Jonna Nyman

Hell of a chart, this, from @financialtimes.com. Spot the JCPOA.

on.ft.com/4kSuQYO

Cannot wait to read this: keep an eye out for this beauty!

Book cover for *Easting the West: Theorizing the Postliberal Conjuncture from China* by Chenchen Zhang, published by Oxford. The cover features a building that is half Temple of Heaven and half Capitol Hill, set against a pale background.

It's got a cover!
Coming out in June.

Happy Lunar New Year! 🧧 🐎

The far right label is not easily applied in China, yet xenophobia, militaristic nationalism, racism, and anti feminism are rising in online discourse and sometimes within the state. The global fight against fascism requires solidarity with grassroots resistance. www.tni.org/en/article/m...

I've written an essay on the politics of neurodiversity, drawing on the vital books by @drrobertchapman.bsky.social and @dr-nicky.bsky.social. I hope it will serve as a primer for anyone new to the topic (and maybe prompt questions for those who know it well)

journals.lwbooks.co.uk/newformation...

Twice this week when meeting a new person I've gotten an excited "Wow, it must be an exciting time to be a political scientist!" and both times I've answered "Not really. That's like telling someone it's an exciting to be a surgeon when there's a 63 car pileup on the highway."

IR career starters - January 2026- Postgraduate Network (PGN) | BISA - Postgraduate Network (PGN) Working Group

Great to see @mybisa.bsky.social posting Alexander Borum's list of career and internship opportunities in international affairs on its website

If you wrote a book 10 years ago that started with, "...the year is 2026, European leaders scramble to prevent a US invasion of Greenland", the editor would tell you to calm down.

Ten years of fortress Europe has served only cruelty, profiteers and racists. The next decade is up to us | Maurice Stierl The hard right and far right are the political winners from the migration ‘crisis’, but only because centrist parties keep legitimising them, says migration and border researcher Maurice Stierl

www.theguardian.com/world/commen...

Is there a “dating” app with more national security implications than Grindr? First it was that CFIUS ruling forcing its sale to a US owner, now this…

Stories are there, but they float, and only when one begins to listen, ask, and pay attention do they land. In an era governed by the tyranny of speed, stories are always afloat because few actually care about others’ stories, and the excuse is that they don’t have time. We are governed by speed because we allow speed to govern us. The cab driver’s father-in-law’s frostbites, just like nursing assistants’ body aches, are inconsequential for us and this world but are significant for them. They embody not only the pain of their bodies but the pain of this era. Their bodies become where pain clings to so that fewer others will need to experience pain. I’d like to invite my readers to slow down, even just a little bit, and to care for others’ stories, especially the bodily ones. Ethnography has an unforgiving quality to it because when you see people in the field, you can’t unsee them; when you hear someone’s stories, you can’t unhear them. Ethnography can never be tidy because it’s so close to an ever-messy, changing, and vibrant being that is life. To try to smooth out the ethnography is equivalent to leaving out the “unpretty” people and corners. I slowed down when faced with such “unprettiness” – I dwelled on it. This is my ethnographic responsibility – to not speed up when coming across the unprettiness but to stare right at it long and hard. from Yueqi Alex Cheng, "Reinventing Care: Nursing Assistants’ Embodied Resistance Working in Public Hospitals in Changsha, Hunan" for Graduate Liberal Studies at Duke University, December 2025.

Two committee members, Anne Whisnant and Eileen Chow, and a third, Ralph Litzinger, off camera, plus the new MA herself, Yueqi Cheng

Had our first graduate thesis defense of the academic year here at Duke - for Yueqi Chen's absolutely lyrical ethnography on nurses' aides working in public hospitals in Hunan, China.

Sharing, with permission, a beautiful passage from Yueqi's thesis which I found really moving:
#everynightapoem

The UK edition actually has a different cover (Rachel Reeves) so I missed this, but I usually show my students a selection of orientalist Economist covers when I teach China - will add this to the list!

Check out this post about our current situation from a colleague at another university. @sheffielducu.bsky.social

Reader or Professor in Chinese Studies - AC2219 at University of St Andrews

Senior permanent position has opened up in Chinese studies here at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. It is a very nice place. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPN980/rea...

"academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it... The dominant four collectively generated... $12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024."

A couple of years and a
@leverhulme.ac.uk research fellowship in the making, my book on post-liberalism is out next month and available to pre-order.

www.amazon.co.uk/Post-Liberal...

Norweger stellen fest, dass China 850 ihrer Elektrobusse fernsteuern und sogar stoppen kann Etwa 850 in Norwegen eingesetzte Elektrobusse können aus China vollständig kontrolliert werden. Das hat ein geheimer Test der öffentlichen Verkehrsbetriebe ergeben.

😮
Norway finds out that its electric busses - produced by a Chinese firm - can be remotely controlled from China!

The good news of this is that the Norwegians realised this because they did a cybersecurity test. We need to think about, and test, stuff like this more.
www.focus.de/panorama/wel...

This is an interesting case. It does appear Sheffield Hallam were in a very difficult position if staff in China were being intimidated. Academic freedom vs responsibility to protect staff is not a no-brainer, from the point of view of university administration.

As the government refuses to support universities in dire financial situations, many will look to foreign markets and opportunities with severe implications like the ones below.

China intimidated UK university to ditch human rights research, documents show Sheffield Hallam University apologises to Professor Laura Murphy for restricting her academic freedom.

This is a concerning situation with a lot to unpack. I note it's being dealt with primarily in terms of academic freedom, but what stood out for me is the additional issue of safety both for researchers AND wider communities/participants.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Researchers applying for the UK's Global Talent visa face high upfront costs Upfront cost of visa to applicant and employer in 2025 UK Denmark £692 India £602 Australia £405 Israel £362 US £305 Italy £235 Netherlands 1 £207 Germany | £170 Spain 1£144 Sweden | £117 South Korea | £98 France £84 Japan £21 £5,941 £O £2,000 £4 Source: Fragomen for the Royal Society • Excludes ongoing costs such as mandatory healthcare premiums or fees such as language tests

The costs of the UK’s Global Talent Visa looks a trifle high in comparison to competitor countries - largely through the Immigration Health Surcharge (which critics say is a form of double taxation as they contribute to the NHS through normal tax on their earnings)

Worth your time:

UK universities offered to monitor students’ social media for arms firms, emails show Loughborough, Heriot-Watt and Glasgow corresponded with companies concerned about campus protests

Good morning, in today's edition of How UK Universities are Becoming More Like the US, but not in terms of quality, research rigour, or internalisation www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Meme showing a worker labelled "academic staff" digging a hole in the ground while 10 others look labelled with management titles such as "Director of Human Resources" look on. The caption underneath reads "The only way we can cut costs is to reduce the number of academic staff..."

A meme for the modern university...

the booker prize judges make a lot of fuss about having to read 153 books. but assuming an average weight of 750g per book, that comes in at 115kg of literature - or just under the weight of a single adult male ostrich

(no title) A Chinese Studies research blog. Let's exchange ideas, tell stories, and keep asking better questions!

we are super excited to launch our student research blog Odd China Out. submissions bridging scholarly work with a wider audience, in English or bilingual, are welcome!
oddchinaout.wordpress.com

think that realistically I would have always been deeply, deeply worried about the rise of far-right ideas in public discourse but I truly never expected this level of blithe elite complacency, turns out I do feel worried but mostly I feel like I'm going insane, watching them do.......nothing at all

❓ What is security in an age of catastrophic climate change?

📖 Our special issue "Critical Climate Security" in Geoforum provides new concepts, approaches, and methodologies for rethinking the climate-security nexus from a critical perspective. www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...

Lecturers in Politics and International Relations (Teaching & Research) at Cardiff University Apply now for the Lecturers in Politics and International Relations (Teaching & Research) role on jobs.ac.uk - the leading job board for higher education jobs. View details.

🎉 3 (grade 7) Lecturer positions open Cardiff University in:

🌎 Non-western (espc non US) Foreign Policy/War/Security Studies
📝 Political theory inc history of political thought
📚 History & theory of colonialism & its legacies in politics & IR

Apply here 👉