Anybody know anyone who controls an endowed guest professorship or annual lecture (series)? One that could be manned with a fun and lively Swedish archaeologist? Please put my name forward! I know French and German.
academia
I'm involved now and then in hiring our department's sessional instructors (adjuncts, in the southern North American dialect). While there are always a few applicants who really have no business even thinking they could teach the course (often the same who argue they are "uniquely qualified"), a good chunk have CVs that are as impressive or more than many tenure-track colleagues. This isn't surprising (we all know the score), just always more than a little discouraging.
Today and tomorrow colleagues and I are organising a two-day workshop on the use of LLMs for linguistics research at @UniKoeln: https://sfb1252.github.io/llm-workshop/. This was originally intended as a small, university-internal event, but we have found that there is a lot of interest from colleagues and students about this topic so we are delighted to have 15 poster presentations, in addition to four brilliant keynote speakers, and a concluding panel discussion. 1/🧵
Edited 296d ago
#duke #university is firing 10% of all staff across the board.
Edited 1y ago
Lovely people of Mastodon! You can now register for the Scientist Responsibility Summit. This interdisciplinary 1 day conference takes place in Berlin on Saturday, 11th Oct 2025. We will discuss the role of scientists in the context of the polycrisis with experts from different fields.
On-site attendance in Berlin is free but registration is mandatory.
You can register here: https://blogs.fu-berlin.de/scientistsresponsibilitysummit/ (it will also be livestreamed, no need to register for that)
📊First results from our #research project on the role of #Mastodon in #academia are in. n=346
1️⃣94.7% say they would increase their professional use of Mastodon if more academic peers from their field joined the platform
2️⃣71.4% report a lack of institutional support for using Mastodon
3️⃣66.1% indicate their professional Mastodon use would increase if their organizations were present on Mastodon
Stay tuned for more results.
There is something really shameful to me about institutions of higher education shilling AI "microcredentials" while simultaneously contributing to making higher education inaccessible to the majority of people.
They are offering you crumbs of an education, on which they hope to profit still, while hollowing out their own institutions.
Eating the seed corn.
#HigherEd #academia #USUniversities #microcredentials
They are offering you crumbs of an education, on which they hope to profit still, while hollowing out their own institutions.
Eating the seed corn.
#HigherEd #academia #USUniversities #microcredentials
I was only made aware of this (frankly awesome) case of LLM poisoning today: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01100-y. A researcher made up a disease and published two evidently fake preprints about it (including sentences such as “this entire paper is made up” and “Fifty made-up individuals aged between 20 and 50 years were recruited for the exposure group”), which were almost immediately picked up by LLMs and documented in their output. Worse, actual – supposedly serious – medical papers also started citing the preprints, demonstrating that academics relying on LLMs to do their work is a genuine problem! Not that I had my doubts but, if anyone did, this seems like the perfect demonstration of the problem. Article immediately added to the syllabus of the class I am co-teaching with Iris Ferrazzo on LLMs for Romance Studies/Humanities!
#LLM #GenAI #academia #research #ResearchIntegrity #humanities
If you hear about a job where it helps to have over 200 publications in academic and popular #archaeology, plus 20 years' experience as a journal editor, plus a solid record as a popular teacher, then please give me a nudge!
We’re so sorry to hear that Guppe Groups have shut down.
@FediTips/115164286964463451
Guppe was a really big influence on us when we first joined the Fediverse and served communities across the Fediverse.
Fortunately, conversations and communities can continue! Here are 3 ways how:
1/3 Keep the conversation going by hopping over to Newsmast Channels:
Bookstodon 👉 Follow @books & use #books
Histodons 👉 Follow @history & use #history
Academic Chatter 👉 Follow @academia & use #academia
Photography 👉 Follow @photography & use #photography
Latest comic on the convenience of making less ethical choices
Hey academics - if you have colleagues in the USA on a H1-B (or a J1 where the next step would be a H1-B): reach out! These are scary times, not just for people's work but also for their whole life (imagine suddenly having to leave the country you built a life in - or not being able to leave to see family).
Edited 360d ago
Trump Administration Orders USDA Employees to Investigate Foreign Researchers They Work With
---
The new directive asks workers to check the backgrounds of foreign nationals collaborating with the department’s scientists for evidence of “subversive or criminal activity.” Their names are being sent to national security experts at the agency.
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-usda-foreign-scientists?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mastodon-post
Hello #fediverse! Thanks to my new DFF grant, I'm now looking to hire a PhD student to join me at AAU in Aalborg 🇩🇰 to work on "usable decentralization", i.e. on making distributed and federated cloud services accessible to the everyday user. For more details, see link below, and please don't hesitate to DM me with questions!
https://www.vacancies.aau.dk/phd-positions/show-vacancy/vacancyId/895183
#HCI #academia #getfedihired #decentralization #AAU #Aalborg #Denmark #selfhosted #selfhosting
Edited 226d ago
A proposed White House rule would give political appointees unprecedented control over scientific funding.
One physicist, who helped discover the Higgs boson, the so-called “God particle,” explains how the move would’ve stifled that breakthrough.
https://www.propublica.org/article/federal-science-grants-russell-vought-omb?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mastodon-post
#News #WhiteHouse #Trump #Science #Physics #Research #Funding #Academia
Am I Okay? Will I Ever Be?
I'm not going to go over my entire comprehensive medical history in a way that may reveal any sensitive information about me, or go into detail regarding any stressful or other adverse events (if any) that may or may not have happened to me in reality. I would prefer to resolve my own health issues without the interference of those who don't know me very well, and I don't want anyone to think I'm making others do all the hard work for me. This is ultimately […]
https://untilted.weblog.lol/2026/05/am-i-okay-will-i-ever-be
#PersonalBlog #Blog #Weblog #Science #MentalHealth #Academia #mental #physical #health #nervous #system #anecdote #confession #ThisIsNotAWordpressBlog
Creativity is dead! Creativity never existed in the first place because it’s a concept we invented recently! This post has a video based on a seminar I gave last year, along with a comprehensive summary, downloadable audio, & transcript. Tons of production went into this, especially with the caption syncing (& practicing my podcast voice 😎 )
The Fediverse is overflowing with incredible artists, engineers, designers, photographers, and brilliant minds in academia. With the job market on fire globally, let's make a habit of hiring from within our own community, please 🎨📚
Need a designer for a project? A photographer? A researcher? Post your gigs here. Let's create a close-knit support system to help fellow people weather the storm.
If you are hiring: look here first. Post your short-term gigs, full-time roles, and freelance contracts. Give people here a chance.
If you are looking: share your work, follow the hashtags, and connect. Let's take care of each other.
#FediHire #GetFediHired #Academia #MastoArt #art #Photography #Freelance #SoftwareDevelopment #programming #photography
Dear friends, acquaintances, mysterious strangers, I'm thinking about developing a new online course. Among the following, which would you be most excited to enroll in? Note that all of them would have a philosophical/theoretical bent.
Boosts appreciated, thanks! 🙏
Options: (choose one)
I guess you have to go to the likes of Harvard to be spared bad AI takes by poor thinkers at commencement 🙄
Ronny Chieng Tells Harvard to ‘Destroy AI’ as Graduates Cheer
Ronny Chieng Tells Harvard to ‘Destroy AI’ as Graduates Cheer
The comedian and The Daily Show host gave the keynote address for Class Day 2026.
Check out this project friends in the bat world have been working on:
"Bat Literature Project (BatLit)—a freely available, versioned, multilingual, and citable digital archive of bat research and bibliographic metadata...providing stable, open access to over 20,000 publications contributed by the global bat research community.'
Last boost: a profile in courage by University of Minnesota.
US #academia survives on three things: governmental money for research (including weapons), job training certificates, and the feeling of the people who go on to be its employees that the job is noble and good, a phenomenon called "vocational awe".
Just as Trump is doing more for the climate by destroying oil shipping than any Democratic President, he's doing more for academia by destroying it than anyone else.
Edited 41d ago
Hey it's my birthday! If you like the things I create or just want to help me celebrate, please read this post. It's very short:
https://elftheory.substack.com/p/special-announcement
I'll mention, as I have in the past, that I see Substack as a necessary ethical compromise for now. It's not easy, trying to make good things happen in these times.
If anything in that post interests you, get at me. [email protected]. Muchas gracias, vielen dank.
NEW: For decades, oil companies have funded universities’ research into climate change “solutions” that would not require the public to stop using oil and gas.
Carbon capture is one of their favored ideas.
One snag: It won’t fix the climate crisis.
https://projects.propublica.org/why-carbon-capture-cant-solve-climate-change/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mastodon-post
#News #Climate #ClimateChange #Oil #Gas #Environment #Research #Science #Academia