Nicholas Pagnucco
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nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
Nicholas Pagnucco
@nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
340 followers 530 following 590 posts
Sociologist at St Mary's University, Calgary
Specialties: Post Secondary Education, Culture, Organizations, Theory. He/Him cishet White settler. My posts are my own, reposts are not necessarily endorsements.
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nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
This seems.... not ideal?
kitchener.citynews.ca/2025/11/05/o...
TORONTO — More than 5,000 researchers have signed an open letter pushing back against a parliamentary committee order that they say draws parallels with the U.S. government’s crackdown on equity, diversity and inclusion funding in health and science research. The Standing Committee on Science and Research adopted a motion on Oct. 1 requiring health and science grant institutions to share disaggregated data on all student and faculty grant applications submitted between 2020 and 2025. The span of data requested was later expanded by the committee from five years to the last 25 years. The information requested includes applicant demographics and equity, diversity and inclusion questionnaire responses, which the committee says is needed for its study into federal funding criteria. Abiding by the request would also identify the members of the evaluation committee, comments, opinions, scores assigned, outcome of the application and the amount awarded.
November 7, 2025 at 7:40 PM
nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
I am becoming a Canadian citizen today.

As I wait for the ceremony to start
They have a screen with rotating Canadian factoids.
November 6, 2025 at 6:08 PM
nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
I really wish my university had a sociology of social movements course.
October 11, 2025 at 8:11 PM
nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
Abstract This article investigates justifications by academic professionals regarding part-time faculty working conditions, and it is based on sixty-two qualitative interviews in two disciplines at three post-secondary schools. While each university or college had its own justificatory strategy to claim their use of part-time professors was legitimate, each defined part-time faculty work as something other than a real job. The part-time faculty willing to express dissatisfaction regarding their work explicitly want faculty work to be a real job. Finally, the organizational structures of each college reinforce their respective justificatory strategies. This includes three different organizational boundaries between full- and part-time faculty members that can be metaphorically described as a wall, gateway, or ladder. Policy implications are identified regarding the need for pro-rata pay and participation in self-governance.
July 31, 2025 at 9:34 PM
nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
Next up to read:
Very curious
#sociology #socialtheory
The book, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity
July 11, 2025 at 2:51 AM
nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
Continuing to love the book.
Now on page 133-134
"Writing is not a mop-up chore at the end of a research project. To write is to make countless choices of what pieces of evidence to present; what metaphors are most convincing; whose narrative voice to use; whether to develop a scene, a setting, a concept, or a theme; and what transformations in your main characters will carry a theoretical arc. All these choices are analytical; they animate theoretical points. Scientific writing is a form of persuasion but, especially in theoretical articles, that aspect is often glossed over and bracketed as incidental: pure force of ideas should carry the idea. But as any novelist or poet can tell you, how you write is intrinsically constitutive of our message."
July 9, 2025 at 7:58 PM
nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
Re-reading stuff, I always love this quote from Timmermans & Tavory (2022: 14)
"We do research to be surprised, not to confirm what we already know, theoretically or empirically… [R]esearch is about asking questions to which you don't know the answer. You may have a hunch, but if you are unwilling to ask questions that may give you answers you didn't expect or, worse, want, you are not doing research."
July 8, 2025 at 2:56 PM
nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
Reading an interview with Hartmut Rosa.
I'm tempted to dump this quote on students and see who agrees, who disagrees, who qualifies, and who asks what resonance is.
Hartmut Rosa: About competence and resonance being at odds! Education should be about opening up resonance, not about competences or skills! Of course, it would be mad to say education should not give people any skills at all, but my idea is really that once there is a sense of resonance you will want to develop your skills! That’s exactly what resonance is about! If I think the Roman world speaks to me, if I’m in resonance with the world of the Romans, then I want to know more about them! I want to be able to draw connections and work on it. I think that skills almost automatically develop out of a sense of resonance, but of course, you can’t kind of turn it around… the mere retransmission of skills does not necessarily create resonance!
May 10, 2025 at 12:04 AM
nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
Got a some of my summer reading.
#sociology #socialtheory
April 10, 2025 at 10:23 PM
nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
One of my (many) academic-heretical opinions:
Service should explicitly count more for tenure & promotion.
2 pictures. #1: Godzilla & King Kong fighting. Godzilla is labelled "Teaching", and King Kong is labelled "Research". The second picture is both running away from a corgi wielding a baseball bad. The corgi is labelled "administrative work."
March 24, 2025 at 7:42 PM
nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
www.caut.ca/latest/2025/...

Canadian "Researchers working on projects funded wholly or in part by American federal agencies have been sent a lengthy questionnaire to determine how their work aligns with the Trump administration’s political agenda."

Awesome.
"In the questionnaire, Canadian researchers are asked to confirm that their research: * does not include a climate or “environmental justice” component * does not contain diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) elements * does not ascribe to “gender ideology” * increases American influence globally In addition, the questionnaire asks whether a researcher’s institution has a policy prohibiting collaboration with entities contrary to U.S. government interests and prevents partnerships with “communist, socialist, or totalitarian parties.”
March 21, 2025 at 5:36 AM
nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
NOT GOOD
#education #academicsky
March 14, 2025 at 9:09 PM
nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
This speaks to me.
This is a meme. At the top, there is the line, "Researcher: We let the data speak for itself." The next line is "Earlier that day:" Below is a picture of medieval art, where a woman in red holds a mallet in one hand and a prone demon in the other. He is holding the mallet in the air, about to strike the demon. In white letters, the woman is labelled as "Researcher", and the demon is labelled "Data."
January 20, 2025 at 11:34 PM
nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
This amuses me
January 16, 2025 at 4:07 PM
nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
I respect any conference held in Canada the last weekend of November that includes a hat & scarf as free swag.
November 29, 2024 at 3:32 PM
nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
Finally finishing The Uncontrollability of the World, by Hartmut Rosa (yes, I know its short - don't judge).

I need to reflect about what I like and don't about this book, but there are quotes that I really like at the very least, including this one:

#sociology #SocialTheory
Quote from the book: "If we no longer saw the world as a point of aggression, but as a point of resonance that we approach, not with an aim of appropriating, dominating, and controlling it but with an attitude of listening and responding, an attitude oriented toward self-efficacious adaptive transformation, toward mutually responsive reachability, modernity's escalatory game would be meaningless, and, more importantly, would be deprived of the psychological energy that drives it. A different world would become possible." 107)
November 3, 2024 at 9:33 PM
nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
Best I can think of is the pic from Hobbes' Leviathan:
Image of a king with a crown, sceptre, and sword, towering above the countryside. His body is comprised of countless small people, unifying to make the whole.
October 24, 2024 at 2:58 AM
nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
Even though they weren't aimed at me, and I wasn't in the room, this woman's reactions made me SQUIRM with discomfort.
October 17, 2024 at 4:10 AM
nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
Haven’t read any Hartmunt Rosa before. I’m curious how this goes. #sociology #socialtheory
Image of the book, _The Uncontrollability of the World_, by Hartmut Rosa.
October 9, 2024 at 4:33 PM
nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
I could also just offer up high quality Sociology propaganda, but that seems less useful ;)

Let me just drop off one of my fav handouts, though...
The Business of Sociology is to Denaturalize and Defatalize the World. - Loic Wacquant
October 6, 2024 at 9:06 PM
nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
The Church has a stake in the prospering of departments of sociology that are not preoccupied with “bean counting” but that are about world-making and world-unmaking. We may be glad for such scholarship that, from its outset, has seen that our life world and its viability are entrusted to our hands... The loss of such study leaves college students ill-equipped for the critical work of world making that must always again be enacted. Along with adequate support for sociology departments, my hope for you, dear reader, is that you are, every day, at the good work of world making and unmaking. Such work is empowered by our singing, by our praying and in our preaching. The world is not fixed, settled, or closed. It is kept open, by the will of God, for fresh waves of wellbeing, for the shalom of the city and all of its inhabitants (see Jeremiah 29:7). Walter Brueggeman
October 6, 2024 at 12:03 AM
nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
I'm kinda old, but not old enough to be _cool_ old.
September 18, 2024 at 7:11 PM
nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
Showed up in my memories today. Still one of the better student evaluation comments I got, right up there with being "dorky but chill" and "you totally know he played D&D in highschool"
Question 23: Please tell us what enhanced your learning in class RESPONSE: Dr Pagnucco's dad jokes.
September 16, 2024 at 6:16 PM
nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
From Don Schweitzer (Editor). 2012. A History of the United Church of Canada. Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press. pages xxii-xxiii
A 2-page chart with the label, "The above historical chart shows the various unions leading up to the United Church of Canada"
September 14, 2024 at 5:06 PM
nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
Oh come on.
#yyc
June 15, 2024 at 8:58 PM