By James Horncastle, Assistant Professor and Edward and Emily McWhinney Professor in International Relations, Simon Fraser University
As the Donald Trump administration in the United States continues to threaten Canadian sovereignty — including a recent suggestion that Alberta could secede from Canada and join the U.S. — Canadians, like many others in the world, finds themselves in a period of extreme uncertainty.
Trump’s continued violations of the…
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By Aaron Thierry, PhD Candidate, Social Science, Cardiff University
In Brownsville, Texas, three members of the Galvan family died after a malfunctioning air conditioner left them exposed to extreme heat. Aged between 60 and 82, all three had chronic health conditions, including diabetes and heart disease. This makes it harder for the body to regulate temperature and increases vulnerability to heat stress.
Nobody arrived to check on them until days after they had died in their apartment in 2024. This isolation also
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By Steve Waters, Professor of scriptwriting and playwright, University of East Anglia
“One must have a heart of stone not to read about the death of little Nell without laughing” was Oscar Wilde’s notorious response to the emotional onslaught of Charles Dickens’s 1841 novel, The Old Curiosity Shop. Having watched two films in two weeks about the death of a child, it offers a clue as to why I cried in only one.
In her journals, the novelist Helen…
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By Rachael Jolley, Environment Editor, The Conversation
This roundup of The Conversation’s climate coverage was first published in our award-winning weekly climate action newsletter, Imagine.
“Iran is experiencing not one environmental crisis but the convergence of several: water shortages, land subsidence, air pollution and energy failure. All added together, life is a struggle for survival.”
This is the situation inside Iran as described by Nima Shokri, an environmental engineer who works on global challenges related to the environment. Shokri highlights a rarely discussed factor in relation to this year’s massive…
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By Anthony Booker, Reader in Ethnopharmacology, University of Westminster
Some of the best-known medicines come from poisonous plants. The chemotherapy drug taxol comes from the yew tree, morphine from the opium poppy and digoxin from the foxglove. These plants can have lethal toxicity if taken in their raw form. Digoxin is prescribed to treat angina at doses a thousand times more dilute than most prescription medications, highlighting the plant’s extreme potency.
Many people consider herbal medicines a safe alternative to pharmaceuticals. And it’s true that many herbal medicines…
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By Darío Moreno-Agostino, Principal Research Fellow in Population Mental Health, UCL
It’s been almost five years since the end of the COVID lockdowns. Yet the world is still continuing to learn about how mental health changed during – and after – this unprecedented time.
My colleagues and I wanted to understand how mental health had changed across the life course of baby boomers and generation X – including during and beyond the pandemic.
We also wanted to understand if (and how) gender and socioeconomic inequalities had changed throughout these periods. Previous research we’d conducted had shown that large, existing gender inequalities in mental ill-health…
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By Vanessa Corcoran, Adjunct Professor of History, Georgetown University
Medieval texts and frescoes show how Francis of Assisi’s legends formed – and why his call to poverty and care for creation still resonates.
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By C. Clare Strange, Assistant Research Professor of Criminology and Justice Studies, Drexel University
“The Real Housewives” reality TV series, which showcases the lives of a rotating cast of wealthy women in 11 cities in the U.S. and places in several other countries, is famous for its characters’ over-the-top drama and messy personal antics.
But there are also useful lessons that the characters’ lives and frequent run-ins with the law offer to casual observers and criminology students alike.
I developed the idea for The Real Housewives of Criminology…
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By Zeb Rocklin, Associate Professor of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology
Here’s why some people believe we’re living in a computer simulation of reality – like a giant video game in which we’re all the characters.
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By Amy Pope, Principal Lecturer of Physics and Astronomy, Clemson University
During the 2026 Winter Olympics, athletes will leap off ramps, slide across ice and spin through the air. These performances will look different to my students who have studied physics through sports. These feats will be something the students have already measured, modeled or felt. As a physicist, I help my students see the games as a place where classroom lessons come to life.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how abstract ideas such as kinematics, forces, energy, momentum…
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