Kymberley Chu

Graphic with the Contrasts logo, saying that pitches for issue 2 about fortunes are due February 23. Background image shows a rainbow light in the clouds.

Graphic reading: For Issue 2, we invite submissions that explore the vast and (un)predictable realms of fortunes. Whether they're tucked into cookies, ranked by the dollar on lists of 500, or tempted by the great unknown, fortunes are slippery, contentious things that shape how we choose, desire, imagine, and forge connections with worlds seen and unseen...

CALL FOR PITCHES / ContraSTS issue 02 / "fortunes"

Fortunes are slippery, contentious things that shape how we choose, desire, imagine, and forge connections with worlds seen and unseen...

Send us your thoughts on fortunes, sci/tech ( #STS ), & society!

More info & submit: contrastsmag.net

Abolishing ICE isn’t enough – it’s time to center people’s humanity | Heba Gowayed and Victor Ray It’s far from radical to reject a system predicated on violence – despite what thinktanks might claim

Abolish ICE is not enough.

It's not about training -- Ross who killed Renee Good was a TRAINER. It's not about body cams -- we saw Alex Pretti killed with our own eyes.

We have to abolish the idea that violence ever made us safer, before it's too late.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Notes from the Field | Kymberley Chu, Diasporic Drifting: Experiencing Cultural Outsider/Ethnographic Insider Dynamics in Malaysia — Critical Asian Studies “I don’t like this kind of weather; it looks ominous with the dark clouds, and it feels stuffy with no chance of a gentle breeze. I was going to say yi loh-hor [it’s raining] tapi [but] it’s not exact...

For @criticasianstds.bsky.social, I wrote an essay on the contemporary frictions of dwelling, diaspora, and development politics. Unpacking a political dichotomy, I pay attention to how linguistic identities contend with different projects of modernity in Malaysia.
doi.org/10.52698/BBJ...

Notes from the Field | Kymberley Chu, Diasporic Drifting: Experiencing Cultural Outsider/Ethnographic Insider Dynamics in Malaysia — Critical Asian Studies “I don’t like this kind of weather; it looks ominous with the dark clouds, and it feels stuffy with no chance of a gentle breeze. I was going to say yi loh-hor [it’s raining] tapi [but] it’s not exact...

Notes from the Field | Kymberley Chu @dialecticprimates.bsky.social reflects on the "multiple, overlapping political terrains that shape the complex kinds of interlocutor access and social relationships" Asian/American anthropologists encounter in the field. criticalasianstudies.org/commentary/2...

Distraught woman says ICE killed her wife in video after deadly Minneapolis shooting "They killed my wife," the distraught woman says, adding, "They shot her in the head." An ICE agent shot and killed a 37-year-old woman who was driving an SUV in Minneapolis on Wednesday. / Screenshot/@Breaking911

"They killed my wife. I don't know what to do," the woman says through sobs in the footage, with a damaged SUV visible in the distance behind her. "We stopped to videotape, and they shot her in the head," the woman cries. "We have a six-year-old at school," she says, almost unable to breathe, as a chaotic scene in which federal officers prevented at least one doctor who was on the scene from assisting the shot victim unfolds. "We're new here," the distraught woman says in despair.

You and your wife drop your 6-year-old off at school. You just moved here. You see ICE terrorizing your new neighbors. You film them, as is your legal right. Your wife complies with orders. She is then shot in the head. You still have to pick up your child later today.

This could be you.

As dangerous eugenic ideas spread, NIH falls silent Federal research agencies are pulling back from fostering public discussions about science after the hollowing out of government communications offices.

Highly recommended read about the politicisation of science in the US and how this will help the resurgence of eugenic ideology and scientific racism.

“For the first time, there is a political appointee in the NIH communications operations”

www.statnews.com/2025/12/18/t...

🧵 NSF is reducing external review requirements and eliminating routine expert panels, citing staff shortages that this administration implemented. This change expands program officer authority. But the solution to flawed accountability isn't less public accountability.

Niche Construction: How Life Contributes to Its Own Evolution How niche construction theory extends evolutionary theory beyond natural selection to a more general theory about the coevolution of organisms with their e

Gentle reminder that John Odling-Smee, who is now in his 90s (!) published his big update on #NicheConstruction last year.

It's open access and can be downloaded here: direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon...

( #pleasecite )

More on the non-binary animal world.

www.prosocial.world/posts/lets-t...

Hepatitis B vaccine guidance set to be rolled back for US babies: what the science says A panel of US vaccine advisers voted to rescind a recommendation that all newborns should receive a hepatitis B vaccine at birth.

This is an excellent read. The more you know. #Science 🧪

“… we were advancing toward elimination of hepatitis B in the United States,” says Ward “I am deeply concerned that if the ACIP rescinds this policy, they’re going to contribute to the spread of hepatitis B rather than its elimination.”

Social and emotional cognition in Pleistocene hominin evolution: The role of biocultural processes Patterns and processes of social cognition underlie much of the behavioral and ecological flexibility and adaptive capacity that characterizes the pri…

Just out "Social and emotional cognition in Pleistocene hominin evolution: The role of biocultural processes" with @johnhawks.net @marckissel.bsky.social Penny Spikins, Jennifer French and me. Open access in Journal of Archaeological Science... www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Sally Rooney books may be withdrawn from UK sale over Palestine Action ban, court told Rooney has said she intended to use royalties from her work "to go on supporting Palestine Action."

If you’re going to shop today, buy a Sally Rooney novel while you still can. www.bbc.com/news/article...

For those attending the 2025 American Anthropological Association (AAAs) conference, please consider coming out to our roundtable!

I'm honored to be organizing and presenting at our roundtable entitled "Asian/American Hauntings: Ghosts in/as
Multispecies Theory." With @radhikagovindrajan.bsky.social and Sophie Chao facilitating, we will contend with power dynamics of multispecies theory and racialized discourses of 'Asianness'.

The second and third most read papers in the journal Evolutionary Human Sciences are about pseudoscientific racism and the pseudoscientific sexism of the manosphere. Good to see these critical perspectives about the misuse of science being widely read

[Penn Anthro Colloquium] Beyond the Binaries: The New Science of Sex and Gender Monday, October 13, 2025 - 12:00pm to 1:30pm

Join us: Beyond the Binaries: The New Science of Sex and Gender gsws.sas.upenn.edu/events/2025/...

Pure bloodlines? Ancestral homelands? DNA science says no. — Harvard Gazette Geneticist explains recent analyses made possible by tech advances show human history to be one of mixing, movement, displacement.

“The big perspective change from ancient DNA study is that people living today are almost never the descendants of the people in the same place thousands of years before”

news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...

Dialectics meets the enactive approach!

Join us for Dialectics and the Embodied Mind

📍 Univ. of Luxembourg | Sept 22–23

dialecticalsystems.eu/events/inter...

Evidence for deliberate burial of the dead by Homo naledi Remains of the extinct hominin species Homo naledi were interred by members of their own species, the first time that burial has been documented in populations other than modern humans and Neanderthal...

Evidence for deliberate burial of the dead by Homo naledi.

"the detailed reviews (both rounds) and comprehensive author response are commendable and consequential parts of the scientific record of this study."

Please do read. This is truly fascinating science elifesciences.org/articles/89106

For the first time, I'm teaching an introductory workshop on ethnography for scientists. Anthropologists and STS scholars, what short readings and group activities do you recommend? Thank you for your ideas! #Anthropology #STS #ethnography

Image from the blog showing 5 solutions to countering scientific racism 1. Introduce students to the complexities of developmental processes 2. Introduce students to the complexities of inheritance processes 3. Explain that variation between racialised groups in behavioural and cultural traits is not caused by genetic differences 4. Debunk scientific racism in school and university level science curricula 5. Acknowledge and contextualised the racist histories of academic fields

Race Isn’t Biological — So Why Do So Many Still Think It Is?

@kevinlala.bsky.social and @kztwyman.bsky.social blog about their recent paper in the journal Evolutionary Human Sciences

www.cambridge.org/core/blog/20...

Read the piece and then go below to keep up with efforts to defend People’s Park: linktr.ee/Peoplespark

In Memory of Rosebud, Defender of People's Park On the 30th anniversary of her death at the hands of police, a poster in memory of anarchist and People’s Park defender Rosebud Abigail Denovo.

Thirty-three years ago today, police killed Rosebud, one of countless people who defended People's Park over the years, maintaining an autonomous zone in the center of Berkeley in defiance of developers and capitalists.

We review the story of Rosebud and People's Park here:

crimethinc.com/Rosebud

Five travel awards for scholars from low & middle income countries are available for this years ASAA/NZ #anthropology Conference in Whāingaroa, Raglan! www.asaanz.org/conference Priority will be given to applicants from #Oceania and #SoutheastAsia

Hi Bronwyn, thank you for the kind words!!

A screenshot of a scholarship acceptance letter.

A book entitled "Race, Monogamy, and Other Lies They Told You". Inside, there is a signature and words of support by the author.

Four people stand in the auditorium's background.

I'm honored to announce my ethnographic fieldwork in Malaysia will be funded by the Royal Anthropological Institute's Emslie Horniman Scholarship. Thank you @anthrofuentes.bsky.social and my dissertation committee for their kindness and intellectually generous support!

'If it was a man, we would say that's a warrior's grave': Weapon-filled burials are shaking up what we know about women's role in Viking society New research is finding that some women in Viking Age Scandinavia were buried with war-grade weapons. Experts are divided about what that means.

🏺🧪

One’s sex biology is important and plays a major role in how any given individual engages with gender and other cultural dynamics of their society. But it is neither simple nor uniform, nor binary. It’s biocultural. A🧵...

Scientists as political advocates Science, both teaching and doing, is under attack. The recent US presidential election of a person and platform with anti-science bias exemplifies this. The study of climate processes and patterns and...

Science, both teaching and doing, is under attack. Speak up and push back. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Unfortunately, this is an unpaid opportunity! Apologies for the delayed reply.