By Gustav Cederlöf, Associate Professor of Environmental Social Science, University of Gothenburg
Sophie Blackburn, Lecturer in human geography, University of Reading
Hours before Hurricane Melissa roared towards Cuba’s second-largest city, Santiago de Cuba, the island’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, announced that 735,000 people had been evacuated – one in every 15 Cubans. The storm had already smashed into Jamaica, the most powerful to ever strike the island, causing landslides, power failures and deaths.
By the time Melissa hit Cuba, it was downgraded from a category 5 to a still incredibly dangerous category 3…
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By Eva Nieto McAvoy, Lecturer in Digital Media, King's College London
Jenny Kidd, Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff University
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being used to preserve the voices and stories of the dead. From text-based chatbots that mimic loved ones to voice avatars that let you “speak” with the deceased, a growing digital afterlife industry promises to make memory interactive, and, in some cases, eternal.
In our research, recently published in Memory, Mind & Media, we explored what…
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By Rita Goyal, Assistant Professor, Centre for Resilient Business and Society, Coventry University
Nada Kakabadse, Professor of Policy, Governance and Ethics, Henley Business School, University of Reading
Women are increasingly occupying top leadership roles across organisations, political parties and even nations. This may seem unequivocally like a good thing. Yet, many of these roles are undertaken in precarious circumstances, with inherent risks that might make them unattractive to men.
High-profile examples illustrate this pattern. Sarah Mullally, the incoming Archbishop of Canterbury and first female leader of the Church of…
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By Amy Cano Prentice, Senior Research Officer, ODI Global
The window of opportunity to limit global warming to 1.5°C is closing. Here’s how countries can be held to account with climate targets.
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By Stephen Gorard, Professor of Education and Public Policy, Durham University
A government-appointed review panel has just released its long-awaited report on England’s national curriculum. Its stated intention is to improve curriculum quality for all children, but particularly those “for whom the system is currently not working well,” such as children with special educational needs and those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
A new national curriculum will be published in 2027 and will come into force in September 2028. The review panel wanted…
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By Anna Turns, Senior Environment Editor, The Conversation
The psychological toll of hurricanes, floods and other extreme weather triggered by climate change is enormous – and often overlooked.
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By Eef Hogervorst, Professor of Biological Psychology, Loughborough University
Even modest amounts of walking – as few as 3,000 steps a day – may help protect against Alzheimer’s by reducing harmful tau proteins in the brain.
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By Patrick Diamond, Professor of Public Policy, Queen Mary University of London
There is increasingly bad blood between ministers and civil servants in the UK government. The trend has been apparent for at least a decade, with the mood between officials and ministers darkening during the Conservative administrations of Theresa May and Boris Johnson, fuelled by conflict over Brexit.
It was anticipated that the arrival of Keir Starmer’s government would mark a renaissance in civil service-ministerial relations. To symbolise a new era, Starmer instructed ministers to write welcome notes to their civil servants.
Yet, so far, there has been little visible…
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By Elias Michaut, PhD Researcher in Archaeology & Heritage, UCL
In the 1900s, a growing number of boys aged over 16 were sent to Les Douaires in Normandy. Rumours spread of frequent sexual interactions between detained boys.
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By Kevin Olsen, UKSA Mars Science Fellow, Department of Physics, University of Oxford
Elon Musk’s company SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ company Blue Origin have submitted simplified plans to Nasa designed to return US astronauts to the Moon’s surface.
These plans focus on Nasa’s Artemis III mission, which will see the first US astronauts walk on the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.
SpaceX was awarded the contract to build the lunar landing vehicle for Artemis III in April 2021, using a version of their
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