Aseela Haque

Campus protests and civil disobedience: does academia have a problem with activism? Scientists who join protest movements often find themselves at the centre of a media and political firestorm, causing tensions with some employers.

When activism collides with academia.

My pod for @nature.com feat. @ulibeisel.bsky.social & @climatehuman.bsky.social 🧪

🎧 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
(or search "Working Scientist" wherever you get podcasts)

Sudden fog/smog conditions in Karachi. Several flights diverted to Muscat due to poor visibility. Still waiting in Muscat… :(

I genuinely think these schemes are worse than useless. The tiny scale, and the temporary nature of what's offered, make them look opportunistic more to hang anything. Also why specify the USA of all places where academic freedom is challenged? uni-freiburg.de/frias/call-f...

I’m on hunger strike in a British prison. This is why | Amu Gib Our demands are simple – and they start with stopping the flow of arms to Israel, says activist Amu Gib

"Palestinians are now facing another winter without any of the things that anyone needs to survive. To reach the point we have, where Israel can weaponise starvation, you have to confront who enables that."

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Khalid from our GOCEP group published a great paper about everyday scarcity, entrapment and erasure of time in Gaza:

‘Temporal ruination: Scarcity, entrapment, and the affective intensities of time in Gaza’

#CFP #RC21
@aseela.bsky.social & I have a session "Epistemic friendships in/across difference: Rethinking methodologies in urban research" @rc21.bsky.social Vienna 2026
If you're interested in political & epistemological potential of friendships within urban studies/geog, do submit your abstract!

💥 New publication out on the alignment of AI & authoritarianism 💥

We argue that AI is not simply extending, but actively modulating, key dynamics of authoritarianism, and present a flexible analytical framework to account for these changes.

rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

This was a brutal read. An incisive rendering of the life of ECRs and (false) promise of an academic career:

journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

Screenshot of a paper abstract in Area by Sarah Marie Hall (2025) entitled: 'Friendship in academia: A radically ordinary praxis?' with a black banner at the top. Friendships play a fundamental role in everyday life, offering companionship, mutuality, and care, across multiple and intersecting socio-spatial contexts. Drawing on scholarship and activism across feminist geographies, and contributing to this growing field of geographical interest, this piece brings together considerations of solidaristic friendship with/in everyday academic practice. Turning this critical lens inwards, I argue that everyday relational spaces of friendship within academia have radical potential – a radically ordinary praxis? – and yet are often overlooked or undervalued. I suggest that, in being so very ordinary, friendship has the possibility to be much more widely registered and deployed within academic spaces to engender greater and much needed solidarity in current times.

New in Area:

'Friendship in academia: A radically ordinary praxis?' by @smhall.bsky.social

This piece is part of an ongoing Special Section: 'Dialogues in Radical Geography'.

doi.org/10.1111/area... #geosky

🚨CfP: Lexicon for Animacy
Deadline: 1 December 2025

Please find more info in the full call online: call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/06/...

Israel is turning Gaza city into an apocalyptic wasteland, and the world watches on.
May the cries of desperation from Palestinians in Gaza forever haunt complicit state leaders who have not only allowed this to happen, but have willingly supported this extermination campaign for the last 2 years.

German arms exports to Israel have been the subject of debate for some time.

But what about Israeli arms exports to Germany?

ALON SAHAR (@alonsahar.bsky.social) and ITAMAR MANN (@itamann.bsky.social) on the political and legal risks of arms imports from Israel.

verfassungsblog.de/the-other-si...

I don’t know if my parents went to work and if they were able to reach home. How do we continue to live like this?

At least 6 dead as heavy rain lashes Karachi; PMD warns of more showers Traffic slows down at multiple points across metropolis due to flooded roads; citizens advised to take precaution; PMD predicts torrential rains in Sindh, Balochistan in next few days.

www.dawn.com/news/1931859

Karachi is flooded. Have not been able to get in touch with my parents at home. They haven’t had electricity for many many hours now.

📢 Call for Papers!

Urban Politics in the Global South Conference

November 6-7, 2025 (fully virtual!)

This conference showcases research on urban politics in low- and middle-income countries in different world regions.

Deadline for Submissions: Sept. 5

Link: www.globalsouthurbanpolitics.com

We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard. The emissions from individual AI text, image, and video queries seem small—until you add up what the industry isn’t tracking and consider where it’s heading next.

For all of the educators trying to deal with AI, I did a deep dive in early June and these are the four articles I decided to assign to my students.

1. This is the longest of the bunch, but so wonderfully comprehensive.

www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1...

This is amongst the most impactful two minutes of broadcasting I’ve ever seen.

By Emma Murphy, International Editor, ITV News. #Gaza

“Feminism has in fact offered a diagnosis, steadily, for decades and centuries: that the cause is misogyny and the violence is intended to perpetrate the inequality, exploitation and subordination of women.”

250 signatures by academics in Germany/German academics abroad pledging to boycott Israeli institutions supporting and/or benefiting from military occupation, apartheid, and genocide. Join the growing movement‼️

Just stumbled upon this young, talented woman's project called - Detectly - which is like an ad blocker but for AI content, suitable for Chrome and Firefox.

detectly.xyz

“Gaza is a turning point that lays bare the full range and cruel depths of the contemporary world’s contradictions ... It exposes what is fundamentally wrong today: a persistent inability to recognize every human being as equal and deserving of dignity and life.”

Glad to share that the edited volume "Amphibious Anthropologies: Living in Wet Environments" is now officially published! I have a chapter in the book about the Salton Sea.
uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295...
UW Press has a sale thru August 31- WARM25 for 40% off & free shipping. #Geosky #waterscience

Try to imagine any other context where a news presenter describes credible reports that soldiers have been shooting huge numbers of teenagers and children *for sport*, for fun, and a politician gives this reaction.

Disturbing footage: Berlin police violently assaulting peaceful protestors for Palestine, today (July 24, 2025.) Credit: Unpublished.de (found on Instagram)

Climate change an ‘existential threat’, UN court says in landmark opinion ICJ Judge Yuji Iwasawa says greenhouse emissions are ‘unequivocally caused by human activities’ as he delivers opinion.

Some actual good news: the ICJ have set out the ecological situation clearly and authoritatively, and confirmed that each country has a legal obligation to take effective climate action. Could we get on and do it, please?
www-aljazeera-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.alja...

It’s worse than “Gaza is being starved and destroyed and no one cares.” It’s that hundreds of millions *do* care and are powerless to stop it. We need a world where that can never happen, where the masses actually have political power.

Visit and support Gaza Places (Amākin Ghazza: www.gazaplaces.con) —a community-led digital mapping platform and independent research-action project dedicated to supporting the post-war recovery of Gaza through critical, participatory geography. www.gazaplaces.com #urban #sociology

die @spdfraktion.de hat recht: die Bundesregierung sollte diese Erklärung unbedingt unterstützen!

Die @spdfraktion.de handelt - endlich. Werden @cducsubt.bsky.social vor Lobbyisten einknicken oder kommt die Regierungskoalition nun endlich ihren völkerrechtlichen Verpflichtungen nach?