ASA has won a major victory for academic freedom. As part of a coalition represented by @democracyforward.org, we defeated the Dept of Ed’s attempt to get school districts to censor lessons, abandon student support programs, and certify compliance. Read more: https://bit.ly/4qKGo2U.

Time to share some news I've been sitting on: starting in January, I will lead a @dfg.de Emmy Noether Group at @weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social! We will investigate how local public spheres are constituted under conditions of digitalization & globalization.

www.weizenbaum-institut.de/en/research/...

‘They don’t like us in the global movement’: the experiences of youth activists at the periphery of worldwide Fridays for Future While global movements are often lauded for the ability to unite action worldwide, this study foregrounds the hindrances and conflicts that may emerge between a global movement and its local chapte...

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

💡 Publication alert!
@icsjournal.bsky.social

Based on interviews with youth activists in FFF Turkey and Israel, we explore how local conditions can complicate transnational collaboration — and how the “weak ties” that make connective action possible can also make it fragile.

Today, I got the teaching award of the Media and Communication Science Department at FU Berlin for the very first seminar I taught!

It's great to see that you are rewarded for doing your job with passion and dedication!

Thanks to my great students 💙

The introductory chapter I wrote together with Barbara Pfetsch on theories and conceptualization of conflict and space is finally out! doi.org/10.4324/9781...
We explore how spatiality is shaped by social conflicts and conflicts shape space building on the great work at @sfb1265.bsky.social !

Screenshot reading: ABSTRACT Climate change exemplifies the complex spatial patterns of contemporary social issues. It spans across scales from global to local, is inequitably distributed regarding responsibilities and impacts, and connects heterogeneous actors. The notion of climate justice highlights these uneven spatialities. This chapter reflects on the spatial dimension of climate justice conflicts and solidarities. It argues, first, that local climate justice conflicts can be interpreted as spatial conflicts arising from the tensions between different spatial figures, namely, territory, place, trajectory, and network. Second, the chapter identifies spatial dimensions of solidarity and conflict in climate justice movements: between center and periphery, between local and translocal, and across scales. These considerations are brought together in a conceptual model of the actor and issue spaces of climate justice movements. Key aspects are illustrated using observations from two field trips to the coal-mining area of western Germany and to the oil- and gas-drilling region in North Dakota, USA.

First, in a chapter together with B. Pfetsch, @zozanbaran.bsky.social and @anniewald.bsky.social, we conceptualize how lines of both conflict and solidarity in contemporary climate justice (and really, most other types of) social movements are spatially structured.

doi.org/10.4324/9781...

I wrote about Grok going "MechaHitler" over at X, and the need to view LLMs correctly: as remarkably powerful plausibility engines.

Their AGI marketing and the strong inclination to project human qualities to anything that can speak is misleading us.

NYT gift link:

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/o...

@isa-sociology.org Forum is fun thanks to the incredible volunteers, attentive colleagues and beautiful Rabat!
I was lucky to present my papers and had constructive feedback and intriguing discussions.
Now I will enjoy the rest!

Multiple Spatialities 7: Lokale vs. globalisierte Räume - SFB 1265 „Re-Figuration von Räumen“

Der neue #SFB1265 Schnittstellenfilm ist da!
Linda Hering, @dstoltenberg.bsky.social und @zozanbaran.bsky.social sprechen mit Janin Walter über das Spannungsverhältnis lokaler und globalisierter Räume anhand ihrer SFB Forschung zu Protestbewegungen und Warenketten📺⬇️
sfb1265.de/einblicke/vi...

Seeing Like a Platform. An Inquiry into the Condition of Digital Modernity The proposition at the heart of the book “Seeing Like a Platform” by Petter Törnberg and Justus Uitermark is that the digital era into which we are entering signifies the rise of a new epistemology of...

On Wednesday, 16 April, at 17:00 I am delighted to co-organize a presentation with Justus Uitermark @uitermark.bsky.social about his and Petter Törnberg's new book Seeing Like a Platform at @weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social.

Please register here: www.weizenbaum-institut.de/news/detail/...