Colleagues may look askance at ‘the death squad’, but while teaching and research into one of life’s only two certainties may be taxing, it is also vital, Matthew Reisz hears
The use of VR in psychology experiments is being driven not just by increasingly affordable technology but also by concerns about the reproducibility of many real-world studies. But do humans really behave in the virtual world as they do in reality? And does it matter? David Matthews investigates
Big datasets linking higher education participation to a range of socio-economic factors are useful and fascinating, but their translation into policy remains fraught
Political scientists typically see politics as an exercise in consensus-building. But Chantal Mouffe tells John Morgan that the left must learn from right-wing populists’ exploitation of “them and us” narratives if it is not to be vanquished by them
Maintaining a breadth of curricular offerings is crucial if subjects outside the sciences are to retain their attraction in the digital age, says Dean Forbes
Dutch figures show just how little time professors get for their own research. It may be easier to pursue your intellectual interests outside the university system, says THE reporter David Matthews
Jonathan Haidt tells Matthew Reisz how a moral culture of ‘safetyism’ took root in today’s students, who view the use of any word that can cause offence as an act of violence
Immersive ethnographic research often produces gripping accounts of life on the edge, but verifying such work can be problematic. Matthew Reisz examines how ethnographers can produce work that is both credible and robust
Matthew Reisz meets Andrea Pető, recent recipient of the Madame de Staël prize, a scholar at Hungary’s Central European University whose feminist probing into the dark corners of Hungary’s past is provoking strong reactions in the ‘illiberal democracy’
The entanglement of the university and tech worlds faces increased scrutiny following the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Could joint positions in industry and academia offer a workable and ethically defensible way forward? David Matthews reports
Only a completely new institutional structure will see teaching and research on organisations become a proper, socially responsible subject, and not merely a cash cow, says Martin Parker
For insight into the ‘pervasive dislocation’ of people’s lives today, the sociologist Jeff Ferrell rode the rails across the US. He tells Matthew Reisz about life on the road and the limits of mainstream research
The former LSE director tells Matthew Reisz that colleagues at Sciences Po sense an opportunity in Brexit, that the French should not fret over league tables and that academics, policymakers and bankers must talk more
Following individuals’ paths in and out of different institutions shows that most students eventually graduate, say Ross Finnie, Richard E. Mueller and Arthur Sweetman
Social scientists’ scepticism about research oversight also relates to the curiously bad press it gets in Western literature, writes Katarzyna Kaczmarska
The new chair of the Campaign for Social Science on ethnic minorities, the similarity between law and academia and universities swallowing the management textbook
The publication game that researchers are obliged to play has stripped the purpose out of social research. Time to change the rules, says Yiannis Gabriel
Economists’ stock plummeted with the financial crash. The authors of a new book suggest that reading novels could sharpen their insights, while four academics consider how the field might need to change
Texas-born scholar Angelia Wilson talks to Matthew Reisz about the changing face of political studies, Trump and the Christian Right, and a Bible Belt road trip
Discriminating in hiring practice against particular intellectual perspectives is no less sinister than discriminating against particular political persuasions, says Glenn Geher
Spanning 200,000 years of human trading, this study considers the influence of technology and the fallout of global interconnectedness, says Juliet Webster
