Renewing Crooked Timber: new grafts

We’ve been blogging together at Crooked Timber for nineteen years now, pre-Facebook even. Inevitably people move on to new projects in that time or just find less interest in writing in this format. So from time to time the tree surgeon has to visit and do some running repairs on our crooked timber. We’re really happy to welcome some new bloggers to the party with a couple more probably on the way in a few months. Our new additions are Chris Armstrong, Speranta Dumitru, Kevin Munger, Paul Segal and Eric Schliesser and, if all goes according to plan, there will be a couple of further additions in December that will also improve the gender balance of our new cohort. Also a sad farewell to Daniel Davies, Kieran Healy, Scott McLemee, Eric Rauchway, Corey Robin, Astra Taylor, and Rich Yeselson who have contributed so much over the years, particularly to Dan and Kieran who were founding members back in 2003, with Kieran’s tech support having dug us out of more internet holes than I can remember.

A little bit about all of the new bloggers below:

Chris Armstrong is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Southampton. He is interested in issues around global justice, the environment, territory, climate change, biodiversity, and the ocean. He lives in Hampshire, England with his better half, their three children, and two labradors. He is a long-term vegetarian, and a lifelong Chelsea fan. Any spare time is devoted to archery, reading novels, walking the dogs, and growing vegetables.

Speranta Dumitru is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the Université Paris Cité. She works on migration and freedom of movement. Having spent her childhood in a communist country that had left no hope for crossing a border or meeting a foreigner, Speranta tries to understand why mobility has come to be politically forbidden or allowed in liberal countries. She is interested in the study of cognitive biases, gender, nationalism, and ethics.

Kevin Munger is a computational social scientist who writes about social media and politics. His latest book is Generation Gap: Why the Baby Boomers Still Dominate American Politics and Culture and he blogs at Never Met a Science. He has lots of interesting things to say about the Baby Boom cohort and its outsized influence on US politics, as well as the philosophy of social science applied to the study of online behavior.

Eric Schliesser is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Amsterdam. He publishes widely in the history of philosophy and science, metaphilosophy, and twentieth century political economy. He has blogged at NewAPPS and Digressionsnimpressions. He divides his time between London and Amsterdam.

Paul Segal is an economist of inequality, development and history, with a certain affinity with both sociologists and political philosophers. His focus is on middle-income countries, particularly Argentina and Mexico, and on different perspectives on the global distribution of income – global inequality, global poverty, and global elites. He is currently working on the linkages between social and economic inequality, including their relationship with social reproduction. He also teaches international macroeconomics and finance, if only to be able to keep up with dinner time conversation on trips to Buenos Aires. He lives in Brighton on the south coast of England where he argues over social reproduction labour with an Argentine political economist and two medium-sized children.

We look forward to reading their contributions and we hope you do too!