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 […]
Economic Inequality and Political Power (Part 2 of 3)
In my previous post I discussed the lack of government responsiveness to the middle-class and the poor, when their policy preferences diverge […]
The Decline of Public Debates About Higher Education in Britain
Just a few years ago, critical voices could still speak through mainstream media to highlight the dangers of the quickly accelerating commercialisation of academia. These commentators have now been pushed to the margins.
Beyond the Randomised Controlled Trial
Although the value of Randomised Controlled Trials in very specific contexts cannot be denied, any imperialist claims for its universal applicability and its use as a bench mark against which all other studies must to be measured needs to be challenged.
Economic Inequality and Political Power (Part 1 of 3)
If policy influence becomes so unequal that the wishes of most citizens are ignored most of the time, a country’s claim to be a democracy is cast in doubt. And that is exactly what I found in my analyses of the link between public preferences and government policy in the U.S.
Hate Rock 101
A sociologist explains why Sikh temple shooter Wade M. Page’s white-power music scene is dying out, just as we’re all discovering it.
“The author has asked not to be identified in case this further affects his career prospects.”
Many PhD graduates are forced into the troubled world of unemployment while, at the same time, being denied a public voice. How is it that extremely narrow standards of professional legitimacy are used to judge young scholars who simply cannot meet them?
Writing the North Atlantic Bubble: Part 1
Sociology is arguably a global project. Significant approaches to the study of society have been developed in many parts of the world. Yet, students in the North Atlantic world do not learn about these approaches, as textbooks interpret the world in terms of scholars of the region.
