Julie Spray

Also would love recommendations of journals in critical higher education whose editors understand feminist epistemologies

Frustrating example of #epistemicmirecognition: rejection (after 2 rounds of review and reviewers recommending acceptance) from journal editor because this autoethnographic paper sounds like a story retrospectively told from my experiences (and so cannot be "academically rigorous inquiry"). Sigh.

Opinion | Autism Has Always Existed. We Haven’t Always Called It Autism.

“In the Kalahari, one little boy who would almost certainly be diagnosed with autism in an American doctor’s office is highly valued for his abilities… the boy, his father told me, “is great herding goats. He always knows where they are in the day or night.””

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/o...

This is a super helpful and interesting window into the editorial process - I learned a lot! I found the explanation of the relationship between editor and reviewer reports in final decision-making especially helpful to understand.

I was a grad student when Trump got elected in 2016, and the next day a very senior professor commented: "just goes to show the dangers of an uneducated populace."

I have always remembered that remark over the last few years of social and political regression. Lest we forget what education is for.

And you know so much more than them! You know so much more than you did the last time you taught, you’ve forgotten how much you know

Trump helped me learn to recognise narcissistic people in my own life. Once you see the pattern and understand the drivers, confusing people become a lot more predictable. Thanks Donald, I guess?

It was, I think, the most exciting episode I’ve ever seen of any franchise. So well edited too. What a dream cast, what a joy to watch them

And the students are so much younger right?!

Please tell Lisa congratulations ngā mihi nui on an amazing first episode and I’m so proud of her! Also why is she not on Bluesky

#AcademicSky #SciPub #PeerReview #PhDSky #OpenScience #AcademicResearch #AcademicWriting #ScholarlyPublishing #AcademicPublishing #AcademicChatter 🧪

We've had huge societal shifts that made childhood a private matter instead of a collective social responsibility, then wonder why so many youth are alienated & vulnerable. We need to think about this with a social & generational lens on gender & power, not an individualised developmentalist lens.

We are asking boys, who are age-segregated and stripped of agency in schools, where they must play a social Game of Thrones, to resist the vortex of power and make themselves relationally vulnerable without any models as to how. This is actually super hard and wise adult men need to step in to help.

If boys are being algorithmically gender-segregated into cultural bubbles where leaders and role models convert their vulnerability into a sense of power, then that's a potent vortex and we can't hold kids responsible for knowing how to navigate that alone. This is a hermeneutic injustice issue.

A valuable checklist. Thanks Julie. And for those seeking to explore further and challenge adultism in research, can I offer some additional resources from my own back catalogue: www.harryshier.net/docs/Shier-A...
www.harryshier.net/docs/Shier-W...

When I interview medical professionals about children’s role in their chronic illness management, so many of them only point to receiving education. It’s such an injustice to children, who are typically already doing a lot of their own management that adults don’t see.

Let me know how this resonates and if you have any more items to add to the checklist! Next resource is: "How might adultism be shaping your participants' experiences?"

If you noticed yourself saying “yes” to some of these questions, you might consider how adult-centric bias may be influencing your research or practice. Adult centrism is the assumption that adults’ perspectives, experiences, ways of knowing, and priorities are the most valid, important, or normal.

Adult-centrism is a form of positional bias where adults are unconsciously centred as the default social actors and decision-makers, shaping how society, institutions, and knowledge systems operate. Consequently, the perspectives and experiences of children and young people are often undervalued, dismissed, or ignored.

Key features of adult centrism Adults as the Norm: Adults’ views are considered standard, rational, and universal, while children's views are often seen as incomplete, naive, or irrelevant. Authority and Power: Adults are assumed to know what is best for children, often without including children in decisions that directly affect them. Knowledge Hierarchies: Children's knowledge is typically considered less valid or rigorous, especially in research, policy, or clinical settings. Social Organization: Many systems (education, health care, legal structures) are designed to meet adult needs and operate on adult terms, often at the expense of children’s participation. Adult centrism also leads to adultism: prejudice or discrimination against young people simply because they are young.

Adult Centrism also affects adults. Just as patriarchy also impacts men, adult-centrism also shapes how adults experience the world. How is adultism influencing your work?

How adult-centric is your research?

I consider my research ageless Most or all of my participants are working-age adults I consider research about children, youth or older-age people to be the subject of special niche scholarship, not mainstream to my discipline. I expect research involving children, youth or older-age people to be separate subfields.

I consider my research ageless Most or all of my participants are working-age adults I consider research about children, youth or older-age people to be the subject of special niche scholarship, not mainstream to my discipline. I expect research involving children, youth or older-age people to be separate subfields.

Age variation within the adult age category is not part of my analysis I do not specify the age or life stage of my participants when contextualising their stories or quotes I don’t really consider how the perspectives of children, adolescents or older-age people might change my interpretations of adult participants’ experiences in my research

It's hard to see what we're not seeing when working from the dominant or majority (normative) social position. As researchers, we share a normative but rarely critically considered position as ADULTS.

This means our research has likely been shaped by adult-centrism. I made a resource.

Sample sizes for saturation in qualitative research: A systematic review of empirical tests To review empirical studies that assess saturation in qualitative research in order to identify sample sizes for saturation, strategies used to assess…

Why do people keep trying to fo this?

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

When I was little, the U.S. military came to our home at gunpoint and took me and my family away. We were imprisoned for years in barbed wire camps simply because we were Japanese American. I have spent my life telling that story, hoping it would never be repeated.

Watching the US from afar, you realise the frog did notice the water heating up, it just believed the next midterm would turn off the stove.

Ireland has had "sELf iD" for 10 years now and not one single issue that the media, government and anti-trans movement predicted has come to pass. Not one.

If it works in Ireland why would it not work here? No one who opposes it can give a good answer, because the real answer is transphobia

BREAKING: Scientists are staging a “science fair” in the lobby of a Congressional building to tell elected officials about the critical knowledge the US will lose because their research grants have been canceled.

Pretty sure they tasted awful because my mum boiled the tasty out of them.

(Children also have differences in taste receptors that make them more averse to bitter foods)

Turns out all those guns don’t help when the militia is well regulated by consumer capitalism

Might be good use for that well regulated militia

‘Basically impossible to get them back’: Russia’s mass abduction of Ukrainian children is a war crime, say experts As territories shift and divide families, desperate parents are travelling to Russia to find their children, many of whom have been moved into military camps or orphanages

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

'It's a Killing Field': IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid IDF officers and soldiers told Haaretz they were ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near food distribution sites in Gaza, even when no threat was present. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, prompting the military prosecution to call for a review into possible war crimes

IDF soldiers have now themselves admitted they have been ordered to murder aid-seekers in Gaza.

Truly an atrocity built on atrocity.

www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...

9. Law / Legal Studies Legal Anthropology: A significant subfield of anthropology examines legal systems, customary law, and dispute resolution in diverse societies. Influence on Critical Legal Studies: Anthropologists like Sally Falk Moore and John Comaroff have influenced critical legal theorists, particularly on how law operates outside formal institutions. Critiques from Legal Scholars: Some legal scholars view anthropological work as lacking doctrinal precision or relevance to real-world jurisprudence. Others worry that anthropologists “romanticize” informal justice systems. 10. Geography Shared Interests: Cultural geographers and anthropologists often study similar phenomena — place, landscape, identity, and spatial politics. Methodological Exchange: There has been mutual borrowing of concepts like “place-making,” “territoriality,” and “embodiment.” Critique: Some geographers argue anthropology can be insufficiently spatial in its analyses; others critique the discipline’s historical ties to colonial mapping and knowledge.

11. Education Studies Anthropology of Education: This subfield explores schooling, learning, and pedagogy through ethnographic methods, often focusing on inequality, language, and hidden curricula. Use in Teacher Training: Some education programs draw on anthropological insights about culture and learning styles to support inclusive pedagogy. Skepticism: Quantitative educational researchers may see anthropology as too context-bound to inform policy or scalable interventions. 12. Public Health / Medicine Medical Anthropology: Widely recognized for its critical insight into health systems, illness narratives, and global health. Contributions: Anthropologists have illuminated issues around health inequality, medical pluralism, and the cultural meanings of disease. Criticism: Biomedical practitioners may find anthropological critiques of “Western medicine” threatening or impractical, especially when they emphasize cultural relativism over measurable outcomes.