In the first few months of the year my writing focus was on Generative AI for Academics. It took a lot of work to get the draft into shape, compounded by my tendency to procrastinate at the editing stage. When that was done I wrote a structured series of 24 blog posts about how to enjoy academic writing, with a view to working out what to do next. It turned out I wanted to write a book about GAI through the lens of enjoying academic writing, specifically the question of why academics would want to outsource their writing in the first place. That’s about 80% complete and it’s become a deeply weird hybrid of auto ethnography, theoretical analysis and practical guidance. Unfortunately, this is the second year in a row where I intended to finally finish Platform & Agency but failed to do so, partly due to the difficulty of writing about sociotechnical change when shit keeps, well, changing but mostly to do with getting distracted. We also did a lot of preparatory work for the Platform University book I’m writing with Susan Robertson and Michele Martini.
Beyond my obsession with writing books, I wrote a chapter with J.J. Sylvia about generative AI and platform literacy for the World Yearbook of Education. I helped Katy Jordan put together this special issue of Journal of Interactive Media in Education, including an editorial which I think was really timely. I worked with Morten Hansen on a paper exploring how Donati and Archer’s relational sociology could be applied to the study of educational technology. I wrote most of a chapter about Margaret Archer’s relevance for digital sociology which I’m struggling to finish off, though the edited book being delayed has taken the pressure off somewhat. I also worked on a couple of small GAI related grants, one exploring our school at the University of Manchester and the other evaluating the use of a tool on the primary school PGCE programme (TES interview). The former is finished with the first of two papers underway, whereas we’ll start the fieldwork for the second early in the new year. I did an interview with the Observer which I really enjoyed, as well as brief comment for a Inside Higher Education piece on AI textbooks and an interview with a French magazine about the sociology of awkwardness. But in general I didn’t have much media coverage of my work this year, compared to last year when seemingly everyone wanted to talk to me about Twitter/X.
I did a really fun keynote for an internal PGR event in May, telling the story of being targeted by this AI generated scam to explore issues of public trust. I did a keynote on GAI for Academics in Greenwich in June which I really enjoyed, not least of all because I love that campus so much. I enjoyed a guest session with Huw Davies at the Edinburgh Futures Institute in January where a conversation about the feral sociology of conspiracy theorists led to a fascinating exchange about hope, despair and the responsibilities of educators. The first Centre for Social Ontology annual workshop since Margaret Archer died was much less depressing than I’d expected it to be. Other than that none of the other talks I’ve done this year really stuck in my mind and my diary is too much of a mess to make me want to go through it month by month. I went to two big conferences for the first time since Covid (IACR and Social Media & Society) and didn’t really enjoy either of them, though I met some brilliant people at the former. Along with Sebastian Raza and Joe Davidson (thank you 🙏) I organised a symposium after IACR celebrating Margaret Archer’s intellectual legacy. It was a wonderful day, helped by absolutely sensational weather, which I think she genuinely would have enjoyed. I went to BERA for the first time in September, for our first public DTCE team event as a fireside chat on AI and the future of education. I wasn’t impressed by the conference (my own event was literally the only thing I went to) but I really enjoyed doing something together as a team. It also felt like it was a hit with the audience.
I co-organised a conference on GAI and social research in September which was amazing, though ruined slightly in the afternoon by an avoidable crisis that left me glued to my e-mail for two hours. For the University of Manchester’s bicentenary I organised an interactive exhibition at the data visualisation observatory exploring the history of the campus. As an amateur archivist I hadn’t quite grasped how difficult what I’d originally envisaged would be, which meant the finished installation didn’t live up to my expectations. We had some good feedback but I’ve essentially filed it away as an example of how dangerous it can be to be an overconfident generalist. There were lots of internal seminars I was involved in over the course of year. My favourite was probably Tyler Shores visiting to talk about digital wellbeing for academics. I had forgotten quite how good he is at this, leading to a deeply therapeutic event which almost everyone in attendance made a point of later saying how much they enjoyed. Helen Beetham also organised some amazing webinars for our Generative Dialogues podcast series which I failed to follow up on.
I felt like I did less research this year than I can see I actually did, now I’ve written it out long form. It was a year of massive growth for the MA Digital Technologies, Communication and Education with student numbers growing alongside a team which has doubled in size in the last couple of years. We hired six new colleagues for the team this year who have completely transformed what we’re doing already. Though we also lost Felix Kwihangana to KCL, which is a brilliant move for him but a huge blow for us. There was a vast amount of politics to negotiate in wanting to develop a new distance learning programme, but we’re now in a position where we have a lot of support to do something radically innovative. At points in the year I despaired slightly about the programme review I signed us up for, but I can see an end in sight for it. This such a weird, creative and engaging programme that just needs a bit of tidying up and focusing in order to be a national leader. Our research group which I run with Louis Major is becoming a hive of activity, to a remarkable degree given that we’ve only been running for 2.5 years.
I’ve also enjoyed being involved in developing a CPD programme on digital sustainability which we’re going to get up and running properly next year. In terms of teaching I taught a course on digital and media literacy which I absolutely loved, particularly when focusing on propaganda and misinformation. I taught on our work placement unit for the first time, which was fascinating as an entirely international cohort of students came back to reflect upon their placements all around Manchester. I enjoyed Digital Education Futures as much as always, though it’s a victim of its own success in that it’s tripled in size, which means I’ve got to redesign it. The media literacy course has also nearly doubled, with 130 students next year, which is inevitably going to impact on how it’s taught unfortunately. I learned a huge amount from teaching on Sustainable Ed Technology Design as well, which I’m still actively processing with regards to GAI.
This was such a formative year professionally. It was my third year of leading a large programme and co-leading a research group. It’s started to feel relatively straight forward by this point, even when extremely challenging situations emerge, as they did in the last couple of months. There was one minor disaster earlier in the year, but I learned important lessons from it which really helped moving forward. I’m realising that I genuinely enjoy leadership, in the sense of building community and enabling an agenda to coalesce which works for everyone involved. Even the challenging bits are oddly satisfying, in the sense that negotiating them inevitably leaves me feeling I’ve learned important things about myself and how I relate to others. I like solving problems in quite a straight forward way, particularly ones which involve people and things interacting in systems. I like mentoring people and offering support.
What I’ve found challenging, in the most enjoyable way, has been working with a big picture of where we want to get to and then trying to gently steer day-to-day activity in that direction. I knew I liked thinking strategically from consultancy but it’s far more satisfying (and difficult) when you need to actually implement the ideas you’re offering. It did make me wonder if I wanted to try being a head of department (probably starting with applying for one of the numerous deputy HoD positions in my unfeasibly massive departure) but I realised I’d just find it too interpersonally draining. Even so I’m increasingly aware that departments which are nice places to work (so v rare) remain so because people put the effort into keeping them that way. I’d like to find a way to make that contribution beyond what I’m doing now. I’m also conscious that working away from Manchester becomes challenging during the semester, at least if you want to avoid spending the entire day glued to e-mail.
I also began to feel like a good teacher this year. In part this was simply the fact that I keep getting really positive teaching evaluations, but it’s also a matter of feeling comfortable and energised by what I’m doing. If I’m teaching something I’m actually interested in, I increasingly realise my enthusiasm is obvious to the students. I’ve frequently had the experience (albeit less so this term when I’ve had a sequence of minor illnesses) of coming in feeling drained and leaving feeling energised. I like talking about technology, education, politics and where things are going. Doing it in the structured and clear way necessitated by teaching makes my thoughts and beliefs clearer to me than they’d otherwise be. I particularly enjoy the challenge of talking about issues which are developing in real time (e.g. GAI and propaganda) which means processing recent events in analytical yet clear ways to present them to students for discussion. A couple of senior colleagues have pushed me towards larger grant applications recently, but I’d honestly struggle to see what I’d want to buy myself out from, even if I were successful.
Even so I’m conscious that I’d just like to have more research time, particularly now I’ve developed some brilliant writing partnerships. It’s not so much field work, as much as time for reading and discussion, as well as travelling without feeling the need to be constantly connected. I’m not sure how to square this circle but it’s a good problem to have, particularly as I’m horribly aware the sector as a whole is in crisis. But for now at least I genuinely enjoy my research, teaching and leadership which is something I would not have expected to say when I started applying for lectureships a few years ago. This has been a fantastic year professionally (personally as well, at least in some ways, though those reflections are for my journal 😊) in which I’ve suddenly begun to feel comfortably and confidently mid career. I’m still not completely settled in Manchester personally, but I find it hard to imagine myself leaving here in the short or medium term just because it’s such a conducive environment to my professional flourishing.
Mark Carrigan 