By Alberto Caracciolo, Postdoctoral researcher, University of Iceland
Maurizio Petrelli, Professor of Igneous Petrology, Università degli Studi di Perugia
Teresa Ubide, ARC Future Fellow and Associate Professor in Igneous Petrology/Volcanology, The University of Queensland
By observing the tree-ring-like growth records present in volcanic crystals, geologists are able to track volcanic activity and reconstruct the steps leading up to eruptions.
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By Kinda Ibrahim, Associate Professor, Primary Care, University of Southampton
Around 8 million people in the UK take five or more medications each day (known as polypharmacy), with a further 2 million people taking ten or more prescription drugs daily. The majority of people who take multiple medications each day are aged over 65.
Taking multiple prescription drugs is not necessarily a problem. But it can become problematic when a
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By Gemma Ware, Head of Audio, The Conversation UK, The Conversation
AI expert Nick Jennings speaks to The Conversation Weekly podcast about calls for an slowdown in the development of frontier AI models.
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By Jacopo Gnisci, Lecturer in Art and Visual Cultures of the Global South, UCL
A high-stakes cultural dispute has erupted over the promoted sale of an important 18th-century Ethiopian manuscript at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.
The Magdala Gospel is a large manuscript, probably dating to the second half of the 18th century. It measures approximately 360 x 290 x 100mm and contains the Gospel of Luke and most of the Gospel of John.
The manuscript is written in Ge’ez or ancient Ethiopic, the language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. It would have originally been…
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By Martin Waehlisch, Associate Professor, University of Birmingham
Stefan Wolff, Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham
UN secretary-general, António Guterres, used his final address to the general assembly to recast the world’s crises as a single problem. War, inequality, the climate emergency and artificial intelligence, he argued, are not separate crises but chapters of the same story. That story, as he told it, is the story of power: who has it, who is denied it, how it is used and how it is changing.
Guterres identified three shifts. Among states, new centres of economic, political and technological influence have emerged.…
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By Eef Hogervorst, Professor of Biological Psychology, Loughborough University
A study has raised a question that many women would understandably want answered: could hormone replacement therapy (HRT) protect against dementia? The research found that women who had used HRT were less likely to receive a dementia diagnosis during follow-up, particularly if they had undergone surgery involving their reproductive organs. But the results do not establish that HRT caused the difference.
The researchers analysed data from 183,450 postmenopausal women in the
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By Frida Mannerfelt, Associate Professor in Practical Theology, Centre for Theology and Religious Studies, Lund University
Alexander Maurits, Associate Professor of Church History, Centre for Theology and Religious Studies, Lund University
When Sarah Mullally was confirmed as the 106th archbishop of Canterbury, this meant a woman would become spiritual leader of the Church of England and worldwide Anglican communion for the first time in history. For many, it has been a welcome shift that recognises the importance of female leadership at all levels – both ecclesiastical and secular.
But some within the Church took issue with Mullally’s accession. For example, the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, a network of conservative Anglican churches across Africa and Asia, issued a…
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By Weronika Osmolska, PhD Candidate, School of Earth, Environment and Sustainability, University of Leeds
Across the northern hemisphere, cold spells are becoming milder as the temperatures rise, with their intensity decreasing by 0.3°C per decade.
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By Joseph Janes, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Swansea University
When someone buys a drug illegally, they cannot be sure exactly what is in it.
More than one in three samples submitted to the Welsh Emerging Drug Identification Service (Wedinos) where the buyer had said what substance they believed they had purchased, contained something other than what they expected. Between April 2025 and March 2026, 36.6%…
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By Henrietta Moore, Founder & Director of the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity, UCL
In December, the UK will take over the G20 presidency from the United States. The world is a remarkably different place since the UK last hosted the G20 in 2009. Back then, it led a collective response to the 2008 financial crash, mobilising more than US$1 trillion (£740 billion) to rebuild economies across the world.
In 2027, it will arguably face an even stiffer challenge – leading cooperation when the major powers in the world no longer see eye-to-eye on the nature of problems, let alone the pathway to solutions.
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