What does social media mean for academic writing? Most answers to this question focus on how such platforms might constrain or enable the expression of complex ideas. For instance, we might encounter scepticism that one could express conceptual nuance in 140 characters… Read More ›
Tag Archive for ‘writing’
“Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens”
This is the fifth of Walter Benjamin’s thirteen rules for writing. I would love to know more about what this meant in practice to him. How often did he record his ideas? Where did he record them? How did their… Read More ›
Do academics write badly because they’re rushing?
I saw the science journalist Simon Makin give an excellent talk yesterday on how social and natural scientists can make their writing clearer. He offered some excellent tips to this end, including assuming your reader is exactly as intelligent as you are, but has absolutely none… Read More ›
Writing prompts for a PhD journal
Embed from Getty Images I’m a big advocate of the research journal as a key part of doing a PhD. I think blogs are wonderful for this but I realise this might not be for everyone. The important thing is… Read More ›
The turn to end all turns
The upwards trajectory of publication poses an obvious problem for the aspiring academic. It is one familiar from other fields of cultural production. How to be heard above the din? If ever more publications are being produced each year, commanding ever… Read More ›
On Academic Productivity
Some great ideas about academic productivity offered by Fabio Rojas at OrgTheory, based on conversations he has had with ultra-productive academics. Read it in full here: Team work: Almost every star I’ve asked works in large groups. If you look… Read More ›
The challenge of writing in the accelerated academy
In the nine years since I first entered a Sociology department, I’ve had a deep interest in academic writing that has only increased with time. In my past life as a philosophy student, writing had never occurred to me as… Read More ›
What is ‘the literature’?
My experience of watching the literature on asexuality spiral from a handful of papers ever through to new ones each month has left me fascinated by how quickly ‘the literature’ can become unmanageable. Within a relatively small and nascent field,… Read More ›
Squeezing Us ‘Till It Hurts: Motherhood, Discrimination, and Universities
by Deborah Talbot The Final Report of the Equalities Review, published by Equalities Commission in 2007, reviewed a range of persistent inequalities including those that affect women. It argued that, ‘…new research reveals clearly that there is one factor that… Read More ›
CfP – Contemporary Boys’ Literacies / Boys’ Literatures
Boyhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal Special Issue Contemporary Boys’ Literacies / Boys’ Literatures For the Fall 2017 issue of Boyhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal (Volume 10), the editors invite original contributions to the wide and dynamic fields of contemporary boys’… Read More ›
Eliminating the first person from ethnography
A powerful argument by Matthew Desmond from the conclusion of his incredible book Evicted. What do you think? Far from being a prerequisite for reflexivity, can writing the “I” into ethnography inadvertently make the text about the author rather than the… Read More ›
How to write essays for A Level Sociology exams
This is very much geared towards the specific format of A level exams in the United Kingdom but it might be useful for others:
Using fiction as a resource for social theorising
I was a bit hesitant when preparing this talk because of the risk that I just end up talking about a couple of novels that I really liked and explaining why I liked them. So I won’t actually say all that much… Read More ›
Using social media to ‘inhabit the attentiveness of another writer’
There’s a lovely reflection in Les Back’s Academic Diary, released soon by Goldsmiths Press, concerning the role of Twitter in academic life. He suggests that Twitter sometimes facilitates our “inhabiting the attentiveness of another writer” by providing “signposts pointing to… Read More ›
Why publish? The politics of communication in perishing times
In her inaugural lecture, Professor Sarah Kember asks how a new generation of independent and university presses can reinvent rather than reinforce what counts in scholarly and artistic practice. In a context of ongoing crisis and policy reform in publishing,… Read More ›
Writing praxes beyond papers and books
A really fascinating reflection by Rob Kitchin on ten forms of academic writing beyond scholarly papers and books: fiction, blog posts, newspaper op eds, email correspondence, policy papers, policy consultation, a television documentary script, powerpoint slides, academic papers, and grant application…. Read More ›
The challenge of sociological writing
In this event organised by The Sociological Review’s Early Career Forum, a panel of accomplished writers with a long history of supporting younger scholars reflect on the challenges of sociological writing. Each participant will give a short talk, discussing a particular aspect… Read More ›
The Challenge of Sociological Writing
In this event organised by The Sociological Review’s Early Career Forum, a panel of accomplished writers with a long history of supporting younger scholars reflect on the challenges of sociological writing. Each participant will give a short talk, discussing a particular aspect… Read More ›
On not writing from the PhD
This was originally published on patter: On March 26th 2014 I finally submitted my thesis for the PhD I had begun almost six years earlier. The event itself was somewhat anticlimactic after a false start the day before when ebullience… Read More ›
Connected and disconnected writing
By David Beer I recall watching a documentary about the popular crime novelist Ian Rankin. It’s a documentary that is well worth watching for any writer. The programme followed him through a year in his life. It began in January,… Read More ›
Returning to blogging
Around two months ago I reluctantly came to the conclusion that I no longer had time to maintain two blogs. I won’t go into the reasons here, but the case seemed pretty unanswerable. So I closed down this blog and… Read More ›
Blogging as ‘writing without a parachute’
What does it mean to write with energy? That’s a question Patter addresses on her blog this morning, reflecting on the notion of ‘writing without a parachute’. As she summarises this approach to writing: 1. write what comes up for… Read More ›
Medium: The New Frontier
If it wasn’t for the fact we’ve been going for over 5 years, I’d be tempted to move SI over to Medium. It’s immensely appealing in a range of ways and it becomes more exciting with each passing month. As… Read More ›
Why should academics blog about their research? An answer in pictures
Thanks to Jacqueline Bartram who drew these great cartoons as I was talking at a Hull event last week about academic blogging. Why should academics blog about their research? It provides a home for things you reluctantly cut from your… Read More ›
The busy academic’s guide to writing concisely
Thanks to Shit Academics Say for an image which is both funny and useful:
Are you a dandelion or a mammal?
This is a question Cory Doctorow introduces in his book Information Doesn’t Want To Be Free: When my daughter was born, I became keenly aware of how much stock we mammals put into the copies we make of ourselves (yes,… Read More ›
Creative Work and Coercions of Circumstances
It was only with the success of shows like The Sopranos and The Wire that the reverence accorded directors in cinema began to be extended to creators of television. David Milch was the show runner for NYPD Blue and Deadwood…. Read More ›
Against word counts as part of a daily writing routine
As some people reading this might know, I’m an obsessive cultivator of habits. I’m preoccupied by them intellectually and spent 6 years writing a PhD about how who we are is shaped by the situated interplay between reflexivity and habit… Read More ›
The Promise of Sociological Fiction
It’s been far from obvious to me what I should say for my talk at the Design Fiction event at Goldsmiths on Wednesday. The motivation behind this event has been little more than “isn’t this interesting? let’s talk about it”… Read More ›