‘I was left with nothing.’ Why apprentices are being pushed into the informal economy

| Insights & Views

In the UK, apprenticeships and training schemes are often seen as a gateway to skilled careers, providing invaluable hands-on training for service trade professions as varied as plumbing, engineering, accounting and...

From a colonial hill town to Idris Elba’s island masterplan, what can two Sierra Leone developments a century apart tell us about urban elitism?

| Insights & Views

Sierra Leones capital, Freetown, is celebrated as a city founded to resettle freed slaves in the 1790s. Over the following century, it became a truly cosmopolitan port city as people from across western Africa and the...

What is locked-in syndrome? The extraordinary stories that help us understand this rare condition

| Insights & Views

Locked-in syndrome is a rare phenomenon which makes conscious people almost entirely unable to move and communicate. It is estimated there are fewer than 1,000 existing cases in the US, and between 50 and 300 in the UK. In...

Wallace and Gromit: you’d never know it wasn’t Peter Sallis in Vengeance Most Fowl thanks to expert vocal mimicry

| Insights & Views

The release of a new Wallace and Gromit film has always been much anticipated in our house, and this year was no different. Like many others, we snuggled under the blankets after a full Christmas day (in every sense),...

UK foreign policy: the top five priorities for 2025

| Insights & Views

The UKs new government has now had six months to settle in to office. And by the general standards of new governments, Keir Starmers was well prepared in terms of foreign policy. Once in office, the government hit the...

Afghanistan shows what investing in women’s education – or divesting – can do to an economy

| Insights & Views

When the Taliban fell from power in Afghanistan in 2001, women were once again allowed to go to school after being banned since 1996. I, along with World Bank education expert Raja Bentaouet Kattan and American University...

Can science be both open and secure? Nations grapple with tightening research security as China’s dominance grows

| Insights & Views

Amid heightened tensions between the United States and China, the two countries signed a bilateral science and technology agreement on Dec. 13, 2024. The event was billed as a renewal of a 45-year-old pact to encourage...