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Butch drag in the builders’ caff
Two men in a café dressed in practical workwear might seem indistinguishable, but closer inspection reveals layers of complex, nuanced identity.
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Designing better mental health wards
Bringing colour and natural light to tired, grubby mental health wards has a measurably positive effect on patients. A few groundbreaking projects are showing the way.
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Life before assistive technology
When an inherited condition caused Alex Lee’s vision to deteriorate, he began to discover the technologies that would help him navigate the world around him. Here he describes how his life began to change.
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Investigating what lithium is and how it works
The more questions Laura Grace Simpkins asked about lithium, the more she realised how little is known about this powerful drug and how it affects our mental health.
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姜、蒜、葱 Ginger, garlic and spring onions
Nina Mingya Powles felt adrift in the UK, living thousands of miles from home. But nurturing familiar tastes and smells in her tiny balcony garden helped her roots begin to grow.
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Written on my body
Scars mean David Jesudason has never enjoyed seeing his reflection. Recounting the stories behind the marks on his face and body, he finds the only one that symbolises hope and happiness.
- Interview
- Interview
Meet the climate emergency
Find out what led Yinka Shonibare to create the compelling artwork ‘Refugee Astronaut’.
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Fashion for an unruly body
One weekend, just before an operation to correct her scoliosis, Rosalind Jana stopped trying to hide her body. Read how those two days helped her step into the future.
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The art of scientific glassblowing
Exciting things happen when art, craft, engineering and science collide. Glassblower Gayle Price is proof of that.
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The anatomy of a brain dissection
Dissecting the brain after death not only helps confirm a diagnosis, but it can also teach us so much more about the symptoms and causes of brain diseases and how to treat them.
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Don’t call me a strong Black woman
Her upbringing taught Jaydee Seaforth that she could never show pain or weakness, even when her internal distress was extreme. Find out how she learned to listen to her body.
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A nose through Blythe House
Recently sold and emptied out, Blythe House was once one of the UK’s biggest museum storage facilities. Here, museum worker Laura Humphreys reflects on her relationship with the store’s architecture, objects and aromas.
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Eugenics and the welfare state
Indy Bhullar explores the ideas of William Beveridge and Richard Titmuss, who were strongly influenced by eugenic thinking, and yet championed the idea of the welfare state.
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The secret lives of Britain’s first Black physicians
Dr Annabel Sowemimo explores the web of connections between early Black British doctors, the role of empire in West Africa and the pernicious reach of scientific racism.
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In search of the ‘nature cure’
Under the competing pressures of modern life, many of us succumb to mental ill health. Samantha Walton explores why so-called ‘nature cures’ don’t help, and how the living world can actually help us.
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It’s getting mighty crowded
Mid-20th-century population-density research on mice produced a whiskered apocalypse, predicted to become the fate of humans too. But perhaps a more compassionate approach could fend this off.
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Performance art, frozen in time
For over a year, live performance art with an audience present has been largely impossible. But still images continue to allow artists in this sphere to inspire audiences at home.
- Interview
- Interview
Inside the mind of George Vasey, co-curator of Misbehaving Bodies
Discover how curator George Vasey honoured the approaches of Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery, who mischievously subvert clichés around illness and death.
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Can isolation lead to manipulation?
Military-funded researchers wanted to know if isolation techniques could facilitate brainwashing. One neuroscientist suggested that it might improve our own control over our minds.
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NHS Blue: the colour of universal healthcare
The 1980s and 1990s saw ideas from the world of business infiltrating the NHS, including the introduction of an internal market, followed by a corporate branding exercise.
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Exceptional talent and the trouble with IQ tests
Is a high IQ really a mark of genius, or does something else explain the exceptional?
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The search for a cure for endometriosis
Discover how a white American doctor’s experimental operations on black female slaves laid the foundations for modern gynaecological surgery.
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Milk trails round Euston
Where cows once grazed near Wellcome Collection in London, baristas now froth their milk. Esther Leslie uncovers Euston’s dairy-based urban history.
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The joys and failures of audio description
Audio description enhances the experience of watching a film or TV show for people with a visual impairment, but it's not widely available in the UK. Alex Lee explains why.
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How the mental health system fails Black people
Accessing mental healthcare as a Black woman can be a challenging experience. Rianna Walcott shares her story, alongside those of three other women, to reveal the barriers she faced.