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February 17, 2026

Extra/Ordinary Women exhibition explores the women in Charles Dickens’s life and writing

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Oliver Bray, Dean of Leeds School of Arts, Leeds Beckett University

Walking through the doors of London’s Charles Dickens Museum is always a special moment. This handsome, tall London townhouse – middle class by Victorian standards but practically palatial to visitors today – was the crucible in which a young, ascending Charles Dickens wrote himself into international superstardom.

It is here that The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby spilled from his pen. And it is here, as the new exhibition Extra/Ordinary Women compellingly demonstrates, that Dickens lived in constant proximity to the intelligent and talented women who shaped his imagination, his domestic life and his enduring theatricality.

The Extra/Ordinary Women exhibition offers insights to many of these women. His wife, Catherine Dickens, who also wrote within these walls. His sister, Mary Hogarth, whose sudden death here devastated him. His sister-in-law, housekeeper and adviser Georgina Hogarth, who remained his rock for the rest of his life.

Victorian culture, which was suspicious of women who moved in theatrical, artistic or public spheres, left deep traces on Dickens’s portrayals of women. In his writing, Dickens either sanitised his female characters, like the “saintly” Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop (1841) or the “innocent” Rose Maylie in Oliver Twist (1838); or he reformed them, like the “fallen” women, Martha Endell and Little Em’ly in David Copperfield (1850). He gave these characters emotional clarity and symbolic weight that belies the more complex real-world inspirations.

The exhibition shows that Mary Hogarth, for instance, is scattered through Dickens’s fiction in the form of saintly young women whose deaths confer moral meaning. Dickens’s close friend Angela Burdett‑Coutts – a philanthropist and powerful progressive – was softened into Agnes Wickfield, a gentle moral influence in David Copperfield.

Dickens the performer

Looking around the exhibition, I found myself thinking about performance. Not just the performances of the women around him, but Dickens’s own lifelong, desperate theatricality.

It has always seemed obvious to me, as a performer of Dickens’s work, that he wrote with an actor’s mind. My own performed reading of A Christmas Carol taught me that his prose demands embodiment: the regretful cadences of Scrooge’s former fiancée Belle, the anguish of Bob Cratchit, the vocal changes that illustrate the transformative journey of Scrooge himself. These characters were not merely written to be read, they were written to be heard.

The deputy director of the museum, Emma Harper, informed me that while writing, Dickens would break from his desk to perform the characters he was developing in the mirror. He also performed domestic dramas for his children, founded amateur dramatic troupes and he threw himself into public readings so intensely that doctors monitored his pulse before and after each performance. He made himself physically ill with the sheer force of his acting. This is not a writer who happened also to perform. This is a performer who happened also to write.

And the women around him were, in many ways, part of that theatrical and artistic world. His daughters are good examples. Mamie Dickens loved performing, and Katey Perugini, an artist of real talent, appears in the exhibition through in a newly displayed painting that mimics her own painting style. The exhibition also reminds us that Ellen Ternan – Dickens’s longtime mistress – came from a theatrical family.

All of this becomes shockingly vivid with the exhibition’s centrepiece: the newly revealed, previously unpublished letter to the French opera singer Pauline Viardot. It is, in many ways, a perfect artefact, because it shows Dickens in full, contradictory colour.

Pauline Viardot in a black and white photo — Pauline Viardot in 1860.
Musée Carnavalet

Here is the great novelist, in Paris for his triumphant theatrical readings, writing with unabashed admiration to a woman whose artistry moved him to tears. But here is also Dickens the flirt – offering her an invitation to dine and promising tickets to his next reading.

Dickens wrote the letter while en route to see his mistress, Ternan, in Geneva. “I am going to Geneva tomorrow night, but will be back in seven days,” he says breezily, attempting to schedule dinner with Viardot for the following week.

The exhibition also includes a letter from Viardot to Dickens’s biographer, where she recalls Dickens “raining tears” during her performance of Orphée. And it reveals something about Dickens that the exhibition continually circles back to: he existed in a self-made world of performance, admiration, emotional excess and artistic intoxication. He was drawn to women who were brilliant, expressive and creative, because they belonged to that same world of heightened feeling and dramatic possibility.

This is what makes Extra/Ordinary Women so compelling: it reframes Dickens not only through the women he knew, but through the theatrical culture they collectively inhabited. Stepping outside, I felt his familiar voice linger, now joined by the sense that the women behind the scenes were finally stepping into the light – something the dramatist in Dickens might have appreciated.

Extra/Ordinary Women is at the Charles Dickens Museum in London until September 6

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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.

Oliver Bray 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.

– ref. Extra/Ordinary Women exhibition explores the women in Charles Dickens’s life and writing – https://theconversation.com/extra-ordinary-women-exhibition-explores-the-women-in-charles-dickenss-life-and-writing-275861

February 17, 2026

How shaming unethical brands makes companies improve their behaviour

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Janet Godsell, Dean and Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Strategy, Loughborough Business School, Loughborough University

Recent investigations have uncovered forced labour in agricultural supply chains, illegal fishing feeding supermarket freezers, deforestation embedded in everyday food products, and unsafe conditions in factories producing “sustainable” fashion. These harms were not visible on labels. They surfaced only when journalists, whistleblowers or activists exposed them.

And when they did, something predictable happened. Consumers felt uneasy. Brands issued statements. Promises were made. The point is that the force that set change in motion was not regulation. It was consumers.

Discovering that an ordinary purchase may be tied to exploitation or environmental damage creates a jolt of personal responsibility. In our research,
we found that when environmental consequences are clearly linked to people’s own buying choices, many are willing to switch products — especially when credible alternatives exist.

But guilt is private. It nudges personal behaviour. It does not automatically reshape systems. The shift happens when private discomfort becomes public voice.

Consumers are often also the first to make hidden environmental harms visible. They post evidence on social media. They question corporate claims. They compare sustainability promises with independent reporting. They organise petitions, boycotts and review campaigns. By shining a spotlight on the truth, the scrutiny shifts from shoppers to brands.

That shift matters because modern brands depend on trust. Reputation is an asset. When sustainability claims are publicly challenged, credibility is at risk. Research in organisational behaviour
shows that firms respond quickly to threats to legitimacy. Reputational damage affects customer loyalty, investor confidence and regulatory attention.

In many high-profile cases, supply chain reforms have followed intense public scrutiny rather than quiet compliance checks. Leaders may not act out of moral awakening — but they do act when inaction becomes costly to their reputation.

Consumers can trigger the emotional chain reaction. They feel guilt. They seek information. They speak collectively. That collective voice generates corporate shame.

woman shopper with trolley checking two bottles — Consumers have the power to demand more transparency from brands.
Stokkete/Shutterstock

Sustainability professor Mike Berners-Lee argues in his book A Climate of Truth that demanding honesty is one of the most powerful climate actions available to citizens. Raising standards of truthfulness in business and media changes incentives. When the gap between what companies say and what they do becomes visible, maintaining that gap becomes harder.

Our research explores how that visibility can be strengthened. The findings were clear. When environmental and social consequences are personalised and traceable, sustainability feels less distant. People see both their own role and the role of particular firms. That dual awareness encourages two responses: behavioural change driven by guilt and corporate accountability driven by shame.

Shame works because it is social. Brands care about how they are seen. When the negative environmental and social effects of supply chains can be publicly connected to named products, corporate narratives become contestable in real time.

Making supply chains socially visible

The technology to improve transparency already exists. Companies track goods through logistics systems, supplier databases and digital product-tagging that collect detailed information about sourcing and production. The barrier is not data collection. It is disclosure.

Environmental indicators — carbon emissions, water use, land conversion risk, labour standards compliance — can be linked to products through QR codes or retail apps. Comparable reporting standards would ensure consistency. Simple digital interfaces would make information accessible. Social sharing tools would allow consumers to compare and discuss findings publicly.

Social media is crucial. It already enables workers, communities and campaigners to challenge corporate messaging. Integrating verified supply chain data into these spaces would shift transparency from crisis response to everyday expectation.

This strategy, with its behaviour change directive, could work more effectively than rules or green marketing campaigns alone.

Regulation is essential but often slow and uneven across borders. Marketing campaigns can highlight selective improvements while leaving deeper practices untouched. Transparency activated by collective consumer voice operates differently. It aligns emotional motivation with reputational consequence.

Consumers are not passive recipients of information. They are catalysts. By feeling the first twinge of guilt, asking harder questions and speaking together, they create the conditions under which companies experience shame. When shame threatens trust and market position, change becomes rational and inevitable.

Shame is uncomfortable. But when directed at opaque systems rather than consumers, it can be powerful. By demanding truth and making supply chains socially visible, consumers can push businesses towards greater transparency — and, ultimately, towards more sustainable practice.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 47,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

Janet Godsell receives funding for the Interact Network+ from the Innovate UK Made Smarter Innovation Programme via the ESRC. She is affiliated with the World Economic Forum (WEF) Advanced Future Council for Advanced Manufacturing and Global Value Chains.

Nikolai Kazantsev receives funding from UKRI funded project “Resilience in Agrifood Systems Supply Chain Configuration Analytics Lab (Project ID: R1650GFS). He is a fellow of Clare Hall College, Cambridge.

– ref. How shaming unethical brands makes companies improve their behaviour – https://theconversation.com/how-shaming-unethical-brands-makes-companies-improve-their-behaviour-273062

February 17, 2026

Why coping with heavy rain in Scotland’s whisky country shows how to save water for the summer

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Josie Geris, Reader in Hydrology, University of Aberdeen

After weeks of relentless rain and flooding, and even more forecast, 2025’s droughts and hosepipe bans feel like ancient history. But they shouldn’t.

The UK is increasingly caught between these wetter winters and warmer, drier summers. What if this year’s summer brings water shortages again? The seemingly endless rainfall causing flooding across the UK right now could help solve future summer drought problems – if we capture it right.

The stakes are high in Speyside, home to around half of Scotland’s malt whisky distilleries. They had to cope with 2025 being the UK’s warmest and sunniest on record, where prolonged dry conditions led to widespread restrictions on water abstraction. Multiple distilleries were forced into temporary closures, costing the industry millions of pounds and highlighting just how vulnerable even Scotland’s famously wet regions are to water scarcity.

Whisky production represents one of the UK’s biggest industrial water users. Large quantities of water are required for the distilling process and the product itself, so understanding water conservation is both extremely important for the industry, and can also help others recognise the benefits.

If it was possible to retain this winter’s rainfall and release it gradually when it was needed, the nation could become more resilient to both floods and droughts without building expensive new reservoirs.

Managing droughts with floods

Across Speyside, they’re testing ways to slow, store and steadily release water by working with the landscape rather than against it. Distillers have invested in leaky dams (small barriers built across temporary upland streams) to slow the flow of water during heavy rain and allow the rainwater to soak into soil and recharge groundwater.

Leaky dams hold the water at surface level as well helping it store underground. Water in the soil and deeper groundwater move through the subsurface much more slowly than over land – taking weeks or months rather than hours or days – which is why rivers still flow even after long dry spells.

An overhead view of the Tromie river. — Tromie river in Speyside.
Ondrej Zeleznik/Shutterstock

There are other examples of useful interventions. Peatland restoration, wetland creation and tree planting all work by increasing temporary storage in the landscape and slowing the movement of water into rivers.

Research across upland catchment areas in Cumbria and West Yorkshire shows how the principles being tested in Speyside could translate to elsewhere. A large academic review of natural flood management evidence concluded that measures increasing water storage, slowing the flow of water over the land or enhancing soil structure can consistently reduce the peak level of a flood.

This growing body of evidence supports a simple but powerful idea: the UK and other countries could be more resilient to droughts and floods by redesigning landscapes to keep water around for longer.

Three lessons for the rest of the UK

1. Design and location matter

Local factors and hydrology (the study of the movement and management of water) can determine what works best where. For example, planting trees “somewhere” delivers far less benefit than planting them in the right places, especially near rivers, near the source of the river, or where soil can absorb water.

2. Benefits must stack up or they won’t be adopted

Leaky dams and other projects, such as tree planting, are relatively inexpensive, compared with traditionally engineered flood defences or having to deal with flood and drought consequences. They can deliver benefits at a fraction of the cost, while potentially also increasing biodiversity, soil health, carbon capture and improving water quality.

But there are trade-offs, which need to be assessed early. For example, in some cases, large-scale tree planting can also reduce summer water availability in already stressed catchment areas. Tree canopies can temporarily store water on the leaves, but if this water evaporates it doesn’t return to the soil. Tree roots improve the soil so it absorbs and stores more water, but trees can also use more water. The net effects depend on factors such as climate, soil type and tree species.

3. Good governance will unlock funding

When water security has clear economic benefits, businesses are willing to engage. However, investment is not always private, and a recent review showed public funding is often fragmented, with inconsistent planning rules. Strengthening overall governance of these kind of schemes is essential, because farmers, businesses and landowners are far more likely to participate if they benefit.

Managing our landscapes appropriately won’t stop all floods or prevent every drought, but it can make both less severe, while restoring habitats, supporting farming, and protecting industries that rely on dependable water supplies.

Every river carrying floodwater to the sea represents water that could be stored for drier months. Thinking ahead for what happens during heavy rains can be part of forward planning for more extreme weather in years to come.

Josie Geris receives funding from the Natural Environment Research Council, Royal Society, the Scottish Government via CREW (Scotland’s Centre of Expertise for Waters), and Chivas Brothers.

Megan Klaar receives funding from the Natural Environment Research Council, The Leverhulme Trust and National Trust.

– ref. Why coping with heavy rain in Scotland’s whisky country shows how to save water for the summer – https://theconversation.com/why-coping-with-heavy-rain-in-scotlands-whisky-country-shows-how-to-save-water-for-the-summer-275762

February 17, 2026

Figura indispensable del cine estadounidense de los 70, Robert Duvall brilló en papeles protagonistas y de reparto

Source: The Conversation – (in Spanish) – By Ben McCann, Associate Professor of French Studies, Adelaide University

Robert Duvall, el actor californiano fallecido a los 95 años el pasado 16 de febrero, será recordado por su larga y brillante carrera. Además de sus intervenciones en dos de las películas más icónicas del cine estadounidense, su trayectoria de más de seis décadas incluye más de cien papeles.

Duvall estaba cómodo tanto en cintas prescindibles, como 60 segundos (2000), como en dramas profundos del estilo de Confesiones verdaderas (1983). En el año 1990, por ejemplo, interpretó al mentor de Tom Cruise en Días de trueno y al Comandante en la versión de Volker Schlöndorff de El cuento de la criada.

Actuar es escuchar

Nacido en 1931 en San Diego (California), su familia esperaba que siguiera los pasos de su padre en la Marina estadounidense. Pero su pasión por la interpretación le llevó al teatro y la televisión. En Nueva York es donde dio sus primeros pasos y aprendió el oficio; en una ocasión afirmó que lo más importante de la interpetación era hablar y escuchar.

Debutó en cine en 1962, con el papel de Boo Radley en Matar a un ruiseñor. Se oxigenó el pelo y evitó que le diera el sol durante seis semanas para capturar el aspecto frágil y demacrado del personaje. Y desde aquel momento, apenas dejó la gran pantalla, apareciendo en películas clásicas de género como Bullitt (1968), Valor de ley (1969) y M*A*S*H (1970).

Historiadores del cine como David Thomson han afirmado que Duvall no era “ni bello ni lo suficientemente imponente para ser el protagonista de una película grande”. Y, sin embargo, fue nominado al óscar siete veces y ganó una, en 1984. Su nominación más reciente fue en 2015, por su papel en El juez (2015), como el dominante y gruñón padre de Robert Downey Jr, acusado de asesinato.

Muy frecuentemente sus papeles fueron históricos: el icónico fuera de la ley Jesse James en el largometraje Sin ley ni esperanza (1972), Adolf Eichmann, Dwight Eisenhower y el general confederado Robert E. Lee.

Trabajo con Coppola

Como muchos de sus contemporáneos, Duvall idolatraba a Marlon Brando.

Qué apropiado entonces que su papel decisivo llegara en 1972 como Tom Hagen, el consigliere del propio Brando como Vito Corleone en El padrino, de Francis Ford Coppola, y la segunda parte (1974).

Su interpretación del impecable Hagen es majestuosa: todo él es amenaza silenciosa y sociabilidad incómoda.

Coppola volvió a contratar a Duvall en Apocalipsis Now (1979) como Kilgore, el coronel con sombrero de vaquero, amante del surf y de Wagner, que se vuelve adicto a la brutalidad de la guerra de Vietnam.

Esta interpretación es apenas un cameo (Duvall aparece menos de 10 minutos en la cinta) pero su aparición con total calma y control en la escena en la que suena la Cabalgata de las valkirias es uno de las más memorables del cine contemporáneo. El discurso de Kilgore es uno de los momentos álgidos de la película.

En busca de la fama

Tras aquellas cintas, vino Gracias y favores (1983), en la que interpretaba a Mac Sledge, un cantante de música country alcohólico y venido a menos, que intenta rehacer su vida y encontrar la redención tras tocar fondo. Un personaje en las antípodas de Kilgore.

Duvall captura maravillosamente la naturaleza lacónica e introvertida de Sledge, y recibió un óscar a mejor interpretación protagonista.

Sin embargo, la fama no le fue fácil de alcanzar. Al contrario que otros colegas de la época como Al Pacino, Robert de Niro y Jack Nicholson, o Gene Hackman y Dustin Hoffman (con quienes compartió un apartamento en los años 50), Duvall siguió siendo un actor más que una celebrity: con talento, muy versátil, encantado cuando un papel era de reparto y alternando proyectos que lo apasionaban con películas que le permitían subsistir.

Si la señal de un buen actor es la falta de esfuerzo con la que pronuncian sus diálogos, y lo creíbles que resultan, la profesionalidad relajada de Duvall le valió su prestigio como uno de los actores de reparto más deseados en Hollywood.

Observemos esta escena en Network, un mundo implacable (1976): Duvall interpreta al ejecutivo televisivo Frank Hackett con rabia, vulnerabilidad y humor a un tiempo: frente a William Holden, podemos ver cómo mueve sus manos, cómo se seca el sudor de la frente y va levantando la voz.

Actores de alto nivel como él siempre toman caminos arriesgados en el uso del lenguaje corporal, la postura y la voz. En esta película, Duvall hace un trabajo ejemplar.

A lo largo de los noventa, continuó ofreciendo interpretaciones destacables, una tras otra, en diversos géneros. En una ocasión admitió que su papel preferido fue el de Stalin en una película de 1992 de HBO, en parte por el desafío que suponía para él interpretar personajes monstruosos o comprometidos moralmente y encontrar en ellos una chispa de vulnerabilidad.

Una carrera lenta

En 1997 escribió, dirigió y protagonizó Camino al cielo, una sorprendente historia sobre la búsqueda del perdón. Como Sonny Dewey, un pastor apasionado y carismático de Texas que se ve obligado a huir e iniciar una nueva vida en una pequeña localidad de Luisiana, Duvall fue de nuevo nominado a los Óscar.

Un crítico definió su interpretación como una “sublime exploración de lo que supone ser humano, debatirse entre el bien y el mal, el pecado y la redención”. Este fue un proyecto muy querido para Duvall, en el que invirtió cuatro millones de dólares de su propio dinero, y es una de sus mejores películas.

Siguió participando en papeles y proyectos peculiares para sorprender a sus fans. Por ejemplo, estuvo discretamente maravilloso en Assassination Tango (2002), como John J., un matón que viaja a Argentina y se encuentra con el mundo de los clubs de tango (de hecho, este baile obsesionó a Duvall desde entonces, y pasó gran parte de su tiempo en Buenos Aires).

Es un largometraje de ritmo tranquilo que trae a la memoria otros trabajos iniciales de Duvall con Philip Kaufman, Sam Peckinpah y Sidney Lumet.

Preguntado por cómo lograba entender la oscuridad de sus personajes, Duvall describía así su manera de enfocar la interpretación: “Todo tiene que ver con los porcentajes. Quizá el 80 % de cualidades negativas y el 20 % de positivas un día, y el día siguiente al revés”.

Para un actor incapaz de un mal trabajo, esta ecuación suma su carrera completa: auténtica, impredecible y sin ningún ego.

Ben McCann no recibe salario, ni ejerce labores de consultoría, ni posee acciones, ni recibe financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y ha declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado.

– ref. Figura indispensable del cine estadounidense de los 70, Robert Duvall brilló en papeles protagonistas y de reparto – https://theconversation.com/figura-indispensable-del-cine-estadounidense-de-los-70-robert-duvall-brillo-en-papeles-protagonistas-y-de-reparto-276220

February 17, 2026

Sierra Leone’s harsh new laws to protect women and girls are causing harm in the wrong places

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Luisa T. Schneider, Assistant Professor, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Independent Social Research Foundation

In the decades after Sierra Leone’s civil war (1991-2002), there was pressure on the west African country to demonstrate progress on gender equality. Laws were passed to fight domestic violence, rape and teen pregnancy. But drawing on colonial legal models, the reforms don’t always match social realities and in many cases are harming young people from poor communities. Punishment is being made more important than resolution or education.

Luisa T. Schneider is an anthropologist who has spent a decade researching the subject. We asked her about her open source book Love and Violence in Sierra Leone: Mediating Intimacy after Conflict.

What did your study involve?

My research began in Freetown in 2012, ten years after the civil war’s violence, especially against women and girls. In 2016 I began living in a hillside community in eastern Freetown and also with a group of young men downtown. For 13 months I studied intimate relationships and followed disputes from household quarrels to community mediations and court cases, tracing over 100 through the magistrate’s court. I also spent time in Central Prison, interviewing men and boys convicted in “women cases”.

I wanted to know how love and violence intersect in everyday life and how law reshapes both.

What did you find?

In Sierra Leone, gender and relationships lie at the heart of moral life. Care, warmth and resilience are virtues held in high regard, and they are cultivated and learnt from women. But this masks the widespread abuse of women and places the unpaid labour of holding families and communities together on them. When the state tries to regulate intimacy without considering these moral realities, it deepens the very violence it seeks to end.

Love and violence often live together, tangled in ways that make harm hard to end. People say that when harm occurs, judgment falls not only on the act but on the person’s character. Communities call for state involvement in cases of rape against minors or severe violence. But everyday conflicts in consensual relationships are generally understood as matters of character and relational repair rather than criminal intent. They are mediated internally, often by women who bear the burden to prioritise group stability over punishment.

Yet, the country’s legal system often tells a different story.

After the war, new laws were introduced to protect women and girls from rape, early pregnancy, and domestic violence. Key laws include:

Sexual Offences Act (2012; amended 2019): criminalises rape, sexual assault and sexual exploitation; raises age of consent to 18; mandatory sentences; zero-tolerance enforcement reshapes policing of adolescent sexuality and youth relationships.
Domestic Violence Act (2007): criminalises physical, sexual, emotional and economic abuse within intimate and family relationships; recognises private-sphere violence as a public concern.
Child Rights Act (2007; revised 2025): defines children as rights-bearing subjects entitled to care, protection and due process, aligned with international standards.
Prevention of Child Marriage Act (2024): prohibits marriage under 18 to end early marriage and related health and educational harms.
Diversion and Alternatives to Detention Framework (2025): redirects children in conflict with the law from imprisonment to rehabilitation, mediation and reintegration.

Together, these reforms are meant to protect. But I found they also collapse care, consent and harm into a single criminal framework that misfits the lived realities of the Sierra Leoneans I lived and worked with. Importantly, mine is not an argument against protecting children from sexual harm, but about how protection is defined and enforced.

Although recent reforms frame children as having rights and promote alternatives to detention, boys charged under sexual offences law are routinely denied bail and treated as adult perpetrators. This reveals a contradiction in the system. It conflates rape, harm and consensual adolescent intimacy into a single category of criminality.

By raising the age of consent to 18, many ordinary youth relationships became criminalised. A 19-year-old can now face years in prison because his girlfriend is 17, even though she has chosen to love him. In aiming for zero tolerance, the state has policed intimacy instead of teaching consent.

In a society battling poverty and corruption, the new laws often shield the wealthy and punish the powerless. Young couples, especially across class lines, can be convicted, while powerful older men who abuse children can walk free.

One High Court judge told me:

We have serious problems with rape in this country. But of 25 or maybe 30 cases … mostly there are boyfriends here, you know, lovers. Maybe almost 23 of them are lovers. But the law is so rigid that I have to convict no matter the circumstance.

The updated Sexual Offences Act has deepened fear. It lowered the age of criminal responsibility to 12; sexual cases are now sent directly to the High Court; and life sentences are allowed.

Convictions happen even when girls testify that they love the boy or man who stands accused and confirm consensual sex took place. Many of the cases I studied are initiated by parents, neighbours, or teachers. This was often after pregnancies, school conflicts, or community disputes made relationships visible. Often the relationship happened within unequal social conditions between the partners.

In my view, what communities seek to mend through care, the law isolates and punishes. Conversations about consent, safety and protection disappear when love itself risks imprisonment. Women in violent relationships, meanwhile, lose attention and resources as the system turns to criminalising consensual intimacy.

What does this say about gender and justice?

Sierra Leoneans believe a good man is made not by punishment but by being raised with respect, love and care for others. As a community elder put it:

A child taught to kill becomes cruel. A child taught to love protects everyone.

Yet laws carry war’s legacy in their effort to discipline masculinity instead of guiding it.

What do you hope readers take away from your book?

Sierra Leone’s moral vision, found in everyday speech, mediation practices and women’s community leadership, reminds us that femininity is not weakness but wisdom. And that any just system must build on that strength.

If women were actually treated as they are morally regarded in Freetown – as strong, capable and central to social wellbeing – then both patriarchy and violence would begin to lose their hold. Ending violence begins in the home, in everyday care, and in the way we raise our children.

This isn’t just about Sierra Leone. It matters the world over. Law alone cannot end violence. Laws can punish, but they cannot teach care, consent or empathy. Yet punishment increasingly replaces education.

The lesson is clear: without engaging local understandings of care, consent and responsibility, laws meant to protect risk reproducing harm rather than preventing it.

Luisa T. Schneider receives funding from the Dutch Network of Women Professors, Oxford University, the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes and the Royal Anthropological Institute.

I am assistant professor in Anthropology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and a Research Partner at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle (Saale)

– ref. Sierra Leone’s harsh new laws to protect women and girls are causing harm in the wrong places – https://theconversation.com/sierra-leones-harsh-new-laws-to-protect-women-and-girls-are-causing-harm-in-the-wrong-places-269662

February 17, 2026

South Africa’s foreign policy is rooted in negotiation with all nations – a shifting global order makes this difficult

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Tinashe Sithole, Postdoctoral research fellow at the SARChI Chair: African Diplomacy and Foreign Policy, University of Johannesburg

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, South Africa’s foreign policy has been under sustained international scrutiny.

Its stance on the war in Ukraine has been one of active non-alignment. This means it has called for negotiations while abstaining from UN resolutions condemning Russia. However, it decided to take Israel to the International Court of Justice over the Gaza conflict in December 2023.

To many observers, including US policymakers and international analysts, these decisions suggest uncertainty or inconsistency. However, a closer look suggests a different interpretation.

In my recent research, I show how South Africa’s negotiated transition to democracy has shaped a foreign policy tradition that prioritises mediation, multilateralism and non-alignment.

I argue that South Africa’s foreign policy since 1994, including the period after the 2024 election, has been shaped by more than political shifts.

Instead, its negotiated democratic transition experience continues to guide how the country understands conflict and cooperation. This is even as the costs of maintaining this approach rise in a more fragmented and competitive global order. I describe this trajectory as “idealism under strain” – a principle-based foreign policy maintained under growing external pressure.

As a middle power, South Africa exerts influence most effectively through international institutions. By working through the African Union (AU), the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the UN, it helps broker agreements and shape regional and global agendas.

What has changed is the international environment. Global politics has become more polarised and more transactional. States are increasingly expected to take clear sides on major issues, from security alignments to trade relations. This shift has narrowed the space for diplomatic independence.

In this context, South Africa’s preference for dialogue and institutional process has become harder to sustain and easier to misinterpret. Positions that once appeared principled are now criticised as evasive or contradictory.

This matters because South Africa’s influence depends less on power and more on trust.

To remain effective, it needs to continue leading regional mediation and peace efforts and to apply its principles consistently. When its positions on international law or human rights appear selective, its credibility weakens. When they are consistent, its voice carries more weight.

Behind the choices

South Africa’s post-apartheid foreign policy reflects the negotiated nature of its democratic transition. The end of apartheid in 1994 came through compromise rather than a military victory. This experience shaped a preference for mediation over coercion; for dialogue over exclusion.

These preferences shaped the country’s early diplomatic engagements on the continent. In Burundi (1999-2003), the Democratic Republic of Congo (2002-2003) and Lesotho (1998 and again from 2014 to 2017), South Africa promoted negotiated political settlements and power-sharing arrangements rather than military solutions.

This history helps explain current policy choices, including the call for negotiations on Ukraine.

It also explains the contrast in how the country engages across crises. For example, in 2023 it brought the case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. In other situations, such as political tensions in Zimbabwe, it has relied on quiet diplomacy, working behind the scenes rather than openly criticising the government.

In my view, these decisions reflect an adaptation to constraint rather than inconsistency.

This pattern has persisted across administrations. Successive governments have sought to balance democratic values with geopolitical realities rather than abandon one in favour of the other.

What has changed is the level of external pressure under which this balance must now be maintained.

A changing world

A more polarised and transactional world has narrowed the space for diplomatic independence.

Pressure from the US to align with the west has become more explicit, particularly following the South Africa vs Israel case.

Tensions have also affected the trade relationship. In Washington, some lawmakers called for a review of South Africa’s eligibility for the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa). The legislation provides duty-free access to the US market. The criticism reflected concerns that South Africa’s positions on Russia and Israel, and its broader stance of non-alignment, were increasingly seen as out of step with US foreign policy priorities.

South Africa’s Agoa benefits expired in September 2025 and were only renewed on 3 February 2026. The months of uncertainty highlighted the economic risks that can accompany geopolitical pressure.

For a country whose influence depends more on diplomacy and external partnerships, such signals matter. They show how the costs of maintaining diplomatic independence are rising in a more competitive international environment.

What needs to happen next

South Africa is unlikely to abandon its preference for mediation, multilateralism and non-alignment. The key challenge is how it sustains this approach as international pressure intensifies.

First, South Africa needs to use the institutions where it already has influence more actively. This means taking visible leadership roles in the AU and SADC, and continuing its involvement in UN peace missions. These platforms are the main channels through which the country exercises diplomatic influence.

Second, regional cooperation needs to result in coordinated action. Conflicts in places such as Mozambique or eastern Democratic Republic of Congo affect neighbouring states and cannot be managed by one country alone. Working with regional partners on joint mediation and shared responses helps avoid fragmented or competing interventions.

Third, consistency matters. When South Africa calls for international law, negotiated settlements or civilian protection, the same principles should guide its positions across different conflicts. Applying these standards evenly reduces accusations of selectivity and helps preserve trust in its role.

These priorities do not require a new foreign policy. They reflect the need to apply an existing approach more clearly and more consistently.

Tinashe Sithole 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.

– ref. South Africa’s foreign policy is rooted in negotiation with all nations – a shifting global order makes this difficult – https://theconversation.com/south-africas-foreign-policy-is-rooted-in-negotiation-with-all-nations-a-shifting-global-order-makes-this-difficult-275033

February 17, 2026

Kizza Besigye: the firebrand who has shaped opposition politics in Uganda

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Barney Walsh, Senior Lecturer in Security, Leadership and Development Education, King’s College London

Uganda’s Kizza Besigye has been described as possibly the most arrested man in Africa. Besigye was once President Yoweri Museveni’s ally, and personal physician. He broke ranks with Museveni in 1999, and emerged as the most long-standing political opponent to the ageing president, who has run the country since 1986. For this, Besigye has been jailed, kept under house arrest, renditioned, forced into exile, and endured state violence countless times. He has been in jail since 2024. Barney Walsh and Dennis Jjuuko have studied Besigye’s remarkable political career.

Who is Kizza Besigye?

Kizza Besigye was born in Rukungiri district, south-western Uganda, in April 1956. After graduating with a degree in human medicine from Makerere University in 1980, he joined the National Resistance Army (NRA) rebellion, which dislodged the dictatorial rule of President Milton Obote in 1986.

Besigye served in different senior positions in Museveni’s new government, including minister of state for internal affairs and the president’s office. In 1993, he was appointed the army’s chief of logistics and engineering and later senior military adviser to the defence minister. He was part of the inner sanctum of the National Resistance Movement which became the civilian government.

Besigye remained close to Museveni until 1999, when he abandoned the ruling party. He said the movement had departed from its original principles, like democracy through free elections, security for all and eliminating corruption.

He believed Uganda needed liberation again, this time from a government he’d helped establish. This would define his life’s work.

Under the pressure group “Reform Agenda”, and later the political party Forum for Democratic Change, he was the leading contender against Museveni in successive presidential polls. He scored 27% of the vote in 2001, 37% in 2006, 26% in 2011, and 35% in 2016. The Ugandan supreme court acknowledged irregularities but refused to overturn the result in 2006.

After leaving the government, Besigye became the focal point for Ugandans wary of Museveni’s increasingly vicious authoritarianism. He was forced to flee to South Africa after the 2001 presidential elections. He has been brutalised, detained and charged numerous times. His younger brother died in 2007 from illness associated with incarceration on trumped-up conspiracy charges.

When the opposition one day take the reins of power in Uganda, the debt it owes Besigye will be immense.

What are the highlights of this legacy?

Besigye, 69, stands out as the foremost opposition figure who was part of Museveni’s original Bush War victory. His 2011 “walk to work” protests, in response to dramatic fuel prices and general inflation, will not be forgotten in the history of Uganda’s political economy.

Besigye seemed to think this civil action could be Uganda’s “Arab Spring” moment. Some mocked his efforts as a mis-reading of the socio-economic conditions in sub-Saharan Africa.

The protests were, indeed, subdued in the face of brutal repression by security agencies.

But similar protests would soon remove Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe in 2017 and Blaise Compaoré in Burkina Faso in 2014.

Besigye has developed credibility as someone trustworthy because of what he has been through. And he has a heartfelt connection with supporters.

His leadership has transcended other opposition figures during Museveni’s administration in terms of longevity and consistent vision for change. Other opposition leaders have emerged only fleetingly, failing to sustain any moral standing or coherent transformative vision.

As we argue in our recent paper, it is unclear whether opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi (better known as Bobi Wine) could have emerged without Besigye laying the foundation and sustaining the momentum for change.

It’s important, too, to recognise his failings.

He is given to outbursts. His call for Chinese debts to be written off as odious was thought to alienate an essential development partner. His storming of what he described as a “rigging centre” during the 2016 election led to accusations of leading mobs to take over elections.

He is also partly to blame for the fact that Uganda’s opposition has not yet mustered a single candidate against Museveni due to competing egos and moral certitudes. Besigye has never seemed to be able to convince other opposition candidates to drop their candidacy and support him (or to do that for them).

Nevertheless, his individual role has been fundamental to the emergence of the idea and principle of peaceful opposition politics emerging in Uganda in the post-1986 era.

This is not to be underestimated in a country which has yet to experience a peaceful change of government since independence in 1962.

What is the context in which you assess his legacy?

Uganda’s post-1986 political landscape has been dominated, and controlled, by Museveni. His most recent election victory in January 2026 will extend his reign beyond 40 years.

While his public popularity has been in decline, Museveni has relied on two things. First is the Ugandan political and military elite. Since the mid-2000s he has taken steps to proof his regime against a military coup, by keeping influential military personnel on board.

Second is external support, mainly from western governments. This stems from Uganda’s involvement as a key security actor in the sub-region at the behest of western powers. This role has gradually been prioritised over the west’s pursuit of human rights.

Partly for these reasons, Besigye was never able to get the full backing of western donors to support his democratic goals. Instead they supported Museveni’s regime.

A lack of support for Besigye in western capitals was evident in 2024 when he was abducted while visiting Kenya, and returned as a prisoner to Kampala. It barely registered international condemnation or action – save for a belated push from US lawmakers.

This silence must be seen within a global context of democratic backsliding, including developments within President Donald Trump’s second term.

In east Africa, Kenya’s violent response to the 2024 Gen Z riots in Nairobi included state-led abductions and enforced disappearances targeting young people linked to the protest movement.

In Tanzania, the October 2025 presidential elections also saw human rights abuses of protestors met with unjustified lethal force.

What next?

Besigye has not managed to shake up Museveni’s inner circle of corrupt powerbrokers. This is because his progressive democratic vision of change threatens their privileges.

Neither has he ever enjoyed the global profile that he would have hoped for, such as Raila Odinga of Kenya or Morgan Tsvangirai of Zimbabwe managed – even as Bobi Wine did briefly before the 2021 election.

But the idea of a free and fair election is now at least ingrained in Uganda’s people. In a February 2025 interview, he revealed the lens through which his life work should be viewed:

We can only influence whether change happens quickly or is delayed, but change is inevitable. Sooner or later, Ugandans will take charge of their destiny and rebuild their country in a way that ensures equal opportunities for everyone.

If Besigye’s decades of sacrifice are to mean anything beyond retrospective praise, they demand engagement now, not memorialisation later. To remain silent is to collude in the slow erasure of a political life spent insisting that a truly democratic Uganda was a cause worth fighting for.

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.

– ref. Kizza Besigye: the firebrand who has shaped opposition politics in Uganda – https://theconversation.com/kizza-besigye-the-firebrand-who-has-shaped-opposition-politics-in-uganda-275568

February 17, 2026

Developing lab-grown human cartilage… using apples!

Source: The Conversation – France – By Karim Boumédiene, Professeur de biochimie et biologie moléculaire, ingénierie tissulaire, Université de Caen Normandie

Astonishing but true: apples are one of the latest plant-based materials tissue engineers are experimenting with to create lab-grown human cartilage. Priscilla Du Preez/Unsplash, CC BY

A research lab at the University of Caen Normandy (France) has succeeded in making cartilage using decellularized apples.

The Bioconnect laboratory at the university, which I head, has just published a scientific paper in the Journal of Biological Engineering. In this original study, we used apples that had been “decellularized” (their cells removed) as a material, combined with human stem cells, to rebuild cartilage outside of the body, in laboratory Petri dishes.

The process is called tissue engineering. Its goal is to rebuild human tissue in the laboratory so it can be used at a later date as grafts to repair damaged parts of the body. The idea is to place a patient’s cells onto a supporting material and grow them in the right conditions so they can form tissues such as bone, muscle, or cartilage.

Many diseases and injuries damage or destroy tissues, which then require reconstruction. Among these are degenerative diseases where tissue slowly wither away over time, such as osteoarthritis (cartilage damage) or osteoporosis (bone loss). There is therefore a real need for tissue grafts.

However, finding healthy tissues for transplant is difficult because donors are rare and compatibility is a major issue. Tissue engineering offers an effective solution to this problem. Using the patient’s own cells when possible also avoids the risk of immune rejection.

Apples provide excellent scaffolding

Although scientists can easily grow cells in the lab, these cells do not naturally organise themselves into full and functional tissues. That is why they need a support material. These materials act like scaffolding, giving cells a structure so they can grow in three dimensions and form real tissue.

One approach is to use human tissues or organs that have been decellularized, leaving only their structure. New healthy cells can then be added. However, this method is limited by the lack of available human tissues. For about ten years now, plant-based tissues have also been decellularized and used as supports.

Several studies (including those conducted in our lab), have already explored different materials. But this work is the first in the world to rebuild cartilage using a plant-based support. The idea came from a Canadian study showing that decellularized apples are compatible with mammalian cells 2. Since cartilage is our specialty, we decided to apply this method.

Plant-based materials offer many advantages: they are widely available, very cheap, already shown to be compatible with living organisms, and easy to shape to match the form of the tissue to be repaired. This study is only a first step. More tests are needed, first in animals and then in humans, to understand how these tissues behave over time and how beneficial they are for patients.

Multiple application possibilities

Potential applications include joint cartilage repair (after injury or osteoarthritis), reconstruction of nasal cartilage (after trauma or cancer), and even ear cartilage. Overall, this research opens new possibilities in tissue engineering, both for reconstructive surgery and for reducing animal experimentation. Indeed, lab-grown tissues can also be used to better model disease and test treatments in so-called organoid models, which can reduce or even replace animal testing.

Finally, because plants are incredibly diverse, there is still a wealth of potential to explore. Future research will aim to identify which plants, or which parts of plants, are best suited for rebuilding specific human tissues. Other plants, such as celery, are already being studied.

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Karim Boumédiene ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.

– ref. Developing lab-grown human cartilage… using apples! – https://theconversation.com/developing-lab-grown-human-cartilage-using-apples-274438

February 17, 2026

3 generations of Black Philadelphia students report persistent anti-Black attitudes in schools

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Leana Cabral, Researcher at the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, Teachers College, Columbia University

Over 70 years after Brown v. Board of Education, public schools in the U.S. remain deeply segregated. AP Photo/Phil Long

John Washington, now in his 50s, attended a public elementary and middle school in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia and then went to a large magnet high school, a type of public school that has a selective admission process. As he has gotten older, he has understood that in the education system in Philadelphia, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

John was bused during the integration movement of the 1970s and graduated from high school in 1990. Back then, he recognized that his school was not as segregated as the schools his parents and grandparents had attended in Philadelphia. As a parent of three current students, however, he has noticed how racially segregated most of the schools in Philadelphia remain.

As research demonstrates, U.S. public schools in general are not more integrated than they were just after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954.

I am a sociologist whose research focuses on education, race and social inequality. For my dissertation research, I interviewed over 45 former and current Black students to learn about their intergenerational experiences in Philly public schools. “John” and the other names used in this article are pseudonyms to protect the privacy of the research participants.

Intergenerational research is underexplored within educational research. I wanted to understand how different generations of Black public school students in Philadelphia understood and experienced racial inequality, as well as how families’ memories and perspectives around schooling shape students’ educational journeys.

The people I interviewed ranged in age from 14 to 95, and all attended a Philadelphia public elementary or high school, or both. Across the generations, I heard both clear awareness of anti-Blackness and its presence in schools alongside an unyielding hope and vision for a better future.

As Naya, a 30-year-old former student from Germantown, put it, there is a “magic” in being Black. “You have to see what’s possible when nobody else can see it,” she said.

Black-and-white photo of elementary school children seated at desks in classroom — Black and white students sit together in an integrated classroom in Philadelphia in 1968.
AP Photo

Anti-Blackness and American education

Historian Carter G. Woodson warned of the danger in allowing Black students to be treated as inferior within the educational system.

“There would be no lynching if it did not start in the classroom,” he wrote in his seminal book “The Mis-Education of the Negro,” published in 1933. “Why not exploit, enslave, or exterminate a class that everybody is taught to regard as inferior?”

Anti-Blackness is made visible in schools today through, to name just a few examples, the sanitization of the United States’ violent racial history, the school-to-prison pipeline, wrongful placements of Black students into special education or remedial classes, racial violence in schools and the ongoing disinvestment in and closures of majority-Black schools.

‘We weren’t troublemakers, we were just kids’

Several current and former students I interviewed said their parents taught them “they had to work twice as hard” as white students.

A former student who is now in her 30s shared how she understood the idea that “you have to continue to prove yourself in ways that white kids aren’t expected to … and that’s how supremacy shows up.”

I repeatedly heard from former and current students of all ages how they believed their white teachers held low expectations of Black students and did not challenge them academically.

“I honestly feel like there was a divide, there was less patience for us,” said Jazmine, who graduated from a Philadelphia public high school in 2003. “It was just so obvious, the difference in how the adults treated us, which in turn led to a lot of animosity with the children.”

Hank, who graduated from high school in 1981, said the low expectations his white teachers held limited students’ motivation. “We were just going through the motions,” he said. “You could definitely see a difference with the expectations of the Black teachers than many of the white teachers. And then if the white teachers had expectations, it was sterile. It wasn’t with the love that you felt from some of the Black teachers.”

Current high school students shared incidents of white teachers using racial epithets, including the n-word, and one saying, “You’re acting like a park ape.” Another teacher, a student shared, said slavery was in the past “and not connected to today.”

A recent graduate who attended a magnet middle school recalled being treated by her white teachers as “disposable.”

“I feel like the school actively tried to strip away a lot of my confidence, but not just for me, but also other Black kids,” she said. “It was the first place where I didn’t feel like my teachers thought that I was smart and capable.”

I repeatedly heard both current and former students describe white teachers treating them as if they were “criminals” and receiving harsher discipline and punishments than their non-Black peers, which research has long demonstrated. Students I spoke to described feeling degraded and “singled out” by white teachers – and even blamed for things they did not do.

For example, Naima, a current high school student, shared a painful memory from fourth grade when she had an older white teacher who kept a candy jar on her classroom desk. One afternoon, someone took many pieces of candy from the jar.

“And, of course, it was the white girl, but me and my other Black friend were the last people in her room that she saw walk out, so she assumed it was us,” Naima said. “She said, ‘You stole my candy jar. Y’all were the last people in there. I know y’all did it.’”

Naima could not believe they were accused because, as she explained, she and her friend “weren’t troublemakers, we were just kids.” Despite their innocence – and that they were only in the fourth grade – they were suspended.

High school students wearing backpacks shown walking down a school hallway — Schools can be sites of both racial harm and affirmation for Black students.
AP Photo/Matt Slocum

Experiences of affirmation too

Speaking to multiple generations of students provides unique insight into the ways in which Black students continue to experience racial harm and trauma in Philly public schools.

On the other hand, at some point in their schooling, many of the former students I spoke to were fortunate to also experience classrooms or schools that affirmed their Blackness and did instill in them a sense of pride.

However, this tended to happen only in majority Black schools where Black teachers were also in the majority.

Delise, who graduated in 2004, shared that at her elementary and high schools, “Blackness was a norm. It was the standard. … Black cultural norms and my identity was affirmed in that school.”

Black communities in Philadelphia have always resisted and mobilized for educational justice. Such efforts include the Black People’s Unity Movement, Philadelphia’s first Black Power political organization, in the 1960s and the many movements that have come since, as well as the creation of alternative educational spaces such as the freedom library, freedom schools, faith-based groups and other Black-led community and art spaces focused on Afrocentric history and curricula.

Former and current students are proud of this legacy.

“We have yet to grasp the significance of our experience as far as I’m concerned,” said James, a former student from North Philly who is now in his 80s, reflecting on Black communities’ resilience and resistance. “And when I look at how we have navigated, I mean, it’s just constant, man … and still we rise.”

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.

Leana Cabral receives funding from Teachers College, Columbia University.

– ref. 3 generations of Black Philadelphia students report persistent anti-Black attitudes in schools – https://theconversation.com/3-generations-of-black-philadelphia-students-report-persistent-anti-black-attitudes-in-schools-266439

February 17, 2026

Revisiting the story of Clementine Barnabet, a Black woman blamed for serial murders in the Jim Crow South

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Lauren Nicole Henley, Assistant Professor of Leadership Studies, University of Richmond

A grainy photograph of Clementine Barnabet. A 1912 edition of The Atlanta Constitution newspaper via Wikimedia Commons

In April 1912, a young Black woman named Clementine Barnabet confessed to murdering four families in and around Lafayette, Louisiana. The widespread news coverage at the time effectively branded her a serial killer.

Her confession, however, did not align with the timeline of crimes that had gripped America’s rice belt region with fear. Even today, her guilt is debated.

From November 1909 until August 1912, an unknown assailant – or assailants – zigzagged across southwestern Louisiana and southeastern Texas. Many Black families were slaughtered in their homes under the cover of darkness. An ax – the telltale weapon – was almost always found in the bloody aftermath.

All but one of the scenes were located within a mile of the Southern Pacific Railroad’s Sunset Route. In each case, a mother and child were always among the victims. Evidence of additional weapons was often found nearby, suggesting a deliberate cruelty to the carnage.

Dubbed the “axman”, the unknown assailant eluded the authorities and terrified local Black communities.

Today, when scholars and laypeople alike discuss Clementine Barnabet, they oscillate between two extremes: portraying her as a fear-inducing, cult-leading Black female serial killer, or as an innocent young Black woman caught in circumstances beyond her control.

In more than a decade of researching Clementine Barnabet, I’ve been struck by how print media created overtly sensationalized accounts of the mythology of the axman and, by extension, the axwoman. Whether Barnabet committed the crimes she said she did – or any of the axman murders, for that matter – is irrelevant to the primary motive the media constructed for her fatal violence: religion.

Diverse faith traditions

In Jim Crow Louisiana, various expressions of faith were possible. The state’s history as a French colony – one that also practiced slavery – meant it was home to the largest percentage of Black Catholics in the United States.

A black-and-white sketch depicts people walking and sitting around a square cloth on the ground, with small items arranged on it. — A sketch supposedly depicting a Voodoo ceremony in Louisiana.
Photos.com/Getty images plus

At the same time, religions like Voodoo, that originated in West Africa, reached the region on slave ships. Voodoo was not necessarily at odds with Catholicism; enslaved practitioners creatively adapted their ancestral faith to that of their enslavers.

Some displays of faith were not organized religions at all, but folkways. Hoodoo, for example, has West African origins, though it also draws upon European and Native American elements. Hoodoo practitioners – sometimes called doctors – and their clients often practice a religion, yet they also seek comfort in the supernatural possibilities of their craft.

This craft involves the physical manipulation of earthly elements such as graveyard dirt or plants like John the Conqueror root to achieve magical ends, often resulting in conjures – or ritual objects – needed to bring about desired goals. Conjures are believed to help people protect themselves, harm one’s adversaries, alter one’s circumstances, intervene in one’s relationships and more.

In their most powerful form, believers contend that conjures can bring about a person’s death.

For some believers, elements of Catholicism, Voodoo, Protestantism and hoodoo combine into syncretic faith practices. Incorporating multiple systems of beliefs has been an aspect of many Louisianans’ identities for generations. Most of the time, this blending of practices, ideologies and communities is depicted as a quirky – even “backward” – way to make sense of the world.

Yet during the axman’s reign in the early 1900s, a Black woman’s confession to murder was interpreted through the lens of religious deviance rather than diversity.

A timeline of events

When Barnabet confessed in April 1912, it was technically the second time she had done so. The first time was in November 1911 in the aftermath of the Randall family murder. Five members of the Randall family and their overnight guest had been brutally slaughtered in Lafayette, Louisiana at the end of the month.

According to regional newspapers, Barnabet was in the crowd that had gathered near the Randall family’s home after the murders were discovered. Reportedly, she caught the attention of the local sheriff. Not only did she live near the slain, but, according to a New Orleans daily, the authorities found “her room saturated with blood and covered with human brains.”

Barnabet was given a “third degree” examination – meaning she was tortured – by the New Orleans Police Department, and then supposedly confessed that she had killed the Randalls because, according to a Midwestern newspaper, they “disobeyed the orders of the church.” That church would become a topic of scrutiny and sensationalism by regional lawmen and news outlets alike throughout much of 1912.

At that time, Barnabet is also said to have confessed to killing another family in Lafayette.

Thus, Barnabet had already been in jail for over four months before her springtime confession. Between January and March 1912, four more families had been axed to death between Crowley, Louisiana and Glidden, Texas. In April, when Barnabet re-confessed, she added two more families to her victim roster.

In aggregate, the four families Barnabet confessed to killing had been slain between November 1909 and November 1911. Four more families had been murdered between her arrest and second confession, meaning she was in jail when they occurred. After her second confession and while she was still in custody, another three families were attacked with an ax, though for the first time, people survived the axman.

This convoluted timeline, in which more than half of the axman murders occurred after Barnabet had been apprehended, presented a challenge for investigators. They generally believed the crimes were related. Yet Barnabet could not have physically carried out the attacks in 1912.

To explain the continuation of the killings despite Barnabet’s incarceration, local lawmen leveraged the young woman’s own statements that had landed her in jail in the first place: that religion compelled her to murder.

It was this November 1911 confession that gave investigators the motive of religious fanaticism to attach to the axman crimes. Then, in January 1912, when the Broussards – another Black family – were murdered with an ax in Lake Charles, Louisiana, the local police found a Bible verse scrawled on their front door. This overtly religious symbol appeared roughly two months after Barnabet’s first confession and seemed to confirm her claims.

By April 1912, the idea of religiously motivated serial murder had been circulating in the rice belt region for months.

Hoodoo, conjures, and sensationalism

Barnabet’s confession was transcribed by R. H. Broussard (no relation to the victims), a newspaper reporter for the “New Orleans Item,” in April 1912.

According to the report, Barnabet claimed that she and four friends purchased conjures from a local hoodoo doctor one evening while socializing. They paid the practitioner for his services. Supposedly, the group then used the charms to move about undetected while committing murder.

In both her November 1911 and April 1912 confessions, Barnabet offered faith-based motives, albeit different ones. In the first case, it was the victims who reportedly erred in their religious duties. In the second, it was Barnabet’s own belief in hoodoo that facilitated such carnage. White media outlets did not interpret either of these statements as evidence of the region’s deep history of diverse faith expressions.

Instead, they labeled Barnabet “a black borgia,” “the directing head of a fanatical cult,” and the “Priestess of [a] Colored Human Sacrifice Cult.”

Moreover, sensationalized news coverage labeled the church Barnabet mentioned as the “Sacrifice Church.” Not surprisingly, the press depicted it as a cult-like organization, portraying Barnabet as either a low-level member or the “high priestess.” Sometimes, news reports also conflated the Sacrifice Church with Voodoo, thereby criminalizing a legitimate West African-derived religion as a cult.

According to unsubstantiated media accounts, the so-called Sacrifice Church promoted human sacrifice to gain immortality. Simultaneously, newspapers treated the conjure Barnabet possessed as proof of her fanaticism, reporting her claim that the only reason she confessed was because she had lost her charm.

Combined these selective – and sensational – interpretations of Barnabet’s supposed religious beliefs ignored the possibility of diverse spiritual practices that enriched life in the rice belt region.

Jim Crow and Black faith

I have yet to find evidence the Sacrifice Church existed. My research suggests the white press conflated the word “sacrifice” with the word “sanctified.” This might have been due, in part, to both sensationalism and ignorance.

Pentecostalism, a branch of evangelical Christianity that emphasizes baptism by the Holy Spirit and direct communication from God, started growing in popularity in the U.S. in the early 1900s. Many Pentecostal denominations call their adherents saints and their churches sanctified. Since sanctified churches were relatively new to Louisiana and some Pentecostal teachings – like speaking in tongues – challenged more mainstream Protestant doctrine, Pentecostalism might have contributed to the media’s reporting.

Although the Sacrifice Church may have simply been a linguistic error in reference to any number of sanctified churches in the rice belt, it is possible that Barnabet did indeed possess a conjure. The hoodoo doctor she accused of selling her and her comrades their charms was arrested and questioned by the Lafayette authorities. The statements he gave to the police aligned with hoodoo practices even as he denied knowing Barnabet or being involved in such folkways.

Given the variety of faith practices in Jim Crow Louisiana, it is possible both that Barnabet believed in her conjure and that sanctified churches were growing in popularity in the region. Whether she ever attended one is hard to know, just as the legitimacy of either confession is difficult to determine.

What is clear is that faith anchored the statements Barnabet made to the authorities. The other anchor, however, was murder. The consequences of how these events aligned reverberate in how Barnabet has been depicted.

Barnbet was front-page news in 1912. People knew her name, even as they debated her guilt. When she was convicted of murder, she was sentenced to life at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. A little over a decade later, she was released and disappeared from public view.

Today, however, no Black female serial killer occupies a similar place in America’s collective memory.

In recent years, there have been calls for a more serious acceptance of Black women’s experiences, knowledge and beliefs within the dominant culture. This shift also invites, I believe, a fresh look at Barnabet’s confessions and the crimes that were attributed to her.

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

– ref. Revisiting the story of Clementine Barnabet, a Black woman blamed for serial murders in the Jim Crow South – https://theconversation.com/revisiting-the-story-of-clementine-barnabet-a-black-woman-blamed-for-serial-murders-in-the-jim-crow-south-271298