Simon Fern

If you have seen a pregnant, postpartum, or lactating woman in immigration custody, please let the Women's Refugee Commission know by submitting a report through the Detention Pregnancy Tracker.

detentionpregnancytracker.com

🚨🚨 My dear friend and fellow academic, the Palestinian American sociologist @emanabdelhadi.bsky.social has been taken by the Cook County Sheriff near Chicago. They have not mirandized her. Please signal boost. All eyes on Broadview for Eman and the community she was defending 🚨🚨

Lovely few days at the British Sociological Association's medical sociology conference. Wonderful range of presentations and such a supportive space.

I shared some recent work about experiences of care and bordering, based on interviews with immigrant mothers in Catalonia (Spain). #MedSoc25

The Anthropology Brown Bag Calendar is up!

Join us this fall semester and listen to our favorite anthropologists in our favorite room, Sewall 570.

Links and descriptions will be provided before each meeting. Stay tuned! ✨

I got my mum a wildlife camera for her 60th, and now I get to enjoy a live feed of our local hedgehogs crunching kibble.

Some wisdom from a diss' interviewee: "I don't know, at the moment, like, just be nice or something. Because recently, I've been feeling like, being kind is really important. Even when somebody's mean towards you. I feel like the energy that being kind radiates is better. And, like, more positive."

Call for applications: 12-month postdoctoral contract (Sciences Po - INED, TIERED Project) for a research project studying the mediating role of environmental risks in the relationship between migration status and health at birth in France (e.g., heat, pollution). www.sciencespo.fr/cris/files/P...

I <3 library - "walk around the stacks and grab whatever looks good" is a valid literature review strategy.

Writing in the library atm, a new student and his grandma were looking around the reading room I'm in. They had got a bit lost and thought this was everything. I showed them to the central stacks and grandma's face lit up at the sight of all the books. I love libraries so much, they're magical.

🚨 Call for Papers for the 2026 IMISCOE Spring Conference
“Governing and Experiencing Migration in Contentious Times”

📅 16-18 March 2026 @ Liège, Belgium & Online

📢 Deadline: 5 September 2025, 23:59 CEST.

📍 More info & submission: www.imiscoe.org/events/2393-...

🏆 SKAT #ASA2025 Awards! Congratulations to the following recipients:

Hacker-Mullins Student Paper Award

Xiaogao Zhou: “Care in transition: Global norms, transnational adaptation, and family-centered gender-affirming care in China”

🔗: doi.org/10.1016/j.so...

I committed to not overfilling my single underseat bag with hoarded books at the conference this year. I failed in that commitment. So here are the six books I picked up in Chicago, from #ASA2025 and @pilsencommbooks.bsky.social

This store in Chinatown also has some premium alternative lanyards available if you're bored of the standard issue ASA black string + transparent wallet.

At the most elite roundtable at this conference rn #ASA2025

8am. Repro in the US Post-Roe 10am Reproductive Beliefs and Fertility Intentions 12pm Reproductive Surveillance and Clinical Policing 2pm States, Laws, and Clinicians: Toward Reproductive Justice

#ASA2025 Four(!) regular sessions on reproduction. Starting at 8am and going all day. Hope to see you there!

We've just wrapped up the Q&A now. Shout out to Alice Julier (Chatham University) for organising this panel, and Nicholas Bascuñan-Wiley (SUNY Stony Brook) for presiding. I had a lovely time as a discussant, and these food panels are always my highlight for ASA. #ASA2025

And finally, -Lola Loustaunau (University of Wisconsin-Madison) presenting work on the endemic precarity of food processing for migrant workers. #ASA2025

Michaela Hoffelmeyer (University of Wisconsin-Madison) introducing us to worker safety and legal accountability in small-scale meet processing, framed through scalar irresponsibility. #ASA2025

Sarah Bowen (North Carolina State University) now presenting on the relationship between the pandemic and how people felt about and experienced food assistance #ASA2025

Alana Haynes Stein (Creighton University) is sharing work understanding how nonprofit food banks measure and determine success - and the disconnect with systemic issues #ASA2025

We just heard Aya Shirayama (University of Hawai'i) present on Okinawan food and gastronationalism. #ASA2025

If you're at the @asanews.bsky.social conference in Chicago and wondering what to do bright and early tomorrow, join us for this wonderful session! Five papers by a fantastic collection of scholars, all about food systems and inequality.

#sociology #ASA2025 #food

This bit

The Onion giving an unironically legit teardown of much food insecurity / obesity panic research.

The theory training in my soc PhD consisted of bitesize chunks of a few 'big names' + garbled conversations about Goffman/DuBois. Talking to grad peers at other schools, the theory attention is superficial + our depts are somewhere between dismissive and hostile towards anything vaguely critical.

Thank you for helping to normalise the use of scoundrel as a verb

No justice in a genocide: sexual and reproductive health and rights in Gaza Since October 2023, Gaza, Palestine, has been the site of a humanitarian crisis due to violence from Israel, with numerous violations currently undermining sexual and reproductive health and rights...

The decimation of life in Gaza is a reproductive genocide. It was a privilege to work with Hala Shoman on our commentary 'No justice in a genocide: sexual and reproductive health and rights in Gaza' in Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I am working on 'The Asian Mother and Baby Campaign' which ran from 1984-1986. I would love to interview any linkworkers who were employed by the campaign or any women who were supported by linkworkers. Please spread the word or get in touch if this is you! My email is saima.nasar@bristol.ac.uk

My brother, @samfern.bsky.social , visited my medical sociology class to talk about his new children's book ('Where The Dead Live') about death and burial traditions across cultures. Great time chatting about writing, translating research for kids, + the importance of talking & learning about death.

chips & writing by the lake 😎