Barbara Piotrowska
Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Public Policy @ KCL DPE
🏢Bureaucracy, ideology, authoritarianism
🧠Pedagogy + uses of #genAI to foster thinking
BarbaraPiotrowska.com
- 🚨New genAI teaching material: an Electoral System Explorer built with Claude. It lets students see how votes translate to seats under different electoral systems. Try it here: claude.ai/public/artif.... Feedback, as always, is very much appreciated! #poliski
- When talking to @howardhliu.bsky.social about his new project, I remembered this great graphic made by the Stasi showing the social connections of a poet they were spying on projects.propublica.org/graphics/sta...
- You can read more about the context and other information collected by the secret police, as well as get a flavour for their operation here: www.propublica.org/article/how-...
- I will be presenting my first paper using data collected while incorporating genAI into my module on 15/10. If you can join us, I’d love to hear your thoughts 💭
- *PSA EVENT* How do #students with different academic backgrounds engage with #genAI when given equal access? Join us and @bpiotrowska.bsky.social online for this #Teaching & #Learning Network webinar 📆 15 October, 2.30 - 4.30pm ➡️ Register your free place buff.ly/ydueR72 #AI #Education #HE
- Populist policymaking is not only about courts and media crackdowns. It can also hide in technical reforms. In Poland under PiS, changes to academic journal rankings were used to reward allies, promote ideology, and claim responsiveness. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
- Together with Izabela Szkurłat and Magdalena Szydłowska, we argue that populist policymaking is multi-purpose governance. A single reform can: ➡️appear responsive to “the people” ➡️embed ideological content ➡️channel resources to loyal actors
- The reform of Poland’s academic evaluation system looked like a technical adjustment. In practice, it reshaped how prestige and funding were distributed across universities and disciplines.
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View full threadRead the full paper: "Multi-purpose populist policymaking in practice: the Polish academic evaluation reform"(Piotrowska, Szkurłat, Szydłowska, 2025). www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
- Reposted by Barbara PiotrowskaNext...🧵 Have you ever wondered why it’s so hard to compare public administrations across countries? This article tackles the confusion around Administrative Traditions
- We've felt it and now we have the evidence: using genAI to write essays yields shallow encoding. Here, the subjects write essays using one of 3 tools (LLM, Search Engine, brain🧠 only) for 3 sessions. In the 4th session, LLM group needs to rely on 🧠 , and 🧠 group gets LLM. Key consequences for me:
- 𝐍𝐨, 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐋𝐋𝐌 𝐨𝐫 𝐝𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐋𝐋𝐌 𝐮𝐬𝐞. See our paper for more results: "Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task" : www.brainonllm.com
- 1️⃣ Blank page syndrome - LLMs are often seen as an antidote to it. But the paper finds that "the LLM group produced statistically homogeneous essays within each topic". Hence, if you want your piece to stand out, using LLMs to fight the syndrome might not be the best idea.
- 2️⃣ When integrating LLMs into teaching activities, start with cognitive effort, followed by the use of genAI - "Brain-to-LLM participants could leverage tools more strategically, resulting in stronger performance and more cohesive neural signatures".
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View full thread3️⃣AI detection - LLM group displayed significantly lower ability to quote one own's essay - AI use detection could leverage this by randomly sampling students for oral exams discussing the essay. Alternatively, only suspect cases could be subject to such an exam.
- Reposted by Barbara PiotrowskaWe’re hiring 3 permanent (tenured) lecturers in the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London. These are ‘education pathway’ posts (in Economics, Research Methods, & Comparative Politics) 1/4 www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/117268-... www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/117209-... www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/117245-...
- The Anthropic Education Report (www.anthropic.com/news/anthrop...) offers a great insight into how students use Claude. The (relatively) good: half of the conversations are collaborative (dialogue with AI to achieve goals). The bad: students mostly outsource higher-order cognitive functions (see ⬇️)
- Yesterday's session during the @aiatkings.bsky.social conference attracted a wonderfully engaged audience. In the slides, you’ll find the GPTs and exercises demonstrating applications of point 2 (below). Key points ⬇️
- 1️⃣ Learning requires thinking deeply (exerting effort), over extended periods, and at regular intervals. 2️⃣ GenAI can support this by boosting motivation to exert effort (e.g., through gamification) or by adjusting difficulty to an appropriate level (e.g., customised explanations).
- 3️⃣ However, if you lack the motivation to learn, no amount of technology will help - and replacing cognitive effort will lead to skill atrophy.
- Day 2 is over, but there are three more to go: www.kcl.ac.uk/ai/assets/pd...
- Reposted by Barbara PiotrowskaThe state of research on AI and education from controlled studies: Growing evidence that, when used as a tutor with instructor guidance, AI seems to have quite significant positive effects. When used alone to get help with homework, it can act as shortcut that hurts learning. Still early days.
- PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081
- 1/6 This is to share with you Misfortune Telling GPT (chatgpt.com/share/680102...) : a guided reflection tool modelled on the Stoic practice of praemeditatio malorum, to help you imagine and/or prepare for real democratic backsliding.
- 2/6 Growing up Polish, my family often discussed contingencies if war came - our own premeditatio malorum, imagining the worst so it feels less alien. It might sound grim, but it was oddly reassuring.
- 3/6 I originally built the GPT as a novelty after my students enjoyed the text‑based games in my Policymaking in Non‑Democracies module. After hearing the latest Ezra Klein podcast (www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/o...), I realised it could be useful more broadly.
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View full thread6/6 I hope that you find it helpful. Please share any feedback on how your interaction could be improved.
- Last week, I joined Rozana Himaz, Ruth Dixon, @drjennings.bsky.social, and Colin Scott to pay tribute to Christopher Hood and his work: youtu.be/NA3vH8w1RUY. It was a real pleasure to hear memories and reflections from so many of his students, friends, and collaborators.
- Reposted by Barbara PiotrowskaIt's wonderful to see the news that my fantastic Department of Political Economy colleagues @maiaking.bsky.social and @bpiotrowska.bsky.social have been nominated for this esteemed prize. Huge congratulations guys!!!
- 📚 MacKenzie Book Prize 2025📚 ‘The Way the Money Goes’ by Piotrowska, Hood, King & McLean has been shortlisted for this PSA prize. Winner announced in April. buff.ly/OJo7p9u @bpiotrowska.bsky.social @maiaking.bsky.social @nuffieldcollege.bsky.social #bookprize #politics #economy #books
- Reposted by Barbara Piotrowska📢 Out Now! V-Dem Dataset v15 and the V-dem Institute Democracy Report 2025 The Dataset: v-dem.net/data/the-v-d... DR25: "25 Years of Autocratization - Democracy Trumped?": v-dem.net/publications... #DR25 #DemocracyReport2025 #VDemDatasetV15 #polisky #PoliticalScienceData #PoliSciSky 🧵1(3)
- What a nice recognition of all the hard work that went into this book. Especially thinking of Christopher, whose dedication and brilliance made this project happen—this is a lovely testament to his vision.
- 📚 MacKenzie Book Prize 2025📚 ‘The Way the Money Goes’ by Piotrowska, Hood, King & McLean has been shortlisted for this PSA prize. Winner announced in April. buff.ly/OJo7p9u @bpiotrowska.bsky.social @maiaking.bsky.social @nuffieldcollege.bsky.social #bookprize #politics #economy #books
- Reposted by Barbara Piotrowska📢 Call for papers! We are organizing the 5th Early Career Workshop in Quantitative Political Economy on 19-21 May 2025 at King’s College London! Keynotes: Sonia Bhalotra (Warwick) and Peter van der Windt (NYU-Abu Dhabi). No fee, travel grants available! Submit at: tinyurl.com/qpeearly
- Reposted by Barbara PiotrowskaWhat worries me is not government use of AI per se but the slightly credulous way that the government talk about it, which makes me suspect they will be taken for rubes by the tech companies selling their services. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
- Reposted by Barbara PiotrowskaFact-checking wasn’t “biased” against conservatives. Conservatives just shared more false content. If there’s a sportsball game and one team fouls four times as much, it’s not “biased” for the ref to call four times as many fouls against that team.
- 🚨In Nature🚨 Meta is dropping fact-checking to avoid anti-conservative bias- but is there actually evidence of bias? We this test empirically & find that conservatives * ARE suspended more * BUT share more misinfo So suspension isn't necessarily evidence of bias www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Barbara PiotrowskaJust learned that the great Christopher Hood, a professor of public management at the University of Oxford, has passed. Hard to overstate his influence on the field. At a personal level, both a gentleman and a gentle man. Here is a link to his most-cited work. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
- Reposted by Barbara Piotrowskatired: fearing that robots will become so smart they take your job wired: fearing that robots will still be dumb but take your job anyway
- I (or my family) have definitely done it all 🐟
- As a result of this event, I found out about Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation, which runs, among others,Public attitudes to data and AI tracker survey. Sharing in case useful www.gov.uk/government/o...
- Dr Hye-Kyung Lee (@kingsartshums.bsky.social) will be discussing creative precarity in the time of generative AI at 2pm today, Wednesday 11 December. There's still time to register to attend, either in-person (Bush House, @kingscollegelondon.bsky.social) or online ⬇️ www.kcl.ac.uk/events/creat...
- “You saw how the [Assad] regime raised them: they call us Sidi [‘my master,’]” he said. “You feel they are broken. [We just want them] to get out of that mindset. You’re a person with self-dignity, I’m not your master or anything. I am an employee, like you.” on.ft.com/4iyR4hJ
- "The purpose of writing isn’t just to demonstrate knowledge in the most expedient way. Writing is to explore knowledge, to connect and synthesise ideas, to create new knowledge, and to share." An interesting analysis of pitfalls of drafting using genAI by @leonfurze.com leonfurze.com/2024/02/21/t...
- An account of the "Time of Heroes" program, which focuses on embedding individuals with combat experience in Ukraine into Russian governance structures through leadership and management training. A selection of quotes ⬇️ on.ft.com/41nZ7re
- War experience as a loyalty signal: “They should be the ones taking up leading positions, whether in the education system, in non-governmental organisations, state companies, in business, in state and municipal administration,” Putin said.“Such people . . . can be trusted with Russia’s future.”
- Motivation: “Putin wants to create a balance of power in the elites such that it would be impossible to change the country’s course in the case of his death,” Rogov said. “He wants the break with the west and the occupation of Ukrainian territories to be irreversible.”
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View full thread@ascharpf.bsky.social @szakonyi.bsky.social ⬆️ this might be of interest
- In the US, in an information-poor environment (such as local elections), endorsement by various interest groups acts as a partisan cue. A pretty striking graph from onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... by Jennifer Gaudette.
- Reposted by Barbara Piotrowska[This post could not be retrieved]
