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Barbara Piotrowska @bpiotrowska.bsky.social · 21d

You can read more about the context and other information collected by the secret police, as well as get a flavour for their operation here: www.propublica.org/article/how-...

You Know Who Else Collected Metadata? The Stasi.

Files obtained from the archives of the East German secret police show how the Stasi mapped social networks.

www.propublica.org

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Barbara Piotrowska @bpiotrowska.bsky.social · 21d

When talking to @howardhliu.bsky.social about his new project, I remembered this great graphic made by the Stasi showing the social connections of a poet they were spying on projects.propublica.org/graphics/sta...

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Barbara Piotrowska @bpiotrowska.bsky.social · 26d

I will be presenting my first paper using data collected while incorporating genAI into my module on 15/10. If you can join us, I’d love to hear your thoughts 💭

Political Studies Association @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social · 27d

*PSA EVENT* How do #students with different academic backgrounds engage with #genAI when given equal access? Join us and @bpiotrowska.bsky.social online for this #Teaching & #Learning Network webinar
📆 15 October, 2.30 - 4.30pm
➡️ Register your free place buff.ly/ydueR72
#AI #Education #HE

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Barbara Piotrowska @bpiotrowska.bsky.social · Aug 19

Read the full paper: "Multi-purpose populist policymaking in practice: the Polish academic evaluation reform"(Piotrowska, Szkurłat, Szydłowska, 2025).
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Multi-purpose populist policymaking in practice: the Polish academic evaluation reform

This paper theorizes populist policymaking as multi-purpose governance that can simultaneously deliver responsiveness, ideological consolidation, and institutionalized patronage. We apply this fram...

www.tandfonline.com

Barbara Piotrowska @bpiotrowska.bsky.social · Aug 19

This shows how populist reforms can be formally legal, yet designed to entrench ideology and institutionalise patronage. Higher education policy, often overlooked, is a crucial site of populist governance: shaping elites, promoting ideology, and redistributing resources.

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Barbara Piotrowska @bpiotrowska.bsky.social · Aug 19

But most of all, 3️⃣Catholic-affiliated journals gained disproportionately, embedding a conservative-nationalist agenda and rewarding pro-government institutions.

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Barbara Piotrowska @bpiotrowska.bsky.social · Aug 19

1️⃣Humanities and 2️⃣Polish-published journals were given a boost – framed as responsiveness to scholars worried about internationalisation.

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Barbara Piotrowska @bpiotrowska.bsky.social · Aug 19

The reform of Poland’s academic evaluation system looked like a technical adjustment. In practice, it reshaped how prestige and funding were distributed across universities and disciplines.

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Barbara Piotrowska @bpiotrowska.bsky.social · Aug 19

Together with Izabela Szkurłat and Magdalena Szydłowska, we argue that populist policymaking is multi-purpose governance. A single reform can:
➡️appear responsive to “the people”
➡️embed ideological content
➡️channel resources to loyal actors

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Barbara Piotrowska @bpiotrowska.bsky.social · Aug 19

Populist policymaking is not only about courts and media crackdowns. It can also hide in technical reforms. In Poland under PiS, changes to academic journal rankings were used to reward allies, promote ideology, and claim responsiveness. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Multi-purpose populist policymaking in practice: the Polish academic evaluation reform

This paper theorizes populist policymaking as multi-purpose governance that can simultaneously deliver responsiveness, ideological consolidation, and institutionalized patronage. We apply this fram...

www.tandfonline.com

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Barbara Piotrowska @bpiotrowska.bsky.social · Jul 26

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Competence over Partisanship: Party Affiliation Does Not Affect the Selection of School District Superintendents - Greer Mellon, 2025

In recent decades, affective polarization and partisan animosity have risen sharply in the United States. To what extent have these trends affected hiring decis...

journals.sagepub.com

Reposted by Barbara Piotrowska

Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory @jpart1991.bsky.social · Jul 20

Next...🧵

Have you ever wondered why it’s so hard to compare public administrations across countries?

This article tackles the confusion around Administrative Traditions

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Barbara Piotrowska @bpiotrowska.bsky.social · Jun 18

3️⃣AI detection - LLM group displayed significantly lower ability to quote one own's essay - AI use detection could leverage this by randomly sampling students for oral exams discussing the essay. Alternatively, only suspect cases could be subject to such an exam.

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Barbara Piotrowska @bpiotrowska.bsky.social · Jun 18

In my module, I do that by asking the students to complete independent research first and only then engage with the genAI task.

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Barbara Piotrowska @bpiotrowska.bsky.social · Jun 18

2️⃣ When integrating LLMs into teaching activities, start with cognitive effort, followed by the use of genAI - "Brain-to-LLM participants could leverage tools more strategically, resulting in stronger performance and more cohesive neural signatures".

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Barbara Piotrowska @bpiotrowska.bsky.social · Jun 18

1️⃣ Blank page syndrome - LLMs are often seen as an antidote to it. But the paper finds that "the LLM group produced statistically homogeneous essays within each topic". Hence, if you want your piece to stand out, using LLMs to fight the syndrome might not be the best idea.

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Barbara Piotrowska @bpiotrowska.bsky.social · Jun 18

We've felt it and now we have the evidence: using genAI to write essays yields shallow encoding.

Here, the subjects write essays using one of 3 tools (LLM, Search Engine, brain🧠 only) for 3 sessions. In the 4th session, LLM group needs to rely on 🧠 , and 🧠 group gets LLM. Key consequences for me:

Nataliya Kosmyna, Ph.D @nataliyakosmyna.bsky.social · Jun 16

𝐍𝐨, 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐋𝐋𝐌 𝐨𝐫 𝐝𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐋𝐋𝐌 𝐮𝐬𝐞.

See our paper for more results: "Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task" : www.brainonllm.com

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Reposted by Barbara Piotrowska

Jonathan Leader Maynard @jleadermaynard.bsky.social · Jun 10

We’re hiring 3 permanent (tenured) lecturers in the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London. These are ‘education pathway’ posts (in Economics, Research Methods, & Comparative Politics) 1/4

www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/117268-...

www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/117209-...

www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/117245-...

AEP Lecturer in Politics and Research Methods

www.kcl.ac.uk

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Barbara Piotrowska @bpiotrowska.bsky.social · May 28

The Anthropic Education Report (www.anthropic.com/news/anthrop...) offers a great insight into how students use Claude. The (relatively) good: half of the conversations are collaborative (dialogue with AI to achieve goals). The bad: students mostly outsource higher-order cognitive functions (see ⬇️)

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Barbara Piotrowska @bpiotrowska.bsky.social · May 23

I’m not 100% sure that this won’t actually improve his chances among voters of other far right candidates.

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Barbara Piotrowska @bpiotrowska.bsky.social · May 22

Day 2 is over, but there are three more to go: www.kcl.ac.uk/ai/assets/pd...

Barbara Piotrowska @bpiotrowska.bsky.social · May 22

3️⃣ However, if you lack the motivation to learn, no amount of technology will help - and replacing cognitive effort will lead to skill atrophy.

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Barbara Piotrowska @bpiotrowska.bsky.social · May 22

1️⃣ Learning requires thinking deeply (exerting effort), over extended periods, and at regular intervals.
2️⃣ GenAI can support this by boosting motivation to exert effort (e.g., through gamification) or by adjusting difficulty to an appropriate level (e.g., customised explanations).

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Barbara Piotrowska @bpiotrowska.bsky.social · May 22

Yesterday's session during the @aiatkings.bsky.social conference attracted a wonderfully engaged audience.

In the slides, you’ll find the GPTs and exercises demonstrating applications of point 2 (below).

Key points ⬇️

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Reposted by Barbara Piotrowska

Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · May 21

The state of research on AI and education from controlled studies: Growing evidence that, when used as a tutor with instructor guidance, AI seems to have quite significant positive effects. When used alone to get help with homework, it can act as shortcut that hurts learning.

Still early days.

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