Could Distributed Peer Review Better Decide Grant Funding?
The landscape of academic grant funding is notoriously competitive and plagued by lengthy, bureaucratic processes, exacerbated by difficulties in finding willing reviewers. Distributed […]
The Civic Responsibility of Ethnographers
What duty do social scientists have to report illegal activity that they witness as part of their fieldwork? If you answered quickly, you may not have thought about the issue all that deeply.
Academic Morale and Ponzi Schemes
The pool of PhDs and postdocs has expanded far more rapidly than the long-term career opportunities in higher education, a situation Charles Ponzi would have recognized- and which Felicity Callard captured with a late-November tweet.
Reflections on the Centenary of the Armistice
At the 100th anniversary of the end of World War, Robert Dingwall asks how has English sociology asked questions about the experiences and the legacy of the war — or if it even has broached those issues.
Why the Chinese Government Should Read Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer’s examination of ‘militant’ societies, argues our Robert Dingwall, proves to be a cautionary tale for the present Chinese government and its attempts to micro-manage society through the ‘social credit’ scheme.
Sir Cliff Richard, the BBC and the Ethics of Interviewing
The recent brouhaha involving the BBC and the singer points out something the journalists and qualitative researchers share: the need to develop a common approach to the ethics of interviewing.
Paying for the Good Stuff
When Robert Dingwall was younger, sociology departments routinely taught a course on ‘industry,’, ‘work’ or ‘economic life.’ “Most of this turf has now been abandoned to business schools in the form of organization studies, where it increasingly struggles to resist the expansion of finance and accounting studies,” he says, and to our detriment.
The Other Dead of 1918
Although it won’t see the memorials and centenary events that the World War I Armistice will, it’s worth thinking back to the ravages of the ‘Spanish flu’ of a century ago and the implications that that pandemic of the past has for infections of the future.
Should Universities Be Parents?
Increasingly, says Robert Dingwall, UK universities are taking a more paternal role in the lives of their students, taking — or perhaps resuming — more active roles in addressing their charges’ mental health, criminal conduct and self-care.
