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 […]
Five with Social Science Credentials Win MacArthur Grants
Five people with backgrounds in social, behavioral or data science were among 25 named in the 2018 class of MacArthur Foundation fellows. The fellowship and grant program, sometimes referred to as the “genius grant,” awards exceptionally creative people with $625,000 – no strings attached — in expectation that based on their track record they will achieve something important in the future.
The Dean of ‘Ism’ Studies: Walter Laqueur, 1921-2018
Walter Laquer, who fled the Holocaust, experienced the birth of Israel, founded the ‘Journal of Contemporary History,’ and was an unflinching sentinel against terrorism and an authoritarian Russia, died on September 30. He was 97.
Geographer Gardner to Head Academy of Social Sciences
The longtime director of the Royal Geographical Society, Rita Gardner CBE, will be the new chief executive of the United Kingdom’s Academy of Social Sciences. She fills the vacancy created by the retirement of Stephen Anderson after more than 10 years.
Archived Webinar: How Students Can Tell Better Stories
One of the most frustrating things media instructors face is the lack of quality writing that their students produce. While instructors aren’t […]
Book Review: How to be a Happy Academic
In ‘How to be a Happy Academic: A Guide to Being Effective in Research, Writing and Teaching,’ Alex Clark and Bailey Sousa aim to support fellow academic workers at all career stages to become more efficient, successful and happier through focusing on fostering good habits over and above talent or skills. Eddy Li welcomes this insider perspective on seeing, doing and – most importantly – taming academic work, even if it leaves open the question of how exactly we measure and define “success”.
What Can I Do With a Sociology Degree?
“Our goal is to pique students’ curiosity about the social world—and then to give them the academic tools to understand that world, […]
Collaboration Imbues SSRC’s ‘To Secure Knowledge’ Report
In launching its first-ever task force report on Monday, the 95-year-old Social Science Research Council made clear it gets by with a little help from its friends. Collaboration, said sociologist Alondra Nelson Nelson, the president of the SSRC, is the byword of the report, To Secure Knowledge: Social Science Partnerships for the Common Good.
How a Degree in Humanities Can Help in a Disruptive Economy
A report from RBC Royal Bank reaffirms what thought leaders keep insisting — there will be more and more demand for a liberal arts education in our increasingly digital world. “I prefer to call them “essential skills,” because we all need them every day, though we don’t always use them well. They are the foundational skills that allow us to learn and live and work productively with other people.”
