Mark Carrigan – Digital Sociology of Higher Education

Metaverse-related books and films

A list of resources I’ll be adding to over the coming months – suggestions welcome! I’ve ticked the ones which I’ve read and watched. Please note most of the books are non-academic and I’ve not checked the quality of the ones I haven’t read. Non-fiction: Fiction: Films:

January 22, 2023
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on creativity and routine

Most creative individuals find out early what their best rhythms are for sleeping, eating, and working, and abide by them even when it is tempting to do otherwise. They wear clothes that are comfortable, they interact only with people they find congenial, they do only things they think are important. Of course, such idiosyncrasies are not endearing […]

January 29, 2023
Here’s Lookin’ at You Kid

January 27, 2023
I’m going to the river where the current rushes by

January 26, 2023
Why do computational methods matter for education?

In an infamous article from 2008 the editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine argued that ‘big data’ made the scientific method obsolete. While hype about the data deluge has become more nuanced since then, it is undeniable that digital data has led to profound transformations in social scientific methodology. Disciplines and fields such as Data Science, Computational […]

January 24, 2023
On waiting for something to happen

As often happens when I’m ill, I’ve found myself musing existentially about how I approach life. I found last year immensely difficult and felt like I’d started 2023 with a running start before I was felled once more by the eternally recurring coronavirus. This meant enforced deceleration (for reasons of quarantine, feeling awful and avoiding […]

January 24, 2023
The concept of cathexis

I’ve long been drawn to psychoanalytical theory but I find it quite difficult. One of the problems is that these theorists rarely give examples beyond their case history, which tend to be opaque if you’re struggling with the underlying conceptual framework. The other is concepts tend to be used in different ways. I nonetheless routinely […]

January 20, 2023
How do we stop social media making the academy even more unequal?

January 20, 2023
Generative AI and the future of assessment: an open discussion at the Manchester Institute of Education

This is an internal event we’re organising at the University of Manchester but I’m sharing it here to gauge interest in a subsequent public facing event: Since it was launched in November 2022, ChatGPT has enthralled millions around the world with its uncanny ability to respond to queries in a conversational manner. Its apparent capacity […]

January 20, 2023
We might be dead by tomorrow

January 19, 2023
LinkedIn as a replacement for academic Twitter: micro-blogs vs Twitter threads

I always found LinkedIn a sterile place in comparison to the vibrancy of academic Twitter. I’ve deleted numerous accounts over the years; establishing new ones because it feel like a sensible thing to do as a freelancer before once more coming to the conclusion the site was pointless and deleting it. This began to change […]

January 19, 2023
Deflating the concept of ‘surveillance capitalism’

I thought this was an interesting critique by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow in their Chokepoint Capitalism, arguing that the concept of ‘surveillance capitalism’ suggests a break with (past) capitalism whereas we are instead seeing a familiar modus operandi undertaken by new commercial actors: This is the true heart of “surveillance capitalism”—not the idea that […]

January 18, 2023
The false dichotomy of digital hermits and digital champions

In a memorable turn of phrase Patrick Dunleavy once wrote about academic hermits “sitting alone on top of a pillar somewhere in academia and doing their level best to not communicate in any way with the outside world, or let any information about their work leak out”. It was informed by the findings of the […]

January 17, 2023
Social Media for Public Engagement: Opportunities and Dilemmas

January 17, 2023
Gabor Maté on the reality expressed through depression

I thought this was an immensely powerful image in a remarkable book which is full of them. In The Myth of Normal pg 220 he argues for a view of depression as a defensive responsive to an unliveable tension between our self-expression and attachment needs. He argues for recovering the objective conditions which created emotions […]

January 16, 2023
The Use of Digital Artefacts in Teaching and Researching: Guidelines for Practice

I wrote these best practice guidelines with Haira Gandolfi at the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education in 2020. We’re sharing them here in case others find them useful. The use of digital artefacts in teaching and researching presents a number of practical challenges relating to the administration of files which need to be stored, […]

January 15, 2023
Some thoughts about generative AI and the future of education

A few more thoughts which were swirling around in my mind as I’ve been thinking this through: So what do we do in the near term? I’ve not watched these yet but I’ve seen Charles Knight make some interesting comments about this on LinkedIn. The video below is one of a series which I intend […]

January 15, 2023
I am older now and we did it when we were young

January 14, 2023
Too much Zoom in the post-pandemic university

After the longest holiday I’ve had for years, I’ve started to feel seriously depressed about the quantity of Zoom meetings in my calendar over the coming weeks. I’m currently at an intensive workshop with long term collaborators where we’ve spent all day/evening talking to each other. It’s enjoyable to immerse yourself in interaction with others […]

January 12, 2023
Irvine Welsh on angst, addiction and writing

After spending the last couple of months rereading Irvine Welsh novels, as well as reading the few I’d never touched, it struck me that I’d never heard him talk. Nor did I know anything about him. I was unsurprised to find out he was born in Leith and had been addicted to heroin there for […]

January 11, 2023