When the world’s on fire, I always look to @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social’s words. The Beginning Comes After the End is a timely (and necessary) addition to the Solnit canon.
@haymarketbooks.org
Some of my favourite excerpts:
@luciaoc.bsky.social @allenandunwin.bsky.social
There is a lot of (academic and public) scholarship on sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). But, there is a difference between doing something and doing something well with care. TILBIRL is my little way of shedding light on books I think do the job well with care.
@luciaoc.bsky.social
After years of living, stressing and surviving, the blog’s back with a new series, Things I’ve Learnt from Books I’ve Read and Loved (TILBIRL). Part 1 features @luciaoc.bsky.social’s amazing and powerful books.
fieldnotesfromafeministresearcher.wordpress.com/2026/03/07/t...
Such a great book! I read an ARC last month. Highly recommend!
digital illustration of sheets of paper and a pencil. The top sheet of paper is a worksheet with the title, ‘Hope is a discipline.’ The rest of the sheet is filled with doodles of ‘Hope’ in various fonts.
As Mariame Kaba says, “Hope is a discipline.” Given the state of the world, don’t you wish practicing hope right now was as easy as writing it out on a worksheet?
Despite and inspite of the difficulty, we must imagine and strive towards a better world.
@interruptcrim.bsky.social @procreate.com
Love is not a feeling. It is a act that requires commitment, tenderness, active listening and acts of care and support.
Photo of a kindle alongside a vase of Lego flowers against a table cloth. The kindle is open to the cover of “Read This When Things Fall Apart.”
Over the past month, I read an advanced copy of Read This When Things Fall Apart: Letters to Activists in Crisis, a collection edited by @mskellymhayes.bsky.social. Truly a care package for the soul! I highly recommend it. Thank you to @akpress.org for the ARC!
Breaking my nibling-imposed break to say that my Fletcher experience has greatly benefited from @tomdannenbaum.bsky.social’s mentorship and support, literally from day 1 as my MALD academic advisor to now serving on my PhD committee. Finishing up at Fletcher will be strange without you around!
I seriously think the Social Internet is 21st century cigarettes. Complete with secondary smoke causing a lot of harm in nonusers.
I swear the horrors aren’t even daily, they’re hourly. And simultaneously so we don’t see all that is happening.
Seems like a lot of people are choosing not to travel for ISA next year! Will miss you! But I would love to figure out a way to have this conversation elsewhere and/or online at another time.
Seems like a lot of people are choosing not to travel to the U.S. for ISA next year! Will miss you!
Perfect, thank you!!
CC: @drljshepherd.bsky.social @caitlinbiddolph.bsky.social @devoncantwell.bsky.social @marieberry.bsky.social @chichoriktputli.bsky.social
Academia And/As Activism Redux: Tensions and Reciprocities in a Changing World This roundtable explores the relationship between academia and activism in a world increasingly drawn towards authoritarianism, fascism, and attacks on free speech and progressive action. Academia and activism may seem like a symbiotic relationship, especially in the social sciences where the focus is on contending with critical social and political issues. On the one hand, academia can offer theoretical insights and analyses to issues that activists then utilize in their work. Similarly, activists hold rich grassroots experiences that can be theorised and analysed by academics. However, there are a multitude of tensions at play in the relationship: 1. Power (and resource) imbalance between academics and activists, 2. Risk of exploitation and instrumentalization of interlocutors and activists by academics, 3. The applicability and practicality of theories to the field, 4. Increased government repression towards dissenting voices in academia and activism. Additionally, academic-activist identity is vital for feminist, intersectional and decolonial scholars. These scholars have stressed the need for more applicable research, while advocating for social change within academia, and for conceiving of and acting within academia as an inherently political and therefore contested sphere as well. Building on the experiences of participants and an ethic of care, this roundtable will also conceptualize the way forward for academics as activists.
Hi hi! Since there’s an #ISA2026 deadline extension, @sindujaraja.bsky.social and I are wondering if anyone would be interested in joining a roundtable on academia as/and activism? The conversation is as necessary as ever with global trends of growing fascism and repression.
@isanet.bsky.social
CC: @emmalouisebacke.bsky.social @sindujaraja.bsky.social @drljshepherd.bsky.social @qmanivannan.bsky.social @rkrystalli.bsky.social @caitlinbiddolph.bsky.social
We thought we knew tired when we wrote this. Exhausted with @jennifercnash.bsky.social @differences.bsky.social doi.org/10.1215/1040...
Another Storm, by Lee Krasner, 1963, 📸 by Adam Davy
“I wanted to write by the rules of night, by association and intuition” not “the rules of daylight—narratives organized by chronology, analysis, argument, data drawn from research”
@rebeccasolnit.bsky.social on my forever favourite, The Field Guide to Getting Lost
@literaryhub.bsky.social
I know I'm woke -- proudly so -- but I'm tired of hearing
@arsenalwfc.bsky.social's players being referred to as "girls" or "gals" or "ladies." They are women playing the sport at the very highest level and deserve more respect. #Arsenal #COYG
Will do!
Need a feminist researcher to come talk about activism and practices of care?
Oof, I love that phrase: “empty and joyful at once.” It perfectly describes the sense of release (and maybe acceptance?) that I felt.
Five, respondents admitted to being bad at taking care of themselves given the demands of activism, funding issues, overwork and the state of the world. All wanted to know other respondents’ answers to figure out practices of care (any ideas outside of my dissertation welcome! Comic? Podcast?)
6/6
[Oops, I was part way through this and had to stop to put my little baby nephew (who has a cold) down for a nap while also battling a cold myself. This break only adds to my point about balancing work-life and prioritising care!]
Four, they decide their own canvas of impact. While the ultimate goal is a world with no violence, they defined success in smaller ways: 1. focusing on cities/states with friendly governments, 2. their work leading to open conversations with family about gender norms ie “slow/soft activism.”
5/6
Three, everyone’s motivation was deeply personal and came from their own or a loved one’s or experience with SGBV. Some jumped into anti-SGBV work to heal/deal with their experiences and some took time to heal and then jumped into the work.
4/6
Two, almost everyone I talked to sees what they do as being tied to who they are as humans. While a few were hesitant to label themselves as “feminist” or “activist,” they all said the work was important. “Once you see it [SGBV], you can’t unsee it” so you decide to do something.
3/6
First, they’re all exhausted. Everyone brought up being close to burnout or suffering from it in the past. Not only is the work hard to do because social change is slow, the space for non-profits doing violence prevention work is shrinking so they’re all fighting for funding/space/attention.
2/6
