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Francesca Chiu

@francescachiu.bsky.social
259 followers 440 following 42 posts

Researcher & lecturer at CityU Hong Kong. PhD from Copenhagen & UEA. I study urban planning, property, citizenship, migration and social mobility in Southeast Asia.

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Francesca Chiu @francescachiu.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Academic publishing asks early career researchers to be patient. Academic hiring asks them to publish quickly. Both expectations are understandable on their own. Living with both at the same time, however, is much harder. It makes me wonder who can actually afford to be patient.
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Francesca Chiu @francescachiu.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
That seems to be true across many fellowships and funding schemes lately.
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Francesca Chiu @francescachiu.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Tired of people responding to videos of ICE arrests with “are they (migrants) illegal?” as if that settles anything.
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Francesca Chiu @francescachiu.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
I’m happy to share my first book—At the Feet of a War Elephant: Land, Displacement, and Urbanization in Myanmar—is forthcoming with @cornellupress.bsky.social in Mar 2027. It explores the slow violence of urban growth under capitalism and how dispossession is normalized even without formal planning
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Xun-ling Au 歐迅灵 🏴 @xunlingau.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
I got some heart-breaking messages from Myanmar friends about this new passport law. Many fear that they will be forced to return to renew their passports, running the risk of arrest or conscription. Not to mention all the other additional problems with the law www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/m...
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Francesca Chiu @francescachiu.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
[Question] What’s one phrase that, the moment you hear it, tells you exactly what kind of person you’re dealing with? Mine: “reverse #racism”. #academia #academicchatter
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Francesca Chiu @francescachiu.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
Haven’t used #Grammarly for a while and just saw its new “AI Grader” feature, which predicts lecturers’ feedback on assignments without their input or consent--literally "putting words in someone's mouth". Reminds me of Ulrich Beck’s risk society and how we can become victims of our own “progress”.
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Francesca Chiu @francescachiu.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
This development is alarming. The app can automatically log in on behalf of students, potentially posing a serious risk to personal and university data security if they surrender passwords and other credentials to an AI company which is in no way an education provider, period.
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Seva @seva.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
I just finished a three-year term as an editor at an international relations journal. I began at the start of the LLM era but ended right in the middle of it. Our volume of submissions tripled and our desk reject rate rose to 75%. I have some thoughts. open.substack.com/pub/hegemon/...
open.substack.com
The Age of Academic Slop is Upon Us
what happens when AI automates "normal science"?
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Francesca Chiu @francescachiu.bsky.social · 12/01/2026
New study: On #Myanmar’s urban outskirts, ward administrators often told me they had one job—‘Don’t cause trouble.’ They certainly weren’t talking about following the law, though. They meant: don’t attract attention, trigger inspections, or make the ward visible to higher authorities. 1/4
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Francesca Chiu @francescachiu.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
Revising a manuscript is realizing that parts of it work and parts don’t yet, and being very grateful a reviewer caught the obvious oversights before production.
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Francesca Chiu @francescachiu.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
An observation on how #AI is shaping student work: almost none of my students this year included page numbers when citing books or articles in their final essays. Despite repeated reminders, page numbers seem to be disappearing. A troubling shift in how students now engage with reading materials.
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Francesca Chiu @francescachiu.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
I have an article in the Journal of Contemporary Asia on the nationwide university boycott in #Myanmar after the 2021 coup. Drawing on literature on youth and waiting, I explore how students spend their time while rejecting military-controlled education. Free copy here: tinyurl.com/3wmkff3x
tinyurl.com
Reclaiming the Future: Waiting, Resistance, and Expectations in Myanmar’s Post-Coup University Boycotts
University boycotts have been used by students to champion change and challenge oppressive systems around the world. This article focuses on the boycotts carried out by university students in Myanm...
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 06/09/2025
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
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Francesca Chiu @francescachiu.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
Urgent help needed: how do I turn off the #Copilot feature in MS 365? After restarting my Mac yesterday, the Copilot icon now shows up in Word (bottom right + Home panel). I don’t want it and can’t find any setting to disable it.
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ijurresearch.bsky.social @ijurresearch.bsky.social · 12/11/2025
Small-scale land speculation on Mandalay’s outskirts reveals how everyday actors—not just developers—reshape peri-urban space and contribute to displacement in the global South. By Francesca Chiu 📖 www.ijurr.org/article/beyo...
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Francesca Chiu @francescachiu.bsky.social · 08/11/2025
The 2025 National Games are happening and #HongKong is hosting a number of events including #handball. This brought to mind a research project I worked on before my PhD. The project was about electoral representation in the sports and arts functional constituency: doi.org/10.1080/2327... 1/8
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Francesca Chiu @francescachiu.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
My article on land speculation in #Myanmar is featured in the latest @ijurresearch.bsky.social. I show how even without developer mega-projects or evictions, small-scale speculation in Mandalay still leads to urban displacement and inequality. Open access: tinyurl.com/24z2yr48
tinyurl.com
BEYOND PLANNED DEVELOPMENTS: Small‐Scale Land Speculation and Displacement in Peri‐Urban Myanmar
Land speculation is a significant factor contributing to the displacement of poor populations in global South cities. While extensive research has examined how urban expansion increases land values—p....
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Francesca Chiu @francescachiu.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
It’s no secret the academic job market has become increasingly precarious. Many early-career researchers are struggling to find stable positions, and this challenge is global. In Asia, things have recently become more complex due to defunding of Western universities. 1/6
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 08/10/2025
i desperately want everyone involved in the destruction of USAID to have to, st the very least, answer to the american people for the suffering and misery they have caused apnews.com/article/myan...
apnews.com
Starving children screaming for food as US aid cuts unleash devastation and death across Myanmar
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly said “no one has died" because of his government’s decision to gut its foreign aid program.
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Reuters @reuters.com · 15/09/2025
Students killed at Myanmar boarding school as junta escalates air war reut.rs/47Kc95I
reut.rs
Students killed at Myanmar boarding school as junta escalates air war
A Myanmar military airstrike on a school last week killed at least 19 students, an ethnic militia said, as the war-torn nation's ruling junta steps up a campaign to retake territory ahead of a planned election in December.
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Dan Nexon @dhnexon.net · 10/09/2025
It's our fucking job to present students with uncomfortable facts and challenge their worldviews. The point isn't to change their beliefs but to ensure that they can better defend whatever positions they take.
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Miles Kenney-Lazar @mklaz.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
My first book, Socializing Land: Plantations, Dispossession, and Resistance in Laos (University of Hawai'i Press, 2025), exists in this world! Check it out at: uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/social... 1/4
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The New York Times @nytimes.com · 27/08/2025
In Opinion In the 1,000 days since ChatGPT’s release, it has disrupted the university approach to learning, meant to stop students from relying on A.I. “We, of course, do not want our students to fail, but we don’t want them to fail to learn, either,” Clay Shirkey, a vice provost at NYU, writes.
nyti.ms
Opinion | The Only Real Solution to the A.I. College Cheating Crisis
Since A.I. has made the mental effort of writing and problem solving optional, universities need new ways to require the work needed for learning.
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Mizzima News @mizzimadailynews.substack.com · 25/08/2025
EDUCATION IN A WAR ZONE: Karenni Alternative Schools Defying the Odds to Give Kids a Better Life open.substack.com/pub/mizzimad...
open.substack.com
EDUCATION IN A WAR ZONE: Karenni Alternative Schools Defying the Odds to Give Kids a Better Life
Mizzima Weekly Analysis & Insights, Issue-19, Vol-02, August 14, 2025
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Francesca Chiu @francescachiu.bsky.social · 20/08/2025
An important question not asked in this incident: why is the government still buying bottled water instead of installing filters, which are more eco-friendly and cost-saving?
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Francesca Chiu @francescachiu.bsky.social · 12/08/2025
Thrilled to share my latest open-access article for @ijurresearch.bsky.social! I dig into what drives so many people to spend their life savings on informal claims to urban land in places so quiet and remote many municipal officials barely know they exist. Please read and share!
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Francesca Chiu @francescachiu.bsky.social · 10/08/2025
At Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, I was walking into the immigration hall when a staffer took one look at me and yelled: “You don’t have a US passport.” They hadn’t even checked my documents. This is how US immigration operates these days. No check. No question. Just assumption & racism.
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DVB English News @dvbenglish.bsky.social · 08/07/2025
Nearly half the world’s supply of heavy rare earths is extracted from mines in Kachin State, including those north of Bhamo, a strategically-vital garrison town. They are then shipped to China for processing into magnets english.dvb.no/why-chinas-u... #WhatsHappeningInMyanmar #rareearth #kachinstate
english.dvb.no
Why China's ultimatum to Myanmar rebels threatens global supply of heavy rare earths - DVB
The global supply of heavy rare earths hinges in part on the outcome of a months-long battle between a resistance army and the Chinese-backed military regime in the hills of northern Myanmar. The Kach...
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Francesca Chiu @francescachiu.bsky.social · 30/06/2025
As an early-career researcher, I hope senior colleagues remember what it felt like starting out. Advocate for us, use your voice to help where we can’t, and challenge the systems that once held you back.
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Francesca Chiu @francescachiu.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
People often say #HongKong landlords are greedy for not lowering rents, and sure, some are. But there’s another side to the issue we rarely talk about: many landlords actually can’t afford to lower rent, even if they want to. 1/x hongkongfp.com/2025/06/24/h...
hongkongfp.com
HK bakery chain Taipan shuts down after 41 years, owing salaries, rent
HK bakery chain Taipan Bread & Cakes, which created the famous snowy mooncakes, has shut down all its stores after 41 years in operation, reportedly owing salaries and rent.
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Francesca Chiu @francescachiu.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
I have a new open-access article about #Myanmar in @ijurresearch.bsky.social examining how small-scale land speculation drives intimate displacement and social stratification in urban peripheries. Please read and share! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
BEYOND PLANNED DEVELOPMENTS: Small‐Scale Land Speculation and Displacement in Peri‐Urban Myanmar
Land speculation is a significant factor contributing to the displacement of poor populations in global South cities. While extensive research has examined how urban expansion increases land values—p...
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