UR Blog
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- What is grief, if not love persevering? An exploration of the character Wanda Maximoff through an Ultra-Realist lens.by Lauren SimpsonBy Lauren Simpson, Teesside University What is grief, if not love persevering? For Wanda Maximoff, this love becomes desire not just for what she has lost, but for the power to undo what is lost. Through the lens of theoretical psychoanalysis, this post demonstrates how her sense of lack is what defines her constant new… Read more: What is grief, if not love persevering? An exploration of the character Wanda Maximoff through an Ultra-Realist lens.
- A Multi-Level Ultra-Realist Approach to Understanding Violence Against Women and Girls: The Micro Levelby Paul AlkerPaul Alker, Mark Bushell, Emma Armstrong, Max Hart, and Craig Kelly At the micro-level, VAWG is often framed as a result of individual actions – abuse jperpetrated by an abusive partner, a violent stranger, or an online harasser. While it is true that acts of violence are carried out by individuals, this perspective alone risks obscuring the broader conditions that shape violent… Read more: A Multi-Level Ultra-Realist Approach to Understanding Violence Against Women and Girls: The Micro Level
- I’ll Sleep when I’m dead: Reflections on leisure, rest and recuperationby Mark BushellMark Bushell, Northumbria University “When you watch a show from Netflix and you get addicted to it, you stay up late at night. We’re competing with sleep on the margin” Former Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings (cited in Hern, 2017). Sleep is a vital homeostatic pillar in supporting life and wellbeing. Without it, we quickly begin… Read more: I’ll Sleep when I’m dead: Reflections on leisure, rest and recuperation
- A Multi-Level Ultra-Realist Approach to Understanding Violence Against Women and Girls: The Meso-Levelby Paul AlkerPaul Alker, Craig Kelly, Max Hart, Cade Darby, and Emma Armstrong Throughout this blog series we aim to show how violence against women and girls (VAWG) must be understood through multiple layers. While macro level structures shape the broader social, economic, political, and cultural conditions that enable VAWG, as we argued in the last post,… Read more: A Multi-Level Ultra-Realist Approach to Understanding Violence Against Women and Girls: The Meso-Level
- Learning and Teaching from Lacan: Dispatches from the neoliberal universityby Daniel BriggsProfessor Dan Briggs It’s the second week of term and I’m only in the second semester of my return to undergraduate teaching in the UK university system. Much has changed I think to myself as I approach the seminar room. As I wait outside, I laugh to myself as I recall some amusing experiences from… Read more: Learning and Teaching from Lacan: Dispatches from the neoliberal university
- Intimacy for Sale: An Ultra-Realist Analysis of the Commodification of Valentine’s Dayby Poppy-Anne TurnerBy Poppy-Anne Turner, Teesside University Saint Valentine is an enigmatic figure theologically, with his title as a saint being deliberated amongst Christians, Catholics, historians and academics alike. There is significant ambiguity surrounding who Saint Valentine was, with some accounts advocating that there may have been two figures named Valentine, both believed to have died as… Read more: Intimacy for Sale: An Ultra-Realist Analysis of the Commodification of Valentine’s Day
- New Year, New Me: Why Personal Change Keeps Failingby Emma ArmstrongBy Emma Armstrong and Paul Alker As January arrives, a cultural ritual takes hold. The clock has officially restarted on Spotify Wrapped, and many of us quietly promise that next year’s version of ourselves will be better, cooler, with less evidence of that one song we played on repeat during a minor emotional crisis in… Read more: New Year, New Me: Why Personal Change Keeps Failing
- A Multi-Level Ultra-Realist Approach to Understanding Violence Against Women and Girls: The Macro-Levelby Paul AlkerPaul Alker, Liam Miles and Emma Armstrong As outlined in the first post of this series, the overarching aim of these theoretical interventions is to shed light on the key determinants of the rising levels of violence against women and girls (VAWG) in its myriad forms. It is our belief that a multi-level critical analysis of… Read more: A Multi-Level Ultra-Realist Approach to Understanding Violence Against Women and Girls: The Macro-Level
- TikTok Made Me Buy It: The Harms of Consumer Capitalismby Poppy-Anne TurnerPoppy-Anne Turner On TikTok, a platform once associated with memes and dance trends, shopping has become inseparable from leisure. The rise of TikTok shop, driven by AI-powered algorithms, demonstrates how capitalism has colonised our downtime. After all, we live in a world where capitalist markets reach into almost every part of our lives. In the… Read more: TikTok Made Me Buy It: The Harms of Consumer Capitalism
- From Tragedy to Spectacle: Kirk, Zarutska, and the Digital Afterlife of Violence.by Craig KellyCraig Kelly Max Hart When Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee, was fatally stabbed on a North Carolina train, CCTV images of her last moments were not only shared but reframed to become the backdrop to further cultural and political debate (Wolfe, 2025). Similarly, when Charlie Kirk was shot in Utah during his latest of… Read more: From Tragedy to Spectacle: Kirk, Zarutska, and the Digital Afterlife of Violence.
- The Disunion Jack: National Flags and the Fragile Balance of Orderly Disorderby Emma ArmstrongEmma Armstrong Steve Hall One year and one month after the summer riots of 2024, here we are again. The same tensions are bubbling to the surface. Across towns and cities in England, the St George’s flag has been painted on roundabouts, draped from lampposts, and flown proudly from windows and car bonnets. Some councils… Read more: The Disunion Jack: National Flags and the Fragile Balance of Orderly Disorder
- Datafication Laid Bare: Making sense of the Grok AI leaksby Max HartWhat the Grok? Performance Promises, Cases of Controversy and Grok. On the 22nd of August 2025, news headlines began to circulate on social media sites regarding X (formerly Twitter) owner and tech-billionaire Elon Musk’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot ‘Grok’. Initially launched in November 2023, Grok has seen rapid evolution with Grok-2 offering image-generation capability and… Read more: Datafication Laid Bare: Making sense of the Grok AI leaks
- A Response to Pridemore and Rogersby Steve HallPlease allow me to have a quick whine. If any other researchers involved in the UR project think I’m abusing my privileged position here, please submit a blog any time you think you have been misrepresented in any type of publication. Unfortunately, we do tend to encounter ‘straw targets’ in mainstream academic journals. Here, Pridemore… Read more: A Response to Pridemore and Rogers
- Leagues of Gentlemen (and Women) on the illicit (violent) playing fields of neoliberal capitalism: An ultra-realist analysis of Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemenby Rob Glasborrow‘Criminal markets are now sophisticated and competitive, riven by class divisions created on the back of the individual’s relative success and failures in markets. A successful new proto bourgeoisie drawn from all positions on the former social order dominates a defeated precariat’ (Hall & Winlow, 2015: 126) Take director Guy Ritchie’s Netflix series, The Gentlemen… Read more: Leagues of Gentlemen (and Women) on the illicit (violent) playing fields of neoliberal capitalism: An ultra-realist analysis of Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen
- The Digital Coliseum: How Capitalism Turns Our Pain into Spectacleby Mayra BarreraWhat if the freedom we feel when using digital platforms is just a beautifully packaged illusion? We spend hours on TikTok, Instagram, OnlyFans, Tinder, BeReal, Snapchat, or Reddit, convinced that we are choosing, enjoying, and even liberating ourselves. But who really benefits? Spoiler: it’s not us. As ultra-realist criminologists argues, not everything that looks like… Read more: The Digital Coliseum: How Capitalism Turns Our Pain into Spectacle
- A Multi-Level Ultra-Realist Approach to Understanding Violence Against Women and Girls: An Introductionby Emma ArmstrongEmma Armstrong and Paul Alker Teesside University
- Zemiogenesis and the Rudakubana caseby Steve HallSteve Hall
- The Society of Enemies: 1. Identity Politics and Crimeby Steve HallSteve Hall