By Shawn Henry, Assistant Professor in Musical Theatre Performance, MacEwan University
Acting students uncovered hidden elements in a musical score, while bringing a new Canadian musical to life on stage and in a live cast album recording.
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By Kawser Ahmed, Adjunct Professor, Natural Resource Institute (NRI), University of Manitoba
Canada is facing an attribution problem when it comes to extremist violence. The person who pulls the trigger may not be the person who has the motive; in some recent cases, there may be no single motive at all.
An emerging form of brokered violence involves local youth, encrypted communications, symbolic targets, recorded attacks, payment and multi-layered motives.
Put simply, this is motive-fragmented violence: the motive may be split…
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By Ben Cartlidge, Lecturer in Greek Culture and Classical Receptions, University of Liverpool
Warning: this article contains spoilers for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.
In Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, Odysseus (played by Matt Damon) is lost not only at sea, but within his own memories. On the island of the nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron), eating lotus flowers offers him relief from the trauma of Troy, allowing him to forget the war, his comrades – and eventually even his wife and son.
While it’s a point of focus in Nolan’s film, the episode of the so-called “Lotus eaters” is, in the scheme of Homer’s Odyssey,…
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By Monique Medeiros, Socio-Environmental Professor and Researcher, Université de Montpellier; Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA)
Brazil holds 12% of the world’s freshwater reserves and yet growing water insecurity reveals some of the country’s deepest sanitation inequalities, which are particularly relevant to Marajó, its largest coastal island.
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By Michael Boampong, Visiting Fellow, The Open University
Daniel Assamah, Researcher, Rutgers University - Newark
Melissa Mouthaan, Researcher, University of Cambridge
African governments are increasingly encouraging young people to work abroad. To address youth unemployment at home, for example, Ghana and Kenya have expanded labour mobility agreements with other countries. These include Spain, Qatar and Caribbean states.
Agreements with Gulf…
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By Hanne O. Mogensen, Associate Professor, University of Copenhagen
Julaina A. Obika, Senior Lecturer, Gulu University
Labour migration from Uganda to the Middle East has surged since the early 2000s, with many young women travelling for employment as domestic workers. Most of these jobs are in Oman, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
However, researchers, journalists…
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By Jake Brooker, Research Associate in the Department of Biology, Utrecht University
Zanna Clay, Professor in the Department of Psychology, Durham University
During an eight-month-long research trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zambia, we studied consolation: the way bonobos and chimpanzees comfort each other after conflicts and distress. But early on, we kept noticing something that didn’t quite fit.
The animals were exchanging a lot of friendly physical contact, embracing, touching and kissing, in competitive situations before any clear conflict or distress signals had broken out. We…
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By Jo Richardson, Professor of Housing and Social Inclusion, Nottingham Trent University
On his first day as prime minister, Andy Burnham promised to end rough sleeping, and pledged an additional £340 million to the cause. A positive aim for society, to be sure, but what he didn’t mention is that we’ve nearly solved this before. The question isn’t whether ending rough sleeping is desirable or achievable, it’s why previous attempts have collapsed.
On a single night in England last autumn, 4,793 people slept rough.…
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By Nick Brindle, Professor of Cell Signalling, University of Leicester
From microplastics clogging up our oceans to landfills leaching out dangerous chemicals, plastic waste is a serious and growing problem for human health and the environment. We need to recycle more, and crucially, recycle better.
Most plastic that is recycled is melted and remoulded into lower-quality products such as carpet fibres and garden planters, before eventually ending up in landfill or the incinerator. This is downcycling rather than proper recycling. Current methods don’t enable the recovery of the…
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By Zoe Stephenson, Associate Professor of Forensic Psychology, University of Birmingham
Ongoing problems in the criminal justice system in England and Wales, from overcrowding in prisons to court backlogs, have raised fundamental questions about how and why we punish people.
Advocates for a more rehabilitative, less punitive system often point to Scandinavian prisons as a model for how things could be done better.
My colleagues and I wanted to find out how beliefs about free will and crime…
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