By Lucyl Harrison, PhD Candidate, School of Humanities, University of Hull
The year is 1926. Queen Elizabeth II is christened. Wage cuts and increased working hours for coal miners precipitate a general strike of workers. A.A. Milne publishes Winnie-the-Pooh. The League of Nations accepts Germany as the sixth permanent member on the council deeming it a “peace-loving country”.
It is also the year that Virginia Woolf published her essay, On Being Ill, in…
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By Carolina Are, LSE Fellow in Interdisciplinary Social Science, London School of Economics and Political Science
My social media feed has been full of Brooklyn Beckham memes. That is, since January 19, when David and Victoria Beckham’s eldest son posted a series of Instagram stories criticising his parents, their curated public personas and what he described as long-standing slights towards him and his wife, actress Nicola Peltz.
As a researcher of online harms and freedom of speech, I’m less interested in whether the memes are funny than in what Brooklyn Beckham versus brand Beckham tells us about how social…
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By Alex Dryden, PhD Candidate in Economics, SOAS, University of London
When a Danish pension fund recently announced it would sell its US$100 million (£74 million) holding of US government bonds, the move was tiny in financial terms – just a drop in a US$30 trillion ocean. But it touched on a much bigger issue. Foreign investors now hold around one-third of all US government debt, amounting to roughly US$9.5 trillion.
Of these foreign holdings, Europe has US$3.6 trillion,…
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By Catherine Meads, Professor of Health, Anglia Ruskin University
New census-linked data reveals a stark UK health inequality: sexual minority people die younger and at higher rates than heterosexual people.
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By Sophus zu Ermgassen, Postdoctoral Researcher, Nature Finance, University of Oxford
Global leaders have committed to halting and reversing the ongoing degradation of nature within the next few decades. But with tight public budgets, governments around the world are looking towards nature markets as one way to attract more private investment into nature.
Nature markets are systems for measuring an ecological improvement on some land, then creating a representation of that improvement as a credit, which can then be bought and sold. In theory, they allow governments to attract more private…
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By Juan Alfonso Revenga Frauca, Profesor asociado de nutrición humana y dietética, Universidad San Jorge
José Miguel Soriano del Castillo, Catedrático de Nutrición y Bromatología del Departamento de Medicina Preventiva y Salud Pública, Universitat de València
The new Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) for 2025-2030 have caused significant controversy, with polarised opinions between their supporters and detractors. They are disruptive, to say the least, both in how they are presented and the recommendations they make.
But little has been said about the fact that, for the first time since 1980, after nine editions in 45 years, the standard scientific procedure for preparing them has been completely bypassed.
The most striking thing about the 2025-2030 GDAs is their graphic…
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By Michael von Massow, Professor, Food Economics, University of Guelph
The new Grocery Code sets guidelines for retailers and suppliers, introduces a formal dispute resolution mechanism and may indirectly benefit consumers.
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By Mark Shanahan, Associate Professor of Political Engagement, University of Surrey
Alex Pretti’s death has been met with global outrage. Mark Shanahan addresses the key issues and considers what it means for Trump.
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By Julie Ayre, Post Doctoral Research Fellow, Sydney Health Literacy Lab, University of Sydney
Adam Dunn, Professor of Biomedical Informatics, University of Sydney
Kirsten McCaffery, NHMRC Principal Research Fellow, Sydney School of Health, University of Sydney
OpenAI’s new dedicated ‘health and wellness’ tool allows users to link medical records to chat. But it hasn’t been independently tested and will still make mistakes.
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By Fay Anderson, Associate Professor of Journalism Studies, Monash University
On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, it’s timely to reflect on how the liberation of the camps was reported at the time – and how it changed journalism.
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