Jenny Edkins
Looking awry at global and local politics. Trauma | Memory | Missing Persons | Disappearance | Hunger | Disasters. Poetry and story-telling as method. Grenfell 💚
Prof @ Manchester & Aberystwyth. Tanguera, yogini.
tinyurl.com/2krunykv
- 'But when we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what is offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating. This is not sovereignty. It is the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.'
- New book tackles funding the investment in UK water that is needed alongside privatisation, arguing that 'The way we charge for water must change... [We need] more progressive bills that reflect the ability to pay'. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... @zackpolanski.bsky.social
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsVital intervention @andyburnham.bsky.social. The duty of candour must apply in full to the security & intelligence services & every public service so that no institution can hide behind secrecy. Recent scandals about MI5 as well as Manchester Arena bombing highlight why this is so important.
- Fascinating discussion of Anya Berger's involvement in John Berger's work: “The new way of seeing,” Anya writes [in 1969], “suddenly became the normal one and the old way—quite tolerable until then—became abnormal and indeed impossible.” 'Ways of Seeing', credited to John Berger, aired in 1972.
- More gems from the family archive of John and Anya Berger, as discovered and compiled by their daughter Katya. Here, on her uncredited contribution to the concept of ways of seeing. www.theparisreview.org/blog/2025/12...
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsMohammedali Yaseen Taha reads his poem The Disappeared Oak in English, one of the first Creative Responses published in the Journal of Disappearance Studies, which explores the dimensions of human disappearance, particularly enforced disappearance. ow.ly/3Qa050XMvv1
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsBMJ has published an editorial calling for #BasicIncome, written by Matthew Johnson and Elliott Johnson, authors of our book 'Basic Income'. This marks a step toward mainstream endorsement of basic income as a response to inequality. bmj.com/content/390/bmj.r1822
- Dr Andrew Meyerson: brilliant on Sky News just now . See also www.dailymotion.com/video/x9i8yyw
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsWhat makes a postdoctoral position different when it’s a Leverhulme Centre for Algorithmic Life junior or senior fellow position? You will be working together with a vibrant community of interdisciplinary researchers, each of them curious about the world-making capacities of AI. Ask us a question…
- Excited to announce @leverhulmecal.bsky.social posts - we are looking for 7 interdisciplinary fellows to join our Leverhulme Centre for Algorithmic Life, closing date 30 January 2026 (1/3) durham.taleo.net/careersectio...
- Reposted by Jenny Edkins📝 Out now in Vol. 53! Chaeyoung Yong argues that trauma time offers key insights into "understanding GBV by highlighting the socio-political nature of trauma and critiquing the linear narrative of healing and restoring the social order." 👇 journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsWhat role do disasters play in global politics? In Vol. 53’s Special Issue, Amy Cortvriend, Lucy Easthope, Jenny Edkins, and @kandidapurnell.bsky.social explore how embodied trauma disrupts the status quo — and may open a path to a new social-political order. 👇 thetinyurls.com/redirect.php...
- This paper builds on our 2023 co-edited book "When This Is Over: Reflections on an Unequal Pandemic" published by @policypress.bsky.social & the work of its wonderful contributors. #disaster #emergency #resistance #trauma #embodiment #politics policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/trade/when-t...
- What role do disasters play in global politics? In Vol. 53’s Special Issue, Amy Cortvriend, Lucy Easthope, Jenny Edkins, and @kandidapurnell.bsky.social explore how embodied trauma disrupts the status quo — and may open a path to a new social-political order. 👇 thetinyurls.com/redirect.php...
- Many thanks to our brilliant editors (especially @seowoohyeok.bsky.social), my co-authors @amycortvriend.bsky.social, @lucygobag.bsky.social and @kandidapurnell.bsky.social, and all the contributors to "When This is Over": @drblack.bsky.social, @jhmustapha.bsky.social, Sue Bryant, Marvin Thompson...
- ... Safina Islam, @dipali17.bsky.social, @michaelrosenyes.bsky.social, Hannah Rumble, Karen West, @graciemaybe.bsky.social, Paul Famosaya, Anjana Nair, Patricia Tuitt, Manca Bajec, @markoneinfour.bsky.social, Lara-Rose Iredale, Irene Naikaali Ssentongo, Avril Maddrell, Danielle House...
- ...Farjana Islam, @ledbydonkeys.org, @honigsbaum.bsky.social, Herbert Woodward Martin, @franfd.bsky.social, Rita Coleman, Matthew Hogan, Mehreen Hamdany, and Gary Younge.
- "During the first three months of 2020... Johnson’s inertia was ... unbearable for NHS staff ... because we knew ... that the bodies were ... going to pile high ... We knew this because it was already happening ... First in Wuhan. Then in northern Italy." @drrachelclarke.com tinyurl.com/257kbfss
- Watch this. Several times.
- 'All The Little Things' follows Adae a young Black creative in an advertising agency, we begin to see how a series of interactions threaten to bring buried tensions and fresh resentments to a boiling point. Will Adae be able to move forward and pursue his dream job? vimeo.com/641858990
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsThank you! And we are proud that our Chair, @franfd.bsky.social, contributed to 'When This is Over' - an important book. ❤️
- Congratulations and respect to you all. ❤️ Lisa Nandy acknowledges that the grief of Covid bereaved "is profound. With friends and families unable to mark people’s passing in the normal ways it felt as if people were disappearing." We wrote about this in 'When This is Over': tinyurl.com/48v8nb8y
- A brilliant reading list, extensive but not overwhelming and usefully arranged in thematic sections. One suggestion for inclusion in the final section would be Isaac Julien's 1997 docudrama 'Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask'
- This is a thematic reading list of antiracism material that includes a wide range of sources: books, articles, videos, movies, etc. It is partially crowd-sourced. The decol list mentioned therein will be published soon. 🤞🏿 Suggestions for additions are very welcome. folukeafrica.com/an-anti-raci...
- I would say this piece has three significant implications for @zackpolanski.bsky.social's #Green Party. Thread 🧵
- open.substack.com/pub/ewanhoyl... And here's the evidence to back that up.
- First, and perhaps not surprising, Ewan Hoyle's comment that "'The Green Party have a 5 point lead over Reform UK in the under 50s' is quite the headline that appears to have been overlooked."
- Second, the assessment that 'the Greens can safely target 100 or more Labour held seats that are out of the reach of Reform UK and the Conservatives, and be in with a very strong chance of taking them all.'
- But third and most important, the call for the Greens to back STV in the call for PR: 'First-Past-the-Post truly paves a road to a far-right hell for our country.... We need ... the Single Transferable Vote.' All backed up through analysis of different measures of voters’ political opinions.
- Missing persons in Gaza: The pain of ambiguous loss and the task of recovery After every war someone has to clean up. Things won’t straighten themselves up, after all. -- Wislawa Szymborska www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...
- “The whole world has seen the equipment that was brought in to retrieve the bodies of Israeli hostages [including bulldozers and excavators],” said Dr Mohammed al-Mughir, “We also need the same equipment to retrieve our bodies.”
- "Hundreds of families queue every day at hospitals and offices ... seeking information about missing relatives. Mughir said that at the civil defence headquarters in Gaza City alone, upwards of 30 families a day ask for help trying to locate and recover their loved ones."
- "Identifying the bodies is not just a question of restoring dignity to the dead; it is also necessary for the health of the living... [Pauline Boss] described the unresolved grief of relatives of the unidentified dead as an “ambiguous loss”
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsDyna’i diwedd hi, Nôs Galan Gaeaf hapus oll ! / and that’s the end of things on the west coast - happy Halloween all ! #Aberystwyth #Ceredigion #Cymru #Wales
- Reposted by Jenny Edkins'Alternative ecological futures: Art climate change & the radical imagination' new event with Environment and Climate Politics Working Group 🌳 Bringing together Carl Death, Audra Mitchell, Farai Chipato & Cara Berger Hannah Hughes at this roundtable to discuss 🌟 Sign up 👉 ow.ly/Y56j50XjGl9
- #Caerphilly by-election
- Martin Shipton, Nation Cymru: "Caerphilly matters because Wales is Reform’s next big target. If Reform wins, it’s going to boost their chances of winning the Senedd next May. And if they do, it will make the national Reform party flush with taxpayers’ cash." #Caerphilly @stevebasnett.bsky.social
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsAc wele... www.newstatesman.com/politics/wal...
- Caerphilly Senedd by-election: thread 🔽
- @zackpolanski.bsky.social Why is the Green Party in Caerphilly not supporting the Plaid Cymru candidate in Thursday's by-election?
- Reposted by Jenny Edkins#NoKings Miami!
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsHappy #Caturday!
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsBenjamin Zephaniah reading his poem People Need People on the One Show June 2020 in lockdown after George Floyd was killed, and talking about multicultural Britain
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsQED:
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsBritish.
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsRead my two letters to the #UK: 1. Protests: I call for a review of the legal framework and the reconsideration of provisions in the Crime & Policing Bill that could restrict freedom of assembly. 2. Trans people: I warn against exclusion&zero-sum approaches 👇#HumanRights www.coe.int/en/web/commi...
- The search for the missing in Gaza www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsNEW: The British politician, his Russian intelligence handler & a Kremlin plot against the US & Ukraine. My new piece about Nathan Gill and Nigel Farage for @thenerve_news in which we ask: Why, even now, is no-one asking questions? t.co/BUTtpK9C4S
- Worth a read. A study of working class perceptions of “government of the people, by the elites, for the rich”. Is this why the approach of @zackpolanski.bsky.social and the Green Party resonates?
- Today's Marxist Sociology Blog post is a banger from @lwestheuser.bsky.social & Linda Beck based on their Critical Sociology article. It examines how workers think about class & class politics. Against ideas that they are irrelevant or "lost to the right" 1/ marxistsociology.org/2025/10/work...
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsTimeline cleanser 🐈
- Heading for 1.5 million signatures now petition.parliament.uk/petitions/73...
- At last.
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsHappy to see our latest work together published in Millenium. After disaster a return to the status quo isn't inevitable. It can be an opportunity to resist journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1... Always a joy to work with @kandidapurnell.bsky.social @jennyedkins.bsky.social @lucygobag.bsky.social
- "A dose of Stuart Hall for what ails us." Lisa Diedrich @lisadiedrich.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHph...
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsA dose of Stuart Hall for what ails us.
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsI didn't see another good article @ailsahenderson.bsky.social and @richardwynjones.bsky.social which considering the unusually large concentration of St George's Crosses yesterday is required reading. You can feel the frustration in their writing.
- NEWYDD - gan @ailsahenderson.bsky.social a minnau. NEW by me and my fellow student of Englishness, Prof. Ailsa Henderson. theconversation.com/nigel-farage...
- Jamie Raskin showing @zackpolanski.bsky.social how it's done? Not that Zack needs showing...
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsThis, from the Quakers, is a pretty good example of how to resist pressure from bigot lobbying groups. Effectively “we legally can allow trans people to use the loo, we morally should, and we tried it and nothing bad happened”
- Worth listening to: Chris Naylor on the alternative to privatised asylum accommodation, which now produces huge profits and concentrates asylum seekers in impoverished areas. The proposal would enable local councils to increase their general housing stock, as well as taking account of local needs.
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsThis is such a cool idea - this book is an incredible, powerful chronology of thoughts, reflections & poetry about an extraordinary time, fast receding into the public’s collective memories. @amycortvriend.bsky.social @lucygobag.bsky.social @jennyedkins.bsky.social @kandidapurnell.bsky.social
- We would like to #BuyAStrangerABook - "When This Is Over: Reflections on an Unequal Pandemic," which has a section on the Wall, including a contribution from one of our trustees, @franfd.bsky.social. ❤️
- “You can’t starve anyone by accident, you can shoot someone by accident but … in inflicting starvation [you] have 60 or 80 days in which [you] can remedy the error” Alex de Waal www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsAlex de Waal has worked on humanitarian causes across the globe for over 40 years. “There is no case, over those four decades, of such minutely engineered, closely monitored, precisely designed mass starvation of a population as is happening in Gaza today.”
- Grenfell Uncovered www.netflix.com/watch/81683138
- Grenfell: Uncovered, Netflix review — harrowing documentary channels fury into a greater purpose on.ft.com/45xa7or
- “You underestimate just how harrowing Grenfell was.”
- Grenfell report on the causes of the fire “highlighted the incompetence, dishonesty & greed” “companies –Arconic, Celotex & Kingspan –had engaged in “deliberate & sustained strategies to manipulate testing processes, misrepresent test data & mislead the market” www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsSystemic Grenfell Tower failings focus of new documentary www.channel4.com/news/systemi...
- Thread
- New: US bosses at cladding firm which sold material for use on Grenfell knew it was unsafe and knew it was being sold for use on the tower, newly released emails reveal www.thetimes.com/uk/london/ar...
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsOn 5 June 2020, anti-racism protestors toppled the statue of slave trader Edward Colston. Where is it now? Eleanor Callaghan examines how local authorities and museum curators in Bristol turned the controversial monument into an opportunity for inclusive public history. www.historyworkshop....
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsThe Telegraph going after the Quakers because the Quakers won't be assholes to trans people. That opening paragraph by Daniel Martin is lol. It's Helen Joyce doing the accusing.
- Reposted by Jenny Edkins“Mass death through starvation is the certain outcome of Israel’s continued blockade and ongoing military campaign. The only question is when.” The uniqueness of the ongoing famine in Gaza, where people have absolutely no coping strategies or alternatives at all.
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsWhat is different with the Gaza famine is that the causes are so plain and so direct, textbook example of Alex de Waal’s and Jenny Edkins’ work on forced starvation. Often present to different degrees in other famines, but never so plain in intent and mechanisms.
- Sir Paul Nurse's evidence is in the first hour here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TclI.... It is a bleak tale of missed opportunities by a government focused on centralised commercial solutions at the expense of developing local testing facilities based around existing publicly funded research centres
- The UK COVID Inquiry should be required viewing for anyone working in public health. Hopefully people will find my appearance useful youtu.be/kXntLNz_xXs?... but Iain Buchan on Liverpool's experience yesterday was excellent and Sir Paul Nurse, today, is amazing
- Reposted by Jenny Edkins💔😡😷💔😡😷💔😷 @michaelrosenyes.bsky.social responds to the ‘Island of strangers’ comment. #poetry #immigration #humanbeings
- It's surely time for Labour MPs who deplore Starmer's rhetoric and policy on this to resign the whip and form a new party. The rest can join Reform.
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsI am going to find it hard to forgive a man as deeply racist as Keir Starmer. www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/05...
- "Is all of this really easier than trying to tackle false narratives about immigration in the right wing press?"
- Activists, artists and academics come together to respond after the Grenfell Tower Fire. With contributions from Phil Scraton, Daniel Renwick, Nadine El-Enany, Sarah Keenan, Gracie Mae Bradley and The Radical Housing Network. Half price until 14 May www.plutobooks.com/978074533958...
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsThought provoking essay by #PamelaSwanigan
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsUnless the Labour government starts using it's parliamentary majority and the levers of state power for progressive change to address inequalities and make a material difference to people's lives then England faces a very troublesome future
- Reposted by Jenny Edkinsi'm infuriated by those who argue that "woman" is a safe space into which cis women can retreat from the depredations of the world. solidarity with my trans friends and with everyone else working for a feminism made to the measure of the world. inrelativeopacity.substack.com/p/there-are-...
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsFrom @terinahine.bsky.social, an interesting overview of the pandemic that changed our lives... ❤️ www.counterfire.org/article/the-...
- Reposted by Jenny Edkinsmy website for searching all SAGE Covid-related documents is now complete: sagesearch.info Contains over 900 documents from Jan 2020 to Feb 2022, filterable by document type, categories covered and date. There are AI-generated summaries of every doc. You can also free-text search summaries
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsBrilliant, illuminating and (for people like me), simple to understand. Read here about what is and isn’t AI.
- Roberta Flack - First Time Ever I Saw Your Face 1972 www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8_f...
- Reposted by Jenny EdkinsI studied film, wrote about it, & discussed it as a broadcaster for over a decade. Recently, however, I've struggled to find a space to hold its magic in our current reality—a framework of madness, horror, & terror. Tilda's speech casts cinema in the realm of possibility, solidarity & imagination.
- Now out: the fourth edition of Global Politics: A New Introduction. An innovative textbook that engages directly with questions that those coming to the study of world politics bring with them. www.routledge.com/Global-Polit...
- Fascinating article! Also his earlier co-authored piece is relevant doi.org/10.1093/ips/.... @macvieira.bsky.social
- 📢 New Article Alert! 📢 How does the notion of societal multiplicity in IR overlook the psychological impact of global hierarchies? Read more: @coco-journal.bsky.social #InternationalRelations #UnevenDevelopment #Psychoanalysis #SocietalMultiplicity doi.org/10.1177/0010...
