CTlab News

Dr. Bradley Evans Joins CTlab

CTlab — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:18:00 +0000

The Complex Terrain Laboratory just got a whole lot smarter... Dr. Brad Evans, a colleague in the School of Politics and International Studies (POLIS), at the University of Leeds, is joining CTlab. Brad is a political theorist and Lecturer in Global Terror (how's that for a handle!?!) at POLIS, as well as founder/curator of the nascent Histories of Violence project. He'll be contributing to Current Intelligence, CTlab's current affairs blog, and participating in other CTlab funnies as they come up. Here's a snippet from his faculty bio:

I am a political theorist specialising in the fields of terror, governance, and political violence. My work is particularly interested in exploring 1) the contemporary nature of terror, especially the divine role terror has assumed within the Liberal imaginary 2) the depoliticizing nature of Liberal forms of governance 3) the imperial nature of Kantian thought 4) the re-problematisation of violence in today’s post-Clausewitzean world 5) the shift in security discourses and practices towards event based thinking 6) the critical relevance of the works of Giorgio Agamben, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Paul Virilio to global politics and international affairs.

Welcome, Brad!

Year In Review: CTlab Stats For 2009

Mike Innes — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 13:39:07 +0000

Now that New Years has passed and we're fully into 2010, we thought it was time for the annual Posting of the Statistics. So here they are. One of the peculiarities of the platform we use is that even though we can track pretty specific site stats, and even though they're gee-whiz glossy to look at, for some reason known only to the techie-gods who allow developers to be self-indulgent at the expense of system users, we can't actually export the stats to a useful format (like Excel). You know, the way that an investor or sponsor might actually require in exchange for, oh, say... money. Sigh. Anyway, the method we're stuck with, in order to provide CTlab readers with an indication of how we'll we're doing, is through screen captures of our stats dashboard. Here they are:

Screen Capture. DTG: 31 Dec 2009 23:56 GMT

PSA: Research Blogging

Mike Innes — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 16:19:14 +0000

Back when CTlab was but a wee idea in the backs of our brains and we were thinking about how to marry up serious research with blogging technology, we stumbled across Dave Munger's Research Blogging project. RB has come a long way since then, partnering with Seed Media Group (publishers of the excellent Seed Magazine) and really pushing the boundaries on intelligent use of social media.

The perennial site tweaking here at the lab is sometimes hit and miss, but we thought a few changes were in order to make the content a little more accessible and the site more user-friendly. One of those changes, you'll notice, is the addition of a Research Blogging widget here at The Review (bottom left, in the nav margin). It's set to pick up all of the Research Blogging feeds, and while they tends to be heavy on hard science, there are a handful of humanities and social science bloggers involved. That includes us: every time a new post on peer-reviewed research is posted to The Review, we cross post it into the Research Blogging platform. The wider readership, we think, is consistent with CTlab's long-standing interest in multi- and interdisciplinarity.

Public Service Announcement: New CTlab RSS Feeds

Mike Innes — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:45:32 +0000

A quick note to our regular readers... a couple of weeks ago, we initiated a new blog strategy, which involved implementing several new blog modules on the website. The Review will remain active, but it'll be limited to less frequent long form reviews of books, events, and research. It's open to submissions, and will include the occasional extra feature (like interviews). We're also looking into partnering with ResearchBlogging.org, an important project that links peer reviewed research with serious blogging on it.

Public Service Announcement: Site Upgrade and Redesign

Mike Innes — Mon, 11 May 2009 18:37:56 +0000

For our regular readers, this is just a heads up to let you know that Stuart Hobday, our web designer/master, will be implementing a new site design with radically improved front page. Yes, yes, I know, we've promised it before, and more than once. This time it's for true. And no, the minor color and layout changes that occured over the past weekend are not this new thing that's about to happen. Stuart's been developing this for a while, and some of the new features have been custom coded, so we're really looking forward to what we hope will result in a friendlier website and an enhanced CTlab Experience. Bear with us while Stuart goes to work; some elements of the site might look a little hinky while Stuart tweaks code.

Public Service Announcement: Creeps, Quacks and Trolls

Mike Innes — Sat, 09 May 2009 08:25:36 +0000

We're big fans of free speech and social media at CTlab, especially the kind that enables Joe Q. Public to be heard and ivory tower academics to communicate with a broader public. We also deal with some fairly dark subjects, from terrorism and insurgency to genocide and war crimes, and a whole range of things in between. So we expect that from time to time, that'll result in the odd online difference of opinions, and even outright spats between CTlab participants.

Year in Review: CTlab Stats For 2008

Mike Innes — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:04:17 +0000

Screen Capture. DTG: 31 Dec 08 at 19:15CET.

Charli Carpenter Joins CTLAB

Mike Innes — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:17:46 +0000

With the Complex Terrain Lab still in its infancy, and its roster of excellent contributors growing at a rapid rate, we've been neglecting our responsibilities as hosts to make everyone feel at home. No time like the present to remember our manners... so without further adieu, we'd like to extend a warm welcome to Dr. Charli Carpenter, who'll be skipping basic

The CTLab Line-Up

CTlab — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 22:29:54 +0000

Some of you may have noticed CTLab's expanding repertoire of SMEs over the last few weeks. The goal has always been for this blog to be multidisciplinary, and the eclectic band of thinkers now listed as contributors are certainly that. None need introducing here, since all are well known or knowable through their respective blogs and other online activities. But to recap, the Complex Terrain Laboratory's Review weblog is (in addition to yours truly):