By Nathan Murray, Assistant Professor, Department of English and History, Algoma University
Elisa Tersigni, Senior Research Associate, University of Toronto
Imagine two identical spoons. One is hand-wrought from silver by a skilled metalworker. The other, a base-metal facsimile, was mass-produced by a machine. Which would you value more? Most of us would say the handmade spoon.
In 1899, more than a century ago, American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen used this very example to explain how we assign value, or his theory of conspicuous consumption, in which he contended that bourgeois consumption was driven…
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By Olga Dodd, Senior Lecturer in Finance, Auckland University of Technology
Adrian Fernandez-Perez, Assistant Professor in Finance, University College Dublin
NZ today stands as the only International Energy Agency member whose public oil reserves lie entirely offshore. How can it now rebuild its domestic fuel resilience?
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By Vivek Krishnamurthy, Associate Professor of Law, University of Colorado Boulder
Iran’s decision to levy tolls on ships passing through the crucial choke hold has an unlikely connection to the site of Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet.’
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By Amin Saikal, Emeritus Professor of Middle Eastern Studies, Australian National University; The University of Western Australia; Victoria University
Amitav Acharya, Distinguished Professor of International Relations, American University
At every difficult moment in their long history, the Persian people have fought to preserve what is theirs. The Trump administration may have underestimated this.
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By Thea van de Mortel, Professor Emerita, Nursing, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Griffith University
Is it the flu, COVID or something else? That old rapid antigen test sitting in your cupboard may tell you. But this is what you need to know.
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By Marie-Claire Beaulieu, Associate Professor of Classical Studies, Tufts University
Anna Jarvis founded Mother’s Day in 1908 to honor women’s collective work for peace. Today, the celebration is largely detached from its political origins.
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By Renske Jongen, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Faculty of Science, University of Sydney
Ezequiel M. Marzinelli, Associate Professor, Faculty of Science, University of Sydney
Paul Gribben, Professor, School of Biological, Earth & Environmental Sciences, UNSW Sydney
On the western side of Lake Macquarie in New South Wales, Australia, sits Myuna Bay, a quiet bay with meadows of seagrass waving beneath the water. The most common marine plant species you find there is Zostera muelleri. It has long ribbon-like leaves that grow from stems (called rhizomes) buried beneath the sediment and provides important shelter for small fish, shrimp and crabs.
Although Myuna Bay looks quite normal, it is actually a bit unusual. For decades, the nearby Eraring power station released…
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By Hannah Kirk, Senior Lecturer in Developmental Psychology, Monash University
Sashka Samarawickrama, PhD Candidate (Clinical Psychology), Monash University
Even quite young children are watching, thinking and feeling things about the future of the environment. Those feelings deserve to be taken seriously.
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By Ianto Ware, Honorary Associate, Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney
Between 2011 and 2021, the number of professional artists, writers, musicians and performers living in Greater Sydney shrank by 17% – even as overall employment increased by 20%.
This didn’t happen anywhere else in Australia. On the contrary, most of the other capital cities had growth of artists above the rate of employment.
Among Sydney’s policy makers and art sector, there’s an entrenched belief the decline is specific to the inner city, with increasingly diverse artistic communities migrating out to the western suburbs.
But the data consistently shows the…
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By Niusha Shafiabady, Professor in Computational Intelligence, Australian Catholic University
Winter is coming, and the increased cost of living might have you worried about higher energy bills.
Most winter energy advice focuses on heaters and insulation but energy savings often come from places people rarely check. Small and inexpensive changes can reduce heat loss more than many standard…
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