Ben Anderson | Lightnews

Ben Anderson @benandersongeog.bsky.social · 23m

Thanks for the kind words on the collection. I think your response, and all kinds of other responses, is exactly what we hoped for, and fits the ‘not a handbook’ aim

Ben Anderson @benandersongeog.bsky.social · 7h

U.K. universities are completely unprepared for the significant policy shocks (and I suspect huge loss of funding) we will face if there is a Reform government … the discourse is entirely hostile, and is now ramping up e.g. this nonsense

Ben Anderson @benandersongeog.bsky.social · 1d

Part of a series of papers on attachment and detachment; this is a piece in a different style that means a lot to me. The north east, a brass bell, and me … in cultural geographies

journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

gillian rose @profgillian.bsky.social · 1d

I wrote a blog on images and cultural geography, prompted by an essay in an excellent collection convened by @benandersongeog.bsky.social @vickiezhang.bsky.social available here: https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/473927627/DIGITAL-Promises_revised_5Sep25.pdf

‘the image’ and cultural geography

I've just been browsing a fascinating collection of short essays, gathered by Ben Anderson and Vickie Zhang in the summer of 2025. They invited contributions on 'the promise of cultural geography' and put all the responses into an open-access book which you can download here. It's a wonderful initiative in many ways, not least in its openness to contributions and its publication as open access.

visualmethodculture.wordpress.com

Ben Anderson @benandersongeog.bsky.social · 13d

Session on The Geographies of Intensity at RGS-IBG 2026, with @amyrobson.bsky.social & @dannymcnally.bsky.social Themes include theorising intensity, cultures and economies of intensity, and the politics of intensity. Abstracts due to me for 20th feb

Ben Anderson @benandersongeog.bsky.social · 18d

There was weak/no attachment to labour/Starmerisn, but if Reform do get in the starting point will be considerable hostility amongst large parts of the electorate (in particular to Farage)

Glen O'Hara @gsoh31.bsky.social · 18d

This is what worries me most at home. The instincts and views of any Reform-Tory govt are so totally at odds with the public, so outlandish to the median voter, as to make government and even the very ability to govern impossible. (1/2)

Glen O'Hara @gsoh31.bsky.social · 18d

This is what worries me most at home. The instincts and views of any Reform-Tory govt are so totally at odds with the public, so outlandish to the median voter, as to make government and even the very ability to govern impossible. (1/2)

Ben Anderson @benandersongeog.bsky.social · 18d

Great work! Congrats : )

Ben Anderson @benandersongeog.bsky.social · 18d

Quite literally the logic

Ben Anderson @benandersongeog.bsky.social · 18d

Fun to talk at Sheffield this week on the Politics of Feeling with @ajsecor.bsky.social Talk in Manchester in a couple of weeks - sign up below. We love the questions and discussion about the book, so get in touch if you’d like us to speak on it.

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-politi...

The Politics of Feeling: Populism, Progressivism, Liberalism

Join us for this public event, co-hosted by HCRI and UoM Geography.

www.eventbrite.co.uk

Ben Anderson @benandersongeog.bsky.social · 18d

‘Academic work’. Contemptible

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

When two years of academic work vanished with a single click

After turning off ChatGPT’s ‘data consent’ option, Marcel Bucher lost the work behind grant applications, teaching materials and publication drafts. Here’s what happened next.

www.nature.com

Ben Anderson @benandersongeog.bsky.social · 19d

Absolutely this! Modules with the same prescribed form, team taught, substitutable and therefore replacable staff (often done in the name of ‘workload’)

hannah @hannahkateboast.bsky.social · 19d

just read a former colleague's wonderful and highly idiosyncratic syllabus, and feeling a renewed sadness that so many places have accepted the Nous consultancy version of education - against research-led teaching, for the infinite replaceability of staff - without even a proper fight.

Ben Anderson @benandersongeog.bsky.social · 19d

Amid the cruelty of the present, it’s hard not to be struck sometimes by its utter absurdity eg the head of FIFA, governing body for football, pledging its support for Trump’s ‘board of peace’ 🤯

hannah @hannahkateboast.bsky.social · 19d

just read a former colleague's wonderful and highly idiosyncratic syllabus, and feeling a renewed sadness that so many places have accepted the Nous consultancy version of education - against research-led teaching, for the infinite replaceability of staff - without even a proper fight.

Ben Anderson @benandersongeog.bsky.social · 19d

New papers - on events, with some wonderful collaborators!

TIBG @tibg.bsky.social · 19d

New in TIBG:

'The life of events: Exception and everyday life in Acapulco, Mexico' by Hector Becerril, @benandersongeog.bsky.social & @alejandrodecoss.bsky.social

This paper draws on Berlant to consider how certain events, such as storms, become exceptions to ordinary life.
doi.org/10.1111/tran...

Screenshot of a paper abstract in Transactions by Hector Becerril, Ben Anderson & Alejandro de Coss Corzo (2026) entitled: 'The Life of Events: Exception and Everyday Life in Acapulco, Mexico' with a red banner at the top.

The paper focuses on the event of ‘Ingrid-and-Manuel’—a Hurricane and Tropical Storm that hit Acapulco, Mexico in 2013. It traces what this event was and how it remains for people in and beyond Acapulco. It does so in the context of a place where the lines between events and everyday life are often blurred, and yet the event was still named and felt as an exception to ordinary life. By focusing on how exceptionality was and is produced, the paper supplements how human geography understands and relates to events, arguing for an approach that focuses on the ‘life of events’: following how events begin, happen, change, end and live on. This approach sits between social constructivist and realist approaches to events, orientating inquiry to the ongoing mediation of impactive experience, via Lauren Berlant's work. Through this approach, the paper tracks the affective-material variations through which Ingrid-and-Manuel became and remains an exception: excess, (dis)connection, loss and damage, recovery.

TIBG @tibg.bsky.social · 19d

New in TIBG:

'The life of events: Exception and everyday life in Acapulco, Mexico' by Hector Becerril, @benandersongeog.bsky.social & @alejandrodecoss.bsky.social

This paper draws on Berlant to consider how certain events, such as storms, become exceptions to ordinary life.
doi.org/10.1111/tran...

Ben Anderson @benandersongeog.bsky.social · 22d

No better feeling as a journal editor than getting the ‘reviewer agreed’ notification!

Amanda Litman @amandalitman.bsky.social · Jan 10

“When I speak about making our city more affordable, my vision is not limited to the homes that we live in or the child care that we’re making universal — it’s also a vision where we make it possible for working people to afford lives of joy, of art, of rest, of expression.”

Handing Out Free Tickets, Mamdani Says Theater Should Not Be ‘a Luxury’

www.nytimes.com

Ben Anderson @benandersongeog.bsky.social · Jan 2

Thanks! Hopefully get to talk at some point about the resonances and differences with your fascist passions work

Gail Davies @gailfdavies.bsky.social · Dec 22

New paper outlining a spatial account of #FND and proposing an approach to the co-production of functional symptoms. It draws on my longstanding work on geographies of health knowledges, my recent health experiences, and emerging interdisciplinary conversations www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Screenshot of the front page of an article published in the journal Social and Cultural Geography called Remapping the body: an autoethnography of pain, paraesthesia, and the co-production of functional neurological symptoms

Ben Anderson @benandersongeog.bsky.social · Dec 19

Final issue of the year - and so much great work! More next year : )

TIBG @tibg.bsky.social · Dec 19

📢December Issue of TIBG📢

Our latest issue gathers papers around 3 broad themes: the more-than-human, borders, and working from home. It also features the third collection in our 'Geography in the World' series.

23/24 papers are #OpenAccess ⬇️
rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14755661...

A graphic showing the title page of Transactions on a read background with TIBG in large letters on the right hand page. On the left hand page are nine tiles sharing 6 papers in a Themed Intervention and 3 standard articles, with the names of papers in the issue.

1) Worlding geography, area studies and the study of area
Han Cheng, Deen Sharp

2) Egypt's geographical tradition: The post-independence moment and shifting regional imaginations
Aya Nassar

3) Constructing and contesting meta-geographies in Russian area studies debates
Vera Smirnova

4) Geography and area studies as critical bedfellows? The view from Singapore
Brenda S. A. Yeoh

5) Global China's spatial ambition and area studies with geography
Han Cheng

6) Beyond the Limpopo: Geography and the worlding of South(ern) Africa
Maano Ramutsindela

7) Unseasonable seasons: Shifting geographies of weather and migration mobilities
Kaya Barry

8) Staged ecologies: Aesthetics, nature and infrastructure in the late-modern metropolis
Zuhri James

9) Multispecies slavery–environment nexus in resource extraction and animals' ecological politics: Coercive donkey labour in Indian river sand mining
Yamini Narayanan

A graphic showing the title page of Transactions on a read background with TIBG in large letters on the right hand page. On the left hand page are six tiles with 4 standard articles, 1 commentary, and a Themed Intervention with the names of papers in the issue.

1) Post-pandemic geographies of working from home: More of the same for spatial inequalities?
David McCollum

2) The place where we live: Children, families, play, neighbourhoods and spaces of care during and after the pandemic
Alison Stenning, Wendy Russell

3) Living a ‘shadow life’: The disorientations of losing orientation and agency while waiting through furlough
Victoria J. E. Jones

4) What does it mean to be present at work? Negotiating attention, distraction and presence in working from home
David Bissell, Elisabetta Crovara, Andrew Gorman-Murray, Elizabeth Straughan

5) Subtractive, ambient and bifurcated attention at work and when working from home: Towards a geography of workplace attention

6) Crisis of imagination/(re)imaginations for a (climate) crisis
Ankit Kumar, Chandni Singh, Lauren Hermanus, Lalitha Kamath, Wangui Kimari, Mark Pelling, Harriet Bulkeley

TIBG @tibg.bsky.social · Dec 19

📢December Issue of TIBG📢

Our latest issue gathers papers around 3 broad themes: the more-than-human, borders, and working from home. It also features the third collection in our 'Geography in the World' series.

23/24 papers are #OpenAccess ⬇️
rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14755661...

Ben Anderson @benandersongeog.bsky.social · Dec 18

Fantastic that a long interview with @ajsecor.bsky.social and I is the cover story for the January issue of Byline Times - was a pleasure to talk to Hardeep and Peter about the ideas in the The Politics of Feeling! @bylinetimes.bsky.social
@peterjukes.bsky.social @hardeepmatharu.bsky.social

Geography at Durham @geogdurham.bsky.social · Dec 10

We have a rich and varied programme of Human Geography Research Cluster events scheduled in the Department for the Epiphany term at the start of 2026. Details also available on our website here: www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...

Ben Anderson @benandersongeog.bsky.social · Dec 7

Very interesting on variants of post-liberalism and their articulation with Trumpism (tracing the emerging influence on Reform, via Orr, is important)

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · Dec 6

‘Posner and Vermeule argued that “public opinion” would act as the ultimate constraint on a wayward president. That seemed a tad naïve.’

@jwmueller-pu.bsky.social on post-liberal political theory.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Jan-Werner Müller · Caesar wept: Trolling the Libs

All post-liberals have at one point or another declared themselves anti-libertarian. Why is it, then, that once in power...

www.lrb.co.uk

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · Dec 6

‘Posner and Vermeule argued that “public opinion” would act as the ultimate constraint on a wayward president. That seemed a tad naïve.’

@jwmueller-pu.bsky.social on post-liberal political theory.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Jan-Werner Müller · Caesar wept: Trolling the Libs

All post-liberals have at one point or another declared themselves anti-libertarian. Why is it, then, that once in power...

www.lrb.co.uk

Louise Amoore @amoorelouise.bsky.social · Dec 4

To read more about our vision for the Leverhulme Centre for Algorithmic Life - and to explore & apply for our 7 research fellow positions, see leverhulmecal.webspace.durham.ac.uk/call-for-fel... and get in touch if you have questions #MachineLearning #Algorithms #Interdisciplinary #postdoctoral

Call for fellows - Leverhulme Centre for Algorithmic Life

leverhulmecal.webspace.durham.ac.uk

Ben Anderson @benandersongeog.bsky.social · Dec 4

Thanks, we’re very excited about it. Just a sketch of an idea sent through to us. We decided this sort of initial discussion and screening would be a way of saving everyone time - so do send through an idea, the blurb on the website sets out what we hope an intervention will do : )

Keir Milburn @kmilb.bsky.social · Dec 1

Get our Radical Abundance book for just £8!!!

www.plutobooks.com/product/radi...

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