Jonathan Harris
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jonathanaharris.bsky.social
Jonathan Harris
@jonathanaharris.bsky.social

Political-Historical Geographer researching diaspora diplomacy @dublincityuni.bsky.social | posts: education, geopolitics, decolonisation & francophonie

www.diplotraining.org

Art 49%
History 25%
Pinned
My research over the next four years at @dublincityuni.bsky.social is generously funded by @researchireland.ie! 🥳🙏😇

‘Diaspora Diplomacy and the Migration-Development Nexus’ will work with #Indian, #Brazilian and #Algerian communities across the island of #Ireland.

👇

www.dcu.ie/research/new...
Five DCU researchers secure over €3.2 million in Research Ireland Pathways call | Research Office
The Research Ireland funding spans a four-year period and will support researchers and provide resources to establish their careers. Dr Eirini Maniou, Dr Purabi Bhagabati, Dr Ciara Mahon, Dr Jonathan ...
www.dcu.ie

An excellent way to frame a debate of this kind! I’ve got my hands on the book, to read as I take my almost daily cross-border train… 🤓
⏳ The countdown on!

Join Fintan O’Toole & Sam McBride, Nov 30th @ 7 pm at the National Concert Hall for a live debate on what a united Ireland could really mean.

Prep for the night:
🎧 Listen to the ARINS podcast: bit.ly/4qS7KEM
🎟️ Tickets: bit.ly/3LoU0Bs
NCH Talks: Fintan O’Toole & Sam McBride: For and against a united Ireland | National Concert Hall
The National Concert Hall is a national cultural institution and the designated home of music in Ireland.
bit.ly

Reposted by Jonathan Harris

⏳ The countdown on!

Join Fintan O’Toole & Sam McBride, Nov 30th @ 7 pm at the National Concert Hall for a live debate on what a united Ireland could really mean.

Prep for the night:
🎧 Listen to the ARINS podcast: bit.ly/4qS7KEM
🎟️ Tickets: bit.ly/3LoU0Bs
NCH Talks: Fintan O’Toole & Sam McBride: For and against a united Ireland | National Concert Hall
The National Concert Hall is a national cultural institution and the designated home of music in Ireland.
bit.ly

Happy Friday 😊 The new issue of Diplomatica (Brill) has been published - with a diverse forum of scholars responding to "Provincializing ‘New’ Diplomatic History: An Interdisciplinary Manifesto", published earlier this year. Chuffed to have been asked to participate!

brill.com/view/journal...
brill.com

Now there's some product placement I can get behind
So the new and outgoing Presidents of Ireland met yesterday and a certain book was visible on the table...

Thanks @president.ie Michael D. Higgins for your great service to Ireland down the years (and for this little personal surprise).

Here's to the success of President elect Catherine Connolly.

Reposted by Jonathan Harris

So the new and outgoing Presidents of Ireland met yesterday and a certain book was visible on the table...

Thanks @president.ie Michael D. Higgins for your great service to Ireland down the years (and for this little personal surprise).

Here's to the success of President elect Catherine Connolly.

Reposted by Jonathan Harris

I’m very excited that years of work with Dorry Noyes (@mershoncenter.bsky.social) and a fantastic group of friends and colleagues finally resulted in this, I think, rather beautiful object. The Global Politics of Exemplarity! @normativeorders.bsky.social @prif.org @brisunipress.bsky.social 1/4

Yet another example of Brexit Britain forgetting Northern Ireland - and complex border arrangements www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
NI parents caught in UK crackdown lose child benefit after travelling via Dublin
Exclusive: new anti-fraud system fails to account for fact many return to country via airport in Irish capital
www.theguardian.com

Late in the day, but Francesco Ventura and I are seeking participants in a paper session on #diaspora #diplomacy for next year's @geographers.bsky.social #AAG2026 in San Francisco. See call for papers here - deadline 28th October:

Reposted by Jonathan Harris

Who is most at risk from overcrowding in the UK?

Rory Coulter (@uclgeography.bsky.social) explores the answers in a new Geography Directions blog post.

Check it out here👇
https://blog.geographydirections.com/2025/10/09/understanding-social-and-spatial-patterns-of-overcrowding-in-england-and-wales/
Understanding social and spatial patterns of overcrowding in England and Wales
By Rory Coulter, University College London One of the few things that Britain’s political parties agree is that the country faces a housing crisis. One sign of this is overcrowding, where people li…
blog.geographydirections.com

Reposted by Jonathan Harris

Solidarity activists with Timor-Leste (East Timor) during the period of Indonesian military occupation (1975-99) were involved in a form of diplomacy. It was messy and often loud. Yet the movement often proved influential in shaping both government and Timorese actions. New open access book 👇
Everyday Diplomats – Simple Book Publishing
Around the world, movements in support of East Timor (Timor-Leste) during the 24-year Indonesian occupation made a diplomatic difference. This book tells some of their stories.
pressbooks.pub

Reposted by Jonathan Harris

#HouseofGuinness

Who was the real Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness? More than a brewer, he was a major figure in 19th-century Dublin. His funeral, which opens House of Guinness on Netflix, was one of the city’s largest, with 500 employees and 239 private carriages.

Reposted by Jonathan Harris

📣We're pleased to launch this year's PolGRG Book Prize!
The winning book will also be the subject of an Authors meets Critics session at the annual RGS-IBG meeting (2026).

Deadline 19 December. Full details available here:
polgrg.wordpress.com/2025/10/07/c...

#bookprize #polgrg #award

Historians (and geographers) of diplomacy: you might be interested in this article (with @drruthcraggs.bsky.social and Fiona McConnell) as part of an Itinerario special issue on 'Late Colonialism'. We explore tensions in training Ghana's first diplomats in 1957.
www.doi.org/10.1017/S0165115325100144
Rethinking the late colonial state in Africa through diplomatic training | Itinerario | Cambridge Core
Rethinking the late colonial state in Africa through diplomatic training
www.doi.org

Reposted by Jonathan Harris

📣 We’re thrilled to announce that Caleb Tan (UCL) is the winner of the 2025 UG Dissertation Prize for ‘Third space or territorial trap: citizenship and conscription in Singapore’! Congratulations!👏
#PolGRG #prize #education #HE

Read about all the finalists on our website 👇
Announcing the results of the Political Geography Research Group 2025 Undergraduate Dissertation Prize!
Outcome 2025 PolGRG Undergraduate Dissertation Prize The panel of the 2025 PolGRG Undergraduate Dissertation Prize (Alexander Manby, Anil, Sindhwani, Öznur Yardımcı, Semra Akay, Shawn Bodden) is de…
polgrg.wordpress.com
Prof Claude Raffestin has died. RIP He taught me when I was an undergraduate in Geneva. A formidable force. More info on him here (happy to send pdf): Fall, J. J. (2012). Reading Claude Raffestin: Pathways for a Critical Biography. Env. & Plan. D, 30(1), 173-189.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/...

Reposted by Jonathan Harris

The defunct railway network - Belfast and County Railway. All but the line between Belfast and Bangor was closed in the 1950s, although some of it has been restored near Downpatrick by a heritage line, the Downpatrick and County Down Railway.

#CountyDown
#SpéirGhorm

"Killing members of a group, causing them serious bodily and mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to destroy the group, and preventing births"

This is the daily horror being inflicted on Palestinians through this war, and arguably long before it.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, UN commission of inquiry says
The panel finds that four of the five genocidal acts defined under international law have been carried out against Palestinians during the war.
www.bbc.co.uk

Reposted by Jonathan Harris

Reposted by Jonathan Harris

"Egypt's geographical tradition: The post-independence moment and shifting regional imaginations " a short intervention, part of a set, out and open access in case of use.

rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers | RGS Journal | Wiley Online Library
The aim of this intervention is to respond to the provocation of how different worlds and regions are imagined from the non-west. To do this from the vantage point of Egypt, I start with the specific....
rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
🚨JOB Alert🚨 We are looking for another postdoctoral researcher to cover the history of veterans in the British colonies of Southern and/or East Africa in the interwar period. 24 month contract, deadline October 03. Please share widely. universityvacancies.com/maynooth-uni...
Post-Doctoral Researcher, Specified Purpose, Department of History and the Arts and Humanities Institute | University Vacancies Ireland
universityvacancies.com

Reposted by Jonathan Harris

Lough Neagh and its system of peripheral waterways on course to record worst year of algal blooms to date.

While rescue plans for Ireland's largest inland waterbody stall, the fallout from this pollution crisis deepens.

My story in today's @theguardian.com

www.theguardian.com/environment/...
UK’s largest lake faces environmental crisis as rescue plans stall
Toxic algae cases in Northern Ireland’s Lough Neagh have tripled since last year, as local fishers’ incomes plummet
www.theguardian.com
“Over the past 20 years, Paris has undergone a major physical transformation, trading automotive arteries for bike lanes, adding green spaces and eliminating 50,000 parking spaces.

Part of the payoff has been invisible — in the air itself.”

Leadership, strategy, real action, common sense. #Paris
Paris said au revoir to cars. Air pollution maps reveal a dramatic change.
Air pollution fell substantially as the city restricted car traffic and made way for parks and bike lanes.
www.washingtonpost.com

Reposted by Jonathan Harris

For my latest dispatch from Ireland for America Magazine, I talked to 2 bone fide legends, Sr Lena Deevy and Michael O'Sullivan, to investigate how, if you start to scratch, Irish attitudes to immigration aren't that far away from MAGAland. www.americamagazine.org/dispatches/2...
Migration and Irish identity—in the era of Trump deportations
Just about no one in Ireland would say that Irish citizens living in the U.S. are being treated as badly as immigrant residents from Latin America or Africa. But consternation is on the rise about esc...
www.americamagazine.org

"I have to play it by ear as I have no money. God has always come through, so I'll see what God sets up next"

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Donald Trump posted a pic of me by my tent. Then a bulldozer arrived
DC's largest homeless encampment was destroyed after the president called for a crackdown. What happened to its residents?
www.bbc.co.uk

Reposted by Sarah Mills

This is an interesting, timely and helpful intervention from #geography colleagues 👆 immediately I'm drawn to query the scale and location of the 'community' in which candidates are supposed to be volunteering, as doing so in diaspora/religious settings so often risks the charge of 'not integrating'

I did this a couple of years ago and really benefitted from it! Great to get feedback but even better to read exciting new work from other ECRs before it’s published… 🤓🥰
Hey @geographers.bsky.social and #geographers please pass this great opportunity on in your networks!
Hey @geographers.bsky.social and #geographers please pass this great opportunity on in your networks!

Reposted by Jonathan Harris

Ah here. Half of Belfast has signs up supporting various proscribed organisations. I can walk out my door and go find some proscribed organisation flags quite handy.

This is about suppressing the right to protest.

BBC News - Woman released after Belfast protest arrest
www.bbc.com/news/article...
Woman released after arrest at Belfast protest
The woman was arrested on Linenhall Street in Belfast on Saturday.
www.bbc.com
Abu Dhabi owned provider of special schools and children's homes sees profits rise by 28% to £44 million due to strong demand.

That's all taxpayer money that could be spent on improving state provision.

schoolsweek.co.uk/abu-dhabi-ow...
Abu Dhabi-owned SEND school firm profits soar to £45m
Rise in private special school pupils helped deliver 30 per cent profit boost, company says
schoolsweek.co.uk

Reposted by Jonathan Harris

80 years ago today WW2 reached its cataclysmic conclusion in the bombing of Hiroshima. But as I write here, the extraordinary but virtually-unknown story of the Aka island truce is a sliver of hope. Other outcomes are possible. @spaceforpeace.bsky.social
theconversation.com/when-us-and-...
When US and Japanese troops stopped fighting to talk, eat and pray together
Eighty years ago, this remarkable event showed a rare glimpse of humanity on both sides of a bitter conflict.
theconversation.com