Abbey Heffer

Hello! I'm here!

Screenshot of the latest Authoritarianism 101 Newsletter on Substack, including a photo of Roger Griffin's book "Fascism", which offers a working definition of the term.

I've started a Substack where "translate" political science concepts and theories. I also lean heavy on reading recommendations.

My latest newsletter is a 3-minute read defining "fascism", a word that modern fascists unironically reject.

#politicalscience #science
open.substack.com/pub/theopenb...

An artistic image of two books open to the title page and covered with yellow and orange roses. The books are The Autists: Women on the Spectrum by Clara Törnvall and Misjustice: How British Law is Failing Women by Helena Kennedy.

Eight Questionably-Fun Facts about women's health and legal rights since I was born (nearly) 33 years ago.

Here's the image and the first "fun" fact, can you guess the rest based on this?

In my lifetime, women in the UK have had to fight:

1. For marital rape to be counted as a crime.

Thank you! Have a lovely rest of the day!

Hey Emily! I'm a PhD candidate researching Chinese policymaking and modern authoritarianism. You can find me over on Google Scholar:

scholar.google.com/citations?hl...

On socials, I share free academic resources, so I'd really appreciate being added to the science🧪feed!

Bad timing for this question... I've been in a horrible reading slump since summer. Barely been able to read anything, aside from work-related stuff.

When reading feels like a reward or a break from real life, it's easy to read a lot... When it feels like an obligation, however...

I'm open to people outside my niche!

😂

Who should I be following on here?

I care about holding people in public office accountable, protest rights, freedom of information and how authoritarianism functions within otherwise-democratic regimes.

Hit me with the recommendations.

If you're interested in some of the research behind my opinion in the Financial Times here's a snippet of my PhD project, published in the China Quarterly last year:

Policy Experimentation under Pressure in Contemporary China | The China Quarterly | Cambridge Core - bit.ly/3PzMWAU

China’s zombie car plant problem The terminal decline of factories devoted to the internal combustion engine presents a challenge for Beijing

Got quoted in the @FT today saying it's not easy to be a local government official in China right now.

www.ft.com/content/f197...

Apparently I've tricked social media algorithms into giving me all the cute, nerdy linguistic content for the two and a half languages I speak.

This one's from Middle English:

This isn't a "social media isn't always awful" account... But sometimes it just hits in all the right places:

"Indian police clear a suspected Chinese spy pigeon after 8 months in bird lockup."

A photo of a no-parking sign in Taipei, it says 請勿停車, 長得帥也不可以 (No parking, not even if you are handsome" credit to @chowleen on X

Social media isn't always awful.