Mallory James
@secondordersocialresearch.com
political economy & engineering studies research. neurodiverse, first-generation college student, she/her. PhD anthropology, Chicago. academic writing teacher. energy expert on non-normative terms.
Reposted by Mallory James
Day 207: No funding this year? What a gift—extra time to reflect, build character, perfect the syllabus, and cultivate resilience. Cheerful perseverance will fund itself! ⏳ #AcademicChatter
February 15, 2026 at 2:27 PM
Day 207: No funding this year? What a gift—extra time to reflect, build character, perfect the syllabus, and cultivate resilience. Cheerful perseverance will fund itself! ⏳ #AcademicChatter
In one week from today, our 📚 Energy and Social Science Reading Group 📚 will meet online to discuss Matt Wilde’s book A Blessing and a Curse: Oil, Politics, and Morality in Bolivarian Venezuela (2023): www.sup.org/books/latin-...
#Anthropology #Venezuela #Oil
#Anthropology #Venezuela #Oil
A Blessing and a Curse | Stanford University Press
A Blessing and a Curse examines the lived experience of political change, moral uncertainty, and economic crisis amid Venezuela's controversial Bolivarian Revolution.
www.sup.org
February 13, 2026 at 4:23 PM
In one week from today, our 📚 Energy and Social Science Reading Group 📚 will meet online to discuss Matt Wilde’s book A Blessing and a Curse: Oil, Politics, and Morality in Bolivarian Venezuela (2023): www.sup.org/books/latin-...
#Anthropology #Venezuela #Oil
#Anthropology #Venezuela #Oil
Writing my journal article:
Dealing with just one subsection at a time 👣
Laying all my sources out, at hand! 🗞🛠
#academicsky #academicchatter #anthropology #sts
Dealing with just one subsection at a time 👣
Laying all my sources out, at hand! 🗞🛠
#academicsky #academicchatter #anthropology #sts
February 12, 2026 at 12:50 PM
Writing my journal article:
Dealing with just one subsection at a time 👣
Laying all my sources out, at hand! 🗞🛠
#academicsky #academicchatter #anthropology #sts
Dealing with just one subsection at a time 👣
Laying all my sources out, at hand! 🗞🛠
#academicsky #academicchatter #anthropology #sts
Reposted by Mallory James
It's bandcamp Friday and you can help support my music. Below is the @etherdiver.bsky.social review of my debut album.
countingcardsmusic.bandcamp.com/album/jormun...
countingcardsmusic.bandcamp.com/album/jormun...
February 6, 2026 at 9:22 AM
It's bandcamp Friday and you can help support my music. Below is the @etherdiver.bsky.social review of my debut album.
countingcardsmusic.bandcamp.com/album/jormun...
countingcardsmusic.bandcamp.com/album/jormun...
Reposted by Mallory James
Christi Belcourt, contemporary Métis visual artist known for her paintings which depict floral patterns inspired by Métis and First Nations historical beadwork art #WomensArt
February 5, 2026 at 9:00 AM
Christi Belcourt, contemporary Métis visual artist known for her paintings which depict floral patterns inspired by Métis and First Nations historical beadwork art #WomensArt
Returning today to data and unpublished writing that are more than 10 years old, but speak to a phenomenon of ongoing interest. 🥲😶
I am filled with compassion towards my younger self, even while amused at her evident immaturity in the academic profession:🧵
#AcademicSky #STS #Anthropology
I am filled with compassion towards my younger self, even while amused at her evident immaturity in the academic profession:🧵
#AcademicSky #STS #Anthropology
February 4, 2026 at 11:10 AM
Returning today to data and unpublished writing that are more than 10 years old, but speak to a phenomenon of ongoing interest. 🥲😶
I am filled with compassion towards my younger self, even while amused at her evident immaturity in the academic profession:🧵
#AcademicSky #STS #Anthropology
I am filled with compassion towards my younger self, even while amused at her evident immaturity in the academic profession:🧵
#AcademicSky #STS #Anthropology
There's an image, now, to illustrate the book destruction we wrote about: ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/112... 😢
January 29, 2026 at 8:15 AM
There's an image, now, to illustrate the book destruction we wrote about: ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/112... 😢
Reposted by Mallory James
Looking forward to energy #anthropology panel proposals for #EASA 2026! 🔌🔦
nomadit.co.uk/conference/e...
nomadit.co.uk/conference/e...
P153: Opacity and Energy Knowledge: Getting to Just, Sustainable Energy Policy in a Polarizing World [Energy Anthropology Network (EAN)]
This panel explores changing cultural visibility and opacity of energy in anthropological research and impacts on energy justice and sustainability. It asks
nomadit.co.uk
January 14, 2026 at 1:15 PM
Looking forward to energy #anthropology panel proposals for #EASA 2026! 🔌🔦
nomadit.co.uk/conference/e...
nomadit.co.uk/conference/e...
Looking forward to energy #anthropology panel proposals for #EASA 2026! 🔌🔦
nomadit.co.uk/conference/e...
nomadit.co.uk/conference/e...
P153: Opacity and Energy Knowledge: Getting to Just, Sustainable Energy Policy in a Polarizing World [Energy Anthropology Network (EAN)]
This panel explores changing cultural visibility and opacity of energy in anthropological research and impacts on energy justice and sustainability. It asks
nomadit.co.uk
January 14, 2026 at 1:15 PM
Looking forward to energy #anthropology panel proposals for #EASA 2026! 🔌🔦
nomadit.co.uk/conference/e...
nomadit.co.uk/conference/e...
Interesting resource for enabling the more deliberate use of language in our professional #writing! #AcademicSky #STS #anthropology
www.selfdefined.app
www.selfdefined.app
Home «
A modern dictionary about us. We define our words, but they don't define us.
www.selfdefined.app
January 14, 2026 at 10:44 AM
Interesting resource for enabling the more deliberate use of language in our professional #writing! #AcademicSky #STS #anthropology
www.selfdefined.app
www.selfdefined.app
Reposted by Mallory James
Our #energy #anthropology network panel for #EASA Poland 2026! . . . 👁️Thematizing visibility, mediation, and justice🔌🤨 Please send abstracts by 26 Jan.
nomadit.co.uk/conference/e...
nomadit.co.uk/conference/e...
P153: Opacity and Energy Knowledge: Getting to Just, Sustainable Energy Policy in a Polarizing World [Energy Anthropology Network (EAN)]
This panel explores changing cultural visibility and opacity of energy in anthropological research and impacts on energy justice and sustainability. It asks how scholars might contribute to “energy w...
nomadit.co.uk
December 10, 2025 at 2:41 PM
Our #energy #anthropology network panel for #EASA Poland 2026! . . . 👁️Thematizing visibility, mediation, and justice🔌🤨 Please send abstracts by 26 Jan.
nomadit.co.uk/conference/e...
nomadit.co.uk/conference/e...
"An interdisciplinary team is not a group of people trained in 'interdisciplinarity'. It’s a group of people who have deep knowledge and sound judgment in their disciplines."
Interesting point I just stumbled across here: theconversation.com/why-the-inte... #AcademicSky #AcademicChatter
Interesting point I just stumbled across here: theconversation.com/why-the-inte... #AcademicSky #AcademicChatter
Why the ‘interdisciplinary’ push in universities is actually a dangerous antidisciplinary trend
Talk of “breaking down the barriers” is all too often a cover for breaking down academic disciplines to create administrative flexibility.
theconversation.com
January 6, 2026 at 10:58 PM
"An interdisciplinary team is not a group of people trained in 'interdisciplinarity'. It’s a group of people who have deep knowledge and sound judgment in their disciplines."
Interesting point I just stumbled across here: theconversation.com/why-the-inte... #AcademicSky #AcademicChatter
Interesting point I just stumbled across here: theconversation.com/why-the-inte... #AcademicSky #AcademicChatter
I haven't lived in DC for quite a while, but somehow I still was invited to this #Anthropology event, which I am appreciatively watching a recording of now: youtube.com/watch?v=6_1Q...
Surviving DOGE: Anthropological Adaptations and Career Shifts
YouTube video by Washington Association of Professional Anthropologists
youtube.com
December 16, 2025 at 7:13 AM
I haven't lived in DC for quite a while, but somehow I still was invited to this #Anthropology event, which I am appreciatively watching a recording of now: youtube.com/watch?v=6_1Q...
Anthropic settlement checks are arriving in the mail to book authors who suffered #AI #plagiarism. This reminds us that beyond a one-off check, #AcademicSky authors, #nonfiction #writers and community members need sustainable livelihoods and the ability to hope for a positive 'Future of Work.' (1/2)
December 16, 2025 at 6:51 AM
Anthropic settlement checks are arriving in the mail to book authors who suffered #AI #plagiarism. This reminds us that beyond a one-off check, #AcademicSky authors, #nonfiction #writers and community members need sustainable livelihoods and the ability to hope for a positive 'Future of Work.' (1/2)
"Thinking of AI technologies by means of the relationship
between mining (as a practice) and energy (as a concept)
reminds us of how regrettable environmental legacies can
hide behind a clean and innocent-sounding key term set forth
as a social good." #AI #STS
ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/112...
between mining (as a practice) and energy (as a concept)
reminds us of how regrettable environmental legacies can
hide behind a clean and innocent-sounding key term set forth
as a social good." #AI #STS
ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/112...
Special Issue Editorial: Extraction by Design—AI, Value, and the Future of Work
ieeexplore.ieee.org
December 15, 2025 at 8:38 AM
"Thinking of AI technologies by means of the relationship
between mining (as a practice) and energy (as a concept)
reminds us of how regrettable environmental legacies can
hide behind a clean and innocent-sounding key term set forth
as a social good." #AI #STS
ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/112...
between mining (as a practice) and energy (as a concept)
reminds us of how regrettable environmental legacies can
hide behind a clean and innocent-sounding key term set forth
as a social good." #AI #STS
ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/112...
"How can it be possible to predict a package’s arrival down to the hour, yet know almost nothing about the conditions of its manufacture?"
Indeed.
logicmag.io/scale/see-no...
Indeed.
logicmag.io/scale/see-no...
See No Evil
An investigation into how software wires global supply chains, and what code conceals.
logicmag.io
December 12, 2025 at 4:35 PM
"How can it be possible to predict a package’s arrival down to the hour, yet know almost nothing about the conditions of its manufacture?"
Indeed.
logicmag.io/scale/see-no...
Indeed.
logicmag.io/scale/see-no...
Our #energy #anthropology network panel for #EASA Poland 2026! . . . 👁️Thematizing visibility, mediation, and justice🔌🤨 Please send abstracts by 26 Jan.
nomadit.co.uk/conference/e...
nomadit.co.uk/conference/e...
P153: Opacity and Energy Knowledge: Getting to Just, Sustainable Energy Policy in a Polarizing World [Energy Anthropology Network (EAN)]
This panel explores changing cultural visibility and opacity of energy in anthropological research and impacts on energy justice and sustainability. It asks how scholars might contribute to “energy w...
nomadit.co.uk
December 10, 2025 at 2:41 PM
Our #energy #anthropology network panel for #EASA Poland 2026! . . . 👁️Thematizing visibility, mediation, and justice🔌🤨 Please send abstracts by 26 Jan.
nomadit.co.uk/conference/e...
nomadit.co.uk/conference/e...
I have words, and I am going to use them. I have a voice, and I am going to use it. #AmWriting
People in my birth country are trying to curtail the existence of the form of expertise my colleagues and I represent, #Anthropology.
But we won't be erased. We will persist! Go #SocialScience go! ❤️🔥💪🏼❤️🔥
People in my birth country are trying to curtail the existence of the form of expertise my colleagues and I represent, #Anthropology.
But we won't be erased. We will persist! Go #SocialScience go! ❤️🔥💪🏼❤️🔥
December 8, 2025 at 3:56 PM
I have words, and I am going to use them. I have a voice, and I am going to use it. #AmWriting
People in my birth country are trying to curtail the existence of the form of expertise my colleagues and I represent, #Anthropology.
But we won't be erased. We will persist! Go #SocialScience go! ❤️🔥💪🏼❤️🔥
People in my birth country are trying to curtail the existence of the form of expertise my colleagues and I represent, #Anthropology.
But we won't be erased. We will persist! Go #SocialScience go! ❤️🔥💪🏼❤️🔥
Reposted by Mallory James
The NSF Bio Anthro Program DDRIG, Cultural Anthrpology DDRIG, and Archaeology DDRIG have all been archived (as of yesterday afternoon). Please speak with your grad students and plan accordingly. To say I am angry and depressed about this is an understatement.
November 26, 2025 at 3:25 PM
The NSF Bio Anthro Program DDRIG, Cultural Anthrpology DDRIG, and Archaeology DDRIG have all been archived (as of yesterday afternoon). Please speak with your grad students and plan accordingly. To say I am angry and depressed about this is an understatement.
📖 Would you like to join us next week to discuss the book Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia (2022)? 📖 #STS #energy #anthropology #history #energyhistory #technologyhistory
Our reading group is meeting for the last time in 2025! (1/6)
Our reading group is meeting for the last time in 2025! (1/6)
November 28, 2025 at 11:27 AM
📖 Would you like to join us next week to discuss the book Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia (2022)? 📖 #STS #energy #anthropology #history #energyhistory #technologyhistory
Our reading group is meeting for the last time in 2025! (1/6)
Our reading group is meeting for the last time in 2025! (1/6)
Reposted by Mallory James
„Quiet, Piggy!“ Just think about that for a minute, and what it means to live in a time when a President can assault a woman in public like that without any consequences.
It‘s quite a testimony to the age of regression we live in.
It‘s quite a testimony to the age of regression we live in.
November 23, 2025 at 6:09 PM
„Quiet, Piggy!“ Just think about that for a minute, and what it means to live in a time when a President can assault a woman in public like that without any consequences.
It‘s quite a testimony to the age of regression we live in.
It‘s quite a testimony to the age of regression we live in.
Reposted by Mallory James
"...this infuses responsible professionalism with class-specific loyalties that could more readily serve to dampen, rather than amplify, critiques of engineering’s wider harms."
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
November 12, 2025 at 9:45 AM
"...this infuses responsible professionalism with class-specific loyalties that could more readily serve to dampen, rather than amplify, critiques of engineering’s wider harms."
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
"Universities provide the fundamental infrastructure for decision-making in industry and government. And they provide the tools for bolstering democracy - indeed, this was what the systems we have inherited from the post-war moment were largely for."
open.substack.com/pub/hannahfo... #AcademicSky
open.substack.com/pub/hannahfo... #AcademicSky
open.substack.com
November 13, 2025 at 10:35 AM
"Universities provide the fundamental infrastructure for decision-making in industry and government. And they provide the tools for bolstering democracy - indeed, this was what the systems we have inherited from the post-war moment were largely for."
open.substack.com/pub/hannahfo... #AcademicSky
open.substack.com/pub/hannahfo... #AcademicSky
LMU posted my publications onto the Department's page!! 🥰 www.en.ekwee.uni-muenchen.de/publications...
Articles in English - Institute for European Ethnology and Cultural Analysis - LMU Munich
www.en.ekwee.uni-muenchen.de
November 12, 2025 at 9:15 AM
LMU posted my publications onto the Department's page!! 🥰 www.en.ekwee.uni-muenchen.de/publications...
So interesting
this is just such a stark contrast to the general Western mood that climate politics is dead. THIS is what climate politics is about (the political economy of decarbonization). Everything else follows.
Ethiopia last year banned the import of new gasoline-powered cars. Nepal reduced import duties on EVs so much that they are now cheaper than cars with internal combustion engines. Brazil raised tariffs on car imports to compel Chinese automakers to set up plants inside Brazil. Etc
November 11, 2025 at 11:02 AM
So interesting