How polarised is European politics? Here’s how your generation, gender and where you live affect what you believe
Protesters march through the Youngstorget public square in Oslo, Norway, in 2025. borisk.photos / Shutterstock Across Europe, the political debate has rarely looked more polarised. Media narratives frequently describe societies as becoming sharply divided between younger progressive and older conservative generations. A growing body of research also suggests that political attitudes are becoming more divided […]
What protects teachers from burnout: relationships, good leadership and a system that supports them
Jacob Lund/Shutterstock The summer break offers teachers something in short supply during term time: downtime. Our research explores the factors important for teachers’ wellbeing. For many, summer is an essential opportunity to recover from the exhaustion accumulated across the year. There is time to sleep properly, reconnect with family and step away from the constant […]
‘You’re a 4 out of 10’: the troubling rise of AI appearance ratings
New Africa/Shutterstock A teenager joins an online video chat. Within seconds, artificial intelligence analyses their face and gives them a score out of ten for “attractiveness”. They are compared in real time with another user who scores higher and is declared the winner. The game is live-streamed, and the audience ridicule the loser in the […]
Ukraine assault on Russian retail giant Wildberries brings war home to consumers and retailers
Ukrainian drones are regularly striking warehouses belonging to Wildberries – Russia’s largest online marketplace, often described as its answer to Amazon. This is the latest front in a campaign that has made the economic costs of the war harder for ordinary Russians to ignore. Earlier this summer, strikes on oil refineries and fuel infrastructure contributed […]
One Song: Kadir Karababa’s exhibition uses music to reimagine home
Home is often imagined as a physical structure or a fixed point on a map, something stable that we can locate and return to. Yet our earliest experiences of home are rarely so concrete. They are shaped by memory, sensation and emotion, held in fragments of sound, smell, language and feeling. One Song, a socially […]
As severe drought hits, the UK’s food system faces crisis – here’s how to change that
Paul Maguire/Shutterstock The UK is in the grip of a severe drought. England and Wales received only 9-10% of their normal rainfall in July, and for England it was the driest July since records began in 1836. A fifth heatwave has just been forecast. This is the shape of things to come and is what […]
How a cosmic coincidence gives Earth its ‘perfect’ solar eclipses
A solar eclipse is a rare, visually striking phenomenon. The Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, temporarily hiding our star – a geometrical alignment spanning millions of miles. A partial solar eclipse occurs when the Moon doesn’t fully block the Sun, resulting in a gentle dimming of the sky. A total solar eclipse, however, […]
Having a baby throws time management into chaos – here are five important lessons for new parents
Anna Grant/Shutterstock Parents are told to treasure every moment: “It goes by in the blink of an eye!” Yet for many, the early months of parenthood do not feel fast so much as relentless: a blur of feedings, worries and appointments in which time seems to belong to everyone but the parents themselves. How do […]
Morning-after pill now free at your local pharmacy – what you need to know
KL-Pharma/Shutterstock.com Almost 305,000 doses of the morning-after pill were provided free of charge in England’s high street pharmacies in the first five months of the new contraception service, according to new NHS data (October 2025 to March 2026). This figure marks one of the biggest changes in access to emergency contraception in decades, putting a […]
What Andy Burnham means for the arts
Beyond the rapid turnover of prime ministers in recent years (seven in the last 15 years), there’s been an even higher churn in other roles, notably that of culture secretary – 12 in the same period, and 18 since the post was first introduced in 1997. Of these, Andy Burnham is the first to achieve […]