endurance and adaptation of ethnic armed organisations and militias in Myanmar’s northern Shan State, investigating how these organisations transitioned from the drug trade to the gambling industry and, more recently, online scams.

Illustration: Poster with profile image of the speaker Ida Nafstad, Lund University logotype, and the same information as in the post. Additional information: Organised by Critical Studies Research Node at the Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences in collaboration with Lund Academics for Palestine and Lund Students for Palestine. For details visit website: luap.se

Come listen to Ida Nafstad, associate professor at Sociology of Law Department, Lund University, talk.

"Apartheid Law: The History and Possible Future of Israel's
(Military) Legal System"

LUX:C126, 2 December 15.00–17.00
Helgonavägen 3, Lund