Cutting NSF Is Like Liquidating Your Finest Investment
Look closely at your mobile phone or tablet. Touch-screen technology, speech recognition, digital sound recording and the internet were all developed using […]
Fast Professor: WeChat and Future Academe
Daniel Nehring describes China’s social networking platform WeChat as ‘Facebook on steroids,’ and notes it has long surpassed e-mail as the main tool of mediating communication at Chinese universities while obliterating boundaries between work and home. Is this a cautionary tale for academe outside of China?
Social Science Ahead of the (Shallow) Curve on Altmetrics Acceptance
A new survey of university faculty finds that the idea of altmetrics – using something aside from journal citations as the measure of scholarly impact – has made less headway among faculty than might be expected given the hoopla surrounding altmetrics. These new measures are the most familiar in the social science community (barely) and least familiar in the arts and humanities (dramatically so).
Becoming a diagnosis: An ESRC Better Lives Essay
Sociologist Lauren O’Connell, a postgraduate research student at the University of Essex, holds a scholarship from the Economic and Social Research Council for her doctoral research exploring how clinical diagnosis and treatment shapes the experience of anorexia nervosa. In this shortlisted essay from the ESRC Better Lives Writing Competition, in which PhD students who have received money from the ESRC write short essays about how their research leads too better lives, she details how her own experiences influenced her work.
Zoom-in vs Zoom-out: Resources for the Generalist-Specialist Trade-Off
Hashem ElAssad argues that the failure to appreciate the trade-off that comes with an espoused view is doing harm to the public. The specialization vs generalization debate is no exception to this. The aim of this article is to provide quality resources exploring whether or not specializing in a trade or generalizing in multiple is a better route.
Monika Krause on Humanitarian Aid
Humanitarian aid organizations often find themselves torn by reasonable expectations – to address a pressing crisis and to show that what they are doing is actually helping. While these might not seem at odds, in practice, says sociologist Monika Krause, they often do. Krause, is the author of The Good Project, an award-winning book from 2014, and guest of this Social Science Bites podcast.
ESRC Announces Finalists for Celebrating Impact Prize
Ranging from jurisprudence to autism, the loss of a baby to the growth of equality in science education, the work of the finalists in the seventh annual Celebrating Impact Prize competition—announced today — represent a broad cross-section of meaningful work from Britain’s social and behavioral researchers.
Collecting Social Media Data for Research
How can researchers use social media data in their research? The digitalization of social life offers researchers an unprecedented world of data with which to study human life and social systems. However, accessing this data has become increasingly difficult. Jason Radford here is to help you figure out what approach is right for you.
The psychology of flooding: An ESCR Better Lives Essay
Niall McLoughlin is a PhD candidate in psychology and arts scholar at the University of Bath, as well as an associate with Climate Outreach. In this shortlisted essay from the ESRC Better Lives Writing Competition, in which PhD students who have received money from the ESRC write short essays about how their research leads too better lives, McLoughlin discusses the psychological catastrophe that accompanied the natural disaster of the 2015 Cumbrian floods and what that might teach us for addressing climate change.
