Features

‘I first realised I wanted to study History and only History when I was 7 and visited the Tower of London on a school...

‘As a child it was always the small things I would notice, an ice cream van humming in the playground, parked cars outside the...

"Since the Academy was founded, it has flourished, taking in students from the age of just 6 and delivering a range of classes in disciplines like acting, singing, dance and public speaking...When the pandemic began, Laura tells me how all their classes moved online, providing great solace to all the students of the Academy and allowing their creative education to continue."

"When she does reach pop music, she exerts an extreme amount of control and mastery over commonly used sonic structures. ‘Blank Space’ parodies both the narratives surrounding her and general pop structures. This is done by the marking out of the chorus and the excessive use of four chords that are commonly used throughout music. The basic structure of a song is tripartite: setup, build-up, and climax, often corresponding to the sections verse-chorus, verse-chorus, bridge-chorus.‘Shake It Off’, as basic as it may seem, is one of the most complex songs on the album ‘1989’. This is because each sub-setup, build-up, and climax have their own setup, build-up, and climax. We praise Homer for his ability to expand on his basic structural frameworks: to appreciate the artistry of the compositions, we should look at Taylor’s songs in the same way."

"Ultimately, clubs don’t seem to envision a world in which spiking does not happen, and despite their good intentions, this automatically places the onus on the individual to go out of their way to avoid being spiked, and go through the stress of reporting it when it does happen."

"The Classical world remains one that was intensely interested in gender."

"Silence is a hard stain to get out. Even when they reached their host countries, refugee women and asylum-seekers could not voice their trauma."

"When the sexist behaviours are mild but occur over a long period of time, the effect can also be damaging and yet an intense angry reaction is easily dismissed."

"Whether it be when going for a walk in the park or when doing the weekly supermarket shop, I felt a slight pang of fear whenever someone looked at me or approached me, scared of whatever prejudice my mere presence had ignited within them."

"Twitter has shown themselves to be better arbiters of truth than Oxford University."

I cannot speak for immigrants everywhere, but an enduring sense of anxiety looming in the back of my mind has been fears of a recalcitrant government revoking residency rights. What would follow would entail deportation to a country I feel rather distant from and would struggle to adjust to.

CW: Discussion of murder and infanticide, mentions of rape and alcoholism.  On the 24th October 2003, Kathleen Folbigg was sentenced to 40 years in prison...

When faced with an uncertain situation we tend to try whatever we can to feel like we have some control. And so, virtual retail therapy and comfort buying provided a sense of control at a time when we felt deprived of so much.

"This Western-imposed isolation of the Tigray Crisis exposes the asymmetric power structures and false promises of the ‘international’ age."

"Argentina is a country where the Catholic Church has historically held sway, and it forms part of a continent where swathes of women and young girls are ostracised, shunned and even imprisoned for wanting to end their pregnancy."

"The National Trust’s attempt to simply avoid censorship is perceived as a threat by those who are more interested in following the traditional heroic narrative of British imperialism, obscuring a reality of millions of deaths."

"The physical impact of the virus is hugely concerning. But the threat from the parallel pandemic of misinformation – which is jeopardising our collective capability to agree on basic facts – should not be underestimated."

"The vaccine and the coronavirus, inextricably interlinked, have become channels through which national political interests can be realised, a new, shiny tool in the arsenal and war-chests of governments to wield power and gain political capital."

"The persona that Max cultivates in these three videos is so overdone that it could be a cynical deconstruction of the ‘crazy’ stereotype, rather than a reinforcement of it. However, could the effect ultimately just be a reproduction of old misogynist tropes, changing nothing and possibly even fuelling the faithful old fire of patriarchy?"

"When the first Timorese began arriving in the UK in the early 1990s, they were essentially asylum seekers and yet, since they were on paper no different to a French, German, Swedish or Greek person moving to the UK, over the past thirty years they have received far less support than people fleeing violence from other countries."