By David D. Perlmutter. Controversy over the sociologist Alice Goffman’s On the Run, a study of young people on the margins of society, has put ethnography on trial. Lost in the accusations and rebuttals, I fear, is the reality that ethnography is one tool among many but too valuable to dismiss or ignore. Like other methodologies, it has strengths and weaknesses, but it complements other approaches in crucial ways. More...01 juillet 2015
In Defense of Ethnography
By David D. Perlmutter. Controversy over the sociologist Alice Goffman’s On the Run, a study of young people on the margins of society, has put ethnography on trial. Lost in the accusations and rebuttals, I fear, is the reality that ethnography is one tool among many but too valuable to dismiss or ignore. Like other methodologies, it has strengths and weaknesses, but it complements other approaches in crucial ways. More...28 juin 2015
Before they were famous: art stars on their final degree shows
By Becky Barnicoat. Tracey Emin made £2,500, Gillian Wearing met her future husband – and the tutors gave David Shrigley’s giant walnut whip a 2:2. As this year’s students hang their work and cross their fingers, British artists relive their last days at art school. More...
Don't take social work training away from universities
By Joanne Westwood. The political appetite to remove social work education from universities and fund private businesses to train students is misplaced. More...
Conferences are for networking
By Jennifer Polk. I had this intention vaguely in mind recently when I attended the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, the annual gathering of more than seventy Canadian scholarly associations. I went to Ottawa because I was invited to speak at the Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education’s graduate student pre-conference; I stayed to network. More...
14 juin 2015
Getting a Life in the Humanities
By Greg Colón Semenza and Garrett A. Sullivan Jr. A number of books have focused on the questions of getting a job, negotiating office politics and other work issues for academics. Far less attention has been paid to the issue of how to construct a life around whatever job you happen to have. We’ve recently tried to address this omission by publishing How to Build a Life in the Humanities: Meditations on the Academic Work-Life Balance. Read more...
Social Sciences Produce Leaders
By Scott Jaschik. Politicians and plenty of parents throughout the world regularly urge students to think practically, and to focus on degrees in technology or business. And colleges and universities around the world are being pressured to focus on disciplines outside the liberal arts and sciences.
But a survey being released today suggests that leaders of a range of organizations internationally (including the United States) are most likely to have a degree in the social sciences, with 44 percent of leaders holding such a credential. Read more...
Re-evaluating the Risks of Public Scholarship
By Anastasia Salter. Last week I attended the HASTAC Conference, an interdisciplinary conference from the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory (one of the oldest and most active academic social networks around). HASTAC is dedicated to public scholarship: many of its initiatives are based around blogging and sharing ideas through the social network, and the conference included livestreaming many sessions for a virtual conference, with a very active Twitter feed supported by designated tweeters at each panel. Read more...13 juin 2015
Pub crawl and ‘zombie walk’ win funding to promote humanities
By . The UK’s only national humanities research festival has announced funding awards to 41 universities and cultural organisations. More...
