By Jenni Ramone, Associate Professor of Postcolonial and Global Literatures, Nottingham Trent University
Salman Rushdie’s new collection of short stories urgently recollects his literary legacy. It’s as though time is increasingly uncertain so the need to tell stories is great.
Its title, The Eleventh Hour, says as much, and the book succeeds Knife (2024), written about his attack on stage in 2022. The central story portrays students and writers in the libraries of
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By Steve Schifferes, Honorary Research Fellow, City Political Economy Research Centre, City St George's, University of London
The UK chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has made it clear that taxes will go up, and more cuts to welfare spending are on the horizon. The moves will be deeply unpopular and controversial – but in an extraordinary press conference ahead of the UK budget on November 26, Reeves made it clear that she believes both will be necessary.
In a highly unusual move, the chancellor used the press conference to set out her priorities for…
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By Mark Lorch, Professor of Science Communication and Chemistry, University of Hull
If you’ve sat in a nail salon recently, you may well have encountered TPO or trimethylbenzoyl diphenylphosphine oxide to give it its full chemical name. You won’t have seen the name on the bottle. But if you’ve had your gelled fingers under a blue-violet lamp, TPO could well have been part of the process.
TPO is what chemists call a photoinitiator – basically, a chemical that reacts when it’s hit with UV light. When your nails go under the lamp, TPO breaks apart and helps link tiny liquid molecules together, turning the polish into that solid, shiny, long-lasting gel layer.
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By Dhritiraj Sengupta, Visiting Researcher, University of Southampton
The lines of artificial coastal developments might be neat and straight but in reality, they are fragmenting ecosystems and disrupting hydrodynamics.
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By Samia Islam, Professor of Economics, Boise State University
Kelly Chen, Associate Professor of Economics, Boise State University
Two economists found links between the adoption of right-to-work laws and the opioid overdoses of working-age male teens and men.
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By Herkulaas MvE Combrink, Senior lecturer/ Co-Director, University of the Free State
Social Stress Indicator is invaluable for digital governance, crisis response, mental health monitoring, and platform design to track and respond to social stress.
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By Jacques Matthee, Senior Lecturer, University of the Free State
Grey Stopforth, Lecturer in Department of Mercantile Law at the Faculty of Law, University of the Free State
A South African court case made headlines for all the wrong reasons in January 2025. The legal team in Mavundla v MEC: Department of Co-Operative Government and Traditional Affairs KwaZulu-Natal and Others had relied on case law that simply didn’t exist. It had been generated by ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by OpenAI.
Only two of the nine case authorities the legal team submitted to the…
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By Thulani Andrew Chauke, Lecturer, University of South Africa
About 3.5 million South Africans aged 15-24 are disengaged from the formal economy and education system. In the first quarter of 2025, 37.1% of young people were not in employment, education, or training.
These alarming figures highlight an urgent need for youth development. Interventions such as skills and entrepreneurship development are needed to expertly guide young people towards…
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By Human Rights Watch
Click to expand Image Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK, June 20, 2022. © 2022 BCDS/Wikimedia Sheffield Hallam University in England terminated a project about Uyghur forced labor after Chinese state security officers reportedly interrogated a staff member in Beijing and a Chinese company named in a report filed a defamation lawsuit in the United Kingdom. The project was led by Laura Murphy, a professor of human rights and modern slavery at Sheffield Hallam.In February, the university removed reports from its website that Murphy and others had published at the Forced Labor…
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By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
The Australia Security Intelligence Organisation believes there is a “realistic possibility” a foreign government will try to assassinate a “perceived dissident” in Australia, ASIO’s boss Mike Burgess has revealed.
Delivering the 2025 Lowy lecture on Tuesday, Burgess said: “This threat is real.
"We believe there are at least three nations willing and capable of conducting lethal targeting here. It is entirely possible the regimes would try to hide their involvement by hiring criminal cut outs, as Iran did when directing its arson attacks.”
He stressed he was…
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