Jeremy Trevelyan Burman 🎓
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burmanphd.bsky.social
Jeremy Trevelyan Burman 🎓
@burmanphd.bsky.social
2.1K followers 3.1K following 210 posts
Theory & History of Psychology at the University of Groningen (@rug-gmw.bsky.social). Elected fellow of the APA in History 26 and Developmental 7. Elected president of the APA division for History, 2024-2026. Advisor to NWO SSH Roundtable for Humanities.
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burmanphd.bsky.social
One of my students "mispronounced" the name of @anthropic.com's LLM today, and it sounded so right that I immediately wondered if it wasn't exactly what they intended all along. What do you think?

"Cloud"
October 24, 2025 at 3:28 PM
burmanphd.bsky.social
A prof I liked in another department once invited me to TA for their course on "the scientific revolution." Delighted, I laughed and said, "which one?"

Their reply has haunted me for nearly twenty years: "That's cute. But it only goes to show that you don't know as much as I thought you did."
October 23, 2025 at 8:01 PM
burmanphd.bsky.social
In last night's vivid dream, I was at SNL pitching a skit for Antony Starr: Homelander is interviewing Vought staff about their loyalty, and tells one of them to eat a basketball. I then demonstrate. First by deflating it. Then by nibbling at the seams. All the producers look horrified: "Yes!"
a man in a superhero costume is standing in front of a cross with his arms outstretched ..
Alt: A man in a superhero costume is standing in front of a cross with his arms outstretched, and flies over an adoring crowd
media.tenor.com
October 8, 2025 at 8:40 AM
burmanphd.bsky.social
Yep. Forward this to those who haven't yet made the move

www.psypost.org/scientists-s...
Scientists say X (formerly Twitter) has lost its professional edge — and Bluesky is taking its place
After Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter, many scientists report the platform is no longer suitable for professional use. A recent survey indicates that researchers are increasingly turning to Bluesky...
www.psypost.org
September 27, 2025 at 4:42 PM
Reposted by Jeremy Trevelyan Burman 🎓
jonothingeb.bsky.social
I'm excited to share with you all a conference I'm planning Oct. 10-12: Dialectical Biology Today: Legacies of Richard Lewontin.

It will be hybrid in Toronto and on zoom, so please join us however you can! Register for zoom link here: ihpst.utoronto.ca/events/diale...
Conference title: Dialectical Biology Today: Legacies of Richard Lewontin, and image of Lewontin in Black and White with intense expression in front of a chalkboard holding up a fist, When and Where Friday, October 10, 2025 11:30 am to Sunday, October 12, 2025 2:00 pm Music Room (218) Goldring Student Centre 150 Charles St W, Toronto, ON M5S 1K5 | and online via Zoom
September 15, 2025 at 5:35 PM
burmanphd.bsky.social
On Friday, I asked a question at LinkedIn about what everyone is doing with their writing assignments to respond to the crisis of AI in education. By yesterday afternoon, it was a fully worked-out invitation to share anchored in my own experiences. What say you?
mindwise-groningen.nl/inviting-tho...
Inviting thoughts about AI in education | Mindwise
mindwise-groningen.nl
September 15, 2025 at 1:23 PM
burmanphd.bsky.social
Germany's far-right "remigration" movement is probably giving a preview of future Republican rhetoric in the US. For those with an interest in such things, this report is worth watching. It's from the German public state-owned international broadcaster: Deutsche Welle (DW).

youtu.be/MOrTIB8JVe8?...
The dilemma that could test the AfD's rising popularity | DW News
YouTube video by DW News
youtu.be
September 12, 2025 at 12:53 PM
Reposted by Jeremy Trevelyan Burman 🎓
olivia.science
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues. Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA). Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe. Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
September 6, 2025 at 8:13 AM
burmanphd.bsky.social
I am not ready for it to be September. I am, however, ready for it to be July. Who do I speak to about this inconsistency?
September 1, 2025 at 11:49 AM
Reposted by Jeremy Trevelyan Burman 🎓
alisabokulich.bsky.social
The Department of Science & Technology Studies at Cornell University invites applications for a two-year Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the area of “Science, Technology, and Governance.” #HPS #STS #PhilJobs
academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30301
Cornell University, Society for the Humanities
Job #AJO30301, WDR-00046364 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Science and Technology Studies, AY 2026-2028, Society for the Humanities, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, US
academicjobsonline.org
August 30, 2025 at 8:54 PM
burmanphd.bsky.social
The archive where I'm working for the next two weeks has the largest single collection I've ever heard of: 15 shelf-kms! That's almost 50,000 linear feet!! (It's the complete property records going back to the 1820s for the entire province of Noord-Holland, which includes Amsterdam.)
A light skinned man with white hair and beard, and glasses, studies intently without realising that he has accidentally taken his own picture while putting down his phone
August 20, 2025 at 10:30 AM
Reposted by Jeremy Trevelyan Burman 🎓
adapalmer.bsky.social
I see grocery/takeout shaming discourse going around again, so this is your periodic historian reminder that cooking from scratch daily while working has never been sustainable, and for millennia everyone either relied on takeout & restaurants or ate in huge households w/ big dorm-like group dining.
July 25, 2025 at 10:40 PM
burmanphd.bsky.social
The meaning of "presidential" has been so debased from what Jed Bartett preached that this now sounds like folksy charm
onestpress.onestnetwork.com Olga Nesterova @onestpress.onestnetwork.com · Jul 21
Hunter Biden has a point. And a quite colorful one.
July 21, 2025 at 8:23 PM
burmanphd.bsky.social
When I lived in the middle of nowhere, and the electricity would fail regularly and often (sometimes for many hours), I just went and got a back-up power supply. But how do you do the equivalent with these pseudo-cognitive tools that people are starting to rely on?

www.forbes.com/sites/callum...
July 13, 2025 at 9:40 AM
Reposted by Jeremy Trevelyan Burman 🎓
brepols.net
𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗻 𝗬𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗛𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗣𝘀𝘆𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 𝟭𝟬 (𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟰)
𝗦𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲𝘀, 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹𝘀

More info: bit.ly/3Gcfe3b

#History #Psychology #Science #Medicine #Historysky #Psychologsky
June 30, 2025 at 7:21 AM
burmanphd.bsky.social
The first ever "Three Societies Meeting" has ended. It was wonderful to bring together so many scholars and friends to discuss the history of psychology, the history of the behavioral and social sciences, and the history of the human sciences. Let's not wait another sixty years to do it again!
In what felt like record-setting heat, The representatives from the Three Societies (ESHHS, Cheiron, and SHP) open the proceedings at the American Church in Paris Thoughts, reminiscences, and thank yous at the dinner Dr Jeremy Trevelyan Burman, president of the Society for the History of Psychology (Division 26 of the American Psychological Association), speaks about AI and education—and his research in digital history that spans the gap between them Friends at the Eiffel Tower
July 6, 2025 at 11:38 AM
burmanphd.bsky.social
Look, this is really getting serious: I need you all to stop publishing such interesting books. I simply can't afford to buy them all. And anyway, I've run out of shelf space. Both at home and at the office. So, please: stop being so clever! (Take a vacation without bringing your laptop!!)
June 24, 2025 at 11:34 PM
Reposted by Jeremy Trevelyan Burman 🎓
jenlucpiquant.bsky.social
Enter an Archive of 10,000+ Historical Children’s Books, All Digitized & Free to Read Online www.openculture.com/2025/06/ente...
Enter an Archive of 10,000+ Historical Children’s Books, All Digitized & Free to Read Online
We can learn much about how a historical period viewed the abilities of its children by studying its children's literature.
www.openculture.com
June 19, 2025 at 9:28 PM
Reposted by Jeremy Trevelyan Burman 🎓
haushoferl.bsky.social
🚨Salaried PhD position in history of medicine at the University of Zurich with the wonderful @fcondrau.bsky.social 🚨 (ignore the 60%, this is just the Swiss system, and amounts to a very respectable pay)
#histmed #histstm

jobs.uzh.ch/job-vacancie...
UZH: Assistant History of Medicine
The History of Medicine Group within the Institute of Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine and the Center for Medical Humanities at the University of Zurich, led by Professor Flurin Condrau, seek...
jobs.uzh.ch
June 17, 2025 at 4:11 PM
burmanphd.bsky.social
Can someone who knows Husserl please explain how this index entry refers to a page that isn't contained within the book? This is from the English translation of Husserl's (1948/1973) "Experience and Judgment." The book ends on page 443. What I want is on page 521. (How?)
An excerpt of the index from the English translation of Husserl's (1948/1973) "Experience and Judgment." The entry for genetic construction of logic is highlighted, and given on page 521. But the book ends on page 443.
June 10, 2025 at 12:16 PM
burmanphd.bsky.social
The readings for my Monday lecture talk extensively about mirror neurons. But the book I'm using was written during the period of hype. Does anyone have a favorite "critical" text that could help me bring the students back to earth? (I want them to be excited, but not *too* excited.)
May 16, 2025 at 11:34 AM
burmanphd.bsky.social
Yes. Please do this. It improves a bad day, and can even make up for a frustrating week
elliemackinroberts.net Dr Ellie Mackin Roberts @elliemackinroberts.net · Apr 25
I don’t know which academic needs to hear this but yes you should absolutely email other academics just to tell them you enjoyed their article/book/chapter. Just do it. Don’t overthink it.

Hello So-and-so, just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed ‘Title’. Hope you’re well. Best, You.

Done.
April 25, 2025 at 5:05 PM
burmanphd.bsky.social
The piece I linked to in the thread is the sequel, using archival history, to an earlier quantitative (digital) history. That's linked here. My broader idea is that there are invisible influences which inform our thinking: the water we swim in that we can't see.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
April 21, 2025 at 9:08 AM
burmanphd.bsky.social
This is p. 111 of "Rewriting the soul." From chapter 7: "measure."

Hacking, I. (1998). Rewriting the soul: Multiple personality and the sciences of memory. Princeton University Press.

Hacking also wrote several important articles and books about statistics and probability directly.
kitnoussis.bsky.social Kit Noussis @kitnoussis.bsky.social · Apr 21
Thirty years ago, Ian Hacking commented on the temptation to do push-button statistics without first thinking about the theoretical side. The earliest statisticians would spend hours thinking about their assumptions and models because the computations themselves might have taken days. #rstats
April 21, 2025 at 7:57 AM