Ulrich Beck is an internationally known and highly influential sociologist — easily one of the biggest names in social theory alive today — and he is to be thanked for finding a way to talk about postmodernity without subjecting us to that word. He refers instead to “second modernity,” and understands it less as a […] … learn more→

I take a lot of notes. Even when I was doing my PhD and I was taking thousands of pages of notes, I took them by hand. I tried using a computer, but there are so many things that are really hard to do on screen (drawing an arrow to make a connection between points, […] … learn more→

Conflict of interest in academic science is a controversial, but most of all a highly emotional, issue in the academy. Scientists and administrators disagree vehemently about whether it is a good or bad thing, and many aver that it has no impact on research—or that it is no one’s business. The thing is that the […] … learn more→

My reading material to and from London recently for the annual open-source programming event known as Mozfest, or the Mozilla Festival, included two glossy magazines focusing on the future of education: the November 19 cover story in Forbes and the entire November issue of Wired UK, an offshoot of the American magazine. Education is rarely […] … learn more→

As the world celebrates Human Rights Day on 10 December, it is a good time to pause to reflect on the status of human rights in Timor-Leste. 13 years after the end of Indonesian rule and after ten years of independence, the question arises as to whether Timor-Leste’s aspirations to respecting notions of human rights, […] … learn more→

One of the oldest questions of philosophy is, \”Who guards the guardians?\” When Plato posed this question — if not quite this succinctly — his concern was with how a community can keep its leaders focused on the good of the whole. Plato\’s answer was that guardians should govern themselves — philosophy would train their […] … learn more→

You can tell a lot about a person just by looking at their face. From a glance, we can glean information about a person’s emotional state, sex, age, ethnicity, where their attention is focused and, of course – if we recognise them – who they are. But where should you look on a face to […] … learn more→

I\’d like to thank my colleague Melonie Fullick for the conversation that led to this post. — As a researcher interested in the digital humanities and as a blogger, editor and academic blogging and social media workshop facilitator, I have observed different shades of digital literacy levels. I have witnessed it not between groups from […] … learn more→

He hated my class, I was pretty sure. I was teaching an introductory course with enough humor and anecdotes to appeal to new majors and engage the nonmajors. But the course was more reading-intensive and academically rigorous than this particular student had bargained for, and he finished the semester with an eye on the clock […] … learn more→

A new study out of Michigan State University and published in the Annals of Behavioural Medicine could shed some light on how to manage our motivation to exercise – by training with people that are fitter and stronger than us. Of course, the concept of exercising in groups is not new. Research by Emily Kahn […] … learn more→