Academics are over-explainers. Our articles read like insurance policies, in which we protect ourselves against lawsuits from future readers.
But what if the most profound understanding happens not when everything is explained, but when just enough remains unsaid?
In a new series, @vmmmh explores what happens when we grant our readers the dignity of uncertainty...
Comics have long been more than just entertainment: They can be a medium of remembrance, criticism and testimony all at once. Since the Russian attack on Ukraine, artists from all over the world have taken to pen and paper to make the incomprehensible visible.
Svitlana Pidoprygora explores how documentary comics shape public understanding of the Russian invasion in #Ukraine worldwide ⬇
Struggling to finish your academic writing projects?
Sarah Lang explains how to identify and manage writing bottlenecks - and write more effectively, stay focused, and overcome procrastination ⬇
What does it mean to study a revolution while living through it?
A conversation with sociologist Atef Said explores how to critically analyze, periodize, and represent an unfolding present.
Read the full interview at #TRAFO blog ⬇
If you have ever spent time at an airport in Turkey, you have seen them: Men with fresh hair transplants.
As Melike Şahinol argues, aesthetic interventions such as these are not merely individual choices. They are shaped by social expectations, technological affordances, and gendered norms.
In this 🎧podcast, Melike discusses her research on medical tourism in Iran and Turkey (in Turkish) ⬇
https://hairyless.hypotheses.org/712
#hypoverse #dehypoPodcast #Turkey #GündelikHayatınSosyolojisi
Developing a good research question is an art form, writes @vmmmh: Too broad and it's impossible to answer, too narrow and the results will be tedious and boring.
What if we thought of research questions not as fixed destinations but as evolving companions in a journey of understanding, as questions that are alive enough to grow with us? ⬇
"I decided that I didn’t want to be this deadline-driven, miserable writer anymore. I actually like writing. I like my work." Sarah Lang explains how a mindset shift and buliding low-stress routines helped her actually enjoy #AcademicWriting ⬇
Jim Hickman (1947–2025) was a pioneering force in citizen diplomacy. The pyschologist devoted his life to the grassroots movement of Soviet-American citizen diplomacy, uniting astronauts and cosmonauts through the Association of Space Explorers ⬇
In his Inaugural Adress, Donald #Trump vowed to support Elon Musk’s Mars colonization mission as the United States' "manifest destiny", a divine mandate to conquer space - a 19th century concept which was once used to justify the U.S. westward expansion.
At the HCA Graduate Blog, Peggy Reeder argues that space is no longer just a scientific frontier, but has become a spiritual and ideological battleground ⬇
Why would scientists fake research?
Some surveys suggest as many as 9% of scientists faked data at least once in their careers, and that more than half selectively reported findings – a behavior that makes the things they study to appear less uncertain than they actually are.
Nate Breznau argues that unethical scientific behaviors like faking data may be symptoms of a triggered survival response ⬇
Having the latest tool won’t make you more productive if your system is flawed. It’s like believing a sharper knife turns someone into a master chef, writes @StefanTSiegel at #NoteLab.
There is no perfect tool for personal knowledge management—and there never will be. What matters is how you use the tool(s) ⬇
In the 19th century, Russia used photography and cartography not only to document, but to assert control over Central Asia. The Turkestan Album reveals how visual media served imperial ambitions & the shaping of national identity ⬇
“Ours” or One of “Theirs”?
Nino Aivazishvili-Gehne (#LeibnizIOS) explores post-Soviet identities and their political implications among people from the former USSR in Bavaria, reflecting on her personal experiences during fieldwork as a social anthropologist. 👇
https://ostblog.hypotheses.org/7696
#hypoverse #PostSovietStudies #USSR #fieldwork #SociaAnthropology #Georgia
How to get that grant: In her survival guide to applications in academia, Sarah Lang explains how to make your case an "easy win" by knowing two key facts about the reviewing process 👇
![To be an easy yes, give them an easy win [Applications in Academia 101, A Survival Guide, Part 7]](https://files.mastodon.social/cache/media_attachments/files/114/238/772/432/854/015/original/2fcc99e265f9fc71.png)
In #Bulgaria, the #Covid19 pandemic became a tool for further subjugation of the #Roma population, portraying them as "virus carriers" and denying them basic rights. This reflects a long-standing history of racialized control, writes Francesco Trupia at #TRAFOBlog 👇
In #USElections, the Democratic Party has traditionally been able to count on the #Latino vote. Not so in 2024: Many blamed the Latino community for the outcome of the election. Angela X. Ocampo from the University of Texas at Austin sheds light on the political behavior and priorities of this important and diverse voting bloc 👇
In 1891, the second International Folklore Congress was convened in London. The organizers hoped to raise the profile of the new discipline and to underpin the Folklore Society's role as a disciplinary pioneer.
Frauke Ahrens explores the Folklore Society as a transnational actor 👇
The 1999 Helms-Biden Act ended a decade-long blockade of U.S. payments to the United Nations and stimulated significant reform of the U.N. institutions. It also points to an underlying principle of Joe Biden’s politics, which is central to understanding his legacy, argues Richard Lange.
With the fall of the Assad regime, the brutal violence with which the regime had held on to power for 54 years came overwhelmingly into the public eye. The Hama massacre in February 1982 is a momentous example of this violence. This central and defining event of Assad’s rule, which was a strong taboo for decades and has never been discussed or dealt with publicly, is now openly and freely commemorated for the first time:
"Russia’s war cult and its amnesiac attitude to Soviet political terror are not simply the doings of Putin’s memory industry. They are ingrained in collective imagination and reproduced from generation to generation."
Ekaterina Haskins explains why the memory of the Great Patriotic War remains so powerful in today’s Russia, while public interest in Soviet political terror fades. Read the full interview here 👇
