Medieval skeletons reveal the lasting damage of childhood malnutrition – new study

| Insights & Views

Beneath churchyards in London and Lincolnshire lie the chemical echoes of famine, infection and survival preserved in the teeth of those who lived through some of the most catastrophic periods in English history. In a new...

Cricket’s great global divide: elite schools still shape the sport

| Insights & Views

If you were to walk through the corridors of some of the worlds leading cricket schools, you might hear the crack of leather on willow long before the bell for the end of the day rings. Across the cricketing world, elite...

The African activists who challenged colonial-era slavery in Lagos and the Gold Coast

| Insights & Views

When historians and the public think about the end of domestic slavery in west Africa, they often imagine colonial governors issuing decrees and missionaries working to end local traffic in enslaved people. Two of my...

South Africa’s electricity price is soaring. Why protests are often the only way for people to be heard

| Insights & Views

Millions of unemployed South Africans, many of whom survive on a Social Relief of Distress Grant government grant of R370 (about US$21) per month, are not able to pay for electricity and still afford food and shelter. In...

By building the world’s biggest dam, China hopes to control more than just its water supply

| Insights & Views

Chinas already vast infrastructure programme has entered a new phase as building work starts on the Motuo hydropower project. The dam will consist of five cascade hydropower stations arranged from upstream to downstream...

Your dog can read your mind – sort of

| Insights & Views

Dmytro Zinkevych/Shutterstock.com Your dog tilts its head when you cry, paces when youre stressed, and somehow appears at your side during your worst moments. Coincidence? Not even close. Thousands of years of co-evolution...

Why some underwater earthquakes cause tsunamis – and others, just little ripples

| Insights & Views

After a massive earthquake off the coast of Kamchatka, a peninsula in the far east of Russia, on July 30 2025, the world watched as the resultant tsunami spread from the epicentre and across the Pacific Ocean at the speed...