adam searle

@admsrl.bsky.social

601 Followers 421 Following

cultural and historical geographer interested in ecology, technology, and health Assistant Professor, University of Nottingham Member and co-founder, @digicologies.bsky.social

two children with a banner saying “We are the University”
[ALT TEXT OVER TWO IMAGES DUE TO CHARACTER LIMIT] [This first image is of the letter describing the event taking place.] Dear Colleagues, It has been incredibly difficult to think about our research ideas or projects as we are faced with intensified institutional precarity. For many of us, last week was a harsh confrontation with the limits imposed on us by the neoliberal academy and its implications for how we perceive and value academic life. To paraphrase Wendy Brown, structural neoliberalisation and the economisation of our ideas (abstracted as citations, publications, grant capture, etc.) confines much of our work. After Hannah Arendt (1958), we could call this mere academic life. What is constrained and ultimately eliminated through neoliberal rationality is good academic life: “the cultivation and expression of distinctly human capacities for ethical and political freedom, creativity, unbounded reflection, or invention” (Brown, 2015: 43). How could it be otherwise? What opportunities for imagining a better future for academic work might we encounter?
Figure 2 from the article: "Kojima, Tomoki, et al. "Cows painted with zebra-like striping can avoid biting fly attack." PLoS One 14.10 (2019): e0223447." The original caption in the academic publication is: "Example of the area of legs and body used to count biting flies on cows." The image shows a cow who has been painted with white paint so that they resemble a zebra.
Figure 3 from the article Laible, Goetz, et al. "Holstein Friesian dairy cattle edited for diluted coat color as a potential adaptation to climate change." BMC Genomics 22.1 (2021): 856. The original in-article caption is: "Color dilution phenotype of genome edited calf. Shown are pictures of the PMEL mutant calf with non-edited control calves for direct comparison of coat colors and distribution of white and dark markings." The image compares cows that have been subject to gene editing with a control group. The top-right image in particular shows how pigmentation dilution results in a significantly lighter coat.
Cover art for Becky Chambers' 2019 Novella, To Be Taught If Fortunate, (Voyager publishing version). It shows an astronaut floating in space, looking back at Earth
Sculpture by Malaysian artist Izat Arif of a “terrazzo” style bench (common in Singapore) with the text “YOU CAN BE COMFORTABLY RADICAL WITHIN THIS DESIGNATED AREA”
Members of UCU, Unison, and Unite trade unions holding a rally in the courtyard of the Trent Building, University of Nottingham.