
Jan 04, 2024 04:39 am UTC| Insights & Views
If youve watched many period dramas, youve probably seen a mantua before. Originating in France in the 1670s, this womens garment consisted of lengths of t-shaped fabric that were pleated to create an unstiffened bodice...

Why Taylor Swift belongs on English literature degree courses
Jan 04, 2024 04:37 am UTC| Insights & Views
When I started my podcast, Studies in Taylor Swift, in the spring of 2021, I felt that I was simultaneously helping to invent, and trying to catch up to, the academic discipline of Taylor Swift studies. Though there wasnt...
Jan 01, 2024 12:09 pm UTC| Insights & Views
On the last night of Hanukkah 2023, a service was held in York on the site of the 12th-13th century Jewbury cemetery. The event was led by Rabbi Elisheva Salamo, the first rabbi to live in York for over 700...

Why some people don't trust science – and how to change their minds
Jan 01, 2024 12:09 pm UTC| Insights & Views Science
During the pandemic, a third of people in the UK reported that their trust in science had increased, we recently discovered. But 7% said that it had decreased. Why is there such variety of responses? For many years, it...

Jan 01, 2024 12:08 pm UTC| Insights & Views Technology
Technological innovation in the last couple of decades has brought fame and huge wealth to the likes of Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos. Often feted as geniuses, they are the faces behind the gadgets...
From Blue Pacific to Indo-Pacific: how politics and language define our ‘Indigenous ocean’
Jan 01, 2024 12:08 pm UTC| Insights & Views Politics
This is an edited extract from An Indigenous Ocean: Pacific Essays by Damon Salesa (Bridget Williams Books) In September 2017, at the 48th meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum, the political leaders of the Pacific...

A brief history of time – as told by a watchmaker
Dec 31, 2023 10:56 am UTC| Insights & Views
I once restored a 1950s timepiece for a customer who waxed lyrical about the intricacies of my work all the while refusing to pay. They baulked when I presented them with the bill wed previously agreed. Then they garbled...