Dara Conduit

We are hiring a PhD student to join us at the @hertiesecurity.bsky.social (start Sept. 2026)!

If you want to conduct research on topics related to digital authoritarianism, state repression, contentious politics or social movements online, then this job might be for you!

Oh damn it’s online! Sorry I should learn to read! Please come and visit us soon ❤️

Ohh you’re in Australia!! Good luck, and let me know if you come to Melbourne!!

ABSTRACT I argue the instrumental, paternalistic strategic culture often adopted in Australian foreign policy circles is counter-productive, preventing Australia from having productive and sustainable relationships with Pacific states. If Australian officials want to follow through on rhetorical commitments to enhance Australia's relationships in the Pacific, Australia must actively recognise the agency Pacific states have and place itself within this community of actors. Australia often positions itself as part of the 'Pacific family, but to be a collaborative member of this family it must go beyond headline commitments and fundamentally reconsider the evolving agency of small Pacific states and how this shapes Australia's interactions with them. We can understand this through the lens of normative communities. Revisiting constructivist International Relations theory, I reexamine who is included and excluded in the communities of actors that norms apply to. This has particularly significant implications around norms of climate change action and mitigation. Australia has historically tried to water down agreements and slow-role actions in this space. The ongoing bid to host COP31 perhaps offers an opportunity to both show leadership on climate-related issues and to reconfigure assumptions around Pacific agency and address the effects this has on Australia's relationships in the Pacific.

🚨Delighted to announce the winner of the Boyer Prize for best article published in the AJIA in 2024. Warm congrats to @liammoore.bsky.social for this paper analysing the complexity of 🇦🇺relations with Pacific states. #OpenAccess
www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10....
#AcademicPublishing

Image shows a screenshot of the conclusion of the linked Senate inquiry submission. This text can be found on page 10. The text is too long for alt text, but here is the first three quarters of the text: Conclusion Over the past decade, Nous Group’s UniForum data has quietly taken on the status of authoritative benchmark for the quality of a range of professional and academic services performed by public universities in Australia and across the world. This authoritative status is performed through scientific-looking graphs and scientific-sounding jargon designed to imply UniForum data is generated through rigorous methods and backed by expert consensus. This performance of authority is significant: it lends UniForum data an air of credibility and facticity that makes acting upon its results irresistible. When one begins to open the black box and examine how UniForum data is actually produced, however, it becomes difficult to justify the degree to which Australian university executives are relying upon it in their decision-making. My analysis is based on a review of publicly available documents, and it is therefore possible that Nous or its clients would point to things not in the public domain that address some of the conceptual and methodological flaws that I have highlighted in UniForum. But the fact that the underlying UniForum data and methodology is not in the public domain is itself one of the key causes for concerns. When the stakes are so high, it cannot be acceptable for Nous Group and its clients to simply tell university staff and governing councils, ‘trust us, these numbers are based on rigorous methods and analysis.’ The lack of rigor, external scrutiny, and transparency in UniForum’s underlying data and methodology would be a cause for concern in any public institution, but it is especially concerning in the context of universities where rigorous, transparent, and accountable knowledge production is a core part of what we do. ...

Private consultants are taking control of how public universities are evaluated and run.

My submission to the Senate university governance inquiry raises concerns about the impact of Nous Group and their dodgy UniForum data on our universities.

www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStor...

A thread

The amount of shit I got for this segment at the time was astronomical, and it was all from people who now stalk CVS employees to get them fired for insufficient online sadness.

Cheering on political violence is both evil and not new, an outgrowth of an internet intentionally dismantled years ago.

The Washington Post is a disgrace. You cannot stop ideas by firing the people who speak them. You can, however, temporarily hide them from yourself.

Assassination With No Limits Early in my academic career I spent a lot of time in Jordan. I still remember the shock across the country and King Hussein’s palp rage when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorized an assassinati...

Assassination with no limits - me on Israel’s shocking bombing of Qatar. I’m old enough to remember Israel trying to assassinate Khaled Mishal in Amman a few years after signing a peace treaty with Jordan so I’m not THAT shocked. But this is big, and bad.

abuaardvarkghost.ghost.io/assassinatio...

President Trump has just announced that Princeton University PhD student Elizabeth Tsurkov who was kidnapped in Baghdad in March 2023 and held by Kata'ib Hezbollah has been released and is now at the American Embassy in Iraq.

On #FirstView -

"Digital Authoritarianism and the Global Technology Industry: Evidence from #Iran" - t.co/rvTrjmucvi

by @daraconduit.bsky.social

GR2P has an exciting double special issue on #Syria coming up, guest edited by @daraconduit.bsky.social from Uni of Melbourne and Yasmine Nahlawi from Dar Justice. It features Syrian authors and practitioners. Rread the introduction online at lnkd.in/gqvR6j6d @degruyterbrill.bsky.social

Volume 5 Issue 2 | Global Studies Quarterly | Oxford Academic Global Studies Quarterly is a fully open access journal that publishes original and innovative scholarship within the broad spectrum of topics, subfields, approaches, and metho...

In the current geopolitical and higher ed context, the publication of this special forum on "technologies of armed violence" is very dear to my heart: academic.oup.com/isagsq/issue... /1

The craven crushing of campus dissent - The Shot There isn’t a free society where universities aren’t havens for academic freedom. The Nazis knew this; Trump, and Australian Zionists, know this too.

Here's @marquelawyers.bsky.social. 'The craven crushing of campus dissent'

The path towards fascism looks like this.

The last day on which a majority of the Supreme Court’s justices had been appointed by Democratic presidents was May 14, 1969.

One of the things we do in the legal academy is support our claims with facts.

Just finished up at RightsCon.

The human rights world is absolutely reeling from the senseless cruelty of the Musk/Trump regime, but it was also extremely good to be reminded that there’s a lot of brilliant people around the world who refuse to bow down to dictators, whatever the odds.

Table from page 25 of the proposed restructure of ARC grants. Back text on white background, with the table delineated by a dark blue header row and alternating light and very light blue rows.

The ARC Board has proposed a major shake-up of the National Competitive Grants Program ▶️ www.arc.gov.au/engage-us/co...

I've only skimmed so far, but they propose reducing 13 grant schemes to 6, with intent & scope in the table👇

Submissions are being accepted in response until 13 April. Get to it!

Syrian Arab Republic: Humanitarian Situation Report No. 1 (As of 12 February 2025) [EN/AR] - Syrian Arab Republic Situation Report in Arabic on Syrian Arab Republic and 1 other country about Agriculture, Camp Coordination and Camp Management and more; published on 12 Feb 2025 by OCHA

On the one hand, the world desperately wants Syria to succeed, the war to end, and refugees to return.

On the other hand: "The humanitarian response for Syria is significantly underfunded, having secured less than 10 per cent of the $1.2 billion needed through March."

reliefweb.int/report/syria...

Letter of Support for nomination of @ARC_Tracker for a Eureka Prize for Leadership in Science In signing this form you endorse the proposal to nominate @ARC_Tracker for a Eureka Prize in the category 'Leadership in Science'. The list of signatories will be appended to the nomination form. I wi...

Australian Researchers,

If you want to support @arc-tracker.bsky.social being awarded a Eureka Prize for Leadership in Science, sign this letter of support.
forms.gle/WxfVjk9JaGpn...

Q: "Are they eligible?",
A: "Let's find out"

Sign, repost & send the link to colleagues. Word of mouth. Do it!

New on #FirstView -

"Digital Authoritarianism and the Global Technology Industry: Evidence from Iran" - tinyurl.com/5pmra43b

by @daraconduit.bsky.social

What happened in Syria will have reverberations across the region.

As the 2019 uprisings reminded us, the Syrian people remind us once again; these kleptocratic repressive regimes are often hollow & despised by many of their own agents.

Their fragility is regularly underestimated.

"Despite incredibly difficult days with increasing pain and medical complications, Emma retained her identity as an active scholar, supervisor, colleague and friend. This was Emma’s commitment to us, and to a better, more peaceful, more empathetic & thoughtful world"
polsis.uq.edu.au/article/2024...

Marsden Fund refocused for science with a purpose Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins today announced the Government has updated the Marsden Fund to focus on core scientific research that helps lift our economic growth and c...

Very shocked to read about the disbanding of all humanities & social science funded research by the Marsden Fund in NZ (their ARC/ESRC equivalent) www.beehive.govt.nz/release/mars...

May the subfloor gods be kind to you this Christmas! 🎄🚧

No but I can throw in some termites for you if you’d like? Luckily the new bearer has a strong message for them!

Given fears that there may be new chemical attacks in Syria, here's a thread on some of the chemical munitions used in the past by the Syrian government. First, there's been two primary agents use, chlorine gas, and sarin, each associated with specific munitions.

You might be onto something 🤦‍♀️

Hey @benleruth.bsky.social, I’m getting some bearers replaced at our place this week. Do you want the old ones? 😱

#Syria: as the rebels retake land that was lost to them 5 to 9 years ago they find portraits of the regimes and their leaders which have been occupying the region in the meantime.

Of course those portraits don't stay long.

Brismes Annual Lecture with Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah 18.00 - 19.30 GMT. Click on link to register.

Today (online): 2024 BRISMES Annual Lecture "Witness to Genocide - In Conversation with Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah"

Friday 29 November, 18:00-19:30 GMT. Event free & open to all, but registration required: brismes.ac.uk/events/annua... @nicolapratt.bsky.social

a man is peeking out from behind a grassy hill and says `` did somebody say propaganda '' . ALT: a man is peeking out from behind a grassy hill and says `` did somebody say propaganda '' .

Just a reminder that the deadline for the attached call for papers for the Propaganda Forum in Critical Studies in Media Communication is December 13! This issue is coordinated by me and @emmalbriant.bsky.social . Check out the CFP here docs.google.com/document/d/e...