By David Hone, Senior Lecturer in Zoology, Queen Mary University of London
Museums are supposed to be havens for the collective cultural and scientific heritage of the planet, but specimens sometimes go missing.
Happily, they can also be rediscovered, as a new study shows, with the vertebrae of the legendary predatory shark known to the world under its old name of Megalodon (now properly Otodus megalodon) turning up on a museum shelf decades after they were seemingly lost.
The new paper takes another look at…
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By Caterina Mazzilli, Researcher on migration, ODI Global
The UK’s last six prime ministers have all promised to reduce migration – and now it is happening. The most recent figures show that net migration (the number of people coming to the UK minus the number leaving) was at 171,000 in 2025. This is the lowest point since 2012.
Falling migration may be a political win in a world where both the right and left see it as a top national concern and promise tough measures to “secure borders”. But it…
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By Harsh Trivedi, Teaching Associate French, School of Languages, Arts and Societies., University of Sheffield
I first picked up The Iliad because the cloth-bound red cover, stamped with gold flames, was simply gorgeous. So much for not judging a book by its cover. The Penguin Classics edition sat on my shelf for months before I finally opened it. For years, the text had felt inaccessible, surrounded by a kind of academic gate-keeping that suggested it belonged more to specialists than to ordinary readers.
What I discovered, reading Peter Jones’s 2003 revision of E.V. Rieu’s translation, was something entirely different. The…
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By Adam Taylor, Professor of Anatomy, Lancaster University
Michelle Swainson, Lecturer in Physiology, Lancaster University
Unregulated peptides sold for muscle gain and anti-ageing carry serious risks, and the evidence suggests women face the greater danger.
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By Christian Knoblauch, Senior Lecturer in Egyptology, Swansea University
The exhibition is the product of the British Museum in Your Classroom programme where schools get access to the institution’s collection
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By Nicolas Decat, Doctorant, Sorbonne Université
Delphine Oudiette, Chercheure en neurosciences cognitives, Inserm
Dream-like states are not confined to sleep: the brain is able, very surprisingly, to produce the same mental experience independently of our state of vigilance.
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By Hannah Fair, Lecturer in Human Geography, University of Southampton
Pest control means dealing with the kinds of animals many of us try our best to avoid. But catching rats and battling cockroaches turns out to be very satisfying work.
My research reveals that this surprising level of job satisfaction comes from the variety, challenge and connection pest controllers experience. They also told me their work had a positive effect on people’s lives.
I discovered…
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By Joshua Brahinsky, Researcher, Department of Transcultural Psychiatry, McGill University
Jonas Mago, PhD student, McGill University
Michael Lifshitz, Assistant Professor of Social & Transcultural Psychiatry, McGill University
Do the world’s religions and contemplative traditions send people to the same place – compassion, bliss, awe, a sense of God, awareness, or the universe?
We conducted a study that asked a smaller version of this question.
As scientists with a research focus on brain science and spirituality, we ask whether people from very different spiritual traditions – Buddhism and Christian Pentecostalism…
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By Marloes Janson, Professor of West African Anthropology, SOAS, University of London
Nigeria’s economic hub, Lagos, ranks among the fastest-growing cities in the world. Its huge population – estimated at around 20 million – and its rapid urbanisation contribute to a sense of life where survival hinges…
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By Artur Nadiiev, Research Associate, School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham
There have long been tensions, political, economic and cultural, between Poland and Ukraine. But that hasn’t prevented Poland from being the biggest supporter of its neighbour, taking in millions of Ukrainians fleeing the war, about 1 million of whom have remained.
And in 2023, Poland conferred its highest honour, the Order of the White Eagle, on Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky. At the time, then-president Andrzej Duda told the Ukrainian president: “It is difficult to hide the tears of emotion…
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