Prof Dave O'Brien

Its the annual holiday countdown for my @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social podcast! Over the next 24 days I'll be highlighting the episodes from this year as well as giving shoutouts to some of the books of the year too!

Studying #inequality? Consider applying to spend two years onsite with us at the GC CUNY Stone Center in New York City. Applications for our postdoc program due one week from today. @cuny.edu @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social @stone-lis.bsky.social @brankomilan.bsky.social @morellisal.bsky.social 👇

The An Injury to All Glasgow book launch is this Thursday! I’m having a Glasgow book launch for my new book, An Injury to All: The Unmaking of the British Working Class, on Thursday 29 October. All welcome! Sign up 🔽

‘Rather than asking whether imperial messages were enthusiastically embraced or merely consumed as spectacle, Derby’s exhibition is an example of the importance of local settings in making imperial identities meaningful.‘

How can we unlock arts and culture for all? 🗝️ Leeds academics Beth Johnson, Abigail Harrison Moore and Nick Barley, Director of the National Poetry Centre, are searching for answers on our latest How To Fix… podcast. Listen here ⬇️ linktr.ee/howtofixpod

This is my best of the year so far. Which is also true for Liverpool.

Mornin’

Social clubs and grassroots music: Uncovering the past, securing the future A great event coming up in Manchester in November. www.21stcenturysocialclubs.com/events/socia...

Putting place first: towards a new vision for UK industrial strategy’ latest paper with Paul Hildreth just out @regionalstudies.bsky.social @regstud.bsky.social @rsaeurope.bsky.social @rsablog.bsky.social @prt1969.bsky.social @uresg76.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Tomorrow I’ll be doing a talk about the centenary of the 1926 general strike in Edinburgh. It was a moment of determined class struggle and violence in Scotland’s capital, its surrounding coalfields and across Britain. Sign up 🔽

Great chart showing who’s sending and who’s receiving in my story about 1mn antiquities being returned to their countries of origin since 1950 www.ft.com/content/82f2...

The final publication from my recent Fellowship from The British Academy into industry support for TV freelancers… Full article here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

This week on Wonkhe: Rosie Nelson, Charlotte Jones, Amy Ryall, and Tig Slater argue institutions need to take responsibility for colleagues doing politicised research wonkhe.com/blogs/univer...

This week on Wonkhe: As devolution gathers pace, David Mba and Julie Farrell argue that the evidence we already hold on universities can answer regional questions about talent wonkhe.com/blogs/unders...

Signing books!

My department - @ucdpolitics.bsky.social - is hiring two PERMANENT posts in any area of politics, international relations, theory, or development studies. Please apply if you are on the academic job market, and if you're not, please do us a solid & spread the word! Deadline NOV 9.

From aristocracy to ‘assetocracy’ – how wealth has transformed the House of Lords theconversation.com/from-aristoc...

Thanks to everyone who came to the launch of Pubs for the People yesterday And to @petebrownbeer.bsky.social for expertly guiding our otherwise loose conversation 📚🍻 If you haven't got a copy... order now! www.waterstones.com/book/pubs-fo...

Call for Papers Star Wars 50 Years in the UK: Pasts, Presents, and Futures. Conference University of Leicester EXTENDED DEADLINE – 31 December 2026 le.ac.uk/media/resear...

This #InternationalOpenAccessWeek, we're spotlighting books on technology, borders, migration and gender. These featured titles are just a small selection from more than 340 books available free to read on manchesterhive. manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/blog/2026/10...

An Injury to All Glasgow book launch. I’m having a Glasgow book launch for my new book, An Injury to All: The Unmaking of the British Working Class, on Thursday 29 October. All welcome! Sign up 🔽

RECORDING: 📺‘Transnational Black culture in Liverpool in the final decades of the 20th century: legacies of West Africa in the so-called ‘second city of empire’ 🎤Stephen Small & Jimi Jagne @uomsociology.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BPU...

Also find evidence in favour of most of the proposed spillover mechanisms House prices seem to be a symptom, rather than a driver, but strong growth is associated with higher ratings of local retail & leisure and some public services, and more progressive local ideological climates

In "it’s nice to live in nice places" news, this association is not moderated by own position in the occupational hierarchy  People at the bottom in strong growth places express lower average Brexit support than people at the top in places that experienced no or low growth

Using Census, LFS and @usociety.bsky.social data, I show the uneven geography of highly paid employment growth 1991-2016 is: i) a powerful predictor of area-level Brexit vote 2016 ii) associated with marked (25 percentage point!) differences in individual Brexit support, in 2016 and more recently

Rejection is strongest in places that have experienced strong growth, because effects are observable on the high street and in public services, housing markets and conversations with friends & neighbours These are all established channels, which I unite under a labour market or structural change ☂️

Where are people most likely to reject populist initiatives like Brexit, and why? In a more topical than expected @polbehavior.bsky.social article, I advance a labour market explanation based on local rate of growth of highly paid employment, which I test on Brexit support then and now

WE'RE HIRING! @ojcollective.bsky.social is advertising for an Administrative Officer - full time, UK-based remote work, supporting a fast-paced team at a really exciting organisation. Please do share with anyone who might be suitable for this kind of work! #openaccess #library #libraries

If you can’t come in-person (CBG 4.17), you can also join both talks remotely. For more info on how to join remotely and to sign up for the email list, please email gov.comms@lse.ac.uk

First, we have a joint session of the LSE Comparative Politics seminar and Political Behaviour series with Peter Hall today *12:00 - 1:30 pm UK time* (in-person and online). He will present “Social Mobility, Access to Opportunity, and their Political Implications: A Review Essay”

I enjoyed chatting to @nickshepley.bsky.social from the Explaining History podcast about my new book, An Injury to All: The Unmaking of the British Working Class. We focused on the 90s New Labour project to eliminate class from politics before class returned on right and left in the 21st century.

Reminder: We are hiring two postdocs in an ERC project on AI and worker power, led by Prof. Michael Becher. Deadline: Oct. 30. More information at the calls below: careers-ieedu.icims.com/jobs/3160/po... careers-ieedu.icims.com/jobs/3161/po...

Reminder: my new article is out. PDF is free to download from my website profgarysheffield.com/my-books/rec... 'Before and After the Somme: providing Officers for the Armies of the British Empire', Stand To: Journal of the Western front Association, No. 143, September 2026, pp.15-21

The @leverhulmecal.bsky.social annual conference 2027 theme is #LatentSpaces details are here, we look forward to your abstracts by 30 November. Join us to discuss how AI latent spaces reconfigure knowledge, society & culture.

Applications for the British Academy/Wolfson Fellowships are now open. The scheme aims to support UK-based early-career researchers who want to engage in both research and public engagement. It is expected up to six awards will be available. Find out more: https://bit.ly/4zHPzp3

Really interesting use of GO data, through a place based lens, to understand the impact of university

Here’s a 3up of the old Heroquest Bloodthirster with some of the other sculpts in the background. We used Chavant clay to sculpt these and they became plastic figures. A few of us sat around a table and worked on these together. We would pick one up, work on it and then move onto a different one.

For dessert, I am v excited to host an event with @arindube.bsky.social to discuss his new brilliant book The Wage Standard on Thursday afternoon, where he’ll be discussing how to fix broken labour markets in the UK and US with Professor Steve Machin. www.resolutionfoundation.org/events/fixin...

For the main course, Professor Paul Gregg has written an essay for us – What’s gone wrong with welfare? – examining the worrying rise in out-of-work benefit claims since 2016, and government’s chequered response to this problem. www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...

For starters @nyecominetti.bsky.social has written on the deterioration of youth employment and what it means for the minimum wage. NEETs may have recently become a hot topic but a worrying decline in employment for under 25s began in 2022. resolutionfoundation.substack.com/p/is-the-min...

We have got a meal's worth of analysis and events on the labour market this week.

I'm so excited that @gavthorpe.co.uk will be delivering this workshop at the Fair Realms Festival! I attended the same one at Edge-Lit 2018 & it unlocked so much for me in terms of my own writing practice I don't think I'd have a writing career without it. So - massive recommendation from me! 🖤

An Injury to All: The Unmaking of the British Working Class is published one week today! To celebrate, I'll be having an Edinburgh book launch at Leith Arches on Leith Walk. Sign up here! 🔽 argonautbooks.co.uk/event/2j2uXL...

“The real question facing higher education lies beneath funding. It is purpose.” We launch Higher Ground today: a new programme bringing experts together to ask difficult questions and develop bold, evidence-led ideas for the future of universities. Learn more here: https://bit.ly/4zErEqt

Alert! PhD studentships in queer & trans health at Manchester! www.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/study/postgr...

I know all the UK folks missed out on NYCC, so how about we do Friday at London Comic Con? We're still working out the details with @dkbooks.bsky.social & Forbidden Planet but I'll be there from 4pm & I will sign copies of 'Star Wars: Star Pilots' for sale! www.mcmcomiccon.com

Final day to get your applications in to come and work with us researching process preferences/democratic attitudes in Europe.