Jelena Brankovic

@jelena3121.bsky.social

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Sociologist. Currently interested in how universities are compared, with a focus on (the history of) data and information infrastructures that enable comparisons on a global scale.

https://jelenabrankovic.net/datafying-universities/

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"Most of us are outsiders in one way or another. We are seen and felt as different than those around us. As not belonging. To be an academic outsider is to be separated from other academics, and from university life more generally, by our lived experiences..."

Academic Outsider - Victoria Reyeswww.sup.org <b>Many enter the academy with dreams of doing good; this is a book about how the institution fails them, especially if they are considered outsiders.</b> Tenure-track, published author, recipient ...

The amount of interesting books coming out that I want to read NOW! is just not sustainable. This 👇

Cosmopolitan Scientists: How a Global Policy of Commercialization Became Japanese - Nahoko Kameowww.sup.org As the university transformed itself into a center of innovation, and biotechnology became a billion-dollar industry, commercialization of university inventions became both lucrative and urgent. In th...

Everyone interested in great ideas & tips for how to organize their digital files should bookmark this thread. I am SO grateful @bsky.app exists. ❤️

How do you systematize/organize your digital sources? I'm looking for a way of efficiently naming and sorting a heterogeneous and growing body of documents (some downloaded, some scanned, some created) and was wondering if there is a recommended way of doing it while staying sane. Tips welcome! 🙏

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Delighted to be part of this special issue on qualitative methods used to study science (alongside superstars Nancy Nersessian, Sabina Leonelli, Rachel Ankeny, Lisa Osbeck, and others), commemorating Ian Mitroff's work on the moon landing. t.ly/1twvt

Qualitative methods to investigate “How science gets done”t.ly Describes a special section of Qualitative Methods (edited by Lisa M. Osbeck, Nancy J. Nersessian, Stephen L. Antczak) that was dedicated to the 50th anniversary of The Subjective Side of Science by Ian Mitroff.

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It's incredibly sad that we've all lost out on such a vital and effective self-promo tool, but simultaneously, it's validating to know that, no, it's not just me. Twitter/X is utterly useless, now. Broken beyond repair. boringstorybook.com/break-up-wit...

Break up with your X. – INCREDIBLY BORING STORIESboringstorybook.com

More in the "pretty stuff in the archives" series: this absolutely wonderful map of downtown St. Petersburg from 1993 😍

1 Jan 2071? Sure, no rush.

One thing I take weird pleasure in these days is opening X and doing nothing else but blocking each ad appearing on my feed. I reckon there's one for every 2-3 "regular" tweets. But the joy those 5 minutes spent there bring to my day makes it all worth the effort. Should be illegal, I know.

"Hopefully, some states will consider criminal prosecution," Musk wrote, suggesting he wants it to be illegal for brands to refuse to advertise on X. arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

Elon Musk calls for “criminal prosecution” of X ad boycott perpetratorsarstechnica.com Congress accused advertisers group of colluding to tank X's revenue.

Let's pause for a moment to appreciate this letterhead of the (technically not anymore existing) Standing Conference of Rectors, Presidents and Vice-Chancellors of the European Universities (from a 1985 document)

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I thought this was going to be a story about ensuring that Tesla's #FakeSelfDriving behaved like an asshole driver, but in fact it's a story about how Tesla is using us all as crash-test dummies by relying on random YouTubers to test their bad software. www.businessinsider.com/tesla-priori...

Tesla prioritizes Musk's and other 'VIP' drivers' data to train self-driving softwarewww.businessinsider.com Current and former Tesla workers say the company prioritizes data from Elon Musk's car and influencers' vehicles to improve its self-driving software.

A special circle of hell please for the people who—without asking—add other people's email addresses to their lists and then spam them each time they have a new preprint or do a webinar or what not. This should be illegal.

"Using specialist software, the consultancy studied 2.3m posts from 468,000 accounts in Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands. From that dataset, it identified 50,000 as accounts that spread disinformation." Swamp. www.theguardian.com/world/articl...

Disinformation networks ‘flooded’ X before EU elections, report sayswww.theguardian.com Analysis by Dutch researchers shows coordinated activity in France, Germany and Italy in run-up to ballot

In other news, Netflix made Decameron into a movie and Italians losing it in comment sections all over the internet is the next level pineapple-on-pizza scandal that no one needed, but that's just adorable to watch.

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The first steps required would be naming and sorting your files. You will probably want to eliminate doubles and give the rest standard and logical names. You can do the first with apps.microsoft.com/detail/xp89b... or www.alldup.info or anything similar.

Download - Bulk Rename Utilitywww.bulkrenameutility.co.uk Bulk Rename Utility Download

Speaking of archives, what I often did was take photos of each box and folder, and insert them as first pages in the file containing the scans. (maybe that's what most people do? anyway, I found those pics useful as a reminder when going back to the files later at home) @johannesnagel.bsky.social

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One would expect that to ban a country killing competitors would be the bare minimum thing to do...

Get Israel out of the Olympics NOW

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This info from The Writers Guild Foundation has some solid tips on digital materials (also physical materials) that might be useful. www.wgfoundation.org/blog/2020/3/...

Things To Do At Home: Organize Your Personal Archive — The Writers Guild Foundationwww.wgfoundation.org

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Job! I am looking for a postdoc with excellent quant skills, ideallly experience with survey experiments, for my ERC project on beauty and inequality. Cool international team, exciting project, lots of freedom: www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jo... Please spread the word!

Postdoctoral researcher “Beauty and Inequality: Physical Appearance, Symbolic Boundaries and Social Dis/advantage in five global cities”www.kuleuven.be Postdoctoral researcher “Beauty and Inequality"

once, there was a country. #yugoslavia

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1/n Since we are talking about project 2025, here are some things a Trump administration plans to do with higher education policy, in no particular order

static.project2025.org

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Thanks y'all for your input and the interesting discussions. My takeaway: There's a concept of "niche fields", but it's less established and, remarkably, the term doesn't carry the idea of diversity and specialization that is to be preserved and valuable per se, which is the case for "Kleine Fächer"

English speaking colleagues, I need your help: Is there an English word for particularly small disciplines? An umbrella term for fields like sinology, frisian studies, paleontology, etc.? In Germany, small fields are a thing ("kleine Fächer" or "Orchideenfächer"). Is there an English equivalent?

There's critical and then there's the shut-up-and-sit-down type of critical:

The last book review I wrote just got its first citation so don't anyone tell me how no one reads or cites book reviews!

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New research project starting this month: “Young Citizen Scientists against Disinformation”. In this GFF-NÖ-funded project, colleagues from the University for Continuing Education Krems (led by PI Bettina Pospisil) and here at St Pölten UAS (led by me) will look into … /1

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Humboldt-Universität Berlin suspends professor after allegations of sexualized violence: www.tagesspiegel.de/wissen/nach-...

Nach Vorwürfen sexualisierter Gewalt: Humboldt-Universität suspendiert Professorwww.tagesspiegel.de Gegen einen HU-Professor läuft ein Disziplinarverfahren, in dem es um sexualisierte Gewalt geht. Nun hat die Hochschulleitung nach Tagesspiegel-Informationen erste Konsequenzen gezogen.

So, if anyone is interested, OECD has made its data and publications open-access, which includes "a catalogue of almost 30.000 items from the OECD archives, which users are now able to access, download, and share." www.oecd.org/en/about/new...

OECD data, publications and analysis become freely accessiblewww.oecd.org The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has transitioned to an open-access information model.

Good call! "In recent years, UU's reach on X has decreased compared to other platforms, such as LinkedIn. In addition, we have seen how X, often more than other platforms, struggles with the rise of disinformation, fake accounts and online harassment." www.uu.nl/en/news/utre...

Utrecht University quits Xwww.uu.nl As Utrecht University, we choose to no longer use X (formerly Twitter) as part of our communication strategy.

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Some happy thoughts about how GOP control of the federal government could result in the decimation of the US higher education sector as we know it today.

How the federal government could kill higher education.brendancantwell.substack.com We need to consider the risks.