Social Science Space

In this Q&A conducted by the LSE Impact blog, social psychologist Sonia Livingstone outlines the ways that the pandemic has transformed the process of promoting a book. She discusses the heightened importance of social media and the opportunities that digital technologies have afforded for reaching new audiences and adapting conventional formats.

We present this article, adapted from a chapter of ‘Good Essay Writing: A Social Sciences Guide,’ as a resource for Academic Writing Month.

From scholarly article to practical guides, from textbooks to media, from weighty tomes to tweets, researchers and academic writers have […]

COVID-19 has led to new ways of working which have transformed research practices. This has created opportunities for research cultures to be more inclusive and accessible- especially to those for whom the university is a barrier. However, post-pandemic, research cultures also need to change. In this post, Stuart Read, Anne Parfitt and Tanvir Bush outline three provocations that researchers can ask as part of an inclusive research practice.

Since it started in 2011, Academic Writing Month has seen a growth of workshops and initiatives aimed at helping researchers […]

William Poole takes an alternative approach to the usual ‘how-to’ blog format for academic writing. An avid reader of conclusions, with an aversion to writing them, the author presents an altogether inconclusive reflection on the form and function of the conclusion.

University life comes with its share of challenges. One of these is writing longer assignments that require higher information, communication […]

Sociologist Kathy Charmaz, whose experience as an occupational therapist led her to develop a new take on the qualitative research methodology known as grounded theory, died of cancer on July 27. A professor emerita at Northern California’s Sonoma State University, she was 80.

t’s Academic Book Week 2020! The theme this year is the environment, and makers, providers and readers of academic books will be celebrating them as vehicles for ground-breaking ideas. To kick off the week, David Beer, author of ‘The Data Gaze,’ discusses the notion of ‘digital atrophy’ and consumer capitalism within the technological and social environment we inhabit.

The move towards including the first person perspective is becoming more acceptable in academia, notes the University of Queensland’s Peter Ellerton, who adds, there are times when invoking the first person is more meaningful and even rigorous than not.

Stoyan V. Sgourev, possibly the only management professor teaching (and indulging in) art history, argues that many of the key principles that guided the evolution of painting during the Italian Renaissance can be usefully applied to the domain of academic writing. Leonardo quite likely never intended to articulate advice on writing as an intellectual activity, but Stoyan borrows generously from his style and writings in formulating a number of basic principles that can help connect with the reader in a similar way to his paintings.

The necessity of rigorous if uninspiring academic writing is perhaps best illustrated with the story of a prominent 18th-century intellectual named Franz Anton Mesmer. He believed that illnesses were caused by blockages that interfered with the healthy flow of magnetic fluid through the body.