Sonali Dhanpal

Christos Lynteris, Visual Plague: The Emergence of Epidemic Photography | Journal of History View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.

"a splendid piece of scholarship: it is original, widely researched, well-written, and a pleasure to read despite its dark subject matter" - a big thanks to Prof Jim Connor for his review of Visual Plague: The Emergence of Epidemic Photography @mitpress.bsky.social utppublishing.com/doi/full/10....

We South Asianists at UW-Madison are *so glad* it's full steam ahead for the 2026 ACSA with @uw-madsouthasia.bsky.social Asst Director Andrea Fowler @ the helm. The conf. chair will be @arunluthra.bsky.social. A million thanks to South Asianists around the world for your support earlier this year!

9,600 redundancies at just 24 universities. Imagine what the picture is for the sector as a whole. This is the other half of the student loan scandal picture, which has been national news lately. Nothing at all from the government on a key sector effectively in freefall…

I will be in conversation w/ the AMAZING Adom Getachew, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, & Camille Robcis, w/ Kate Redburn moderating, on my new book, *The Future That Was*, at Columbia Law School on March 24th at 6 PM.

(thanks to Madhav Khosla for the invite)

Register here:

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Really honored to have my new @harvardpress.bsky.social book be part of an @lpeblog.bsky.social symposium! I am deeply grateful to @lpeproject.bsky.social colleagues for the opportunity, and to my respondents @maggor.bsky.social, @abalasub.bsky.social & Amy Cohen for engaging with my work. 🙏

This economic idea transfixed Wall Street and Washington. It may be a mirage. Massive investment in AI contributed “basically zero” to U.S. economic growth last year, Goldman Sachs has calculated.

"Prominent economists, including from Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, calculate that the AI buildup was directly responsible not for 92 percent or 39 percent of gains to the U.S. economy in 2025, but as little as zero."

Electro-Capitalism Ours is the age of transition: from fossil capital to electricity capital. The future that emerges will be determined by the fierce struggles of the present.

NEW: Gareth Fearn lays out the stakes of "electro-capitalism".

"The economic basis of this transition is not simply between technologies of energy production. Rather, it is between two different fractions of capital."

www.break-down.org/electro-capi...

Is the screen-based bureaucratic management tasks (attendance, record keeping, email torrents, form filling, reimbursement labyrinths, inane video training boxticking, multiplication of online platforms and teaching materials) demanded by Uk university making us dumber and exhausted?
Yes.

that is correct

🔥

i've decided not to listen to the audio of a teacher reporting a kindergartender because frankly I don't want to become the person that that event would turn me into. but one thing I hope we are collectively coming to grips with is what it meant that we have lived among such people this whole time

Epstein Family Values • EQUATOR The billionaire patriarchs of the American far-right want to rule an economy of masters and servants

Remarkable piece by @melindacooper.bsky.social for @equatormag.bsky.social

www.equator.org/articles/eps...

Yes yes yes ✊🏾

And solidarity with NYU contingent faculty

I hope you can- soon! Looking forward to seeing you the Heyman in April :)

Tomorrow!

Absolutely wild that this is happening- delusion abounds in senior management.

To have mass redundancies in the UK and somehow think they’ll simultaneously be profitable in India with investments that make make matters worse, is wild to me.

UCL students win £21mn over Covid disruption in watershed settlement Move involving 6,500 claimants is set to put pressure on other universities to compensate graduates

Another nail in the parlous state of UK higher education in February 2026. More nails very sadly likely coming to an HEI near you....

love to see it

"I'm too old for this imperial shit" - Black Skin, White Masks

This conversation between @arielleangel.bsky.social and @naomiaklein.bsky.social about the Epstein files is the best thing I've listened to or read recently about that topic and also the general state of things

There is a v. generous prize ($7k) offered by @lpeproject.bsky.social for an article that advances the "Freedom from Want" agenda. Due in 2 days but worth an all-nighter for people working on the meaningful decommodification of access to basic needs in America. 👇

lpe.law.harvard.edu/fellowships-...

Does humanities research matter anymore? (opinion) The rapid collapse in available research funding is one crisis in the humanities we aren’t talking enough about, Asheesh Kapur Siddique writes.

It's possible to do a non-reactionary critique of the current landscape of humanities research funding: www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

The Atlantic piece on how the Mellon foundation is to blame for reactionaries defunding the humanities is a remarkable piece of blame shifting.

Amazing! Congratulations :)

What's the Matter with Florida? An Interview with Zachary Levenson A discussion about Florida's censorship of sociology and teaching under authoritarianism

I talked with @victorerikray.bsky.social about the repression we’re facing at public universities here in Florida, where the state is attempting to impose a textbook on our intro classes, insisting that no published textbook complies with state law.

Here’s Part 1. Part 2 drops next week.

Using BBIH online: a help pack for students and lecturers For the academic year, we've a help pack offering guides to BBIH in undergraduate and graduate teaching and research. With embeddable content for VLEs.

Are you studying, researching or teaching the histories of race and ethnicity? Try using the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH). It contains 670,000+ resources from 55 BCE to today! Find out how to use BBIH buff.ly/yD11954 @brepols.net

Another one of my pet bugbears is exasperation over a self-flagellating political discourse in the UK that in its obsession with the impact of deindustrialisation ignores how substantial manufacturing in the Midlands, Yorkshire and Northwest of England still is as a player in European supply chains

Just launched my new podcast -- The Caste Pod! Check out the inaugural episode with Suraj Yengde and Anupama Rao: thecastepod.org

My co-written book with Suzanne Nossel — Is Free Speech Under Threat? — is 99p on kindle for today only!!! 📚 💰

Academic book publishing: the more the book costs, the less proof-reading it has received