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412 results
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Pain, politics and the power of photography

| Giulia Smith

Art historian Giulia Smith explains what she most admires in the work of Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery, and how their approach makes illness political.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

Winter blues and the story of SAD

| Linda Geddes

In ‘Chasing the Sun‘ Linda Geddes reveals why for some people, winter is literally depressing, showing how we first came to recognise seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

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Tracing the toxic story of tear gas

| Imani Jacqueline BrownFungai Marima

Investigating tear gas – from factory to Black Lives Matter protest – Imani Jacqueline Brown uncovers a toxic legacy where pollution, violence and racism are intimately entwined.

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Shakespeare’s cholerics were the real drama queens

| Nelly Ekström

In Shakespeare’s times, people’s personalities were categorised by four temperaments. The choleric temperament was hot-tempered and active.

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The joys and failures of audio description

| Alex LeeIan Treherne

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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The indelible harm caused by conversion therapy

| Jules MontagueStephen Nestor Ostrowski

With first-hand evidence from two powerful testimonies, neurologist Jules Montague explores the destructive history of conversion therapy, a punitive treatment designed to ‘cure’ people of homosexuality.

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Female masturbation and the perils of pleasure

| Dr Kate Lister

Dr Kate Lister exposes the brutal 19th-century ‘cures’ for women who indulged in masturbation.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

The 200-year search for normal people

| Sarah ChaneyMaïa Walcott

Sarah Chaney poses the question we’ve likely all asked at some point in our lives: 'Am I normal?’, and explores whether normality even exists.

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Getting around the rules of sex education

| Hannah J Elizabeth

What should we and shouldn’t we teach our teens about sex, inside and outside of the classroom?

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Remote diagnosis from wee to the Web

| Christine RoSteven Pocock

Medical practice might have moved on from when patients posted flasks of their urine for doctors to taste, but telehealth today keeps up the tradition of remote diagnosis – to our possible detriment.

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Robinson Crusoe and the morality of solitude

| Professor Barbara Taylor

Robinson Crusoe, fiction’s most famous castaway, was certainly isolated, but did he suffer the intrinsically modern affliction of loneliness?

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Why the scariest monsters look almost human

| Amy JonesBenjamin Gilbert

Something is wrong, but you’re not sure what. Amy Jones explores exactly why your worst nightmare is the monster that’s almost human.

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The cures and demons of sleep paralysis

| Sarah Jaffray

Discover the murky past of sleep paralysis, the terrifying disorder once associated with demonic possession

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Confusion, guilt, and the battle to breastfeed

| Joanna WolfarthRosie Barnes

Most new mums are told that breast is best. But breastfeeding doesn’t always come as easily or naturally as you might imagine.

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The Key to Memory: Mark it out

Sarah Bentley explores what a papier-mâché figure from Japan can tell us about how and why we remember.

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The search for a cure for endometriosis

| Jaipreet VirdiAnne Howeson

Discover how a white American doctor’s experimental operations on black female slaves laid the foundations for modern gynaecological surgery.

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Spanish flu and the depiction of disease

| Allison C Meier

The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 killed many millions more than World War I did. Find out why contemporary artistic depictions of its devastating impact are so rare.

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Dirt, disease and the Inspector of Nuisances

| Kristen den Hartog

In the days when ‘bad air’ was thought to spread disease, dozens of Inspectors of Nuisances ceaselessly struggled against the perils of dirt – both visible and invisible.

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Social isolation and the search for sanctuary

| Furaha AsaniGhazal ZargarBenjamin Gilbert

Threatened with deportation, Furaha Asani turned to her church for support. Met with silence and disinterest, she walked away, but argues that churches should do much more for migrants.

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Love, longing and tea from the polski sklep

| Kasia TomasiewiczAnna Keville Joyce

For people of Polish origin in the UK, herbal tea is closely tied to health and shared history. Kasia Tomasiewicz explores her changing relationship to these tea-related cultural habits.

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The Key to Memory: Write it down

Nick Dent explores what the Library of the Human Genome can tell us about how and why we remember.

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How the Peckham Experiment inspired my fiction

| James Wilkes

Find out how an unruly mass of archive material from a 1930s radical health centre has inspired brand new writing.

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Is shoegaze the loneliest genre of music?

| Christine Ro

Christine Ro explores the connection between shyness and shoegaze.

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Lustmord and the three perspectives of murder

| Taryn Cain

Artist Jenny Holzer's work shines a light on the three perspectives of sexual murder: the victim, the perpetrator and the observer.

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Why we need to decolonise the skies

| Tana JosephMaïa Walcott

Astronomer Dr Tana Joseph explores how rethinking way we look at the stars could improve our relationship with our own planet and make it a healthier place to live.