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Michael Briscoe

@michaelbriscoe.bsky.social
201 followers 389 following 50 posts

Associate Professor of Sociology at Colorado State University Pueblo. My research looks at intersections of human, animal, and environmental well-being. www.researchgate.net/profile/Michae… Posts here reflect my own opinions.

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Michael Briscoe @michaelbriscoe.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
New article with my former student Shay Reszka in @springernature.com Discover Animals. Dog bites are going to happen, but by understanding what contributes to their severity we can reduce the harm they cause to humans, dogs, and cats. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
link.springer.com
Predictors of reported dog bite injury severity among human, dog, and cat victims in Southern Colorado - Discover Animals
Dog bites harm both humans and other animals and can range from punctures to fatal wounds. Understanding the factors that are associated with the severity of these bite injuries, including characteris...
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
AI is not inevitable. resistance works!
motherjones.com
Mamdani issues AI moratorium in NYC schools
Kids "need to wrestle with tough problems on their own,” New York's mayor said Wednesday.
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International Association of Vegan Sociologists @vegansociology.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Reminder to register for this year’s Vegan Sociology conference! 🎙 With a theme focusing on internationalising vegan sociology, connecting the local and the global, and building a just world for (non-)human animals alike - this year isn’t one to be missed! 👀 events.humanitix.com/iavs-2026-in...
events.humanitix.com
IAVS 2026: Internationalising Vegan Sociology
The 2026 IAVS annual meeting will showcase research related to veganism, nonhuman animal rights, and sociological theories of international relevance.
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Michael Briscoe @michaelbriscoe.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
I published a new article with Jennifer Givens in @springernature.com 's Socio-Ecological Practice Research. doi.org/10.1007/s425... We interviewed researchers and resource managers working in the FEW nexus about how they thought about stakeholders, including nonhuman nature.
doi.org
“The customer is the forest”? differences in stakeholder identification between food-energy-water researchers and managers in the Columbia river basin - Socio-Ecological Practice Research
Researchers and resource managers must consider a multiplicity of stakeholders within the food, energy, and water (FEW) nexus – the interconnected and interdependent food, energy, and water sectors. To understand differences in perceptions of stakeholders between researchers and resource managers, we conducted focus group interviews with an advisory group of 33 natural resource managers and multi-disciplinary researchers comprised of university faculty, staff, and students primarily in the Columbia River Basin – primarily Washington state. Our research questions asked which stakeholders were viewed as most important, which were currently being left out of decision-making, and how researchers and resource managers thought about nonhuman nature in the context of stakeholder identification. While there was overlap in the identification of key stakeholders, resource managers tended to bring up groups with less power or interest, while researchers focused on more powerful stakeholders or on resource managers themselves. Nonhuman nature came up in interviews as a key concern in decision-making for our advisory group, but less so for faculty and students. Institutional structures and incentives were key in shaping identification of stakeholders.
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De Gruyter Brill Philosophy @dgb-philosophy.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
By extending stakeholder theories to animals, the book makes a compelling case for seriously considering their interests, and how that is ultimately beneficial to humans too. Find the book here 👉https://brill.com/display/title/62085
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De Gruyter Brill Philosophy @dgb-philosophy.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Congratulations are due to @michaelbriscoe.bsky.social! His book "Stocks or Stakeholders: The Benefits of Considering Animal Interests" is the 2026 winner of @asanews.bsky.social Animals and Society's Distinguished Book Award🏅🎉 ⬇️Link to the book below
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Michael Briscoe @michaelbriscoe.bsky.social · 07/03/2026
I wrote a new short piece for @speciesunite.bsky.social on plant based food (and lack thereof) in prison. www.speciesunite.com/news-stories...
speciesunite.com
Should incarcerated people receive plant-based food? — Species Unite
In most U.S. prisons, inmates cannot legally obtain plant-based food - even if they offer to pay for it themselves.
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The Conversation U.S. @us.theconversation.com · 06/02/2026
Know-your-rights trainings are spreading fast as ICE steps up enforcement. But knowing the law doesn’t guarantee it’s respected, explains CSU Pueblo sociologist Heidi Reynolds-Stenson, who studies social movements and protest policing. ⬇️
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Michael Briscoe @michaelbriscoe.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
I published a blog post for @vegansociology.bsky.social about my experience teaching the book Tender is the Flesh in my Crime and Society in Science Fiction class. Check it out here: www.vegansociology.com/2026/01/28/t...
vegansociology.com
The Loneliness and Madness of Teaching Tender is the Flesh, International Association of Vegan Sociologists
By Michael D.
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Zoei Sutton @zoei.bsky.social · 04/10/2025
Michael Briscoe shares fascinating data on large language models and animal issues - how does AI feel about going vegan? surprisingly positive! #IAVS2025
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Zoei Sutton @zoei.bsky.social · 04/10/2025
And we’re off! Our 6th annual vegan sociology conference starts today, still time to join us for a fab suite of vegan sociologies of emotions and the senses #IAVS2025
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Contexts Magazine @contexts.org · 30/09/2025
New! From @michaelbriscoe.bsky.social, a response to Eppard and Mackey's @contexts.org piece on liberal bias in academia: "A Closer Look at Ideology *and* Truth on Campus" contexts.org/blog/a-closer-look #sociology #highereducation #liberalbias
A screenshot of the homepage of Contexts.org shows a new blog post titled "A Closer Look at Ideology *and* Truth on Campus: A Response to Eppard and Mackey." The image shows a lecturer in a campus lecture hall.A screenshot from contexts.org shows the quote "Reflecting widely held ideologies back to the public would no doubt raise trust in academia, but this is not our mandate."
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Michael Briscoe @michaelbriscoe.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
I published a new paper in Sustainability: Science, Practice, and Policy on presidential politics and the carbon intensity of well-being in the US. doi.org/10.1080/1548...
doi.org
The carbon intensity of well-being and presidential politics in the United States, 1960–2023
The carbon intensity of well-being (CIWB) captures the amount of stress that societies place on the environment to produce human well-being. This Brief Report provides a description of the CIWB in ...
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American Sociological Association @asanews.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
ASA’s TRAILS is a peer-reviewed digital teaching resources library that’s free to ASA members. Check out the Crime and Criminology Resource Collection, featuring syllabi for courses on green criminology, sociology of murder, mass shootings, and more. bit.ly/40TkJee
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Michael Briscoe @michaelbriscoe.bsky.social · 04/08/2025
I write about these bad faith animal welfare arguments against renewable energy in chapter 4 of my new book. Fossil fuel production kills many more animals both directly and indirectly than renewables. At the same time, we can do more to reduce the impact of renewable energy production on animals.
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Michael Briscoe @michaelbriscoe.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
It is tempting to visit animal "wildlife centers" or "sanctuaries" that offer you the chance to get close to animals. The problem is many of these organizations are actually roadside zoos more concerned with profit than animal welfare. Read more in my new piece for @speciesunite.bsky.social
speciesunite.com
Roadside zoos are animal welfare disasters — Species Unite
Roadside zoos are a welfare nightmare for animals. They are typically small zoos where wild animals are confined in small cages and frequently forced to interact with visitors in stressful and unnatur...
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Deseret News [Unofficial] @deseret.com.web.brid.gy · 26/07/2025
deseret.com
Opinion: Gutting humanities signals the end of innovation in business and STEM
As a college professor, watching the dismantling of America’s education system has been among the most discouraging events of my life. American aspirations to be a leader in the world of business and science — which springs from our country’s support only of STEM fields — portend their own loss as things like humanities classes are being threatened with extinction. The things that provide powerful support for the structural modes of thought that promote ideas and innovation are being swept away. And make no mistake, humanities is as important to innovation as science. As an exercise with my Honors students, I ask them to imagine that a group of space aliens arrive and tell them they can have science or humanities but not both (or they will destroy both). Which would they keep? Most people think about the things that have made their lives healthier or allowed them to enjoy the marvels of modern engineering or computation. Interestingly, humanities came first in human history. It was from the humanities that science was developed. The arts were here long before science and are what made science possible. They are the very ground of business and STEM fields. You can make science out of the humanities, but the reverse is unlikely. It’s because we had to have the imagination to build, the capacity to envision new worlds, before we could create something as innovative as science — especially as it was developed in the 17th century. To imagine, dream, think critically and use our minds’ eyes to conceive of futures differently than we were handed are necessary for conjuring new worlds. I often surprise my students when I tell them there is more truth in fiction than in science. I’m being a little tongue-in-cheek, but I do believe it. Science cannot teach us values. They are derived from insights that we learn to understand from the great art, music and literature of the past. The exercise of the imagination is one of the most crucial skills for bringing novelty, invention and new ideas into the world. Reading great literature and listening to world music, poetry, art and other humanities have been vital to my life. The arts humankind has produced have taught me much about how to live more fully and think more critically, caringly and empathically. These skills taught me to think more deeply about the things I taught as a scientist and mathematician. Yes, I teach STEM subjects. My education includes a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Statistics from Brigham Young University, a master’s degree in biostatistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Ph.D. in biomathematics. I teach and do research in the biology department at BYU. But without my humanities leanings and studies, I would not have been a very good scientist. My humanities classes were a master class in creativity, envisioning new futures and how to think. It was the skills we learned in our humanities classes that bring creativity to all our endeavors. It is foolish to think that we can make progress in any field without the depth of imagination provided by our humanities classes. Yet that is the supposition that is spreading across our nation like a plague. And it is wrong. Literature classes are essential for science. Music for business. Art for engineering. Poetry for values. If you want STEM-only thinking for our businesses and sciences, then get ready to hire AI algorithms or robots. They can handle that aspect quite well. However, as of yet, only humans can think imaginatively. We can dream. We can recognize and embrace values. The world you see unfolding in this destruction of the humanities is nothing less than abandoning innovation, creativity and a better future. Lose the humanities, and you lose the very ground of science and business that depend on it. Destroy those, and you lose the creative future for which we all hope. Opinion: Let’s be thoughtful in our approach to higher education in Utah
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Michael Briscoe @michaelbriscoe.bsky.social · 25/07/2025
This sale is on just about everything including my new book, Stocks or Stakeholders. Use code DGBSUMMER25 brill.com/display/titl... @dgb-philosophy.bsky.social
brill.com
Stocks or Stakeholders: The Benefits of Considering Animal Interests
"Stocks or Stakeholders: The Benefits of Considering Animal Interests" published on 30 Jun 2025 by Brill.
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Michael Briscoe @michaelbriscoe.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
I think the carbon intensity of well-being is one of the most useful sustainability measures. What's more important than reducing environmental impact and improving human well-being? Being able to explore and interact with this measure helps people understand it. I've made a dashboard to do so -
public.tableau.com
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Michael Briscoe @michaelbriscoe.bsky.social · 18/07/2025
I was fortunate to work on this paper on illegal bird hunting in Fereydunkenar, Iran, with Seyed Ahmad Mir Mohamad Tabar, Maryam Sohrabi, and Meysam Farajpour, now published in Environmental Sociology doi.org/10.1080/2325...
doi.org
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Michael Briscoe @michaelbriscoe.bsky.social · 12/07/2025
My new article with Jennifer Givens and @jbfitzgerald.bsky.social was just published in Environmental Sociology. doi.org/10.1080/2325...
doi.org
Live long and prosper: an evaluation of the carbon intensity of subjective well-being in 99 countries, 2014–2021
The carbon intensity of well-being (CIWB), measured as a ratio of carbon emissions to life expectancy, is a sustainability measure that simultaneously captures environmental and human well-being. I...
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Michael Briscoe @michaelbriscoe.bsky.social · 07/07/2025
My book, Stocks or Stakeholders, was released last week as an ebook and this week in hardcover. I was happy to be part of Animals & Society Institute's book series with @degruyterbrill.bsky.social as their books and journals played a big role for me as a student and continue to as a scholar.
brill.com
Stocks or Stakeholders: The Benefits of Considering Animal Interests
"Stocks or Stakeholders: The Benefits of Considering Animal Interests" published on 30 Jun 2025 by Brill.
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Andrew Jorgenson @akjorgenson.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
New Paper Out Now in Social Problems: “Militarizing the Climate Crisis: An Analysis of the Short-Run and Long-Run Effects of Militarization on Nations’ Carbon Emissions, 1990–2020.” Brief summary in thread. academic.oup.com/socpro/advan... #climatecrisis #politicaleconomy #sociology #climatejustice
academic.oup.com
Militarizing the Climate Crisis: An Analysis of the Short-Run and Long-Run Effects of Militarization on Nations’ Carbon Emissions, 1990–2020
ABSTRACT. Building on scholarship in global political economy, historical sociology, and environmental sociology, as well as emerging streams of research o
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Michael Briscoe @michaelbriscoe.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
Lots of vaccine news these past two weeks. I wrote a short piece for @speciesunite.bsky.social on the bird flu vaccine, which had its funding terminated at the end of May, and why intensive animal agriculture means bird flu is likely to remain a threat to animal and human health.
speciesunite.com
The bird flu vaccine just lost US funding, do we still need it? — Species Unite
We have not yet experienced a bird flu pandemic, and there is little understanding of how dangerous this disease is.
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Michael Briscoe @michaelbriscoe.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
Survey research from Pew says people perceive rudeness to be on the rise since COVID-19. It very well may be, but I'd wager that a similar study pre-COVID would find the same. What do you think? newscsupueblo.org/2025/03/31/r...
newscsupueblo.org
Post-Pandemic Rudeness on the Rise: CSU Pueblo Experts Examine 5-Year Social Shift
Five years after COVID-19 social distancing began, nearly half of Americans report increased rudeness in public spaces. CSU Pueblo faculty Dr. Michael Briscoe and Dr. Richard Walker explore how pandem...
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Michael Briscoe @michaelbriscoe.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
This short piece draws from and highlights the work of @joshsbicca.bsky.social with CSU's Prison Agriculture Lab and Amy Fitzgerald's article in the Journal for Critical Animal Studies to explain how the prison and animal industrial complexes reinforce each other.
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Michael Briscoe @michaelbriscoe.bsky.social · 25/02/2025
I just published a new article in @springernature.com's Discover Animals that shows states with longer working time have lower animal shelter save rates. Another reason to shift away from our work-centric culture with policies like a 4 day workweek. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
link.springer.com
Working time and animal shelter save rates in the United States - Discover Animals
Working time reduction has been proposed as a policy to improve human well-being and reduce environmental harm, and research has confirmed the relationship between working hours and these outcomes. Th...
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Species Unite @speciesunite.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
The successful release is part of plans to restore a self-sustaining population of wolves in the region.
speciesunite.com
Fifteen gray wolves released in Colorado last week as state’s historic wolf reintroduction continues — Species Unite
The successful release is part of plans to restore a self-sustaining population of wolves in the region.
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Michael Briscoe @michaelbriscoe.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
I wrote another short article for Species Unite summarizing a few of the dangers posed by overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture. www.speciesunite.com/news-stories...
speciesunite.com
The dangers of antibiotic use in animal agriculture — Species Unite
In the United States, around 80% of antibiotics are sold for use in animal agriculture.
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American Sociological Association @asanews.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
Check out this TED Talk from ASA member Dana R. Fisher of American University -- the apocalyptic optimist @fisherdanar.bsky.social www.ted.com/talks/dana_r...
ted.com
How to be an "apocalyptic optimist"
Dana R. Fisher calls herself an "apocalyptic optimist" based on her research as a sociologist of large social movements. Her studies suggest that ever-increasing climate disasters will get people out ...
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Michael Briscoe @michaelbriscoe.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
Animals lost in ballot measures this past election, and animal issues contributed to Donald Trump's victory as people - including JD Vance - couldn't stop talking about the price of eggs. www.speciesunite.com/news-stories...
speciesunite.com
Here’s why animals lost in the 2024 US election — Species Unite
The 2024 election cycle will continue to be discussed and debated by pundits and social scientists for years to come, but the majority will overlook one group that lost big in this election: animals.
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Michael Briscoe @michaelbriscoe.bsky.social · 17/11/2024
Posting a bit late here but the new issue of Sociology of Development is out, including an article I coauthored led by Jared Fitzgerald and Jennifer Givens showing that a reduction in working time would be beneficial for humans and the environment. online.ucpress.edu/socdev/issue...
online.ucpress.edu
Volume 10 Issue 3 | Sociology of Development | University of California Press
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