Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Hannah Theaker

Dan Sohege @danielsohege.bsky.social · 8d

There is no such thing, as Starmer well knows, as a "golden ticket of resettlement and family reunion" for people who have been granted refugee status. This is meaningless guff aimed to play to populist fantasies that refugees get provided with everything. 1/

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Starmer to end asylum ‘golden ticket’ of resettlement and family reunion rights

People granted asylum will have to earn right to invite family in plan charities call ‘straight from populist playbook’

www.theguardian.com

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Nate Schenkkan @nateschenkkan.bsky.social · 8d

New today: my essay in @jodemocracy.bsky.social on The Golden Age of Transnational Repression: www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/the...

The Golden Age of Transnational Repression | Journal of Democracy

Authoritarian regimes are targeting exiles and diaspora communities in more places than ever before. Activists, journalists, and regular people living abroad must watch their backs…

www.journalofdemocracy.org

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China Law Translate / Jeremy Daum @chinalawtranslate.bsky.social · 18d

Most of the restrictions mentioned in this article are in 2021's Internet Religious Information Services regs. www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/internet-...

What is new in the Code of Conduct is that it impacts online conduct of registered clergy in their personal, as well as professional capacity.⏬

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Gina Anne Tam @dgtam86.bsky.social · 19d

My head is actually spinning at how many current and future colleagues, both in the China field and beyond it, we are about to lose because of this

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Hannah Theaker @htheaker.bsky.social · 19d

I'm glad someon has said Spence, he had just such an ability to craft narrative and personality - as with probably every Qing historian, the Death of Woman Wang remains the kind of book I'd like one day to write

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Hannah Theaker @htheaker.bsky.social · 19d

Henrietta Harrison, Engseng Ho (especially The Graves of Tarim), Tobie Meyer-Fong - all just beautiful writers

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Hannah Theaker @htheaker.bsky.social · 22d

This is insane. Both the normalisation of a two-week turnaround for that quantity of work, but also, in what world is writing an anonymised summary of achievement and uploading it to CoPilot less work than just marking them all in the first place?

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Hannah Theaker @htheaker.bsky.social · 23d

Say hi to Lucy for me!

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Prof Katherine Schofield 🇬🇧🇦🇺🇪🇺 @katherineschof8.bsky.social · 28d

Most humanities research — including the best, most world leading research by people we’ve all heard of — is unfunded, by which they mean produced as part of one’s routine job as a university lecturer, just “not funded by a big competitive external grant”.

This would mean the death of research.

Research Professional News @resprofnews.bsky.social · 28d

Ministers ‘want to shift funds away from low-quality research’ .

Universities UK president says institutions cannot afford “unfunded hobbyist research”.

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-u...

Ministers ‘want to shift funds away from low-quality research’ - Research Professional News

Universities UK president says institutions cannot afford “unfunded hobbyist research”

www.researchprofessionalnews.com

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Emily Mark-FitzGerald @emilymfg.bsky.social · 28d

This is a jaw-dropping statement from anyone in a uni leadership role — but also — what exactly is ‘low-quality’ and ‘hobbyist’ research? Nearly every academic I know is burning the candle at both ends and STILL producing important work in their fields. This feels like an anti-humanities dog whistle

Research Professional News @resprofnews.bsky.social · 28d

Ministers ‘want to shift funds away from low-quality research’ .

Universities UK president says institutions cannot afford “unfunded hobbyist research”.

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-u...

Ministers ‘want to shift funds away from low-quality research’ - Research Professional News

Universities UK president says institutions cannot afford “unfunded hobbyist research”

www.researchprofessionalnews.com

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The Associated Press @apnews.com · Sep 9

Tens of thousands of people in China are barred from leaving their province and sometimes even their homes by the world’s largest surveillance apparatus.

An AP investigation finds much of this technology came from U.S. companies.

US tech companies enabled the surveillance and detention of hundreds of thousands in China

U.S. technology firms such as IBM, Dell and Cisco largely designed and built China’s surveillance state, an AP investigation finds. The tech companies deny wrongdoing.

bit.ly

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Hannah Theaker @htheaker.bsky.social · Sep 9

Yes, very much this. I am currently appreciating the fact that I am playing it with someone who is better at this sort of game than I am. Love the world, the way it hands out haunted morsels of narrative, but my fingers are so slow to learn this sort of game and each death hurts.

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Hannah Theaker @htheaker.bsky.social · Sep 8

Would talk Silksong, can't talk Silksong as so far my experience can be summarised as "What an utterly beauti - oh shite I died again"

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Rainer Simon @aboutgeo.bsky.social · Sep 8

We just released IMMARKUS 1.0 - our first full release!

An open-source tool for semantic image annotation: multi-image workbench, AI-powered selection tools, ontology builder, knowledge graph, #IIIF support.

Runs fully local–no login, no-signups, no data sent to the cloud!

👉 immarkus.xmarkus.org

IMMARKUS

An image annotation environment for the MARKUS platform. Developed by Prof. Dr. Hilde De Weerdt, Dr. Rainer Simon, Dr. Lee Sunkyu, Dr. Iva Stojević, Meret Meister, and Xi Wangzhi with funding from the...

immarkus.xmarkus.org

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Hannah Theaker @htheaker.bsky.social · Sep 8

So considered, so accessible. And the story is always paramount.

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Hannah Theaker @htheaker.bsky.social · Sep 8

I've always loved the way Supergiant approach this, and its through all of their games, not just Hades - as I (slowly) improve, they offer a range of ways to make it harder, so its not just an arbitrary higher health bar, I can finetune challenge in ways that suit me.

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Hannah Theaker @htheaker.bsky.social · Sep 8

I have no idea how you get students to turn up. Once in a while they stop behind after class to talk to me, and I suggest this conversation would be better during office hours. I also work extremely hard to convince them I'm not intimidating, but it seems to take 2.5 years for them to believe me.

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Hannah Theaker @htheaker.bsky.social · Sep 8

I had a personal tutor all the way through at Edinburgh (Julian Ward), and somehow, I had it in my head that turning up to speak to him was a dreadful imposition and/or a statement that I was academically struggling, which I wasn't.

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Made in China Journal @madeinchinajournal.com · Sep 4

From Sanmenxia and Three Gorges to the Yarlung Tsangpo Dam, China has long relied on monumental hydropower to prove state capacity. @zenel25.bsky.social and @pguer.bsky.social show how such projects, while promising development and security, often deepen the very insecurities they claim to resolve.

The Technopolitics of China’s Yarlung Tsangpo Dam Project and the Paradox of Hydropower | Made in China Journal

Three years after announcing their intent to construct a mega-dam along the Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra) River as part of the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan, Chinese officials gave their approval to proce...

madeinchinajournal.com

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Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · Sep 4

Lovely to hear Melvyn Bragg talking about the big idea behind "In Our Time": to get academics on the air, talking about the subjects they were most passionate & knowledgeable about, without worrying about whether they had "media training".

It's remarkable that this was (& remains) such an odd idea!

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Hannah Theaker @htheaker.bsky.social · Sep 3

... in the event the BBC is reading this, the time is definitely right for an In Our Time on the question of Muslim rebellions in China. Just saying.

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Hannah Theaker @htheaker.bsky.social · Sep 3

Oh damn, always my dream to one day make to In Our Time, so I am delighted it will continue. But this still feels huge to me - so much admiration for Bragg and his curiosity about absolutely everything.

John Gallagher @earlymodernjohn.bsky.social · Sep 3

A huge moment -- Melvyn Bragg steps down from In Our Time after over a quarter of a century. What a programme and what a legacy! Just a model for how to make great, clever, engaging radio, and a twenty-seven-year experiment that proves there's a huge global audience for smart, scholarly programming.

Melvyn Bragg decides to step down from presenting In Our Time

After 26 years on the programme, the legendary presenter bids farewell to the series

www.bbc.co.uk

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Prof Katherine Schofield 🇬🇧🇦🇺🇪🇺 @katherineschof8.bsky.social · Sep 2

A reminder that it is not illegal to claim asylum in the UK, no matter how you arrived here.

New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · Sep 2

The pernicious thing here is not so much the headline (Home Office officiously pestering students to restate a currently enforced policy) but the link in the second para to asylum. It's yet another insinuation that asylum is somehow an abuse of the immigration system.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

International students warned to not overstay visas

The Home Office is proactively contacting foreign students to warn them of the consequences of overstaying a visa for the first time.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Benno Weiner @bennoweiner.bsky.social · Sep 1

CFP: Joint Conference of the Historical Society for 20th Century China and the Institute for Modern History, Academia Scinica
Deadline: October 15

Please note that papers/panels can engage any aspect of China and/or Taiwan's long 20th Crntury
All the info: hstcconline.org/announcements/

Announcements

Call for Papers International Conference Jointly Organized by the Historical Society for Twentieth-Century China and the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica Taiwan Reframing Modern Histori…

hstcconline.org

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Hannah Theaker @htheaker.bsky.social · Aug 31

Sometimes, living in the southwest is fantastic. We're headed Exmoor-way next weekend.

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