An increasingly large share of human activity now takes place in online digital environments. However social researchers are predominantly trained to investigate and interpret a pre-digital world. In this post Mark Carrigan and Phil Brooker argue that social researchers need to increasingly engage with code and coding in order to understand contemporary society. As one step in this direction and […]
Author: Taster
Do no harm? – What development practice can teach us about negative impact
As previous posts on the Impact Blog have highlighted, one aspect of the impact agenda that has until recently been relatively neglected has been that of negative impact, or ‘grimpact’. In this post Valeria Izzi and Becky Murray draw on examples from development practice and research to advance a more complex understanding of grimpact and argue that as development research […]
Using LinkedIn for Social Research
Different social media platforms allow different levels of access to the data they hold for academic research. In this cross-post Daniela Duca explores some of the ways in which LinkedIn has been used by social scientists and provides a list resources for researchers looking to work with LinkedIn data. Back in 2012, when LinkedIn was close to the 200 million users […]
Why social science can help us to better understand organisational change in healthcare
Lorelei Jones, Alec Fraser, and Ellen Stewart write that while the literature of large‐scale healthcare reform is dominated by competing forms of knowledge, social science in particular can offer new insights. Major changes to the way clinical services are organised keep happening, despite a lack of evidence that it improves anything. Health services research often excludes important dimensions, such as politics and emotions, in favour […]
Book Review: A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy by Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum
In A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy, Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum identify and outline the emergence of a new type of conspiracist thinking in our contemporary moment, showing it to pose a fundamental threat to democratic functioning. While questioning whether the book ascribes too much intentionality to those engaging in ‘the new conspiracism’, this is […]
#ScientistsWhoSelfie – How sharing selfies can build trust in science
Academic research is most often represented in abstract depersonalised formats, such as written articles and books, tables of evidence, infographics etc. Whereas these media have developed to convey information, they are less well suited to developing trust in readers outside of academic circles. In this post, Becky Carmichael explores the effects personalising research, by showing the faces of researchers, has […]
Evidence matters, but ideas shape policy in more fundamental ways than we might realise
Evidence-based policy-making can be problematic in practice, especially if the evidence is uncertain. Based on a case study concerning the formation of a national-level policy position in Ireland in response to an EU initiative, Niamh Hardiman and Saliha Metinsoy suggest that policy makers’ decisions may well be guided by beliefs that go beyond the direct evidence available. Ideas can be so deep-rooted that they […]
Book Review: Refugees in Higher Education: Debate, Discourse and Practice by Jacqueline Stevenson and Sally Baker
20 June is World Refugee Day. In their new book Refugees in Higher Education: Debate, Discourse and Practice, Jacqueline Stevenson and Sally Baker offer a comprehensive discussion of the policies and practices that seek to ensure refugee students access to higher education, focusing on the UK and Australia. This book challenges the context of global efforts to widen participation in higher education systems for students […]
How to Write a Book Review of an Edited Collection
Reviewing an edited collection can seem a daunting task, presenting different challenges to a review of a monograph. In this piece, LSE RB Managing Editor Rosemary Deller shares five tips for writing a review of an edited volume, including examples of how contributors to the LSE RB blog have approached their reviews. If you are interested in this topic, you may also […]
Learned Societies, the key to realising an open access future?
Plan S, a funder led initiative to drive open access to research, will have significant impacts on the ways in which academics publish and communicate their research. However, beyond simply changing the way academics disseminate their research, it will also influence how learned societies, the organisations tasked with representing academics in particular disciplines, operate, as many currently depend on revenues […]