Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Sadiah Qureshi @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social · 12h

It was so foggy this morning, but it seemed to clear by the time I hit Leeds.

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Sadiah Qureshi @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social · 12h

Thank you so much. I’m honoured.

Sadiah Qureshi @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social · 14h

Gargantuan selachian joy!
🦈🦈🦈

Natural History Museum, London @nhm-london.bsky.social · 14h

Can you imagine a shark that’s almost the size of a blue whale? 🐋

New research suggests that prehistoric shark Megalodon might have been even bigger than first thought…

See just how big and how this was calculated in this week’s Surprising Science 🦈

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Sadiah Qureshi @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social · 20h

With my apologies for bringing this into your TL on this rather beautiful day. At least it is stunning in Yorkshire, even if not elsewhere. Enjoy your weekend.

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Sadiah Qureshi @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social · 20h

The confidence of the host shows exactly how easy it is to promote bigotry through refusing to accept that the world *is* way more complicated than we know. Sex isn’t a binary, let alone gender. Doubling down to defend oversimplifications designed for school kids is quite a choice for an adult.

Bold Politics with Zack Polanski @boldpolitics.bsky.social · 1d

Solidarity with all trans and intersex people having their existence debated every time a tv host hasn't done their prep and can't think of any more questions

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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 22h

'To meet the demand, a fundraiser has been launched to print out 10,000 posters and distribute them across the city.' 2/2

Donate to 'Brummies United Against Racism and Hate' Poster Campaign, organized by Brummies United

Help Us Flood Birmingham with a Message of Unity and Hope … Brummies United needs your support for 'Brummies United Against Racism and Hate' Poster Campaign

www.gofundme.com

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Reposted by Sadiah Qureshi

David Steel @steelyseabirder.bsky.social · 1d

Welcome to Super Seabird Sunday where we ask you to share photos, videos & artwork of seabirds to brighten up timelines. To get us started here are thousands of Puffins on the Isle of May #SuperSeabirdSunday

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Sadiah Qureshi @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social · 23h

Walking through Birmingham city centre yesterday and there was a huge noisy group of far right protestors. A marked difference from the usual performers and preachers from many different faiths. Even the elderly white couple I was with felt intimidated by the aggression and hatred on show.

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Emma Kluge @emmakluge.bsky.social · 2d

Incredible article on the problems of citizenship in the aftermath of empire and refugees’ use of air travel to carve out a space for themselves between exclusionary and conflicting immigration regimes.

Ria Kapoor @riakapoor.bsky.social · 3d

I have a new article out.

TLDR: Actively courting deportation by air is a way to claim rights as a stateless person and even as a refugee.

academic.oup.com/past/advance...

Air Travel, Statelessness, and the Rights Claims of Ugandan Asians, c.1973*

Abstract. In the aftermath of Idi Amin’s expulsion of Uganda’s South Asians in 1972, some of those made technically stateless arrived in India unsupported

academic.oup.com

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Sadiah Qureshi @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social · 1d

This was fun. I now also have a Books Bab t-shirt!

Get your own merch at the festival site, and tickets to the last few events. And, sign to the mailing list for news about next year when the time comes.

Sadiah Qureshi @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social · 18d

I’ll be in conversation with Thomas Glave about my book at Birmingham Literature Festival soon. More details about the festival, including booking links for all events, here:

www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org/book-tickets/

Book Tickets - Birmingham Literature Festival

Every year the festival brings world class writers into the city, champions writers from across the region and showcases wonderful writing in the Midlands. You can book your tickets for the 2025 Birmi...

www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org

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QM_UCU @qmucu.bsky.social · 1d

*FIFTEEN THOUSAND JOBS LOST*.
If this were in a sector in which the PM could go and do a photoshoot looking like One Of The People, we’d have had a government intervention by now.

LopaLeach @lopa.bsky.social · 2d

Cuts equivalent to 15,000 jobs planned at UK universities – UCU www.timeshighereducation.com/news/cuts-eq...

Cuts equivalent to 15,000 jobs planned at UK universities – UCU

Proposed job losses almost triple since March as unions prepare to vote on nationwide industrial action

www.timeshighereducation.com

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 1d

‘Like James Baldwin, she thought social revolution required a reckoning of all relationships, including the individual’s relationship to herself.’

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (@keeanga.bsky.social) on Audre Lorde: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor · I do not have to be you: Audre Lorde’s Legacy

Lorde never had to persuade her comrades about a strategy, tactic or new idea, lose an argument in order to maintain a...

www.lrb.co.uk

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Graham Caswell @grahamcaswell.bsky.social · 2d

We killed them all. Every last one of them. And now they will never be again.

They lived their Curlew lives, migrated, cared for their young, and had every right to be here - as much as ourselves. And they did us no harm.

And we killed them all.

International Wader Study Group @waderstudy.bsky.social · 2d

Today IUCN has officially declared the Slender-billed Curlew extinct, marking the first known global extinction of a formerly widespread migratory bird species whose range included mainland Europe, North Africa, and West Asia.

Read more here ⬇️
www.unep-aewa.org/fr/node/6632

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Sadiah Qureshi @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social · 2d

Straight from the PT Barnum brand of marketing!

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Sadiah Qureshi @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social · 2d

Surely an abomination 🤔

Pack of pecan and salted caramel blondies with a hint of Marmite.

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Sadiah Qureshi @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social · 2d

When I started my job I was overjoyed to meet another academic who shared my name because it was the first time in over twenty years. Now we’re going to be working together. I’m overjoyed. Just a tiny ordinary thing that most people take for granted that has taken this long to happen.

🐯

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Sadiah Qureshi @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social · 2d

Save the tigers! The idea of a world without them is so bleak. Luckily, as this suggests, there is hope precisely because extinction is a political choice, not an inevitability, when it comes to our current loss of species.

Wildlife Conservation Society @wcs.org · 2d

Tigers are Critically Depleted, says the species’ first
IUCN Green Status of Species Assessment. But conservation has prevented even greater losses and provides hope for recovery.

🌏 bit.ly/4n2seb0 #IUCNcongress

New IUCN Assessment Finds Hope for Tiger Recovery Despite Critical Depletion

Bronx, NY, October 10, 2025—The first IUCN Green Status of Species assessment for the tiger (Panthera tigris) finds that the world’s largest cat is Critically Depleted after a century of population de...

bit.ly

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Sadiah Qureshi @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social · 2d

I’ve not heard it yet, but this is such an important point and why trying to establish migration free fortresses will be impossible as well as profoundly unethical as our world changes.

Matthew Jee @freedomforall.net · 3d

@wanderinggaia.bsky.social

Gaia Vince making the positive and plain case for the inevitability of clean energy and necessity for migration on BBC Radio 4 'Radical' with Amol Rajan - very refreshing.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Radical with Amol Rajan - Climate Migration: Confronting the Reality of Global Warming (Gaia Vince) - BBC Sounds

Gaia Vince makes the positive case for immigration despite public concern over the issue.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Reposted by Sadiah Qureshi

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 3d

Drake lost that rap battle so badly that I wrote about it in my book about SPACE-TIME

A rap battle loss of literally cosmological proportions

Find out how by preordering a copy!!

The Edge of Space-Time by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein: 9780593701683 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

A fresh, charming, socially conscious tour of the mysteries of space-time, from the award-winning author of The Disordered Cosmos In her highly acclaimed debut, distinguished cosmologist and particle...

www.penguinrandomhouse.com

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Sadiah Qureshi @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social · 3d

Oh my word. What a way to lose, and be remembered (or forgotten).

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Sadiah Qureshi @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social · 4d

Super excited for the Manchester event as part of this book tour. Link to book tickets below.

The first time I saw Sara give a talk, a friend who also attended told me he’d never seen a room so full of love at a talk. Not to be missed!

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sara-ahmed...

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Sadiah Qureshi @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social · 4d

An astonishing story involving a great deal of impressive detective work to find the last known great auks. The story of their dispersal, literally in terms of organs and skins, and extinction is bleak.

Science Magazine @science.org · 4d

DNA and historical sleuthing have traced the extinct bird’s remains to a museum in Ohio. https://scim.ag/4791YqA

Fate of the last female great auk is finally solved

DNA and historical sleuthing have traced the extinct bird’s remains to a museum in Ohio

scim.ag

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Sadiah Qureshi @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social · 3d

This collaborative PhD project with the LSE and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, on Planting Decolonization: Plantation Science and Empire in the Twentieth Century, sounds amazing.

I’m sure many of you might be interested.

#STS #HPS #HistSci

www.lse.ac.uk/study-at-lse...

LSE Collaborative Studentship with Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

www.lse.ac.uk

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Caroline Dodds Pennock @carolinepennock.bsky.social · 4d

God bless The Church Times for their ongoing insistence on responding moderately but forcefully to the Reverend Canon Nigel Biggar’s nonsense. www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/202...

Even given all that Biggar writes about the universality of slavery and the complicity of Africans, three things might be said. First, Britain played a key part and, however others may want to respond to their own history, it is morally responsible to face up to our own heritage. Second, as a Tory, he might have made more of Burke’s view that society is a partnership not just between the living, but between the living, the dead, and those still to be born. Third, guilt is not the only spur to action. There are the obligations that we owe one another irrespective of any personal responsibility for atrocities in the past.

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Sadiah Qureshi @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social · 4d

An astonishing story involving a great deal of impressive detective work to find the last known great auks. The story of their dispersal, literally in terms of organs and skins, and extinction is bleak.

Science Magazine @science.org · 4d

DNA and historical sleuthing have traced the extinct bird’s remains to a museum in Ohio. https://scim.ag/4791YqA

Fate of the last female great auk is finally solved

DNA and historical sleuthing have traced the extinct bird’s remains to a museum in Ohio

scim.ag

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