UCL

How our lab is helping develop an Alzheimer’s test that can be done at home

2026-02-04T13:53:27Z

These tests could be done at home, making Alzheimer's diagnosis more accessible. nito/ Shutterstock

Imagine diagnosing one of the most challenging neurological diseases with just a quick finger-prick, a few drops of blood and a test sent in the post. This may sound like science fiction, but we are hoping our research could soon help it become a reality.

Our team at the UK Dementia Research Institute’s Biomarker Factory at UCL are part of the global effort working to develop and validate a test for Alzheimer’s disease. We’re currently working to overcome the various technical challenges facing these tests so that this test can one day soon be available to the broader public.

What do finger-prick tests look for?

At their core, these finger-prick tests are designed to detect specific biomarkers.
Biomarkers are biological molecules found in the blood which indicate signs of disease. In the case of Alzheimer’s disease, the brain gradually accumulates abnormal proteins. These proteins form structures such as amyloid plaques and tau tangles which damage the brain’s neural networks. They’re also involved in brain inflammation.

These abnormal proteins can be detected in the brain, cerebrospinal fluid and, importantly, the blood years before symptoms arise.

Recently, research has also shown these biomarkers can be measured in dried blood samples from a simple finger-prick. A study focusing on 337 people showed that these dried blood samples can reliably detect Alzheimer’s-related changes in biomarkers with a diagnostic accuracy of around 86% compared to conventional methods.

Once refined and validated, these tests could aid with early detection, screening at-risk people, tracking disease progression or even evaluating the effectiveness of emerging treatments.

What are the shortcomings of current diagnostic tools?

In addition to cognitive tests (which check for cognitive decline and memory problems), there are currently two robust approaches for diagnosing signs of Alzheimer’s in the brain.

The first is PET imaging. These scans detect disease characteristics using radioactive tracers which light up areas of the brain where tangles and plaques may be present. However, PET scans are expensive, use radioactivity and require specialist facilities.

The second method uses a spinal tap to extract cerebrospinal fluid (the clear, colourless liquid that protects the brain and extracts waste). This looks for the same biomarkers as finger-prick tests. However, this method is invasive and can be painful and stressful to patients. Some people also may not be eligible to have it done.

PET scans are expensive and require specialist facilities. Gorodenkoff/ Shutterstock

Cognitive tests also have shortcomings. As a result, people whose first language isn’t the one in which the test is being administered, or those who have other health conditions that also cause cognitive problems, may be misdiagnosed.

And, while cognitive testing can give an idea about a potential issue, these tests alone can’t tell us what specific condition is causing symptoms. This can also lead to misdiagnosis.

Even traditional blood tests done in a clinic have limitations. These tests require immediate processing (or refrigeration) and careful handling to avoid influencing biomarker levels. This makes traditional blood tests impractical for large-scale, population-level screening – particularly in underserved or rural regions.

By contrast, the finger-prick test we’re developing can be done at home and posted to a lab without refrigeration.

What are we working on in the lab?

Our lab is currently working to improve the sensitivity, reliability and real-world usability of these finger-prick tests.

We’re currently experimenting with different, sensitive biomarker detection methods – using just tiny volumes of blood collected from either the finger or the vein and seeing how these compare.

Alongside tau and amyloid, we’re also testing other proteins associated with Alzheimer’s and various neurodegenerative disorders – such as Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis.

Our hope with these tests is not only to identify Alzheimer’s disease, but to catch it before irreversible brain damage occurs. This would open a window for early intervention.

With novel therapies emerging that may slow the disease, early identification is critical.

What challenges have we encountered?

Designing these tests hasn’t been straightforward. We’ve encountered a few major hurdles along the way.

The first hurdle we encountered had to do with the biomarkers themselves.

Alzheimer’s biomarker levels are often much lower in the blood than they are in cerebrospinal fluid. So the technological methods needed to measure them accurately had to be very sensitive.

Another obstacle we encountered related to sample quality. Without refrigeration, the proteins can degrade – giving inaccurate readings and potentially misdiagnoses. So we’re currently working to develop collection and mailing methods that ensure these dried blood proteins are stable and don’t degrade before testing.

Data interpretation has also been a challenge. Although these tests are accurate for the majority of cases, we still need to figure out how to interpret outliers – such as participants who have high biomarker levels without other signs of the disease, and those who have low biomarker levels with significant signs of the disease. So even when we detect elevated biomarkers, interpreting what that means for a person’s Alzheimer’s risk is complex.

Alzheimer’s biomarkers are also not exclusive to the disease. Similar biomarkers can occur in other neurological conditions such as vascular dementia, multiple sclerosis, and even in otherwise asymptomatic people or even healthy newborns.

We’ve since refined our tests so they’re more sensitive and have sourced and are currently comparing devices that make at-home sample collection easier. These solutions are steadily improving test reliability.

What could our work mean for Alzheimer’s diagnosis?

It’s important to emphasise that these tests are still at least a few years away from routine use. But, if validated, finger-prick tests could revolutionise Alzheimer’s diagnosis in several ways.

It would allow for earlier detection of the disease and broaden access for patients. It would also enable larger, more diverse population studies to be conducted – reducing historical gaps in Alzheimer’s research and improving our understanding of the disease globally.

The idea of diagnosing Alzheimer’s with a quick, finger-prick test marks a profound shift in how we could approach neurodegenerative diseases. Moving beyond invasive, costly procedures toward accessible, patient-friendly diagnostics carries enormous potential — for patients, their families and future research.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

How mental health has changed in baby boomers and gen X across their entire adulthoods

2026-02-02T12:55:43Z

The lifelong mental health impact of socioeconomic inequalities were even larger in women from the Baby Boomer generation. PerfectWave/ Shutterstock

It’s been almost five years since the end of the COVID lockdowns. Yet the world is still continuing to learn about how mental health changed during – and after – this unprecedented time.

My colleagues and I wanted to understand how mental health had changed across the life course of baby boomers and generation X – including during and beyond the pandemic.

We also wanted to understand if (and how) gender and socioeconomic inequalities had changed throughout these periods. Previous research we’d conducted had shown that large, existing gender inequalities in mental ill-health had widened during the pandemic period.

Moreover, the post-lockdown period came with a marked increase in the cost of living – making ends meet harder in a context where there had already been high levels of poverty for decades before.

We found that, on average, mental health bounced back to levels similar to those recorded before the pandemic. However, women and people from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds continued to experience worse mental health across their adult lives, including after the pandemic. And those inequalities could be traced back to their early lives.

To conduct our study, we analysed data from two nationally representative British birth cohorts: the 1958 National Child Development Study and the 1970 British Cohort Study.

These ongoing studies follow the lives of all people born in Britain during one particular week in 1958 and 1970. Information is collected on each participant’s physical and mental health, as well as their social, economic and family circumstances.

These studies gave us the unique opportunity to investigate how different outcomes – including mental health – changed across the life course in baby boomers and generation X.

For our study, we looked at the same 14,182 people over up to four decades: 6,553 of whom were born in 1958 and 7,629 who were born in 1970.

We used the same measure of psychological distress (which encompasses a range of unpleasant mental states, such as feeling depressed, worried or scared) in both cohorts. This allowed us to understand how mental health had changed in the same participants throughout their adult lives – between the ages of 23-64 for baby boomers and 26-52 for generation X.

To ensure our results weren’t due to differences in measurement, we tested this tool to ensure it provided comparable measures across cohorts, genders, socioeconomic backgrounds and ages.

To examine inequalities by gender and socioeconomic background, we used information on sex assigned at birth, parental social class and housing tenure (whether their parents owned or rented their home) when participants were children (aged five-11).

We also examined the intersection of gender and socioeconomic background to understand any dual impact these inequalities may have on mental health throughout adulthood.

What we found

In both cohorts, mental health was generally at its best during a person’s 30s. But, from middle age, average levels of psychological distress began to increase.

During the pandemic, both cohorts experienced a marked increase in psychological distress. Levels reached, and in some cases surpassed, the highest distress levels they’d experienced in any other period of their lives.

In the post-lockdown period, average distress levels declined – largely returning to pre-pandemic levels. While generation X had higher average distress levels across adulthood, post-pandemic improvements were smaller for baby boomers.

Women and people who grew up in socioeconomically disadvantaged households consistently reported higher psychological distress throughout their lives compared to men and people from more advantaged backgrounds. These inequalities, which were already visible in the participants’ 20s, were still present when they were in their 50s or 60s.

Among baby boomers, socioeconomic inequalities were even larger in women – showing a dual effect.

The changing picture of mental health

We were able to track how mental health changed in the same people through different periods in their lives. This also allowed us to identify potential risk factors for poor mental health.

Our study showed further evidence of the life-long impact of gender and socioeconomic disadvantage. These factors are already known to be among the key social determinants of mental health.

Although our study didn’t investigate the specific ways in which these life-long inequalities in mental ill-health came to happen, we believe these inequalities reflect the unfair distribution of opportunities, power and privilege in society. In other words, our findings may reflect the long-term impact of sexism, classism and material deprivation – and the ways these inequalities overlap.

Sexism, classism and material deprivation in childhood had long-term impacts on mental health. CandyRetriever/ Shutterstock

Women and young girls have long been at greater risk of experiencing a number of mental health difficulties. Factors such as sexual violence, safety concerns, labour market discrimination and the unequal distribution of unpaid care work all potentially contribute to this.

Similarly, early-life socioeconomic disadvantage can limit or preclude access to certain resources, such as wealth and knowledge, which can be protective of mental health.

The finding that socioeconomic inequalities were even larger in women from the baby boomer generation may be partly explained by societal changes in the second-half of the 20th century. Changes such as the expansion of women’s education and labour-market participation and small improvements in the gender pay gap may have had a protective effect on mental health for women born in generation X.

In our view, this supports the idea that these inequalities can, indeed, be prevented.

Future of mental health

One one hand, our findings show the remarkable resilience of two British generations when faced with the challenges the pandemic brought.

But on the other hand, our findings also highlight the unfair, life-long factors that can contribute to poor mental health – factors that are largely down to chance.

Around one in three children in the UK currently living in poverty. Global gender equality is stalling – and, in some cases, even going backwards. Finding ways of addressing these inequalities will be key in improving mental health for younger generations.

Darío Moreno-Agostino receives funding from the Wellcome Trust under grant number 304283/Z/23/Z, and has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Centre for Society and Mental Health at King's College London under grant number ES/S012567/1. The views expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Wellcome Trust, ESRC, or King's College London.

How much can we really know about Jane Austen? Experts answer your questions

2026-01-28T09:10:32Z

A Young Girl Reading by Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1770). National Gallery of Art

Jane Austen’s Paper Trail is a podcast from The Conversation celebrating 250 years since the author’s birth. In each episode, we investigate a different aspect of Austen’s personality by interrogating one of her novels with leading researchers. Along the way, we visit locations important to Austen to uncover a particular aspect of her life and the times she lived in.

For episode seven of Jane Austen’s Paper Trail, we’re doing something a little different. Rather than putting Austen under the microscope ourselves, we’re handing the questions over to you.

Jane Austen is a curious author because the more we learn about her, the more elusive she seems to become. She left behind a remarkably slim paper trail for someone so influential, and much of what we “know” about her has been filtered through family memory, biography and, sometimes, wishful thinking. As Jane Austen’s Paper Trail draws to a close, there are still loose ends to tie up – and that’s where you, our listeners, come in.

We’ve received a virtual sack full of letters from you, ranging from questions about Austen’s religious beliefs to her grasp of contemporary science, and even what she might have made of social media. Unlike Jane’s sister Cassandra Austen, however, we have no intention of throwing your letters into the flames. Instead, three experts join me to debate them – and, where possible, to settle them.

For our first panellist, we’re welcoming back Emma Claire Sweeney from episode four about Austen’s friendships. Sweeney is a senior lecturer in creative writing at the Open University and worked collaborated on a interactive experience with the BBC as part of the Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius.

Returning from episode six about whether Austen was happy is John Mullan, professor of literature at University College London and author of What Matters in Jane Austen. Completing the panel is Lizzie Dunford, director of Jane Austen’s House in Hampshire.

Together, they take your questions seriously, testing what can be answered from the novels, what can be inferred from historical context, and where Austen herself remains stubbornly silent. From faith and feminism to fame and future technology, these questions remind us why Austen continues to fuel our curiosity 250 years after her birth.

Jane Austen’s Paper Trail is hosted by Anna Walker with reporting from Jane Wright and Naomi Joseph. Senior producer and sound designer is Eloise Stevens and the executive producer is Gemma Ware. Artwork by Alice Mason and Naomi Joseph.

Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here.

The cold war maps that can help us rethink today’s Arctic conflict

2026-01-27T16:34:04Z

A US view of the cold war world, 1950, showing the fearsome power of the USSR. Cornell University – PJ Mode Collection of Persuasive Cartography.

The late 1940s and early 1950s were a golden age for polar mapmaking in the US. Major magazines such as Time, Life and Fortune commissioned a generation of famous cartographers – who had come of age in the second world war – to explain the new geopolitics to a mass audience that was highly engaged after the catastrophic global conflict they had just lived through.

Their maps were large, dramatic and designed to be spread across kitchen tables and classroom desks. And they also offered a very different perspective to the mainstream maps we have become accustomed to today.

I’ve spent the past four years unearthing maps from the late 1940s and early 1950s to research a book about a largely forgotten map library at my university, and I am always struck by how consequential they feel to the global arguments of their era. Not least because they invited debate from their readers who were asked to become global strategists by discussing the next moves in the game of geopolitics.

These maps didn’t just illustrate the world – they implored people to think about it differently. As the world enters a new period of international relations and global tensions, it’s worth considering the different perspectives maps can offer us.

With each new US foreign policy intervention – such as the US president’s current preoccupation with taking over Greenland – I have often wondered if these maps of global adversaries could have percolated into a young Trump’s mind. The world must have seemed a menacing place and it is shown on these maps as a series of threats and opportunities to be gamed, with the “Arctic arena” as a major venue.

The World Divided is an iconic map showing the geoopolitical situation at the height of the second world war. It was created by Richard Edes Harrison and published by Fortune Magazine in August 1941. Cornell University – PJ Mode Collection of Persuasive Cartography.

The consensus encouraged by the maps was that of alliances, most notably Nato, and US opinion tended to endorse what Henry Luce, the influential owner of Time and Life magazines, called the “American century” in which the US would abandon isolationism and take on a global role.

Published in 1950, this map introduces the Azimuthal Equidistant Projection to Time Magazine’s readers. Time Magazine

Whatever one thinks of that worldview, it was frequently framed in terms of collective responsibility rather than individual dominance. Luce argued that the “work” of shaping the future “cannot come out of the vision of any one man”.

As we can now see with Greenland, Trump has taken the geography of threats and opportunity shown on these influential maps but reached a very different conclusion: an “America first”, resulting from the vision of the US president himself.

Dawning of the ‘air age’

The skilful of the cartographers of the era played with a range of map projections that offered different perspectives of geopolitical arenas. The master of this was Richard Edes Harrison who is described by the historian Susan Schultern as “the person most responsible for sensitizing the public to geography in the 1940s. [The public] tore his maps out of magazines and snatched them off shelves and, in the process, endowed Harrison himself with the status of a minor celebrity.”

Edes Harrison adopted many projections in his work – but for maps of the Arctic, he alighted on the azimuthal equidistant projection. While this creates maps that distort the shapes of countries, it enables the correct distances to be shown from the centre point of the map.

The projection became widely used in the 1940s and 1950s (and was indeed adopted for the UN flag in 1946) because it proved effective at demonstrating the wonder of the burgeoning “air age” as commercial flights followed great circle routes over the Arctic.

The Air Age Map of The World, 1945 (centered on London). The Library of Lost Maps

This contrasted with the roundabout routes that needed to be followed by ships and it also mapped the countries that bordered and occupied the Arctic with a much greater sense of proximity and threat.

Missiles and bombers were just as able to travel over the top of Earth as were holidaymakers – and this created a juxtaposition exploited by cartographers. Rand McNally, a renowned map publisher, for example, published a collection of maps entitled Air Age Map of the Global Crisis in 1949.

These set out “the growing line-up of countries and peoples behind the two rival ways of life competing for power in the 20th Century” – that is capitalism as embodied by the US and Soviet and Chinese communism.

Those who bought it were told: “Keep this map folder! It may have great historic significance a generation from now.”

This 1950s map published by Rand McNally was produced as part of a marketing campaign for Airwick air freshener, but also sought to inform the US public about the spread of communism. Rand McNally

New world order

Donald Trump’s return to office has revived talk of a world moving beyond the assumptions of the postwar order — weakening alliances, acting unilaterally, treating territory as leverage. At the same time, maps remain one of the most trusted forms of evidence in public life.

A Mercator-shaped worldview, widely used by digital maps can distort reality – for example, making Greenland much larger than it is.

Cartographers have long known the strengths and limitations of Mercator, but Trump’s approach to foreign policy is a further reminder of the perspective we lose when we depend on the standardised views of Earth that digital maps encourage (some have also speculated that Mercator’s exaggeration of Greenland’s area heightens its real estate appeal to Trump).

Maps are powerful things and in times of crisis, or rapid change, we turn to them to help explain events and locate ourselves within them. But they can be just as much about arguments as they are facts – and Trump knows this.

The maps of the 1940s and 1950s were about a fresh (American) perspective to create a new world order. They instilled Trump’s generation with a sense of the geopolitical rivalries that tend to get washed out of generic digital maps that are most widely consumed today.

Nearly 80 years on, this order may be creaking – but the maps are still there to remind us of what’s at stake.

James Cheshire receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.

« Paresseux et complaisants » : des retraités suédois racontent comment la suppression de l’impôt sur la fortune a transformé leur pays

2026-01-26T15:30:59Z

Quels sont les impacts de la suppression d’un impôt au-delà des personnes et des agents économiques concernés ? Les Suédois ont aboli l’impôt sur la fortune en 2007. Ce faisant, c’est toute la vision de la société partagée jusque-là qui pourrait avoir été ébranlée. Car la fiscalité n’est pas qu’une affaire économique. Elle a aussi un rôle social, voire individuel.

Pendant une grande partie du XX^e siècle, la Suède jouissait à juste titre de la réputation d’être l’un des pays les plus égalitaires d’Europe. Pourtant, au cours des deux dernières décennies, elle s’est transformée en ce que le journaliste et auteur Andreas Cervenka qualifie de « paradis pour les super-riches ».

Aujourd’hui, la Suède affiche l’un des ratios de milliardaires en dollars les plus élevés au monde et abrite de nombreuses start-up « licornes », valorisées à au moins un milliard de dollars américains (850 millions d’euros), dont la plateforme de paiement Klarna et le service de streaming audio Spotify

La suppression de l’impôt sur la fortune (förmögenhetsskatten) il y a vingt ans s’inscrit pleinement dans cette évolution, tout comme, la même année, l’instauration de généreuses déductions fiscales pour les travaux domestiques et la rénovation des logements. Vingt ans plus tard, le nombre de foyers suédois qui emploient du personnel de ménage est devenu l’un des signes révélateurs d’un pays de plus en plus fracturé socialement.

Dans le cadre de mes recherches anthropologiques sur les relations sociales que produisent les différents systèmes fiscaux, j’ai travaillé avec des retraités dans les banlieues sud de la capitale suédoise, Stockholm, afin de comprendre comment ils perçoivent la baisse du niveau de taxation au cours de leurs dernières années de vie.

Cette évolution s’est accompagnée d’un recul progressif de l’État-providence. Beaucoup des personnes que j’ai interrogées regrettent que la Suède n’ait plus de projet collectif visant à construire une société plus cohésive.

« Nous, les retraités, voyons la destruction de ce que nous avons bâti, de ce qui a commencé quand nous étions de très jeunes enfants », explique Kjerstin, 74 ans.

« Je suis née après la fin de la guerre et j’ai contribué à construire cette société tout au long de ma vie, avec mes concitoyens. Mais avec la baisse des impôts et le démantèlement de notre sécurité sociale… aujourd’hui, nous ne construisons plus rien ensemble. »

Le coefficient de Gini de la Suède, l’indicateur le plus couramment utilisé pour mesurer les inégalités, a atteint 0,3 ces dernières années (0 correspondant à une égalité totale et 1 à une inégalité totale), contre environ 0,2 dans les années 1980. L’Union européenne dans son ensemble se situe à 0,29. « Il y a désormais 42 milliardaires en Suède – c’est une hausse considérable », m’a confié Bengt, 70 ans.

« D’où viennent-ils ? Ce n’était pas un pays où l’on pouvait devenir aussi riche aussi facilement. »

Mais, comme d’autres retraités que j’ai rencontrés, Bengt reconnaît aussi la part de responsabilité de sa génération dans cette évolution.

« J’appartiens à une génération qui se souvient de la manière dont nous avons construit la Suède comme un État-providence, mais tellement de choses ont changé. Le problème, c’est que nous n’avons pas protesté. Nous n’avons pas réalisé que nous devenions ce pays de riches. »

À l’opposé de l’American Dream

L’impôt sur la fortune a été instauré en Suède en 1911. Son montant était alors calculé à partir d’une combinaison du patrimoine et des revenus. À la même période, les premières pierres de l’État-providence suédois étaient posées, notamment via l’introduction de la retraite publique en 1913.

Le terme utilisé pour désigner ce modèle, folkhemmet (« la maison du peuple »), renvoyait à l’idée d’un confort et d’une sécurité garantis à tous de manière égale. Il constituait, à bien des égards, l’exact opposé idéologique du rêve américain : non pas la recherche de l’exceptionnel, mais celle de niveaux de vie décents pour tous et de services universels.

Après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, l’impôt sur la fortune – désormais dissocié de l’impôt sur le revenu – a de nouveau été relevé par étapes, jusqu’à atteindre dans les années 1980 un niveau historiquement élevé, avec un taux marginal de 4 % pour les patrimoines les plus importants, même si la charge fiscale réelle reste difficile à établir en raison de règles d’exonération complexes. Malgré cela, les recettes totales générées par cet impôt sont restées relativement modestes. Rapportées au PIB annuel de la Suède, elles n’ont jamais dépassé 0,4 % sur l’ensemble de la période d’après-guerre.

À la fin des années 1980, les vents politiques commencent toutefois à tourner en Suède, dans le sillage d’un mouvement plus large de privatisation des services publics et de dérégulation des marchés financiers observé dans plusieurs pays européens, dont le Royaume-Uni sous Margaret Thatcher, ainsi qu’aux États-Unis.

L’un des reproches récurrents adressés à l’impôt sur la fortune en Suède était alors son caractère régressif : il taxait surtout le patrimoine des classes moyennes, principalement constitué de logements et d’actifs financiers, tout en épargnant les plus grandes fortunes, notamment celles détenues par des propriétaires de grands groupes ou des dirigeants occupant des postes élevés dans des entreprises cotées. Une autre critique tenace était que cet impôt encourageait l’optimisation fiscale, en particulier sous la forme de fuites de capitaux vers des paradis fiscaux offshore.

Si l’existence d’un impôt sur la fortune pouvait sembler incarner l’engagement du pays en faveur de l’égalité socioéconomique, les personnes que j’ai interrogées disent ne pas y avoir vraiment prêté attention avant son abolition en 2006 par le gouvernement de droite alors en place, après la suppression, un an plus tôt, des droits de succession par le précédent gouvernement social-démocrate.

« Quand l’impôt sur la fortune a été supprimé, raconte Marianne, 77 ans, je ne pensais pas que l’on faisait un cadeau aux millionnaires, parce que… nous n’avions pas de riches aristocrates possédant tout. La suppression de l’impôt sur la fortune et des droits de succession semblait être une mesure pratique, pas vraiment politique. »

Marianne, comme les autres retraités à qui j’ai parlé, racontent tous une histoire dans laquelle l’État-providence a été construit par un effort collectif, plutôt que comme un projet à la Robin des Bois consistant à prendre aux riches pour donner aux pauvres. Cette vision de l’État-providence suédois comme l’œuvre d’égaux, issus à l’origine d’une population majoritairement rurale et pauvre, a sans doute détourné ces retraités des questions liées à l’accumulation des richesses.

Si la Suède continue de taxer la propriété et différentes formes de revenus du capital, avec le recul, nombre de mes interlocuteurs âgés considèrent aujourd’hui que la suppression de l’impôt sur la fortune, intervenue « alors qu’ils en étaient les témoins directs », a constitué une étape décisive dans la transformation de la société suédoise, l’éloignant du modèle social-démocrate de l’État-providence pour l’orienter vers autre chose : un pays de milliardaires à la fragmentation sociale accrue.

« Je pense à mes enfants, à mes deux filles qui travaillent et ont de jeunes familles, m’a confié Jan, 72 ans. Quand elles étaient enfants, l’État-providence s’occupait d’elles : elles allaient dans de bonnes écoles, avaient accès au football, au théâtre, au dentiste…, mais aujourd’hui, je crains que la société ne se dégrade pour elles. »

Comme d’autres personnes interrogées, Jan exprime des regrets quant à son propre rôle dans cette évolution.

« Je pense maintenant que c’est en partie de ma faute, dit-il. Nous sommes devenus paresseux et complaisants, convaincus que l’État-providence suédois était solide, nous ne nous sommes pas inquiétés de la suppression de l’impôt sur la fortune, nous pensions que cela ne changerait rien… mais je crois que ça a changé beaucoup de choses. »

« Une société plus humaine »

Mes recherches suggèrent que les effets de l’existence – ou de l’absence – d’un impôt sur la fortune ne se limitent pas aux recettes fiscales ou à la redistribution des richesses. Ils ont des répercussions sociales plus larges et peuvent être constitutifs de la manière dont les individus se représentent la société.

À l’heure actuelle, seuls trois pays européens appliquent un véritable impôt sur la fortune : la Norvège, l’Espagne et la Suisse. Par ailleurs, la France, l’Italie, la Belgique et les Pays-Bas prélèvent des impôts sur le patrimoine ciblant certains actifs, sans toutefois taxer la richesse globale des individus.

En Suède du moins, la question aujourd’hui n’est pas seulement de savoir si l’impôt sur la fortune fonctionne ou non, mais aussi quel type de société il dessine : celle du folkhemmet, ou celle d’un paradis pour les riches.

« L’impôt allait de soi quand j’ai grandi dans les années 1950, se souvient Kjerstin. Je me rappelle avoir pensé, alors que j’étais en deuxième année de primaire, que je serais toujours prise en charge, que je n’aurais jamais à m’inquiéter. »

Revenant sur le sentiment que la vie en Suède est aujourd’hui très différente, elle ajoute :

« Désormais, les gens ne veulent plus payer d’impôts – parfois même moi, je n’ai plus envie d’en payer. Tout le monde réfléchit à ce qu’il reçoit en retour et à la manière de s’enrichir, au lieu de penser à construire quelque chose ensemble. »

« Je ne pense pas qu’on puisse dire : “Je paie tant d’impôts, donc je devrais récupérer exactement la même chose.” Il faut plutôt prendre en compte le fait que l’on vit dans une société plus humaine, où chacun sait, dès le CE1, qu’il sera pris en charge. »

Les noms des personnes interrogées ont été modifiés.

Miranda Sheild Johansson a reçu des financements de UK Research And Innovation.

Ce que les consultations citoyennes et le jet de soupe sur « la Joconde » ont en commun

2026-01-25T17:17:23Z

Les manifestations et actions de désobéissance civile pour le climat sont de plus en plus réprimées, et souvent perçues comme incompatibles avec les consultations publiques, le mode classique de participation aux décisions environnementales. Pourtant, les deux relèvent du même édifice juridique environnemental.

Au cours des dernières années, les manifestations exigeant – souvent de façon créative – que les États et les entreprises agissent contre le changement climatique se sont multipliées dans de nombreux pays européens, suscitant souvent une forte répression.

À première vue, il n’y a pas nécessairement de lien direct entre, d’une part, ces actions de protestation et, d’autre part, la pratique moins médiatisée, plus routinière – et certainement moins risquée – de la consultation publique sur des sujets tels que la mise en place d’un parc d’énergie renouvelable ou la destruction d’un espace vert local. Et pourtant, ces consultations publiques, les manifestations et la désobéissance civile sont plus liées qu’on pourrait le croire. De fait, les unes comme les autres font partie du même édifice juridique environnemental.

La participation publique aux questions environnementales, un salon parisien du XVIIIᵉ siècle

Dans notre dernier article, nous explorons les liens entre consultation, protestation et désobéissance civile en matière environnementale. Nous suggérons que la participation politique se constitue comme un continuum de trois pratiques interdépendantes : la participation à des processus juridiques formels, tels que les consultations publiques sur les décisions d’aménagement du territoire (concernant des projets très divers, ayant trait aussi bien à l’énergie renouvelable qu’au logement ou au traitement des déchets) ; les manifestations de rue, telles que les marches « Friday for Future » ; et les pratiques de désobéissance civile conçues pour maximiser les perturbations ou attirer l’attention en enfreignant les règles, telles que les barrages routiers des militants pour le climat ou la dégradation du verre protégeant le tableau le plus célèbre du monde.

Ces trois types d’activités coexistent dans l’espace civique, c’est-à-dire « la couche entre l’État, les entreprises et la famille dans laquelle les citoyens s’organisent, débattent et agissent ». Et lorsque les organisations, les débats et les actions concernent l’environnement, notre espace civique devient un espace civique environnemental.

Nous pouvons appréhender la participation comme un salon parisien du XVIII^e siècle, caractérisé par une enfilade, « une succession de pièces dont les portes sont alignées le long d’un axe où [« l »]es invités découvraient une série d’espaces soigneusement aménagés par les propriétaires et conçus comme une composition en plusieurs mouvements ».

À l’instar d’un salon parisien, les différentes formes de participation au sein de l’espace civique environnemental sont reliées au sein d’un même espace, mais les différentes pièces ont des caractéristiques juridiques et des implications différentes pour les visiteurs.

Les trois salles de participation et le rôle du droit

S’appuyant sur les travaux de Brian Wynne relatifs à la participation « invitée » et « non invitée » et les développant, nos trois salles de participation comprennent la participation invitée, la participation non invitée et – ajoutons-nous – la participation interdite.

Les citoyens peuvent être invités dans une salle ; ils peuvent explorer légalement une autre salle sans invitation formelle ; et ils peuvent décider d’entrer illégalement dans la salle suivante, même si l’entrée leur est interdite.

Dans la première salle, les citoyens sont invités à participer, exerçant pleinement leur droit de débattre et d’exprimer leurs opinions sur une décision. Ce droit est juridiquement protégé, conformément notamment à la Convention d’Aarhus (1998), un traité international clé qui protège l’accès des citoyens et des ONG à l’information, la participation du public et l’accès à la justice en matière d’environnement. L’Union européenne et ses États membres, ainsi que le Royaume-Uni, sont parties à la Convention d’Aarhus et sont donc légalement tenus à s’y conformer. La participation au sein de cette chambre peut consister à être consultés (« invités ») sur une décision relative à une activité spécifique (par exemple, l’octroi d’un permis d’environnement pour l’extension d’un aéroport, ou sur un plan, un programme ou une politique en matière environnementale, notamment en ce qui concerne les activités pouvant être autorisées dans une certaine zone).

Les citoyens ne sont pas expressément invités à entrer dans la deuxième pièce de l’enfilade, mais le droit protège la participation non invitée – à savoir, en l’occurrence, la protestation – en tant qu’exercice légitime des droits humains, en particulier les droits à la liberté d’expression et de réunion pacifique protégés par les articles 10 et 11 de la Convention européenne des droits de l’homme ; ainsi que par d’autres accords internationaux.

La troisième salle est fermée par le droit, qui interdit certaines formes de participation, rendant les manifestations illégales et les actions civiles désobéissantes. On y retrouve un éventail de pratiques allant de l’organisation de manifestations spontanées, non déclarées à l’avance, devant des lieux de prise de décision politique pour protester contre le report et le détricotage d’une loi environnementale (comme la loi européenne contre la déforestation), jusqu’à des actions spectaculaires de désobéissance civile telles que l’interruption d’une étape du Tour de France ou le jet de soupe sur la Joconde.

Le continuum de la participation en Europe

En tant que spécialistes du droit de l’environnement, nous avons travaillé ensemble et séparément pendant plusieurs années, principalement sur la participation sur invitation, sur ce qui se passe dans la première salle. Même si cela ne se traduisait pas toujours par une véritable inclusion, la valeur de la participation du public dans la prise de décision environnementale était plus ou moins admise, et il n’était certainement pas nécessaire de défendre la prise de décision démocratique à partir des principes fondamentaux.

Ce n’est plus le cas aujourd’hui. Les droits et les protections procédurales nécessaires à la participation sur invitation sont remis en cause par des mouvements populistes situés aux deux extrémités du spectre politique qui pensent déjà connaître la bonne réponse : d’un côté, ceux qui contestent l’existence ou la gravité du changement climatique, de l’autre, le populisme climatique qui estime que l’urgence climatique justifie de s’affranchir des temporalités et des procédures démocratiques.

En même temps, l’urgence de nos diverses crises environnementales peut détourner les anciens partisans de la participation citoyenne vers des processus dirigés par des experts qui voient les réponses dans des solutions techniques plutôt que dans le débat démocratique. Prise entre les populistes et les technocrates, la valeur de l’engagement citoyen – des décisions mieux informés et plus solides sur le plan politique – est oubliée.

L’espace réservé à la participation invitée, ouvert à tous et à toutes les opinions, est de moins en moins bien entretenu et protégé. Mais le salon de l’espace civique va au-delà de ces occasions ordinaires, bien qu’importantes, pour les citoyens de s’engager auprès du pouvoir.

Nos recherches ouvrent les portes de l’enfilade et explorent le continuum entre la participation invitée, non invitée et interdite à travers l’Europe. Nous examinons le rôle joué par le droit (par exemple le droit environnemental, public, routier, pénal) dans la détermination de la possibilité pour les citoyens d’entrer dans l’une des salles de participation et de quelle manière. Nous avons constaté, conformément aux signaux d’alarme internationaux et européens, que l’évolution des règles juridiques qui façonne l’espace civique environnemental en Europe démontre une « tendance répressive » croissante.

Cette répression se manifeste par une combinaison de réformes législatives qui criminalisent les pratiques des manifestants, telles que les barrages routiers ou le verrouillage (« lock-in »), ainsi que par un durcissement des pratiques policières, judiciaires et pénales, telles que le recours accru à la force, augmentation des arrestations et alourdissement des peines.

Ces réformes sont accompagnées par une multitude d’autres pratiques intimidantes allant des poursuites stratégiques des grandes compagnies pétrolières contre les ONG environnementales, comme dans le cas de Energy Transfer contre Greenpeace (souvent appelées « poursuites-bâillons ») à la surveillance des manifestants.

La répression pousse les citoyens vers la troisième salle. Ici, le droit punit très sévèrement ceux qui ont réussi à y entrer et à exprimer leur désaccord, comme les condamnations à des peines d’emprisonnement inédites pour les activistes de Just Stop Oil au Royaume-Uni. Le droit restreint simultanément la portée de la participation invitée, interdit ce qui était auparavant non invité mais légal, et augmente le coût personnel de la désobéissance civile interdite (mais pacifique).

Toute la maison compte

Nous ne sommes pas les premières à affirmer que la consultation des citoyens et les manifestations de rue peuvent constituer une forme de participation politique, ou que l’espace public se réduit dans toute l’Europe.

Nous sommes convaincues que l’espace civique se trouve dans la routine quotidienne et banale qui consiste à s’adresser au pouvoir, ainsi que dans des moments clés telles que les élections. Et qu’il se trouve aussi dans la théâtralité des pratiques de protestation, même si elles sont criminalisées, ainsi que dans les institutions sobres de la délibération démocratique, comme la Convention citoyenne pour le climat en France. Mais la tendance transnationale à limiter simultanément ces approches très différentes de la participation politique souligne la profondeur du rétrécissement de l’espace public environnemental.

Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.

Proposed new mission will create artificial solar eclipses in space

2026-01-23T17:31:56Z

The solar corona viewed by Proba-3, a European Space Agency-led mission. ESA/Proba-3/ASPIICS/WOW algorithm, CC BY-NC-SA

When a solar storm strikes Earth, it can disrupt technology that’s vital for our daily lives. Solar storms occur when magnetic fields and electrically charged particles collide with the Earth’s magnetic field. This type of event falls into the category known as “space weather”.

The Earth is currently experiencing one of the most intense solar storms of the past two decades, reminding us of the need for ways to understand these events.

An international team of researchers (including us) is working on a spacecraft mission that would enable researchers to study the conditions that create solar storms, leading to improved forecasts of space weather.

The proposed mission, known as Mesom (Moon-enabled Sun Occultation Mission), aims to create total solar eclipses in space. This would allow researchers to view the Sun’s atmosphere in more detail than ever before.

The need for a better understanding of solar storms is evident from looking at past disruptions. In 1989, for example, the Canadian province of Quebec was forced into a nine-hour electricity blackout by a coronal mass ejection (CME) – a huge burst of hot plasma and magnetic field thrown off from the Sun’s atmosphere towards space.

The event, which affected both Canada and the US, is estimated to have cost tens of millions of US and Canadian dollars – both in lost business productivity and the need to replace damaged power equipment.

In May 2024, a succession of similar solar eruptions caused thousands of satellites in low-Earth orbit to abruptly drop in altitude. GPS outages cost US farmers alone an estimated US$500 million (£370 million).

But these storms were significantly weaker than one in 1859, also the result of a CME, which is known as the Carrington Event. Electrical currents flowing through telegraph wires caused a range of effects in telegraph offices across North America and Europe. Operators received electric shocks – with one in Washington DC receiving a serious injury – and sparks triggered small fires in some telegraph offices.

Today, a Carrington-like event would have far more dramatic consequences on our technology-dependent world, as has been recognised by different UK governments since 2012.

Yet, our view of the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the solar corona – from which CMEs and other adverse space weather events originate – remains dazzled by the bright light emanated from the Sun itself. A new UK-led spacecraft mission aims to change that by recreating total solar eclipse conditions in space.

Better forecasting

During total solar eclipses, the incredibly high-intensity radiation emanating from the visible surface of the Sun is occulted (covered) by the Moon, leaving behind a faint glow of light that comes directly from the outer layers of the Sun’s atmosphere, the corona.

Observing the physical processes in the corona at different timescales and wavelengths is key to enabling better forecasting of space weather – a crucial part of protecting Earth against Carrington-like events – as well as solving longstanding mysteries of our star. These include how the hot plasma of its volatile atmosphere is confined and released by the evolving magnetic fields that thread through it.

Coronal mass ejections explained.

Unfortunately, total solar eclipses are predictable yet rare events that only last for a few minutes. All total eclipses predicted in the 21st century will last less than seven minutes each, and will occur only once every 18 months, on average.

Total solar eclipse measurements from the ground are also subject to weather conditions and suffer from distortions and loss of detail, caused by the interaction of the faint coronal light with the Earth’s atmosphere.

For decades, scientists and engineers have observed the corona by artificially covering the Sun using clever optics and instrument design inspired by the pioneering work of Bernard Lyot, a French astronomer who first come up with the idea of a “coronagraph”.

Coronagraphs are telescopes equipped with an occulting disk to block out the overwhelming radiation emanated from the visible surface of the Sun, along with optical stops and filters that are positioned to suppress the light diffracted (scattered) by the disk itself.

In a coronagraph, the faint coronal light can finally reach the instrument’s focal plane, where it is converted into digital signals using photoelectric sensors. This is the working principle of the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (Lasco 3) onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (Soho 4) spacecraft, which has returned stunning images of the Sun’s corona since its launch in 1995.

However, even ground-based and space-based coronagraphs cannot capture images of the deepest layers of the Sun’s atmosphere, due to artifacts – artificial effects such as streaks of light that appear in images – and instrument limitations that significantly degrade the quality of the measurements closer to the Sun’s surface.

Neither is the recently launched Proba-3 able to image the solar atmosphere’s deepest layers. Proba-3 is a European Space Agency-led technology demonstration mission that relies on a pair of satellites flying in a close formation (up to 150m apart during observations) to recreate total solar eclipse conditions in space.

Celestial neighbour

An alternative approach, first proposed by UK Airbus engineers Steve Eckersley and Stephen Kemble, advocates the use of celestial bodies as natural occulters (covers).

The idea is to fly a spacecraft mission in the shadow cast by a celestial object to enable prolonged and high-quality measurements of the corona down to the Sun’s chromosphere – the layer of the Sun’s atmosphere located just below the corona. This would effectively recreate the same total solar eclipse conditions we experience occasionally on Earth, but without the degradations caused by the atmosphere of our planet.

Our celestial neighbour, the Moon, is a more perfect sphere (its polar radius is only 2km shorter than the equatorial one) and does not have a thick atmosphere, which makes it among the best natural occulting disks found in the solar system.

A pool of engineers at the Surrey Space Centre has investigated the possibility of using the Moon as a natural occulting disk for studying the solar corona, and came up with the Mesom concept.

Mesom is a mini-satellite mission that capitalises on the chaotic dynamics of the Sun-Earth-Moon system to collect high-quality measurements of the inner Sun corona once a month, for observation windows as long as 48 minutes – much longer than the sporadic total solar eclipse on Earth.

Funded by the UK Space Agency, the feasibility study of Mesom has grown into a wider international consortium led by UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory and including the Universities of Surrey and Aberystwyth, plus partners from Spain, the US and Australia.

The project has recently been submitted to the European Space Agency for consideration as a future mission. The current mission design proposes a launch in the 2030s, returning at least 400 minutes of high-resolution, low-altitude coronal observations during its two-year nominal science operations.

To collect the same amount of data on Earth, eclipse hunters would have to wait for more than 80 years. This makes Mesom a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to unravel some of the secrets of the Sun’s atmosphere.

‘We got lazy and complacent’: Swedish pensioners explain how abolishing the wealth tax changed their country

2026-01-19T12:59:56Z

'A country of rich people': a superyacht with helicopter on board heads into Stockholm's harbour. M-Production/Shutterstock

For much of the 20th century, Sweden enjoyed a justifiable reputation as one of Europe’s most egalitarian countries. Yet over the past two decades, it has transformed into what journalist and author Andreas Cervenka calls a “paradise for the super-rich”.

Today, Sweden has one of the world’s highest ratios of dollar billionaires, and is home to numerous “unicorn” startup companies worth at least US$1 billion (£742 million), including the payment platform Klarna and audio streaming service Spotify.

The abolition of the wealth tax (förmögenhetsskatten) 20 years ago is part of this story – along with, in the same year, the introduction of generous tax deductions for housework and home improvement projects. Two decades on, the number of Swedish homes that employ cleaners is one marker of it being an increasingly two-tier country.

As part of my anthropological research into the social relationships that different tax systems produce, I have been working with pensioners in the southern suburbs of Sweden’s capital, Stockholm, to learn how they feel about the decreasing levels of taxation in their later lives.

This trend has been coupled with a gradual shrinking of the welfare state. Many of my interviewees regret that Sweden no longer has a collective project to build a more cohesive society.

“Us pensioners can see the destruction of what we built, what was started when we were small children,” Kjerstin, 74, explained. “I was born after the end of the war and built this society through my life, together with my fellow citizens. [But] with taxes being lowered and the taking away of our social security … we’re not building anything together now.”

Sweden’s gini coefficient, the most common way to measure inequality, has reached 0.3 in recent years (with 0 reflecting total equality and 1 total inequality), up from around 0.2 in the 1980s. The EU as a whole is at 0.29. “There are now 42 billionaires in Sweden – it’s gone up a lot,” Bengt, 70, told me. “Where did they come from? This didn’t used to be a country where people could easily become this rich.”

But like other pensioners I met, Bengt acknowledged his peer group’s role in this shift. “I belong to a generation that remembers how we built Sweden to become a welfare state, but so much has changed. The thing is, we didn’t protest this. We didn’t realise we were becoming this country of rich people.”

Opposite of the American dream

Wealth taxation was introduced in Sweden in 1911, with the amount due based initially on a combination of wealth and income. Around the same time, some of the first moves towards the Swedish welfare state were made – notably, the introduction of the state pension in 1913.

The term used to describe this, folkemmet (“the people’s home”), denoted comfort and security for all in equal measure. It was arguably the ideological opposite of the American dream – its aims not exceptionalism but reasonable living standards and universal services.

After the second world war, the wealth tax – now separated from income – was raised again in several steps up to a historical high of a 4% marginal rate for wealthy individuals in the 1980s, although actual tax burden is is less clear due to complex exemption rules. But total revenues generated from the tax were still relatively low. As a share of Sweden’s annual GDP, it never exceeded 0.4% in the postwar period.

By the end of the 1980s, the political winds were starting to change in Sweden, in line with the shift to privatisation of public services and deregulation of financial markets in several European countries, including the UK under Margaret Thatcher, and the US.

One recurrent criticism of Sweden’s wealth tax was that it was regressive, taxing middle-class wealth (mainly housing and financial assets) while exempting the wealthiest people who owned large firms or held high-up positions in listed companies. Another criticism was that the wealth tax drove tax avoidance, especially in the form of capital flight to offshore tax havens.

While a wealth tax might appear to signal their country’s commitment to socioeconomic equality, my interviewees said it wasn’t something they really thought about much until it was abolished in 2006 by Sweden’s then-rightwing government, following the axing of inheritance tax a year earlier by the previous social democratic government.

“When the wealth tax was abolished,” Marianne, 77, told me, “I wasn’t thinking about millionaires being given a handout, because … we didn’t have lots of rich aristocrats who owned everything. Abolishing the wealth and inheritance tax seemed like a practical thing, not so political.”

Marianne and other pensioners I talked to all told a story of the welfare state having been built through communal effort, as opposed to it being a Robin Hood project – of taking from the rich to give to the poor. This notion of the Swedish welfare state as having been built by equals, by an initial largely rural and poor population, arguably distracted these pensioners from questions of wealth accumulation.

While Sweden still taxes property and various forms of capital income, in hindsight, many of my elderly interviewees now regard the abolition of the wealth tax “on their watch” as a crucial step in reshaping Swedish society away from a social democracy welfare state towards something new – a place of billionaires and increased social disintegration.

“I think about my children, my two daughters who are working and have young families,” Jan, 72, told me. “As children, they were provided for by the welfare state, they went to good schools and had access to football and drama class and the dentist – but now I worry that society is going to get worse for them.”

As with others I spoke to, Jan showed regret at his own role in this change. “I now think that is partly my fault,” he said. “We got lazy and complacent, thought the Swedish welfare state was secure, didn’t worry about abolishing the wealth tax, didn’t think it was going to change anything … but I think it has.”

‘A society that is more humane’

My research suggests the impacts of wealth taxes, or absence of them, are not only about fiscal revenue streams and wealth redistribution. They have wider social ramifications, and can be foundational to people’s vision of society.

Only three European countries currently levy a whole wealth tax: Norway, Spain and Switzerland. In addition, France, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands impose wealth taxes on selected assets, but not on an person’s overall wealth.

In Sweden at least, the question today isn’t just whether wealth taxes work or not, but about what kind of society they project – one of folkhemmet, or a paradise for the rich.

“Tax was just natural [when] I grew up in the 1950s,” Kjerstin recalled. “I remember thinking when I was in second grade, that I will always be taken care of, that I didn’t ever have to worry.”

Reflecting on how different living in Sweden feels today, she said: “Now people don’t want to pay tax – sometimes even I don’t want to pay tax. Everyone is thinking about what they get back and how to get rich, instead of about building something together.”

“I don’t think you can say: ‘I pay this much in taxes and therefore I should get the same back.’ Instead, you should pay attention to the fact that you live in a society that is more humane, where everyone knows from second grade they’ll be taken care of.”

Names of research participants have been changed.

Miranda Sheild Johansson receives funding from UK Research And Innovation.

Mito do gênio artístico louco não resiste ao escrutínio científico

2026-01-14T11:43:46Z

Vincent van Gogh cortou a orelha com uma faca durante um episódio psicótico. O bailarino Vaslav Nijinsky desenvolveu esquizofrenia e passou os últimos 30 anos de sua vida no hospital. Virginia Woolf vivia com transtorno bipolar e acabou tirando a própria vida quando sentiu que outra depressão profunda estava começando.

Muitos artistas criativos famosos viveram com doenças mentais graves. Catherine Zeta-Jones, Mariah Carey, Demi Lovato, Jean-Claude Van Damme e Mel Gibson relataram ter sido diagnosticados com transtorno bipolar. Yayoi Kusama, Sylvia Plath, Kurt Cobain e Syd Barrett falaram sobre suas experiências com psicose. Há muitas especulações sobre se Amy Winehouse, Marilyn Monroe e Ernest Hemingway viviam com transtorno de personalidade limítrofe.

O conceito de “gênio criativo louco” remonta à Antiguidade. Artistas dos períodos renascentista e romântico às vezes assumiam personalidades excêntricas para se distinguirem como indivíduos extraordinários que haviam feito pactos faustianos em troca de seus talentos.

Edvard Munch, o pintor norueguês, descreveu seus “sofrimentos” como “parte de mim mesmo e da minha arte… sua destruição destruiria minha arte”. A poetisa Edith Sitwell, que sofria de depressão, costumava deitar-se em um caixão aberto para inspirar sua poesia.

Em 1995, um estudo de 1.005 biografias escritas entre 1960 e 1990 chegou a propor que as pessoas que exercem profissões criativas apresentavam uma taxa mais elevada de psicopatologia grave do que a população em geral.

Então, como é que isto se coaduna com o facto de a expressão artística ser benéfica para a nossa saúde mental? Como explico em meu novo livro Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Transform Our Health, há uma grande quantidade de evidências científicas sobre esses benefícios.

Mas a realidade para os artistas profissionais pode ser um pouco diferente. Embora eles tendam a relatar um aumento no bem-estar geral, a vida de um artista pode ser psicologicamente desafiadora. Eles precisam suportar de tudo, desde carreiras precárias até a concorrência profissional.

Além disso, a fama traz estresse, estilos de vida desafiadores, um risco aumentado de abuso de substâncias e um foco inevitável, mas prejudicial, em si mesmo. Em um estudo de 1997, cientistas analisaram o número de pronomes pessoais em primeira pessoa – eu, mim, meu, minha e eu mesmo – nas canções de Cobain e Cole Porter (que também teve episódios de depressão grave). À medida que sua fama aumentava, ambos tiveram um aumento estatisticamente significativo no uso desses pronomes.

Ligando arte e doenças mentais graves

Mas e os artistas que desenvolveram doenças mentais antes de se tornarem famosos, ou mesmo antes de se tornarem artistas? Pesquisas genéticas descobriram alguns genes comuns que podem estar na base de doenças mentais graves e da criatividade.

Uma variante no gene NRG1 está associada tanto ao aumento do risco de psicose quanto a pontuações mais altas em questionários que medem o pensamento criativo das pessoas. Variações nos genes receptores de dopamina têm sido associadas tanto à psicose quanto a vários processos criativos, como a busca por novidades e a diminuição das inibições. Trata-se, porém, de um conjunto heterogêneo de descobertas, pois nem todos os estudos mostram tais ligações.

Além da genética, existem alguns traços de personalidade que podem ser comuns tanto à doença mental quanto à criatividade, incluindo abertura à experiência, busca por novidades e sensibilidade. É possível perceber como essas pesquisas podem fornecer uma lente para ver artistas como Van Gogh, Nijinsky e Woolf.

A criatividade e as dificuldades de saúde mental, no entanto, podem agir uma contra a outra. Por exemplo, Woolf descreveu seus episódios depressivos de transtorno bipolar como um poço: “Lá embaixo, não consigo escrever nem ler”. Portanto, embora algumas pessoas com doenças mentais graves possam fazer arte, nem todos conseguem fazer isso o tempo todo.

Além disso, quando procuramos sinais de uma ligação entre doenças mentais graves e atividades criativas em nível populacional, as evidências não são claras. Em 2013, um estudo sueco acompanhou mais de 40 anos de dados de 1,2 milhão de pessoas em registros nacionais de pacientes, incluindo registros médicos de diagnósticos, tratamentos de saúde mental e causa de morte.

Os pesquisadores descobriram que pessoas com esquizofrenia, transtorno esquizoafetivo, transtornos de ansiedade e depressão unipolar eram, na verdade, menos propensas do que a média das pessoas a exercer profissões criativas. A única pequena exceção foi o transtorno bipolar, em que as pessoas tinham cerca de 8% mais chances de exercer uma profissão criativa.

Mas este estudo também descobriu algo indiscutivelmente mais intrigante: os pais e irmãos de pessoas com esquizofrenia, transtorno esquizoafetivo e transtorno bipolar eram mais propensos a exercer profissões criativas. Não é difícil pensar em exemplos entre artistas famosos: a filha de James Joyce e o meio-irmão de David Bowie tinham esquizofrenia. Por que esse padrão pode existir?

Pessoas geneticamente suscetíveis a doenças mentais graves, mas que não desenvolvem a condição completa, podem apresentar versões mais leves. A hipomania leve, por exemplo, envolve humor elevado, mas sem a intensidade do transtorno bipolar. A esquizotipia envolve pensamento divergente e emoção intensificada, sem a gravidade da esquizofrenia.

Essas condições têm sido associadas a processos criativos, como inibições reduzidas, atenção difusa e hiperconectividade neural (a capacidade de fazer associações sensoriais cruzadas, como ouvir cores ou saborear notas musicais).

Talvez os irmãos e pais de pessoas com doenças mentais tendam a ser mais propensos a ter essas condições, e isso explica por que escolhem profissões criativas. Dito isso, nem todas as pessoas criativas trabalham em uma profissão criativa — para muitas, os hobbies criativos são sua válvula de escape do trabalho.

Essencialmente, a ciência sugere que pode haver alguns processos comuns entre doenças mentais graves e processos criativos, como as artes. Mas não é uma ligação clara como as anedotas podem nos levar a acreditar. O mito do “gênio artístico louco” é excessivamente simplista. Ele também corre o risco de perpetuar o estigma em vez da compreensão, então talvez seja melhor abandoná-lo.

Parece mais produtivo focar no valor que o engajamento criativo pode trazer para apoiar nossa saúde mental. Quer as pessoas tenham uma doença mental ou estejam apenas lidando com os humores e as emoções do dia a dia, a cada semana surgem mais estudos que aumentam nossa compreensão dos benefícios tangíveis e significativos que as artes podem trazer. Esta pesquisa está revelando como artistas, médicos e comunidades podem trabalhar juntos para criar oportunidades seguras, acessíveis e inclusivas para apreciar as artes.

Daisy Fancourt recebe financiamento da Wellcome, do UK Research and Innovation, do Prudence Trust e da Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Why the mad artistic genius trope doesn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny

2026-01-12T13:13:53Z

Vincent van Gogh sliced off his ear with a knife during a psychotic episode. Ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky developed schizophrenia and spent the last 30 years of his life in hospital. Virginia Woolf lived with bipolar disorder, eventually taking her own life as she felt another deep depression beginning.

Many famous creative artists have lived with severe mental illness. Catherine Zeta-Jones, Mariah Carey, Demi Lovato, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Mel Gibson have all reported diagnoses of bipolar disorder. Yayoi Kusama, Sylvia Plath, Kurt Cobain and Syd Barrett spoke about experiences of psychosis. Speculation abounds about whether Amy Winehouse, Marilyn Monroe and Ernest Hemingway lived with borderline personality disorder.

The concept of the “mad creative genius” harks back to antiquity. Artists in the Renaissance and Romantic periods would sometimes assume eccentric personalities to distinguish themselves as extraordinary individuals who had made Faustian bargains for their talents.

Edvard Munch, the Norwegian painter, described his “sufferings” as “part of myself and my art … their destruction would destroy my art.” Poet Edith Sitwell, who experienced depression, reportedly used to lie in an open coffin to inspire her poetry.

In 1995, a study of 1,005 biographies written between 1960 and 1990 even proposed that people in the creative professions had a higher rate of severe psychopathology than the general population.

So how does this square with the fact that artistic expression is beneficial for our mental health? As I explain in my new book Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Transform Our Health, there is a wealth of scientific evidence on these benefits.

However, the reality for professional artists can be a bit different. While they tend to report enhanced overall wellbeing, the life of an artist can be psychologically challenging. They have to endure everything from precarious careers to professional competition.

Additionally, fame brings stress, challenging lifestyles, an increased risk of substance abuse, and an inevitable but unhealthy focus on oneself. In a 1997 study, scientists analysed the number of first-personal pronouns – I, me, my, mine and myself – in songs by Cobain and Cole Porter (who himself had bouts of severe depression). As their fame increased, both saw a statistically significant increase in their use of these pronouns.

Linking artistry and severe mental illness

But what about artists who developed mental illness before becoming famous, or even before becoming artists? Genetics research has uncovered some shared genes that may underlie severe mental illness and creativity.

A variation in the gene NRG1 is associated with both increased risk of psychosis and higher scores on questionnaires that measure people’s creative thinking. Variations in dopamine-receptor genes have been linked with both psychosis and various creative processes like novelty seeking and decreased inhibitions. It’s a mixed bag of findings, however – not all studies show such links.

Beyond genetics, there are also some personality traits that can be common both to mental illness and creativity, including openness to experience, novelty-seeking and sensitivity. It’s possible to see how such research could provide a lens for viewing artists like Van Gogh, Nijinsky and Woolf.

Yet creativity and mental health difficulties can act against one another. For instance, Woolf described her depressive episodes of bipolar disorder as a well: “Down there, I can’t write or read.” So while some people with severe mental illnesses may make art, not everyone can all the time.

What’s more, when we look for signs of a link between severe mental illness and creative pursuits at a population level, the evidence isn’t clear-cut. In 2013, a Swedish study tracked over 40 years of data from 1.2 million people in national patient registers, including medical records of diagnoses, mental health treatments and cause of death.

The researchers found that people with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, anxiety disorders and unipolar depression were actually less likely than the average person to be in creative professions. The only slight exception was bipolar disorder, where people had around 8% higher odds of being in a creative profession.

But this study also found something arguably more intriguing: the parents and siblings of people with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder and bipolar disorder were more likely to be in creative professions. It’s not hard to think of examples amongst famous artists: James Joyce’s daughter and David Bowie’s half-brother both had schizophrenia. Why might this pattern exist?

People who are genetically susceptible to severe mental illness but don’t develop the full conditions may instead have milder versions. Minor hypomania, for instance, involves elevated moods but not with the intensity of bipolar disorder. Schizotypy involves divergent thinking and heightened emotion without the severity of schizophrenia.

These conditions have been associated with creative processes like reduced inhibitions, defocused attention and neural hyperconnectivity (the ability to make cross-sensory associations like hearing colours or tasting musical notes).

Perhaps the siblings and parents of people with mental illness tend to be more likely to have such conditions, and this explains why they choose creative professions. Having said that, not all creative people work in a creative profession – for many, creative hobbies are their outlet away from work.

Essentially, the science suggests there may be some shared processes between severe mental illness and creative processes like the arts. But it’s not the clear linkage that anecdotes might lead us to believe. The myth of the “mad creative genius” is overly simplistic. It also risks perpetuating stigma rather than understanding, so it’s perhaps better put to bed.

It seems more productive to focus on the value that creative engagement can bring to support our mental health. Whether people have a mental illness or are just dealing with day-to-day moods and emotions, there are more studies emerging every week that are building our understanding of the tangible, meaningful benefits the arts can have. This research is revealing how artists, clinicians and communities can work together to build safe, accessible, inclusive opportunities to enjoy the arts.

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and contains links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Daisy Fancourt receives funding from Wellcome, UK Research and Innovation, the Prudence Trust, and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

A speeding clock could solve Darwin’s mystery of gaps in animal fossil records

2026-01-06T17:17:12Z

Trilobites were among the first complex animals. Couperfield/Shutterstock

The oldest fossilised remains of complex animals appear suddenly in the fossil record, and as if from nowhere, in rocks that are 538 million years old.

The very oldest of these are simple fossilised marks (called Treptichnus) made by something worm-like with a head and a tail. A host of other animals appear rapidly, ancestors of the diverse animal groups we know today: ancient crab-like arthropods, shelled molluscs and the forebears of starfish and sea urchins.

The rapid arrival of animals so different to each other (and their absence in even slightly older rocks) was a headache for Charles Darwin because it seemed to go against his idea of gradual evolution – and it has confused scientists ever since. However, a recent paper may provide a solution.

In 1859, Darwin wrote in On the Origin of Species: “If my theory be true … during these vast … periods of time, the world swarmed with living creatures. To the question why we do not find records of these vast primordial periods, I can give no satisfactory answer.”

Today, scientists are in disagreement about when these ancient animals evolved. The problem stems from a late 20th-century invention called the molecular clock.

As I explain in my book the Tree of Life, the molecular clock relies on the idea that changes to genes accumulate steadily, like the regular ticks of a grandfather clock. If this idea holds true then simply counting the number of genetic differences between any two animals will let us calculate how distantly related they are – how old their shared ancestor is.

For example, humans and chimpanzees separated 6 million years ago. Let’s say that one chimpanzee gene shows six genetic differences from its human counterpart. As long as the ticks of the molecular clock are regular, this would tell us that one genetic difference between two species corresponds to one million years.

The molecular clock should allow us to place evolutionary events in geological time right across the tree of life.

When zoologists first used molecular clocks in this way, they came to the extraordinary conclusion that the ancestor of all complex animals lived as long as 1.2 billion years ago. Subsequent improvements now give much more sensible estimates for the age of the animal ancestor at around 570 million years old. But this is still roughly 30 million years older than the first fossils.

This 30-million-year-long gap is actually rather helpful to Darwin. It means that there was plenty of time for the ancestor of complex animals to evolve, unhurriedly splitting to make new species which natural selection could gradually transform into forms as distinct as fish, crabs, snails and starfish.

The problem is that this ancient date leaves us with the idea that a host of ancient animals must have swum, slithered and crawled through these ancient seas for 30 million years without leaving a single fossil. Researchers expect gaps in the fossil record but this one would be a whopper.

Starfish evolved their shape hundreds of millions of years ago. Rich Carey/Shutterstock

A popular explanation for the missing fossils is that, for 30 million years, complex animals were tiny and squishy and so hard to fossilise. And then, around 540 million years ago, so the theory goes, these tiny animals began to grow larger, perhaps due to increasing oxygen levels. It is this increase in size that some scientists have used to explain the sudden appearance of complex animals in the fossil record.

The new paper by palaeontologist Graham Budd and mathematician Richard Mann gives a different explanation for the chasm between the ancient ancestor predicted by the molecular clock, and the more sudden, later appearance of complex fossils. Budd and Mann suggest that the molecular clock may not tick quite as regularly as we thought.

The new idea is that the moment that any big group of organisms first appears, evolution speeds up.

To return to our example, for a period of a few million years our imaginary clock could have ticked not once per million years but twice. A faster ticking clock would make it appear as if more time was passing, like pressing fast forward on a video, and this would push the age of the animal ancestor further back into the past.

Faster changing genes would also allow the animals’ appearance to change more quickly. This solves Darwin’s dilemma as it would make it easier for the various branches of the animal tree to become different from each other. The first animal ancestor could quickly diversify into vertebrates, molluscs, arthropods and starfish.

The overall effect of the new idea is to bring the age of the ancestor of complex animals much more in line with the appearance in the fossil record of its immediate descendants.

While the speeding clock idea needs testing, it could explain other mismatches between molecular clocks and fossil record. Perhaps the first flowering plants really existed for tens of millions of years before finally leaving a fossil. And it could help settle scientific debates about whether early primates, carnivores and rodents really lived alongside the last dinosaurs.

For the origins of the animals at least, I feel sure that Darwin would approve.

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Max Telford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The ‘Donroe doctrine’: Maduro is the guinea pig for Donald Trump’s new world order

2026-01-06T17:17:08Z

Shortly after US special forces captured and extracted Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on January 3, Donald Trump said that the US would now “run” Venezuela.

Whatever Washington’s plans for the future of Venezuelan governance, this show of US force in Latin America looks like the first manifestation of a more assertive American foreign policy outlined in the national security strategy published in November 2025. This plainly asserted the Trump administration’s intention to “reassert and enforce the Monroe doctrine to restore American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere”.

Rather than force regime change at this point, Trump has indicated that he is willing to work with Maduro’s vice-president, Delcy Rodriguez, who has been sworn in as president. Rodríguez has adopted a conciliatory tone, inviting the US government to “work together on a cooperative agenda”. For the US president, “cooperation” will involve giving US oil companies unfettered access to Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest in the world.

Announcing the raid at a press conference held hours after American forces snatched Maduro, Trump appeared to issue threats of similar interventions in Colombia, which he said was run by a “sick man who likes to make cocaine and sell it to the US”. His secretary of state, Marco Rubio – the child of Cuban exiles – also hinted at US intentions towards Cuba, saying: “If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned at least a little bit.”

The US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, was perhaps most revealing of the three, talking about the administration’s goal of “reestablishing American deterrence and dominance in the Western Hemisphere”. In a clear warning to US foes, Hegseth said that no other country could have pulled this operation off, adding: “Our adversaries remain on notice. America can project our will anywhere, anytime.”

This is worrying in terms of geopolitics for two reasons.

First, the administration has shown a remarkable lack of engagement with international law. It has chosen instead to frame the raid as a police action to apprehend Maduro as a “narco-terrorist” responsible flooding the US with drugs.

This thin veil of legality has proved successful in the past. In 1989, the administration of George H.W. Bush ordered the invasion of Panama to capture the strongman dictator Manuel Noriega. Noriega was tried in Miami and jailed for 20 years on charges of being a sponsor of illicit drug trafficking.

Despite the UN passing a resolution condemning the invasion as a “flagrant violation of international law” (vetoed by the US, UK and France) the invasion enabled the US to take control of the canal. It held the canal for a decade before handing over operations to the Panama Canal Authority on December 31 1999.

The success of Bush’s invasion could explain why the Trump administration is taking a similar approach with Venezuela. Washington’s official line been to focus on Maduro’s alleged criminality rather than any US ambition to affect regime change in Venezuela.

Hegseth also insisted that the raid was about “safety, security, freedom and prosperity for the American people”. This assertion succinctly captures how the parameters of US national security have evolved to be much broader than defence. They now appear effectively inseparable from advancing US economic interests globally.

It’s an updated version of the Monroe doctrine, which the national security strategy described as the “Trump corollary”, but which the president himself has referred to as the “Donroe doctrine”. The term, which appears to have been coined by the New York Post (but which Trump nonetheless appears to have taken a liking to – as with most things that bear his name) is a vision of geopolitics which projects US power across the Americas.

And it looks set to be used to grab whatever resources the US perceives as beneficial to its interests, from Greenland’s minerals and strategic position to the Panama canal and Venezuelan oil.

A new era of interventionism?

Naturally, it is in Latin America where these threats become more palpable. The 1823 Monroe doctrine – developed under the then president, James Monroe – designated the western hemisphere as an area of US influence in which the European powers of the time were explicitly warned not to interfere. Seven decades later, the 1904 “Roosevelt corollary” added the principle that the US could interfere in any Latin American countries plagued by “wrongdoing or impotence” and “requiring intervention by some civilized nation”.

The Munroe doctrine. Louis Dalrymple, Wikimedia Commons

This principle was invoked to justify direct occupation of Latin American countries contrary to US interests in the early 20th century. In this century, China’s growing links in Latin America have prompted a resurgence of references to the Monroe doctrine – particularly by Republican Congress members.

In 2026, these developments highlight the Trump administration’s willingness to enhance the capabilities of this outlook. It is not clear how the Donroe doctrine differs from its predecessors. But like them, it seems to subordinate international law to national interest.

And while it is aimed at a global audience, it also appears to entitle powerful countries with the right of having spheres of influence. Commentators have referred to this as an era of “rogue superpowers” and the “Putinisation” of US foreign policy.

The absence of conspicuous military support for Maduro from either Russia or China reinforces those arguments. China reportedly buys 76% of Venezuelan oil, while Moscow has in recent years had strong military ties with Caracas. The two countries have also cooperated closely to help each other avoid US oil sanctions.

The new US foreign policy stance as exemplified by the snatching of Maduro means the world is more dangerous – and Latin America considerably more vulnerable. But for now it’s Venezuela, which appears to be the laboratory where Trump has decided to flex America’s geopolitical muscles.

And it looks as if Maduro is the unlucky guinea pig, whose fate is designed to indicate what the world’s most powerful military can and will do to advance its economic and national security interests around the world.

Pablo Uchoa was funded by UKRI, through LAHP, to complete his PhD in Political Science at the UCL Institute of the Americas.

The evolution of digital nomadism: from hi-tech hacker spaces to crypto coworking

2025-12-24T14:40:57Z

Working on a laptop while looking out over terraced rice fields in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand. Torjrtrx/Shutterstock

One of the first modern coworking spaces, C-Base in Berlin, was launched 30 years ago by a group of computer engineers as a “hacker space” in which to share their tech and techniques. Similarly, many of the people we first encountered in our anthropological research into the emerging world of digital nomadism in the mid-2010s were hackers and computer coders.

Nearly a decade later, we returned to Chiang Mai to see what had happened to these pioneers of the borderless, desk-free life. We wondered if they had been put off by the throngs of travellers who have followed in their sandal-clad footsteps, attracted by glamorous – if often inaccurate – images of the digital nomad lifestyle.

One of the city’s nomad hotspots is Yellow Coworking, which launched in 2020 as a blockchain-oriented, collaborative escape zone from the COVID pandemic. The later stages of the pandemic were an interesting time to be in Chiang Mai: Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was followed by mass layoffs in Silicon Valley when Twitter, Meta, Coinbase and Microsoft all made significant cuts.

Yellow Coworking saw an influx of former Silicon Valley workers, Russian and Ukrainian coders, and crypto enthusiasts. “Some ex-Silicon Valley employees are here playing around with startups,” one Yellow staff member explained. “It makes sense for them to come here if they are trying to create an MVP” (that’s “minimum viable product” – startup jargon for a basic prototype that, with luck, will become the next technological success story).

“With its lower costs,” the staff member added, “Chiang Mai gives them a longer runway” (the amount of time the startup can remain solvent without raising additional funds).

People walking into Yellow Coworking’s modernist, European-style building simply raise their hands to sign themselves in via biometric fingerprint scanners. Many are computer coders or IT specialists in their 20s, taking advantage of fast broadband and (mostly western) passports to disconnect their lives from any particular location. They view technology and code as a global language, with no need to stay rooted to a single country or location.

Vitalik Buterin, creator of ethereum – the decentralised blockchain behind the world’s second biggest cryptocurrency, Ether – was often a focus of discussion at Yellow’s regular meet-ups. Buterin has identified as a digital nomad for most of the past decade, claiming to live out of a 40-litre backpack. Like many crypto folk, he views this borderless lifestyle as making perfect ideological sense.

Yellow Coworking in Chiang Mai hosts a mix of ex-Silicon Valley workers, Russian and Ukrainian coders, and crypto enthusiasts. Dave Cook, CC BY-NC-SA

The borderless revolution

In Chiang Mai, cryptocurrency usage has spread to the local population. During one meet-up held in a local bar, the owner took payment for shots of Thai rum in bitcoin. She too talked about the borderless revolution that was coming, and crypto being part of her financial future.

One of the western “crypto nomads” present was trying to launch his own cryptocoin (built on Buterin’s ethereum ecosystem) and get others to invest in it. A few tables away, another who had invested – and lost – a fortune in cryptocurrency explained he was now living in Chiang Mai because of the city’s relatively low cost of living.

For every success story, there were tales of loss and potential scams. Some told outlandish stories of crypto startups and other projects that were hard to validate. One person who wrote eBooks on how to invest successfully in crypto was selling courses on how to get involved. Another was writing code to improve the security of the ethereum blockchain system, to ensure it would be safe from hackers.

A valuable asset for states

Digital nomad hotspots, which also include European cities such as Lisbon in Portugal, show how the worlds of cryptocurrency, blockchain and digital nomadism are colliding – and evolving beyond mere workspace provision.

A collaborative, incubator-like atmosphere is at the core of The Block Lisboa, where you can pay in cryptocurrency and which hosts weekly Crypto Fridays for networking, collaboration and ideas sharing. In 2023, it held the first Ethereum Block Summit, which promised to “delve into the future of finance” by exploring “groundbreaking advancements in the ethereum ecosystem”.

Meanwhile, CV Labs is building a blockchain ecosystem of its own, comprising coworking spaces, events and summits in Lisbon and four other cities including Vaduz in Liechtenstein and Zug – part of Switzerland’s “Crypto Valley”. These spaces are open to cryptocurrency professionals and enthusiasts with professional exchange in mind.

Digital nomads are becoming a valuable asset for states to compete for – as Tsugio Makimoto and David Manners predicted they would in their 1997 book, Digital Nomad. “Just as we are already seeing governments competing with each other to attract industrial investment,” they wrote, “we may see governments competing with each other for citizens.”

Malaysia’s digital nomad visa initially targeted only nomads from IT and digital professions such as cybersecurity and software development. Estonia launched a digital nomad visa along with its e-residency programme to target high-skilled digital workers. While these visas typically restrict local employment, many allow nomads to bring family members and offer a path to residency, such as in Spain and Portugal.

Coworking spaces started off as techno-utopian, hacker spaces. Thirty years later, they are an increasingly important aspect of some cities’ tourism calculations – having been given further allure by the rise of the niche group of crypto nomads.

Top climate books to look out for in 2026 – recommended by experts

2025-12-24T14:40:55Z

Rumka Vodki/Shutterstock

From compelling stories to non-fiction, books can spark ideas that help us navigate the climate crisis. As part of The Conversation’s ongoing Climate Storytelling strand, we asked climate research and creative writing experts to review some of the best new and upcoming titles to look out for in 2026. We’d love to know which ones you enjoy – share your thoughts in the comments below.

Surviving Climate and Chaos: What Dinosaurs Teach Us About Climate Change and Resilience by Evan Jevnikar (December 2025)

Surviving Climate and Chaos offers a refreshing take on dinosaur narratives. While far from the first to guide readers through Mesozoic menageries, Evan Jevnikar contributes a deftly woven history of palaeo-climates alongside the chronological history of the dinosaurs.

Yellow Pear Press, CC BY-NC-ND

Jevnikar shows how dinosaur evolution was intrinsically linked to Earth’s ever-changing climate. Throughout the Mesozoic Era – the “age of reptiles”, which lasted from 252 to 66 million years ago – we see them rise, adapt, and diversify. This was thanks to the way their metabolism and physiology were suited to the warmer, carbon-rich climates of the Triassic period (between 250 and 201 million years ago) and the Jurassic period (201 to 145 million years ago). But the rapid climate change triggered by a fateful asteroid strike (66 million years ago) outpaced the ability of highly specialist dinosaurs (particularly non-flying species) to adapt to a colder and sparser world.

Jevnikar notes how human-influenced climate changes mimic prehistoric catastrophes. Key examples include comparisons between the rising intensity of modern storms and the monsoons of the Triassic period, as well as parallels between carbon-dense volcanic activity throughout Earth’s history and the contemporary mass release of carbon dioxide by people burning fossil fuels.

Jevnikar’s inclusion of actionable solutions is reassuring, though: far from prophesying apocalypse, he couples objective warnings about the influences of climate on ecosystems with remedial steps that humanity can take to reverse some of the damage it has caused. These include reforestation initiatives, carbon capture technology and personal acts of climate consciousness.

Backed by scientific evidence yet communicated clearly enough for people who are not palaeo-climatologists, Jevnikar contemplates our roles as climate stewards in an entertaining and accessible way.

Nathan Bramald is a PhD candidate researching the scientific communication of dinosaurs in literature

Called By the Hills: A Home in the Himalaya by Anuradha Roy (January 2026)

For the past 25 years, novelist and publisher Anuradha Roy has called the Himalaya her home and her world. In Called by the Hills, she invites us up and into the Ranikhet hillside of northern India, where oxygen fizzes like champagne, leopards stalk the forests and langur monkey troops dance on roofs.

Roy’s absorbing book offers a personal panorama of the region: here is the oak tree I planted, she says, that is where the internet cafe was. Throughout, she tends to her sentences with patience and personality, the same way she tends to her Himalaya-facing garden.

The UK edition, smartly presented by Daunt, includes Roy’s adoring watercolours of the dogs who found their way into her home. A book of wildflowers and kafal berries, Called by the Hills stands as both a gardening memoir and a love letter to an endless forest that now faces an ending, as climate change begins to muddle the seasons.

Dominic O'Key is an English-teaching associate

Despite it All: a Handbook for Climate Hopefuls by Fred Pearce (February 2026)

Journalist and writer Fred Pearce argues that climate action is already underway and that defeatism only narrows our imagination. He does not claim to be writing an academic text, yet he provides clear explanations, with careful sourcing and suggestions for further reading that draw the reader into a wider conversation.

His writing on inequity is particularly strong, especially the Enough for a Decent Life section, which confronts the fact that the wealthiest 10% have driven two-thirds of global warming since 1990. It asks how we meet the basic needs of 8 billion people while protecting the systems that support life.

Pearce’s treatment of technology and geopolitical action is thoughtful, using the global response to the stratospheric ozone hole to show that coordinated action can shift outcomes when it is taken seriously. The book focuses on collective work rather than individual lifestyle tweaks.

His examples illustrate what genuine progress looks like, from Indigenous stewardship to eco-restoration projects. The result is a sustained case for cautious optimism that feels earned rather than wishful.

Sam Illingworth is a professor of creative pedagogies

The climate crisis has a communications problem. How do we tell stories that move people – not just to fear the future, but to imagine and build a better one? This article is part of Climate Storytelling, a series exploring how arts and science can join forces to spark understanding, hope and action.

Frontierlands by Hazel Sheffield (February 2026)

The UK has one of the most concentrated forms of land ownership in the world. People are denied access to thousands of derelict properties, boarded up after factories close or landlords raise rents. Hazel Sheffield calls these unused buildings and properties Britain’s “frontiers”.

Documenting the tremendous obstacles to bringing them into productive use again, yet refusing pessimism, she follows artists, community organisers, bricklayers and car repair people who build with a new ethos. They propose collective ownership and neighbourhood co-production of crafts, festivals, healthy food options, together with affordable, low-carbon retrofitting.

In Frontierlands, Sheffield offers countless ideas for increasing our resilience in the face of late-stage capitalism. She also advocates for building neighbourhoods with better protection against a wetter and hotter climate. It’s a convincing argument: these initiatives will improve the nation’s health as well as its infrastructure.

Stephanie Palmer is a senior lecturer in the school of social sciences

The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change by Rebecca Solnit (March 2026)

Rebecca Solnit’s latest work is a powerful meditation on transformation in turbulent times. This slim volume situates today’s polarisation, authoritarian resurgence and reaction against progressive values within a broader historical arc.

The book opens with a moving land-return ceremony to Indigenous Americans and continues with examples of progress achieved through resistance and activism. Through vivid metaphors – caterpillars becoming butterflies, the labour pains of a new world — Solnit argues that the current turmoil signals the dying throes of patriarchy and colonialism.

At its heart, this book is a rallying call for all those who yearn for a just, sustainable and flourishing society. Solnit tells us not to give up hope, reassuring us that these struggles mark the shedding of the old and the birth of a new civilisation. As a sustainability academic, writer and climate-anxious activist myself, it’s just what I needed to hear.

Denise Baden is a professor of sustainable business

Elemental: How We Will Live on a Warming Planet by Arthur Snell (March 2026)

With more than 25 years’ experience in conflict zones and fragile states, Arthur Snell travels from the heat of the Sahel to the Arctic Circle to show how climate change is coinciding with a breakdown in geopolitical order, increasing conflict, military spending and violence.

“This is not a book of predictions … [it] is a guide to the future,” he writes. Snell uses the four elements – earth, air, fire and water – to frame climate change as a force reshaping present-day global politics. Drawing on history and current affairs, he paints a picture of climate change as more than “just” an environmental challenge. He outlines how it is reshaping national security, economic stability and even sovereignty.

He connects drought and the scramble for critical minerals to food insecurity, reminding readers that land remains central to survival. Rising temperatures and air quality pressures drive migration, while wildfires and the “pyrocene” expose vulnerabilities in fossil fuel-dependent economies. Water, meanwhile, links floods in Asia to Arctic ambitions.

Snell’s analysis is rigorous yet human, resisting fatalism and emphasising how outcomes depend on governance and cooperation: choices we make today. Elemental is an interdisciplinary masterclass on power and responsibility in the 21st century.

Mary Johnstone-Louis is a sustainable business researcher.

The Given World by Melissa Harrison (May 2026)

The Given World is a novel rooted in nature. Set in the fictional English village of Lower Eodham, bird song and wildlife are observed in fine detail, interwoven with a well-paced plot. The narrative skips about characters, with each chapter (except the last) focusing on a different village inhabitant or visitor.

Somewhat sparse dialogue gives space to focus on the inner world of these people, with hints at their lives and the connections between them. There is a slightly dark tone, with mysteries we need to wait to understand about difficulties the characters have experienced or may in the future.

Set in post-COVID, modern day life, climate change is an undertone from the start. There are references to wildfires on the news, as well as the consumerist or anti-consumerist leanings of different characters. Mention of the now-closed wholefood vegetarian restaurant chain Cranks made me smile, remembering visits with my father before veganism went mainstream.

The Given World is a thoughtful and thought-provoking story which will resonate with those interested in our reliance on, and complex relationship with, the natural world.

Rosie Robison is a professor of social sustainability

My Body is a Meadow by Bethany Handley (May 2026)

I went through various emotions reading My Body is a Meadow – from angry and amused through to ashamed and annoyed. This reflects the author’s own journey to “radical acceptance” of being Disabled. Disabled like the environment is. Disabled like the flora and fauna that inhibit it are.

The book is at times a painfully honest assessment of how the damage done to Disabled people mirrors that being done to the environment, the barriers both encounter and in turn how these barriers could be overcome.

Handley is also a poet, which is reflected in the many beautiful turns of phrase that litter the book. Some of the points seem a little over worked – but perhaps necessarily so. This is a message that needs to germinate, take root and be planted in people’s minds in order for people and the planet to flourish.

Maria Kett is a professor of humanitarianism and social inclusion

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
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Ecological myopia: the blind spot holding back climate action

2025-12-22T17:53:22Z

Khanthachai C/Shutterstock

Global debate about how to navigate the climate crisis often centres on high-level pledges and whether national targets are being met. Yet focusing on these technical outcomes obscures a deeper problem that keeps climate action falling short.

This problem is ecological myopia: treating climate change as one issue among many rather than as a sign of wider Earth system disruption. It narrows how we understand risk and allows politics, business and daily life to proceed as if planetary stability could still be taken for granted.

Set against the backdrop of a drying and burning Amazon, the UN climate summit in Brazil in November 2025 showed why this way of seeing no longer works.

Ecological myopia interprets climate change as a conventional environmental problem rather than as a planetary one. It assumes climate sits in a box labelled environment or sustainability while the rest of social and economic life sits in separate silos. But this is short sighted.

Political geoecology – an approach that sees politics as inseparable from the Earth’s ecological systems – offers one way to understand what this leaves out. The idea is that politics and ecology cannot be separated because modern societies are built into the Earth system through energy use, land change and industrial infrastructures. These connections shape climate risks and inequalities yet remain largely invisible.

In many people’s conversations, record heat or flooding are still described as odd weather rather than recognised as signs of a shifting climate that affects food prices and public health. Companies announce net-zero plans yet expand activities that embed new emissions.

Meanwhile, governments hand responsibility to environment ministries even though the main drivers sit in finance or security. We need to see much more clearly.

The past ten years have been the hottest on record. The Amazon, host of this year’s UN climate summit, is experiencing droughts so severe that they disrupt river transport and rainfall patterns across the Americas. These developments are not isolated. They reflect mounting pressure on the Earth system.

Modern societies also forget that their prosperity rests on a simple physical process: burning things. Contemporary civilisation has been built around combustion, from coal and oil to natural gas that run homes and industries.

This has turned humanity into a planetary force of disruption, reshaping the atmosphere, the oceans and the ecosystems on which all life depends.

Yet ecological myopia makes it difficult for governments and institutions to respond with the urgency required. When climate is treated as a sector, action is funnelled into narrow channels such as emissions targets or carbon markets, while the deeper forces reshaping the planet continue largely unchecked. Land use, fossil-fuel infrastructure and global supply chains remain the structural drivers of destabilisation.

The cure for ecological myopia is to reframe how we see planetary systems. Negro Elkha/Shutterstock

A planetary lens

A cure for ecological myopia requires using the planetary lens that political geoecology offers. It starts from a simple premise: Everything people depend on, including energy, water, food and health, is embedded in the Earth system.

Looking through this lens shifts priorities. Climate policy becomes inseparable from economic and social policy. Emissions targets are linked to land use and infrastructure, and what societies produce and build.

Indigenous and local knowledge systems are recognised as essential sources of resilience. Protecting ecosystems such as the Amazon is understood as protecting the processes that sustain rainfall and regional stability.

This perspective echoes ideas in research and policy circles on planetary governance, which is not simply global governance at a larger scale. It focuses on how societies can govern within ecological limits and in response to feedbacks – the knock-on effects the Earth system sends back as conditions change – rather than managing climate as an external problem.

For example, shrinking river flows that threaten hydropower or severe flooding that disrupts food production and transport show how Earth system changes spill across sectors, not just climate policy.

Seeing more clearly is the first step toward wiser action.

The central challenge is not only to cut emissions. It is to rethink how societies understand and organise their relationship with the living Earth and to overcome ecological myopia in media narratives, institutional design and economic choices.

The Amazon is often described as the lungs of the planet. It is also a mirror that shows how closely human life is bound into the wider Earth system and how vulnerable that system has become. Now, it’s time to use this mirror to tackle our ecological myopia.

Prior to retirement Simon Dalby was funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Tom Pegram does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Young people’s social worlds are ‘thinning’ – here’s how that’s affecting wellbeing

2025-12-19T13:43:05Z

AstroStar/Shutterstock

Between 2014 and 2024, the proportion of people aged 16–24 in England experiencing mental health issues rose from 19% to 26%.

This means over 1.6 million young people – enough to fill Wembley Stadium 18 times over – are affected by mental ill-health today.

Social media is often at the centre of conversations about what’s driving this trend. But while our increasingly digital lives are part of the story, the bigger picture is more complex. Young people are arguably spending more time online partly because the real world has less and less to offer them, as we’ve explored in a recent report for the Nuffield Foundation.

At the heart of their declining wellbeing is the hollowing out of the real-world infrastructure that supports healthy social development, with social lives becoming increasingly fragile and “thinned”.

This “social thinning”, a term we developed in research exploring trauma, includes fewer opportunities to play, take risks and build supportive relationships. This thinning, we believe, has worrying implications for development and mental health.

One of us (Eamon McCrory) is a neuroscientist who has spent years studying risk and resilience and brain systems that develop across adolescence. During this period, the brain refines the systems that help us understand others, form a clear sense of self and regulate our emotions.

Teenagers are wired to explore friendships, navigate complex social groups and practice handling conflict and rejection. These experiences help young people develop agency and independence.

But developing these abilities depends on spending time in a wide range of real social environments with different kinds of relationships, from casual interactions to close friendships.

When chances to practise these skills shrink, it can lead to loneliness and consequences for development. It can become harder to trust others, feel connected to peers or manage strong emotions.

For example, one study used the pandemic as an opportunity to test the effect of a significant reduction in social connections between teenagers. The researchers found that trust was low in adolescents during lockdown, and this in turn was associated with high levels of stress.

In other words, the evidence points to deprivation of social connection as having developmental consequences, and over time, an increased risk of mental health difficulties.

Thinning social worlds

The real-world experiences that support these crucial neurological processes have been steadily declining. Between 2011 and 2023, over 1,200 council-run youth centres in England and Wales closed, and £1.2 billion has been stripped from youth service budgets since 2010 in England. Meanwhile, parks and open spaces have suffered from underinvestment.

Investment in youth services has shrunk. Knights Lane/Shutterstock

Cultural shifts have also had an impact. It has been suggested that fears about safety and a desire to minimise risks for their children have produced a “risk-averse” parenting culture. In schools, rising academic pressures and an emphasis on achievement have come at the expense of play and exploration.

Research suggests that children today have significantly less freedom to roam, play outdoors, or gather with peers than previous generations.

The environments in which young people can explore, fail safely and develop social mastery have been radically narrowed. It is into an already thinning social ecosystem that digital platforms enter.

Digital help and harm

Despite many arguments to the contrary, digital spaces are not inherently harmful. They can offer connection, self-expression and community.

This can be particularly true for those marginalised offline, with research suggesting social media can actually support the mental health and wellbeing of young LGBTQ people. Our online and offline lives are deeply intertwined, with online connections often allowing us to deepen existing relationships.

The problem is less that young people are online, and more that online life has rushed in to fill the gaps left by a shrinking offline world.

Moreover, digital platforms are built for profit, not development. Young people are shaping their identities, sense of belonging and social status within systems designed to drive constant engagement – a phenomenon which is only accelerating with the advent of AI.

Social media platforms encourage comparison, performance and rapid responses. More broadly, the digital world can pull attention away from the real world and place young people under persistent pressure. It can also affect how – across a formative period of development – they make sense of themselves and the world around them.

Solid foundations in a digital world

There is growing recognition that preventing mental ill health means investing in the social foundations of childhood. McCrory is the chief executive of the mental health charity Anna Freud, which is making a significant shift towards prevention: prioritising building strengths,reducing risks and supporting wellbeing before problems become entrenched. And, of course, positive relationships are the cornerstone of healthy development.

To reverse rising rates of mental ill health, we need to reimagine and invest in the social scaffolding that supports healthy development, ensuring children and young people grow up in socially rich environments. This requires serious investment in youth services, outdoor spaces and community infrastructure.

Schools need more time for play, creativity and extracurricular activities, not just academic performance. Families need support to create shared experiences, from outdoor play to community participation.

Digital platforms are now part of everyday life, but they must complement rather than replace experiences in the physical world. By enriching, not thinning, young people’s social worlds and giving them places and relationships that build trust, foster agency and support connection, we can strengthen the foundations for lifelong wellbeing.

Eamon McCrory is affiliated with UCL (Professor of Developmental Neuroscience and Psychopathology) and Anna Freud (CEO)

Ritika Chokhani is currently the recipient of a PhD studentship funded by the Wellcome Trust, focusing on similar research areas.

How Venezuela has been preparing for a US invasion for more than two decades

2025-12-18T12:23:12Z

In the latest escalation of tensions between the US and Venezuela, on December 17 US President Donald Trump ordered a “complete blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers going into and out of Venezuela. His Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolás Maduro, called the move “warmongering threats”, and accused the US of trying to steal its resources.

Since September, US military operations in the Caribbean have killed at least 95 people in 25 strikes. The Trump administration says it is targeting drug traffickers, but US lawmakers are now investigating some of the strikes amid mounting criticism of their scope and intent.

Meanwhile, Trump has placed a US$50 million bounty on the head of Maduro, and authorised the CIA to conduct covert lethal operations inside Venezuela.

In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to Pablo Uchoa, a PhD candidate researching Venezuela’s military scenario planning, on how Venezuela has long been preparing for this moment.

He traces that planning back to 2002 and an unsuccessful coup attempt against former Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chávez. Uchoa explains that two important influences on Chavez’s thinking at the time were Vietnam and Iraq:

Obviously the Vietnamese army expelled the Americans just by making it so hard for the Americans to stay in – and the same thing with Iraq, in different ways. The basic idea here is that the fight is not just army against army. This is … people against an army.

Listen to the interview with Pablo Uchoa about the Venezuelan military scenario planning on The Conversation Weekly podcast.

This episode was written and produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware with production assistance from Katie Flood. Mixing by Michelle Macklem and theme music by Neeta Sarl.

Newsclips in this episode from NBC News, BBC News, Geopolitical Economy Report, Al Jazeera English, AP Archive, the Straits Times, Euronews, CBS News and Reuters.

Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. A transcript of this episode is available via the Apple Podcasts or Spotify apps.

Pablo Uchoa has received UKRI funding for his research on the transformation of Venezuala's military under Hugo Chávez.

UCL President: Universities must show they bring benefits to everyone, locally and nationally

2025-12-17T11:37:29Z

UCL's Cruciform building. Vinsen Kevin Mingking/Shutterstock

Editor’s note: The Conversation’s operation in the UK is based at UCL in London, where around half of the 25-strong editorial team have desks. It is a physical representation of our integrated position within the institution and the UK Higher Education sector.

We were founded in the UK in 2013, to channel research-based knowledge to the wider public. More than 70 UK institutions are now members of the project, along with 13 worldwide. That means we’re keenly aware of the challenges facing the sector, as well as the incredible value it brings to society as a whole. Here, Michael Spence, President & Provost of UCL, writes about the necessity for higher education institutions to engage with their communities, and universities’ role in national and local life.

UK universities are rightly respected around the world for their academic rigour, openness, and ingenuity. I’m proud of UCL’s close connection with The Conversation, which showcases this expertise daily.

As someone who has worked within this remarkable higher education sector for many years, I know how tempting it is to leap to its defence when it is criticised. However, there are moments when it is important to listen. With increasing dissatisfaction in institutions around the Western world, now is one of them. In doing so, we must be careful not to dismiss criticism or to exaggerate the sense of public dissatisfaction. We must meet the public where they are.

That’s why I was glad that UCL Policy Lab with More in Common, through a series of polls and focus group discussions, recently chose to look closely at how the public sees the role and value of universities today. Their work finds that the British public still hold a deep affection for our universities – indeed they remain a source of national, local and personal pride.

Around 60% of the public see universities as a benefit to the nation, a similar number see them as a local asset. Where many institutions are perceived to be fractured or in decline, universities stand out: globally respected yet deeply embedded in their communities.

In these turbulent times maintaining this trust is far from guaranteed. The report also makes clear where there is growing concern and division over the benefit and role of universities. This includes on the perception that some degrees do not prepare students for the workplace and the finding that only around half of the population say they are aware universities carry out research.

Yet the most striking finding of the report, and the one that should give us most pause for thought, is the gap between the affection of graduates for universities and the relative scepticism of those that have not attended higher education. Voters that see Reform as the answer to their frustrations are overwhelmingly non-graduates.

The clear challenge for us is therefore to show we are serving the whole country whether they attended university or not. It’s easy to respond to this by saying we need to tell a better story – to communicate more clearly the value we bring to the nation. That is true, but it’s not the whole picture. The message I take away is that the public expect change to address their concerns, but not a revolution of institutions that they remain proud of.

The public’s frustration with how many aspects of the country are working – or not working – is real. Universities must not be oblivious to that, and while the overall picture is a positive one, it will not remain so without our showing the requisite leadership to maintain and extend public trust. In setting out the Post 16 Education and Skills White Paper, the government has been clear that universities are expected to take the lead in defining their public purpose.

I have been heartened to see more university leaders start to tackle these challenges. For our part at UCL it starts with our deep commitment to our place in London and serving the communities around us. That includes our long-established partnership with our home borough, Camden Council, working with them on the variety of ways our university can serve the local community. Whether that is through a thoughtful approach to local planning, the “Good Life Euston” project measuring how regeneration affects Euston’s communities, supporting the curriculum development for young people at the London AI campus, or facilitating the volunteering work of our Students Union to distribute toys to families in need at Christmas.

Euston Road, London. Felix Mizioznikov/Shutterstock

More recently we have built an approach to civil society partnerships that recognises the university’s responsibility to communities across Britain. The focus has been on building deep and lasting regional partnerships in areas outside of London where our work can have the most benefit. In the North East of England, one ongoing project aims to support the development of social infrastructure in Sacriston, a former mining village in County Durham. Another project in Sunderland focuses on men’s mental health.

Of course, we must not lose sight of the fact that the power of university research is that so much of it, by its very nature, is at the service of all. This is not just in the knowledge we make available freely to the public, but the transformative impact it can have on lives.

Nowhere is this clearer than in health research and clinical trials, an area where UCL does a huge amount. From aiding the development of medical breakthroughs like the first ever successful treatment for slowing the progression of Huntington’s disease, announced in October, to helping improve treatment approaches, as the STAMPEDE trial has done with over 12,000 men with prostate cancer, to the remarkable progress being made with gene therapies – with a “base-editing” technique shown to reverse incurable leukaemia, just this week. It does not matter to the patient where their treatment was developed, if it can save or improve their lives. Our report demonstrates that while the public have a clear sense of the importance of this research, universities’ role in it is not widely understood. This is something we must address.

No responses to demonstrate we serve the whole nation can engender trust if there is a perception that our doors are closed to some communities. Further work on widening participation is therefore fundamental. I am proud that a third of our recent undergraduate students entered through our Access UCL programme. However, this commitment means not only enabling attendance at university but attainment while here, on which we have a renewed focus.

It is equally important to demonstrate that we are welcoming of diverse views that reflect the whole nation. Genuine diversity of perspectives and backgrounds is fundamental to what we do as a university. Good-faith disagreement between informed participants with a range of views and experiences enhances university life, strengthens our research and makes us better able to serve the communities in which we are based. It is to this end we have developed our teaching of the skills of disagreement, hosted difficult conversations on campus and continue to work across our whole community on the challenge of social polarisation under the banner of our Disagreeing Well campaign.

At a time when public trust in institutions is under strain across the Western world, we can take heart from the continued public support for UK universities. While we cannot be complacent, I remain confident that we can make the necessary changes and demonstrate to the public, whether they attended university or not, that we serve their interests. The task of doing so starts with listening.

England’s synthetic phonics approach is not working for children who struggle to read

2025-12-12T11:09:58Z

JPC-PROD/Shutterstock

Since 2012, England has taken an increasingly narrow approach to how primary school teachers should teach reading.

The policies on teaching reading have insisted that an approach called “systematic synthetic phonics” is the only way to teach reading. Synthetic phonics involves teaching children the 44 sounds, or “phonemes”, of language and how they are represented by letters in words.

England’s approach to teaching reading was alleged to have created “the best readers in the Western world” by the previous government, when England rose up the rankings of an international reading assessment.

Other countries and regions are now following England’s lead. For example, Australia is following many aspects of England’s approach to phonics. The US has moved towards a much greater emphasis on synthetic phonics. And New Zealand has abandoned the programme called Reading Recovery in favour of more emphasis on phonics.

These regions claim to be basing their new teaching approaches on “the science of reading”. But an accurate reading of the science shows that there are a range of different evidence-based approaches that can be taken to teaching children about phonemes and letters. If countries are following England’s lead, then we need to be sure that England’s approach is based on the most up to date research evidence.

Unfortunately the outcomes for children with reading difficulties in England, over more than a decade, tell a different story from those who claim that narrow synthetic phonics is the only approach. The proportion of children struggling to read has remained at a similar level for many years. The percentage of children not at the expected standards in reading at the age of ten or 11 has remained at about 25% since 2017.

As part of new research my colleagues and I conducted, we surveyed a group of 133 experienced teachers and special educational needs specialists in England. We also carried out a new analysis of already published research. We examined the findings of studies that tested which approaches work best for children with reading difficulties, including those with particular problems such as dyslexia.

There are hundreds of well-conducted studies that have examined how children with reading difficulties can best be taught to read. We found more than 40 systematic reviews of all of these studies. There is clear evidence that flexible teaching approaches are more effective than a narrow emphasis on synthetic phonics.

This means that teachers emphasise a range of components – such as the meanings of words and sentences to contextualise learning about phonemes and letters in real purposes for reading, and teaching writing to help reading.

Motivation is a key part of children’s progression as readers. Sokor Space/Shutterstock

Another of the components that is vital to attend to is children’s motivation for reading. The kinds of books that are used as part of the teaching is connected to this.

Systematic synthetic phonics is taught using “decodable” books that often have very limited content. But using real books is a way to motivate children through the imaginative ways that stories, poems and information are portrayed in these books. And my own research with Charlotte Hacking shows that phonics can be taught using real books.

I argue that teaching reading should explicitly focus on motivating children to read. This involves understanding more about children’s interests and providing reading materials that are likely to motivate them. It also requires teachers to actively assess children’s levels of motivation, and take steps to address this as needed.

Deviating from the script

Some of the teachers that we surveyed said that if synthetic phonics was not working to teach a child to read they would try a different approach, including multi-component approaches. But more than 20% of our respondents said they would continue with synthetic phonics even if it wasn’t working, because that was the government’s policy.

Some teachers are more confident than others to innovate with their teaching, and they will have the support of head teachers to innovate. But in education systems with great pressures to conform to one particular approach all teachers find it harder to innovate.

The previous Conservative government used a variety of ways to require teachers to use only synthetic phonics for all children, including those with reading difficulties.

The phonics screening check, taken by all children in year one, and associated targets for schools, encourage a narrow focus on teaching phonics. Ofsted inspections reinforce government messages about synthetic phonics. Teachers in training and new teachers also have new tight requirements on synthetic phonics.

The Labour government has not said it will change any of this. England has just reviewed its national curriculum. No changes were proposed for the teaching of reading in primary schools.

Unless action is taken this will be a missed opportunity that will probably mean that some of our children most in need will not get the teaching based on robust research evidence that they need. However, children and schools cannot wait. The evidence shows that when synthetic phonics is not working, multi-component approaches should be tried.

Dominic Wyse currently receives funding from the Helen Hamlyn Trust and The Welsh Government.

What’s the safest way to walk home at night? We’ve created an AI-powered app that shows you

2025-12-11T13:10:49Z

Night-time view of Derry city centre in Northern Ireland, where the Safest Way app is promoted in pubs to advise on safer walking routes. Irina WS/Shutterstock

In the historic walled city of Derry (also known as Londonderry) in Northern Ireland, the night-time economy is vibrant. But like many urban centres, it presents safety challenges for those trying to get home. At night, a volunteer group known as the Inner City Assistance Team (iCat) often patrols the streets, intervening when people feel vulnerable – whether due to intoxication, a mental health issue, or simply being alone in unlit or unfamiliar areas.

Recently in the city, iCat introduced Safest Way, a pedestrian navigation app I co-developed during my PhD research at UCL. The app employs AI technology to show users not just faster but safer routes when walking to and from a destination – for example, the safest way home after a night out.

The necessity for such interventions is rooted in a stark disparity in how urban safety is experienced by women and men.

Research by the Office for National Statistics in 2022 found that 82% of women feel unsafe walking alone in parks or open spaces after dark, compared with 42% of men. And 63% of women actively avoid travelling alone when it is dark, against 34% of men.

A survey by Plan International UK in 2024 found that nearly three-quarters of girls and young women (ages 14-21) sometimes choose longer routes home to avoid potential danger, and almost two-thirds take taxis home at least once a month because of the risks associated with public transport or walking.

Such fears are a direct response to the built environment, with research showing that factors such as street lighting and conditions of pavements are key aspects of how safe women feel . Lighting is often the deciding factor: 60% of women who feel unsafe walking to and from public transport cite poor lighting as the primary reason.

The vast majority of women say they feel unsafe walking alone after dark. Haru Photography/Shutterstock

Bridging the data gap

For decades, urban walkers have been treated like vehicles, with mapping tools optimising routes for a single metric – travel time – while treating a dark alley and a high street as identical, if the distance is the same. The question of feeling safe has been largely overlooked by this technology.

Part of the reason for this has been a lack of unified data. While local authorities and police forces collect vast amounts of information regarding street lighting, CCTV locations and crime incidents, this data is typically fragmented, incompatible or locked in static PDFs.

To bridge this gap, my team and I developed a data pipeline to aggregate these and other sources. In London, this required issuing dozens of freedom of information requests to borough councils to obtain precise geospatial data on over half a million street lights and thousands of public CCTV cameras. Our lighting map was awarded first prize in the 2025 UCL data visualisation competition.

We then combined this information with official police crime datasets, urban features such as the location of parks, industrial areas and run-down buildings, plus open-source Mapillary and OpenStreetMap data to “safety score” individual street segments.

Even then, objective data is only half the picture. Perceived safety – how safe a street feels to someone walking it – is critical to the route choices they make. To model this at scale, we turned to Artificial Intelligence: specifically, OpenAI’s vision-language model Clip (Contrastive Language-Image Pre-Training).

Unlike traditional computer vision that detects discrete objects such as street lamps, Clip (and similar vision-language models) encodes the semantic meaning of an entire scene – converting both visual data and user-provided text prompts into mathematical vectors.

Classifying subjective viewpoints such as “feels safe” or “quite risky” is an ongoing area of research. But in our 2025 study, we found a high correlation between the way AI and our human testers perceived safety, based on 500 photographs of London street segments.

While we now hope to scale this approach to modelling urban safety to millions of streets in the UK and beyond, we are realistic about the limitations. Past crime and urban design data can inform safer choices, but they cannot predict individual incidents. Our model is designed to support decision-making not guarantee safety, and it should sit alongside wider efforts by venues, councils and police to make night-time streets safer.

Derry’s early adoption

Since launching its beta version, the Safest Way app has been adopted by approximately 1,000 users, primarily in London and Derry, where most of the safety infrastructure is fully mapped.

Coordinating the Derry launch from afar was a challenge. A Safest Way team member visited the city early in 2025 to learn about the city’s complex political landscape firsthand. But the pilot’s success was made possible largely thanks to our partners, iCat.

The volunteer group’s co-founder, Stephen Henry, told the Irish News that the idea to bring the app to the city had come about following some attacks on women there in 2024.

The group now distributes beer mats with Safest Way logos and QR codes in local pubs. “We encourage staff to download the app too,” Henry points out, “as they often don’t leave the premises until 3am or later”.

Having recently showcased our technology at the Prototypes for Humanity conference in Dubai, we are now scaling the app’s data coverage – from street lighting to AI-modelled perception of safety – to cover all of England and then the rest of the UK. We aim to close the information gap that currently forces vulnerable groups to pay a safety tax.

In Derry, the technology already provides a digital layer of protection that complements the physical presence of volunteers. By including this tech in their vulnerability training for security staff and using it during their patrols, iCat is moving beyond reactive assistance to proactive risk reduction.

This article was commissioned in conjunction with Prototypes for Humanity, a global initiative that showcases and accelerates academic innovation to solve social and environmental challenges. The Conversation is the media partner of Prototypes for Humanity 2025.

Ilya Ilyankou receives PhD funding from the UKRI's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and Ordnance Survey. He is a co-founder and chief technology officer of Safest Way, a startup supported by the Ordnance Survey’s Geovation accelerator programme. This article was commissioned in conjunction with Prototypes for Humanity, a global initiative that showcases and accelerates academic innovation to solve social and environmental challenges. The Conversation is the media partner of Prototypes for Humanity 2025.