When did capitalism stop being any good?
When the whole world has been opened to capital, there is nowhere to expand into. There are no more sources…
Ontological problems are research problems
Ontology (‘what is’) is a topic students often have difficulty grappling with in their work. It tends to end up…
Three and a half rules for applying for academic posts
As Olivia Rodrigo so wisely said ‘it’s brutal out there’. But we are never so brutal as with ourselves. Apply…
Naming paragraphs as part of the writing process
In my quest to expose the writing process I have structured this paper using named paragraphs. Each paragraph has a…
Docs and podcasts for my Illicit Markets course
Cultural accounts of illicit markets and criminal activities are the best way to develop a feel for them. Here are…
It is lucky police AI is crap. What if it worked?
I want to engage with a type of argument that is self-undermining. The months after Al-Qaeda’s attacks on New York…
Social construction is an answer to a problem nobody has
One of the annoying things academic competition does is push us to develop elaborate ways of not quite saying what…
Crime’s social facts
…really just one social fact Crime is behaviour that is intentional, measurable and directly harmful. The only reason to care…
Poke-it-with-a-stick methodology
Never ask me ‘do you think this is fence electrified? Are these berries poisonous? Is this knife super-sharp?’ Or somesuch….
Doing a PhD? Just read this and it will immediately show you how to do it and make you feel better about yourself
… or possibly it will make you feel very much worse. Not sure. But I think you need to know…
