Sand makes up coastal bioinfrastructures in Guyana, as Sarah Vaughn shows in a recent essay, https://roadsides.net/vaughn-010/. Groynes used to prevent erosion "reinforce the shoreline’s existing sandy terrain." These groynes themselves contain sand. The essay is part of a special issue entitled "Bioinfrastructures" co-edited by Raúl Acosta and S.AND team member Lukas Ley. Check out the full open access issue here: https://roadsides.net/collection-no-010/
Through the term "bioinfrastructures," Ley and @raulaco reckon with the surge in projects to (re)create lively urban landscapes: While this shows that "infrastructure is never just a single entity or one discrete thing but rather an evolving set of multispecies and material relations," they also interrogate the ambivalent politics of bioinfrastructures.
What is the significance of bioinfrastructures "for larger political projects, emancipatory movements and Indigenous sovereignty?"
#US / Union Theological Seminary trustees endorse divestment from ‘companies profiting from the war in Palestine’
[...] “Our investment policies will continue to adapt, guided by our values, to strengthen the resolve that undergirds our decision today, [...] We do not take this step lightly, and we do so with all humility, recognizing that our work on the global stage is far from finished. Although our investments in the war in Palestine are small because our previous, strong anti-armament screens are robust, we hope that our action today will bring needed pressure to bear to stop the killing and find a peaceful future for all.”
"The really important part [of science] are causal analyses, and they practically always involve data collection. That's why sciences with strong experimental traditions fare a bit better - when you need to run a costly experiment yourself in order to publish a paper, this creates a strong incentive to think things through and do high-impact research."
Remember folks, mainstream economists assert that 3C warming is OKEY-DOKEY. They also put universities on a commerce footing and lobbied for debt based higher education.
They also say they are a scientific discipline, because they believe that humans operation on a rational basis. Of course, they demonstrate evidence regarding that assertion.
#Spain / Spanish Universities Will Suspend Relations with Israeli Campuses if They Don't Reject the War in Gaza
Spanish universities have announced that they will suspend collaboration agreements with Israeli universities and research centers if they do not condemn the military operations in the Gaza Strip. The Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities (Crue), representing 77 public and private universities, has denounced the "very serious events" in Gaza and called for an "immediate and definitive cessation of military operations by the Israeli army" and "any terrorist action."
“Dark pedagogies” imply a pivot to embrace darkness when Enlightenment goals and expectations are found wanting. Lysgaard, Bengtsson and Laugerson (2019, 2020) suggest that darkness should be constructively engaged with, within, and for an environmentally threatened world. Dark pedagogies embrace uncertainty, catastrophe, and terror, by taking an affective turn to add urgency to shared ethical commitments in an already broken world (Mulgan, 2014). Indeed, the dread situation of the current planetary crisis including, of course, the climate crisis, may necessitate the power of dark pedagogies to face planetary darkness and effect a necessary turn towards different, more bearable futures. Educational darkness is a “thing” that exceeds the didactic slog, harnessing aesthetic and affective aspects to spark #learning and transformation (Lysgaard et al., 2019)
My 1st PhD student passed her viva today! So proud and can’t wait to share her thesis about the Research-Teaching-Public Engagement triple nexus and lecturer’s experiences - https://researchblog.scot/about@academicchatter