By Kiffer George Card, Assistant Professor in Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University
Winter shifts people indoors and inward. While this may reduce incidental social contact, connection can be maintained through deliberate routines and low-threshold forms of engagement.
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By Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate Editor, The Conversation
This article was first published in The Conversation UK’s World Affairs Briefing email. Sign up to receive weekly analysis of the latest developments in international relations, direct to your inbox.
The US government’s reaction to the killing of Alex Pretti last weekend – and of Renée Good a fortnight earlier – was a grim reminder of George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It…
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By Laura
Kolwezi in the Lualaba Province of the southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where tensions are high between artisanal miners and industrial companies, holds 70 percent of the world’s cobalt reserves.
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By Human Rights Watch
Click to expand Image Rohingya refugees walk through rice fields after crossing the border from Myanmar into Palang Khali, Bangladesh, October 19, 2017. © 2017 Jorge Silva/Reuters On January 29, the three-week hearings on the merits of Gambia’s genocide case against Myanmar before the International Court of Justice came to a close. The case, filed in 2019, alleges that Myanmar’s atrocities against ethnic Rohingya in 2016 and 2017 violate the Genocide Convention of 1948.During the hearings, Gambia argued that the extreme brutality, pervasive sexual violence, targeting of…
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By Aline Soterroni, Pesquisadora associada do Departamento de Biologia, University of Oxford
In light of the climate crisis and biodiversity loss, voluntary commitments between companies, governments and civil society to avoid purchasing soy from deforested areas in the Amazon should be expanded
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By Martina van Heerden, Senior Lecturer in English for Educational Development, University of the Western Cape
Sharita Bharuthram, Associate Professor, University of the Western Cape
Students’ well-being in higher education has been a growing concern globally since the coronavirus pandemic, which disrupted learning and lives generally.
Well-being has been described as “the combination of feeling good and functioning well; experiencing…
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By Caroline Southey, Founding Editor, Africa, The Conversation
Lyrr Thurston, Copy Editor, The Conversation
How much we pay for the debt that we incur determines a great deal in our lives. This is true of countries too. In the world of sovereign debt – money raised or borrowed by governments – the cost of debt is dependent on, among other factors, how rating agencies “grade” a country.
It’s a sensitive issue. Three agencies dominate the rating business. A criticism often meted out is that they judge African countries more harshly than others, which pushes up borrowing rates. These tensions…
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By Nadine Biehler, Researcher, German Institute for International and Security Affairs
Emma Landmesser, Research Assistant, German Institute for International and Security Affairs
Rebecca Majewski, Information and Data Manager, German Institute for International and Security Affairs
Images of rubber dinghies overcrowded with refugees heading for Europe and narratives about mistreatment and exploitation of migrants on unsafe migration routes have come to dominate how African migration is perceived in European public and policy debates.
They suggest…
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By Gibson Ncube, Senior Lecturer, Stellenbosch University
The film Rafiki is a charming love story that plays out in urban Kenya. It follows two teenage girls whose close friendship slowly turns into first love. Directed by rising filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu, it was celebrated as groundbreaking by critics and at festivals when it was released in 2018. But back home in Kenya, where homosexuality is criminal, the film was banned.
On 23 January 2026, after a lengthy…
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By Gemma Ware, Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation
Amin Naeni, an expert on digital authoritarianism, tracks how Iran built the capability to shutdown the internet. Listen on The Conversation Weekly podcast.
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