Social science

The university professor and former political prisoner compares his own iconoclastic impulses to Rhodes Must Fall movement

Marcus Chown on a deeply political study that explains why inequality exists and that while ending it will not be easy, it is not impossible

Myths about the impact of having a surname starting with a letter late in the alphabet have been debunked by a new analysis

Student artists at Staffordshire University have transformed academic research on graduate debt into a full-length comic

Book of the week: Universities pay lip service to minorities while maintaining the status quo, says Kalwant Bhopal

Repeal the Human Rights Act? A study explains why we would be mad to do so, says Rachael Ita

Once upon a time, authors pushed young readers to see the world very differently, says Shelley King

Book of the week: Working through university crushes US students. Laurie Taylor fears the UK will share their pain

Plugging a multibillion-pound deficit exacerbated by June’s poll result may require ‘drastic measures’, analysts have warned

Those who leave China to study are more likely to win jobs and promotion when they return, but local academics tend to take top administrative roles, analysis suggests

Training, bold interdisciplinary partnerships and ‘bridging skills’ are all essential for social scientists who want to make best use of all the data now available to them

Book of the week: E. Stina Lyon appreciates the social portraiture approach used to understand complex family roles

Catherine Clinton on the legacy of a marginalised group in a supposedly class-free society

Victoria Bateman on why the Enlightenment took root in Europe and how it helped to spur economic expansion

Findings may not be surprising for some, but study of US universities has raised questions about whether there is political bias among academics

New course is already bringing in a strikingly diverse student cohort

Richard Murphy is enthralled by an insider’s story of a secretive profession that intensifies inequality

A fine ethnography reveals how poor Angelenos and the cops control each other, says Dick Hobbs

Eight subject rankings reveal elite group of 14 US and European universities thriving across disciplines

Chancellor Lizhong Yu tells Jack Grove about how NYU Shanghai hopes its model will turbocharge international mobility

BioMed Central psychology journal will attempt to tackle publication bias by withholding research results from peer reviewers

Money buys compliance, and a few shots of Confucianism help too, says Jonathan Mirsky

Large-scale quantitative analysis of university grades confirms the existence of slump in second-year marks first observed in the 1950s

Elite Paris institution says its planned meeting with exiled Tibetan spiritual leader was rendered 'pointless' by similar event

Seeking feedback from the well networked is better than gaining comments from famous scholars, a conference hears

Book of the week: If all-seeing ‘miracle’ tech is making the decisions we must demystify the tricks, says Danny Dorling

From Fox News to the race for the White House, this work is all about politics, says Sharon Wheeler

Angelia Wilson on how vulnerability means profitability when deregulation and privatisation come to health and social care

Young scholars tell it like it is but is knowledge of replaceability a bar to change? asks Finn Mackay

Analysis of Labour Force Survey data reveals extent of earnings boost for university leavers

Germany’s proposed ban follows concerns by Angela Merkel’s supporters that the niqab and burka are contrary to integration

Welfare state expert Peter Taylor-Gooby cheerfully admits his research has had no real-world influence – but hopes a book might

Women's submissions to a leading seminar were viewed more warmly once a gender-blind process was introduced

Institutions should also appoint ‘hate incident champions’ to encourage students to report abuse, says study

Book of the week: The decision process behind the euro has left the EU in an untenable position, says Lucia Quaglia

Unconscious bias training for those on promotion and recruitment panels may help tackle deficit of senior BME staff, says Leadership Foundation study

Paul Bernal on a vital and comprehensive survey of how our era of ubiquitous observation arose

Walking supervision sessions around Birmingham and pub-based academic chats have won praise from PhD candidates

Trends in international mobility may explain why fewer women are reaching the top ranks of academia, a Spanish study suggests

Arts and humanities research will be better represented in the 2016-17 global league table

Ultra-modern university in gambling hotspot looks to ancient college system for inspiration

Departments urged to consider their team's skills mix rather than just individual qualities

Results of NUS survey appear to reflect university leavers’ experience in job market

Dutch researchers find female academics 11 percentage points less likely to hit promotion threshold in course evaluations

A scholar in the oil-rich state takes in Mecca, art and quiet transgressions, says Madawi Al-Rasheed

Stefania Milan on the socio-legal complexities of digital redemption and digital reinvention

Book of the week: ‘Helicopters’ or ‘bystanders’? Your folks’ behaviour can govern more than grades, says Hazel Christie

Scores that will inform teaching excellence framework may herald rise of ‘new elite’

Senior figure sees ‘strong signals’ that Turkey’s academy has been infiltrated, despite international criticism

Centre for Macroeconomics survey finds support for ‘institutional change’ in profession

Despite a long history of trailblazing female academics, Europe's academy is making slow progress in promoting more women to senior roles, says lobby group

Jonathan Mirsky considers an exploration of the dynamics between two ancient rival nations

Book of the week: Investing in individuals delivers personal and national prosperity, Richard Murphy finds

De Montfort University is asking staff to record their lectures to help students with disabilities

The D-PLACE tool means anthropologists and historians can finally statistically test theories about what shapes human culture and society

Book of the week: Meet the human computers in heels who juggled science and family, says Margaret A. Weitekamp

An economist explains to the rich that they didn’t build that, Danny Dorling writes

Projecting their hopes and fears on to Israel has polarised Jews in the US, says William Kolbrener

Unprecedented ’cleansing’ of academia may force many leading minds to leave the country, scholar warns

Social science scholars are attempting to produce ‘impossible results’ due to demands from journal editors, finds study