In this latest newsletter, we’re pleased to welcome new SPIN members, announce new opportunities, and celebrate new publications.

Announcements

• Secrecy and Society invites submissions for their special issue on “pandemic secrecy” and the complexities of COVID-19 concealments. To submit your work and for further details, visit SPIN’s blog.

• SPIN’s main social media platform will move over the summer from ‘X’ (Twitter) to LinkedIn. New events, publications, members, blogs, projects, and podcasts will be publicised there as a trial over the next year. Please follow us and help us share our news. linkedin.com/company/secrecyresearch/about

• We continue to welcome new 500 to 1000-word contributions to our developing A-Z of Secrecy and Ignorance. Beginning online, we aim to see this published as an edited volume in due course. If you have a core concept and associated research project you would like to draw attention to, please get in touch with Elspeth. You can see examples of existing contributions on the SPIN Blog, such as ‘Curiosity’, ‘Gaslighting’, ‘Official Record’, ‘Omerta,’ and ‘Conspiracy Theory’.

• Please do consider becoming a patron of SPIN Labs. SPIN Labs is the creative and public engagement hub for SPIN work, facilitating collaborations between academics, artists, creative producers, and organisations and collectives beyond higher education. Become a Patreon here.

Events

• To start off the new academic year, we invite members to use our JiscMail discussion list to (re)introduce themselves and their research to our community. If you haven’t yet subscribed, please consider joining. More information to follow.

• Also to start the new academic year, please join us for our first bimonthly Research in Progress session(online) to catch up and meet with fellow SPIN-sters. Hear about latest project developments and connect with others, and share issues and find ways through research and career-related challenges. This year, these sessions will also feature a discussion of a ‘classic’ or new reading that we hope will be of interest to the community.

• Please join us for a celebration of Luca Trenta’s new book, The President’s Kill List on 23 October at 3pm (online). Further information on the SPIN blog.

• CFP: SPIN Colloquium, Bristol, December 12^th and 13^th, 2024. We are pleased to see the return of the SPIN conference this year, in-person and online options, and hope to see as many of you there as possible. For further information and to submit an abstract, visit the SPIN blog.

Overview of our SPIN Events schedule for Term 1 2024/25. Please save the dates and look out for further information.

New Members

• SPIN is pleased to welcome photographer, Ashutosh Shaktan, who has been awarded the third round of the Martin Parr Foundation-SPIN Photo-essay Commission. By mixing traditional analogue photographing techniques with the knowledge and information destruction methods used by the state and other organizations, Ashutosh aims to create images that portray secrecy in its visual form. Further details on SPIN’s Project pages.

New Publications and Press

• Huge congratulations to SPIN-ster Luca Trenta on the publication of his recent book, The President’s Kill List: Assassination and US Foreign Policy since 1945

• SPIN is pleased to share a new report co-authored by Demos, Peter Knight and Clare Birchall, Conspiracy Loops: From Distrust to Conspiracy to Culture Wars, recent journal article in the American Book Review co-authored by Clare Birchall and Peter Knight, It’s the Algorithm, Stupid! and Clare Birchall’s recent new ofbook chapter: Haute Baroque Bling”: Style, Taste, and Distinction in the Study of Conspiracist Populism

• Stay tuned for SPIN’s recently recorded new series of short talks (10-15 minutes) and ‘In Conversation’ sessions for the SPIN Podcast series which will be released over the coming months.

As always, do let us know of any news we can share. And in the meantime, have a wonderful rest of the summer. We’ll see you in the new academic year!