Xanthe Whittaker

Only a nationwide strike can stem the carnage in UK higher education Limiting industrial action to defensive branch battles on redundancy is not enough. We need to politically challenge the HE funding model, says Rhiannon Lockley

Opinion: Limiting industrial action to defensive branch battles on redundancy is not enough. We need to politically challenge the HE funding model in the UK: my piece for the @timeshighered.bsky.social

www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/only...

🌟 Disrupting Technology Conference 2025, 16 & 17 June, Leeds
📣 Fantastic keynote speakers:
🔹 Prof Mark Graham, Fairwork & Oxford Internet Institute
🔹 Dr Uma Rani, Senior Economist, ILO
‼️ Abstract deadline 7 March
➡️ Join us! Check out the call for papers: business.leeds.ac.uk/research-cer...

INTRODUCTION

Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines?

Jevin West (@jevinwest.bsky.social) and I have spent the last eight months developing the course on large language models (LLMs) that we think every college freshman needs to take.

thebullshitmachines.com

Condolences to all of those who loved and learned from him

theoretically, thematically, methodologically and towards an orientation to public scholarship that unashamedly addresses injustice.

Sociology is stronger and more relevant for all the work Burawoy did to bring these discussions centre stage in our discipline.

The awful and tragic loss of Michael Burawoy has caused me to pause and reflect on the many ways his work has influenced my development as an early career scholar in sociology of work -.

Esme Terry on LinkedIn: CfP: Disrupting Technology Conference 2025, Leeds 📣🌟 Call for Papers! Disrupting Technology Conference 2025 🌟 📣 📅 When? Monday 16th and Tuesday 17th June, 2025 📍 Where? University of Leeds, UK ‼️…

📣 Call for papers!
✨DISRUPTING TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE
📅 Monday 16th and Tuesday 17th June, 2025
📍 University of Leeds, UK
‼️ Abstract submission deadline: 7th March 2025
📧 Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be submitted via email to: ceric@leeds.ac.uk

www.linkedin.com/posts/esme-t...

Cameron, Ariz. Living on one of the largest swaths of land in America without electrical power, Thomasina Nez's entire life is a scramble to complete basic tasks. To take a hot shower, she must wait for buckts of water to come to a boil on a small propane stove outside her wood framed roundhouse. To make meals, she relies mostly on canned goods because unfridgerated produce rots qucikly in the Arizona heat. Its a struggle to stay warm at night, because she refuses to use her coal-powered heate after its fumes killed her two dogs.

A fierce battle for electric power is being waged across the nation, and Nez is one of thousands of people who have wound up on the losing end. Amid a boom in data acenters, the energy intensive warehouses that run supercomputers for Big Tech companies, Arizona is racing to increase electricity production. In February, the state utility board approved an 8 percent rate hike to bolster power infrastructure throughout the state, where data centers are popping up faster than almost anywhere in the US But it rejected a plan to bring electricity to parts of the Navajo Nation land, concluding that electric consumers should not be asked to foot the nearly $4 million bill.

I know academics who use AI regularly, for work and play, and I'd really like them, and universities, to tell me how they contend with AI's bottomless appetites for power and water.

Is asking ChatGPT to interpret a Xmas song or making it write your syllabus worth this to you?

Akram Al Ariss: Employment of International Migrants What we know and what we still need to know. Part of the CERIC Seminar series.

Tomorrow is the final CERIC Seminar of the semester! Akram Al Ariss will be joining us online at 1pm to discuss Employment of International Migrants: What we know and what we still need to know. Free registration here: www.eventbrite.com/e/akram-al-a...

New limited series starts tomorrow.
BHOPAL: stories of an Ecocide.

Where @lucyburke Explores the history and impacts of the world’s worst industrial disaster. Listen to the trailer below.

Only on GND Media, where ever you get your podcasts.

UK HE shrinking This is a live page of all the redundancies, restructures, reorganisations, and closures taking place across the sector at the moment. Solidarity to all. This sector is vital to the country’s…

Absolutely grim list, which now includes roughly half of UK universities.

One of the most important takeaways from all of this should be that a lot of these cuts are pre-emptive, and/or in response to shortfalls rather than responses to actual deficits.

qmucu.org/qmul-transfo...

Digit wins new five-year ESRC grant to examine the UK’s digital work ecosystem • Digit The UKRI Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) has awarded Digit £8.3million for a further five years to study the UK's evolving digital work ecosystem. The ESRC Centre for Digital Futures at Wo...

Digit has secured a further 5 years of funding from the ESRC totalling £8.3million - congratulations to the co-leads here at CERIC and University of Sussex, and all the partners on this brilliant project!
digit-research.org/news_article...

Yes! Looks like really important work you’re doing. Will DM you

Also interesting when placed alongside this data

So much to unpick here. Is it because better, more affordable childcare? Are women patching together unpaid (partner/family/friend) care bc they cannot afford to be economically inactive, so there is a different set of economic calculations? Or finding ways of working while caring (gig work, etc)?

Hello Bluesky! We're the Center for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change at @universityofleeds.bsky.social Business School, focused on research around the changing dynamics and future of work, employment and labour markets. Follow for research updates, events and news!

Registration for HuLog Circle - Wednesday, November 27, 2-4 pm (CET) online

📢 Join us for the next HuLog Circle Talk on Wednesday, November 27, from 2:00 to 4:00 PM (CET) [online]!
✨ Topic: Labour Control and Worker Resistance at Amazon
🎤 Speaker: Prof. Peter Birke, Soziologisches Forschungsinstitut Göttingen
🔗 Register here: shorturl.at/fmhkZ

@ceric-lubs.bsky.social

Welcome @ceric-lubs.bsky.social - Centre for Employment Relations Innovation and Change (CERIC), University of Leeds
Follow for the latest on our research!

Thank you!

Me too pls!

This took me six months to read it was so heavy and scarily insightful about what the future might hold