By Timothy Krupnik, Director - CGIAR Scaling for Impact, CGIAR
The world’s food systems face real and urgent challenges. These include climate change, nutrition insecurity, food safety, and unequal access to markets. Research has produced practical solutions to each of these that could benefit hundreds of millions of people. Too few are moved into widespread use.
For years, the development sector has flattered itself with pilots.
A new tool works in a controlled pilot, a crop variety performs well in a field trial, and a digital advisory service shows promise in early testing. Evidence is written up, a case study or experiment is published,…
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By Ilias Trispiotis, Professor of Human Rights Law, University of Leeds
After eight years of successive governments pledging action, the UK government has finally published draft legislation to ban conversion practices in England and Wales. If enacted, it would create new criminal offences to protect people from attempts to change their sexual orientation or gender identity.
The proposals come as international momentum has grown. Earlier this year, the Council of Europe called on all member…
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By Imraan Valodia, Pro Vice-Chancellor, Climate, Sustainability and Inequality and Director, Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, University of the Witwatersrand
Adam Hanieh, Professor of Political Economy and Global Development, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, SOAS, University of London; Independent Social Research Foundation
The vulnerability of the world economy to oil prices was painfully visible in the first half of 2026 following the US and Israel war against Iran. The power of this commodity to upend economies has been apparent before. In his recently published book Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the…
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By Ruairidh Macleod, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, All Souls College, University of Oxford
Stephen Shennan, Professor of Theoretical Archaeology, UCL
Did a major epidemic of plague trigger a prolonged collapse in Europe’s population in late neolithic times – from around 5,600 to 4,000 years ago?
In Europe, the neolithic is part of the stone age, spanning the time from the introduction of agriculture by migrant groups from Anatolia, up until the bronze age.
Scientists now know that prehistoric plague infected…
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By Graham Finlayson, Professor of Biological Psychology, University of Leeds
Catherine Gibbons, Associate Professor, School of Psychology, University of Leeds
Strategies to reduce harmful thoughts about food that are persistent, intrusive and distressing can help people better cope with “food noise.”
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By Graham G. Dodds, Professor of Political Science, Concordia University
The U.S. Supreme Court – with its six conservative justices, three of whom were nominated by President Donald Trump – has recently reversed landmark decisions that have long guided American government and society. Over the last few years, the court has stripped federal protection of abortion rights, affirmative action, gun…
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By Stéphane Dion, Diplomate en résidence, Université de Montréal
Canada sells well; it opens doors. But it needs effective science diplomacy, based on a unified approach, bringing together governments, embassies, businesses and universities.
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By Harriet Fletcher, Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication, Anglia Ruskin University
The blonde archetype Monroe represented in the 1950s continues to evolve and expand as an ever-fascinating part of pop culture.
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By Irina Kuznetsova, Associate Professor in the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham
Many relatives have not seen each other for years because travelling around Ukraine is unsafe and trips abroad are expensive and, sometimes, restricted.
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By Enrique Gracia, Full Professor of Social Psychology, Universitat de València
Almost one in three women in the European Union has experienced physical violence, threats, or sexual violence since the age of 15. That is roughly 50 million women. These are the findings of the latest EU survey on gender-based violence, based on interviews with more than 114,000 women.
What makes this figure alarming is not only its scale, but its persistence. Ten years earlier, the first…
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