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 […]
September 30, 2013
Eradicating Acute Poverty via UN Human Rights Machinery
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The Rule of Optimism – Thirty Years On
Not many social scientists introduce a phrase into the English language and its subsequent history is instructive about the ways in which the impact of successful sociology becomes invisible. It is also a nice example of how ideas become assimilated into a societal environment that finds it hard to accept the sociologist’s focus on systems and organizations.
Statement by AAU on Support for the Social and Behavioral Sciences
We are pleased to report that this statement came out just today from the American Association of Universities: […]
De profundis
At the moment, some universities do seem to be very happy with quite a lot of inequality. Apparently, universities are even more likely than other employers to make extensive use of zero-hour contracts. This coincides in a striking manner with reports about a growing elitism in British academia.
Weekly Overview of Social Science News
The “US effect”: problems with social science research in America Boston. Tech companies turn to social science The Missoulian Boys whose fathers […]
We need more mainstream social science, not less.
A recent New York Times op-ed has provoked a great deal of debate over the relevance and reinvigoration of the social sciences. Alex Golub welcomes some of the criticism levied at the social sciences as a whole but finds the lack of evidence supporting many of the sweeping claims on why social science is stagnating to be unreconcilable given massive funding differentials and the history of social and natural sciences. But social scientists must continue to work to ensure mainstream social science is communicated in more accessible ways.
140 Thoughtless Characters Cost Dear in Academia
The censuring of an academic in the US for sending out an offensive tweet has led many university tweeters to pause for thought.
How Scholars Can Be Strategic Communicators
As academics, we are not usually trained – or even encouraged – to seek an audience for our research beyond the world of peer review. This leaves us ill-equipped for the policy world, a competitive place in which scholars enjoy few advantages. To bring our ideas and findings into the policy arena, we must adopt a style of engagement that enable us to compete effectively with these other groups for the attention of decision-makers.
Lessons from civil society
As academics think about impact, they can draw on some of the lessons and strategic approaches used by civil society and campaigning groups.
