iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I may not have a job and everything is terrible BUT my book (which I nearly gave up on, see above) just went into production. Following a decade of work 'Uncovering the Star Wars World: The Land, Labour and Nature of a Media Empire' will be out in May 2027. Excitement! Relief! And... copy editing.

A screenshot of a contents page laid out over two columns. The headings read:

Introduction
Worldbuilding
The matter in hand
How Star Wars works
Reading the Star Wars world

Chapter One. Crew and Craft
Imperial exceptionalisms
Arts and crafts
Taxing issues
Extended family
Family affairs
The house always wins
Close Up: Original Trilogy Tea
Making the tea
Drinking the tea
Iced tea
Spilling the tea
Reading the leaves

Chapter Two. Material and Parts
Oily substances
Organic matters
Down the mine shaft
Scavenging parts
Trash, de-compacted
Close Up: Looking for Artoo
Designed for life
Metal heads
Over and over
Paranoid androids
Dirty computers
Short circuit

Chapter Three. Imperial Designs
Closing ranks
Cultural appropriation
Royal remixing
Defensive initiatives
Imperial legacies
Close Up: The Throne Room Gown as Orientalist Couture
Patchwork Padmé
Unpicking orientalism
Patterns of appropriation
Fitting for a queen
Imperial influencer

Chapter Four. Alien Lands
Real-world matters
Location, location, location
A whole new world
Just deserts
Re-worlding Star Wars
Close Up: Expanding and Enclosing Lands
The nature of things
Alienated landscapes
Facilitating shoots
Enclosing lands
Big trouble in Little Marlow
It’s just… people

Chapter Five. Creature Discomforts
Service animals
Creatures of habit
Animal matters
Meet the flockers
What is it like to be an orbak?
Wild irregularities
Close Up: No Birds Sing in Star Wars
And they said it was pretty here
Red in tooth, claw, and tape
Into the wild
Digging deeper
Animal instincts

Conclusion. New Beginnings at the World’s End
Bigger or better?
Common goals
Worldmaking

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

My partner and me on the last full day of the holiday we put off for ages so I could write a book about Star Wars

The Anakin and Padme meme (an image of each character side by side and then repeated below to form a checker board). In the first box over Anakin the text reads ‘staying in Cono will be convenient for the night train’. In the second, the text reads ‘you’re not going to make us visit a Star Wars location, right?’. The characters’ appearances in the third and fourth boxes convey that Anakin is going to do exactly what Padme hopes he won’t.

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

We’re on the inaugral @europeansleeper.eu from Brussels to Milan and it’s like travelling in a 90s adaptation of an Agatha Christie story or Hitchcock film and I’m very here for it (see also: greener and much much cooler than flying)

A red train pulls into a station platform

A bird’s eye view of a sleeping compartment with a bunk bed positioned over a blue bench on each side, and a table under a window in the middle

A compartment interior window with curtains hanging over it, a bunk bed visible on the left and wood panelling of the compartment in the background

A selfie of a white woman with long dark hair (me) in a long horizontal mirror under a bunk bed covered in blue train fabric. Behind me there is a train window and another bunk bed

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Visit to In Other Worlds at the Barbican (on for another week). It’s packed with multimedia stories but left me flat - some of the more emotive pieces about colonialism and climate change are smothered by the project’s overall tech determinism. Enjoyed its celebration of filmic world-building though

A metallic blue-green fragment of what looks like a computer part is embedded in a piece of rock that reveals amethyst on its outer edge

A pink-lit astronaut-diver figure hangs in front of a large screen on which three more of the figures dance among multicoloured clouds. A caption reads ‘We dance for the rivers whose waters have been poisoned and twisted’

Lichen appears to grow on a brightly, intensely pink-lit tree trunk

Three screen shows different scenes from documentaries about technologies that are claimed to help combat climate change. The sceeens hang in a dimly lit car park

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Saw these newt tadpoles feeding on a pond flower on my evening walk. Looking at the photo makes me feel we passed into a strange and murky netherworld. Like haunted Victorian spirit photography, but newts

Two newt tadpoles feeding on a pink-stemmed flower in a murky grey-green pond. Whiteish reflections on the water’s surface give it an ethereal quality.

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Travelling down to Brighton for a research day at Sussex tomorrow on film and the environment, where I'll be talking about the practical and digital erasure of wild animals, plants, and fungi on Star Wars location shoots, and how animals are corporately re-branded as creatures to be exploited as IP

A grey-white horse wearing a costume made of long synthetic grey fur and a saddle is attended to by human crew on the set of The Last Jedi.

A black and white puffin, one of the animal species affected by location shoots for the Star Wars sequel films, stands on a cliff edge overlooking the sea.

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

For #Maythe4th 2026... All the Star Wars films, Ranked! The Global Heating and Jet-Fuel Shortage Edition i.e., I calculated the films' aviation emissions based on one crew member flying to all locations. Solo comes out least worst (breathe easy, you still don't have to like the prequels)

A table showing aviation emissions in kg CO2e for the 11 Star Wars feature films, listed 1-11 as follows:
1 Solo, 4084
2 The Empire Strikes Back, 4400
3 Return of the Jedi, 4821
4 The Phantom Menace, 5004
5 The Rise of Skywalker, 5558
6 A New Hope, 5570
7 The Force Awakens, 8159
8 The Last Jedi, 8163
9 Rogue One, 10211
10 Attack of the Clones, 14823
11 Revenge of the Sith, 17501

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Arrived in Bournemouth a day early for the #baftss2026 conference. Hard to concentrate on finishing my presentation when sun and sea beckon

A photograph taken outside an apartment window. The sky is clear and blue, and an indigo sea can be glimpsed beyond nearby holly and pine trees

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

Went for a spontaneous (much-needed) walk yesterday and gathered more footage for my wild lives film. Including a magical encounter with a hare, a red admiral fluttering in the wind, a (not pictured) slow worm, and a ladybird who changed their mind about the water

A photograph of a two-forked waterfall tumbling over mossy rocks into a shallow, pebbled pool

A close-up photograph of a tan-coloured hare sitting in a hunched position in the grass beside a dry-stone wall

A close-up photograph of a red admiral butterfly almost concealed among the exposed roots of a plant, with just the interior edges of its bright red wings visible.

A jewel-red ladybird hovering on the edge of a pebble above the waterline of a shallow pool.

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

After months of work, @davidharvie.bsky.social and I have finished a major report that centres people’s experiences of job cuts in UK HE - and exposes employer tactics in those processes. ‘Universities Degraded’ will be available in full next week. We hope it helps everyone fighting for change

A screenshot showing the front cover of a report called ‘Universities Degraded: Staff Experiences & Employer Practices of Redundancies in UK Higher Education.’ The blue and white cover also features the authors names: Rebecca Harrison and David Harvie.

The contents page of the Universities Degraded report shown as a screenshot.

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

10hrs of trains and rail-replacement-taxis to get to the Celtic Media Festival and I have been rewarded with sun puddles, wildflowers and sea monsters

An orange and white alien-like wildflower growing from the side of a rocky wall

A view out to sea from within a sandy, shadowy cave

A jellyfish that looks like a mass of translucent rose quartz lies covered in sand on the beach

A puddle of brilliant gold sunlight falling between the evening clouds reflects off a grey/blue sea

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

Shame on UCU managers for this brazen attempt to cover up bad employment practices. Whatever you call them - non-disparagement clauses, confidentiality agreements - these are NDAs. We all know conditions are stacked in the employer’s favour. Enforced silence is *always* violence.

A screenshot from a Times Higher Education article in which a UCU management spokesperson claims that making staff sign confidentiality clauses is not the same as using non-disclosure agreements.

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

Also really into this enormous upended tree with quartz deposits entangled in its roots and wild garlic growing across its trunk. There’s something satisfying about the unearthed and rooted coexisting together

The root system of a fallen tree is visible, with mosses growing across the roots and quartz in between them. Along the top edge of the tree, overhead, there is wild garlic growing.

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

Flowers blooming on cliff faces and in the crevices between rock pools are very much my vibe this week

Small purple flowers among grasses that are growing up the side of a steep, chalk cliff against a brilliant blue sky

Two tiny pink flowers sneaking up between slate outcrops on a beach

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Taking a day of holiday to go to Parliament for the UCU Stop the Cuts rally. I’ll be taking interim findings from my branch’s recent redundancy survey; ‘brutal’ is about right for higher ed right now. The stats speak for themselves. The fight is on to save the soul of UK universities

Photograph of a flier detailing interim findings from the OU UCU universities redundancy survey, including quotes from respondents such as ‘toxic’ and ‘barbaric’.

The flip side of the flier, which offers interim findings from the same survey. There are lots of stats, mostly related to unethical/illegal practices and human costs

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

You have politicians and CEOs flying by private jet, surrounded by police, border control and army vehicles. AI is aggressively advertised everywhere. Endless streams of cars with blacked-out windows. And then there are the BlackRock and Palantir pavilions. It’s somehow even worse than you’d imagine

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

Used the last day of our holiday in Switzerland to make a last-minute trip to Davos (if our presence made even one WEF attendee uncomfortable it was worth it). Can’t properly describe the sense of dread being in the midst of it all, or emphasise enough how hard AI was being pushed at every turn

Photo of a white woman (me) with long hair, wearing a black coat, standing outside a sign for the World Economic Forum. I’m holding up a large placard that I’ve made which reads ‘burn the dinos not fossils,’ which sits alongside a cartoon of Trump as a t-rex

A pavilion at Davos advertising c3 Enterprise AI

Another pavilion at Davos advertising Agentforce, which has the tag line across the shop front ‘What AI was meant to be’

Another Davos pavilion advertising Agentic AI

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