English – Page 7 – MIL Submissions Engine

May 19, 2026

Poor pay is holding back Africa’s biodiversity research and reducing its contribution to global science

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Harith Omar Morgadinho Farooq, Lecturer, Lúrio University

Africa is one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth. But much of its biodiversity remains poorly studied. Research from the continent contributes to less than 1% to global scientific output.

This pattern is often explained by limited investment in research. Governments in sub-Saharan Africa allocate, on average, only about 0.4% of their gross domestic product (GDP) to research and development. By comparison, European countries invest on average more than 2% of GDP, while the global average is around 2.6%. India invests close to 0.7% of GDP, and the US nearly 3.5%. Additional constraints include the lack of infrastructure, and political instability.

But there is a more direct and often overlooked constraint: the salaries of the scientists.

Salary disparities are measurable, policy relevant and a direct economic constraint on researchers’ ability to conduct fieldwork. They play a role in shaping who is able to conduct scientific research, a disparity that becomes especially visible during fieldwork.

We are researchers who have been working on biodiversity conservation in Africa for more than a decade. Through collaboration with and experience in European research institutions, we have observed firsthand how financial limitations affect fieldwork, research continuity and scientific careers. We investigated whether differences in researchers’ incomes are associated with biodiversity research output across African countries.

Our study showed a clear pattern: countries where researchers earn less produce less scientific output and rely more heavily on studies led by foreign institutions. This has implications beyond output alone, because scientific leadership influences which questions are asked, which ecosystems are studied, and how conservation priorities are defined.

Strengthening local research capacity will require greater investment in science and higher education.

Salary disparaties

In our study, we compared salary differences between locally based and foreign-affiliated researchers using publicly available salary data. We linked these to biodiversity research output across 54 African countries using data from the Scopus database.

We found that researchers based at African institutions often earn only a fraction of what their collaborators from higher-income countries receive. This disparity was particularly prominent in Malawi, the Republic of the Congo, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Here, foreign-affiliated salaries were approximately 34, 32, and 25 times higher than local salaries, respectively.

Because of these low salaries, it can take years to save for basic research tools such as field clothing, cameras or computers. For researchers from higher-income countries, these costs can often be covered by a single monthly salary.

This financial constraint may help explain why much of the continent’s biodiversity research is conducted in collaboration with institutions based outside Africa, rather than being led by local organisations, which are few and often underfunded.

Although local researchers often possess critical knowledge of biodiversity, languages, logistics and environmental challenges, they may have limited opportunities to lead projects or secure senior authorship positions in international collaborations.

The hidden cost of doing fieldwork

Biodiversity research is inherently expensive. It requires travel, equipment, permits, and the support of local guides or assistants. Even short expeditions can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. In many parts of the world, these costs are covered by research grants or institutional funding.

But in Africa, especially for exploratory research, funding is generally limited or unavailable. Consequently, scientists often have to rely on their own income to conduct fieldwork, a pattern also reported by researchers in other lower-income countries.

We found that across countries, foreign-affiliated researchers typically earned between four and 30 times more than locally based scientists conducting research in the same country. Researchers based outside the continent also retain substantially higher disposable income, even after accounting for travel costs, allowing them to contribute to or fully fund fieldwork. By contrast, in half of the African countries analysed, locally based researchers could not cover even a conservative fieldwork budget of US$1,000 using their entire monthly salary.

These differences create an uneven playing field. Success depends not only on the merit of ideas or quality of training, but also on who can afford to be in the field.

As a result, scientists with greater financial security may be better positioned to sustain fieldwork, revisit sites and maintain long-term research programmes.

For students, these realities become clear early on. Even those with a strong interest in biodiversity may decide not to pursue careers in biology, or reduce their involvement over time, once they understand the financial constraints. Consequently, fewer local specialists are trained.

The shortage of local specialists is part of a broader research capacity gap. Africa has approximately 236 researchers per million people. This is far below the global average of around 1,516, and substantially lower than Europe’s 4,240 researchers per million people or the more than 4,800 per million in the US.

Many African countries have few locally based scientists available to conduct biodiversity surveys, supervise students, lead long-term monitoring programmes, or build specialised expertise, particularly in poorly studied taxonomic groups.

When research becomes difficult to prioritise

Low salaries have broader consequences.

Scientists may rely on consultancies or teaching across multiple institutions. This leaves limited time for research. Over time it reduces both their development as researchers and the relevance of the knowledge they bring into the classroom.

Research capacity in African institutions remains limited. Most biodiversity studies are led by researchers from foreign institutions. Though international collaborations are essential, they can lead to local scientists being limited in their ability to lead projects or even participate.

In such cases, local knowledge and priorities can be overlooked. Large parts of these countries, and many taxonomic groups, may remain poorly studied.

In Mozambique, for example, some of the country’s most important areas for threatened and endemic plants and animals lie outside the current protected area network.

Conservation funding and research have historically concentrated in large protected areas known for charismatic megafauna such as elephants and lions.

Solutions are hard to come by

Increasing researchers’ salaries is not straightforward. In many countries, salaries at public universities are tied to national government salary scales and broader public sector budgets. This means there is no single institution that can solve the problem alone. Still, universities and funding agencies can create mechanisms to better support research activity.

These may include productivity-based incentives, research stipends, fieldwork allowances, reduced teaching loads for active researchers, and grant schemes that directly fund local scientists. Governments can also invest in research as part of long-term national development strategies.

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. Poor pay is holding back Africa’s biodiversity research and reducing its contribution to global science – https://theconversation.com/poor-pay-is-holding-back-africas-biodiversity-research-and-reducing-its-contribution-to-global-science-282447

May 19, 2026

How traffic makes cities warmer

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Zhonghua Zheng, Assistant Professor in Data Science and Environmental Analytics, University of Manchester

A queue of vehicles in central Manchester, one of two cities modelled to quantify the effect of traffic on urban heating. Marina J/Shutterstock

More than half the world’s population now lives in cities that are often much hotter than their rural surroundings. Roads, buildings and paved surfaces absorb and store heat during the day, then release it slowly after sunset. This is known as the urban heat island effect.

Discussions about why cities overheat tend to focus on buildings, which is understandable. As well as absorbing solar radiation, residential and office buildings consume a lot of energy through lighting, heating and air conditioning. They release waste heat, and shape the flow of air through surrounding streets.

But another source of urban heat receives much less attention: traffic.

Motorised vehicles release heat directly into the urban environment. This is especially true of petrol and diesel vehicles, where much of the fuel energy is lost as waste heat from internal combustion engines and exhaust systems. Tyres, brakes and friction with the road surface all add to these heat emissions.

In streets with heavy traffic and limited ventilation, traffic can be a significant source of human-made heat – as my recent study with colleagues of two major European cities shows.

In the southern French city of Toulouse, our modelling found that traffic heat increases the average annual air temperature by about 0.4°C. In Manchester, a typically cooler city in the north of England, the average annual air temperature increased by around 0.25°C thanks to its traffic.

These numbers may sound small, but in urban climate terms they are meaningful. During heatwaves, even small increases in air temperature can worsen thermal discomfort, increase health risks and raise demand for cooling.

Our past research has shown how the intensity, frequency and length of urban heatwaves are projected to increase in many parts of the world by 2070 (see maps). This includes cities in North America, Europe, India and China. Our latest work suggests these rises could in part be mitigated by reducing urban petrol and diesel traffic.

Projected urban heat changes by 2061-70:

How Manchester and Toulouse compare

The Community Earth System Model is a widely used open-source model for simulating interactions between land, atmosphere, climate and human activity – launched by the US National Center for Atmospheric Research in 2010.

However, traffic-related heat was not considered by the model – so we developed a new module for it which estimates heat generated from factors like traffic volume, vehicle type, road characteristics and weather conditions. Our results change depending on the time of day, according to the nature of the traffic and local weather conditions, for example.

We found that the most heat-polluting elements are generally high traffic volumes – and which kind of vehicles predominate in these traffic jams. Conventional petrol and diesel vehicles release substantially more waste heat than electric vehicles. In cities with lots of these vehicles, peak-period rush hours can become important sources of heat emissions.

We modelled traffic in two European cities – the central Capitole area of Toulouse and central Manchester – using traffic data provided by Transport for Greater Manchester and other open datasets.

Toulouse and Manchester have quite different climates, urban landscapes and traffic patterns – all of which affect not only how much heat is released by traffic, but how that heat affects each city.

A queue of cars in central Toulouse. — The heating effect of traffic was greater in Toulouse than Manchester.
Ensapa37/Shutterstock

In Toulouse, morning traffic heat built up through the day and persisted into the night. In contrast, Manchester’s evening rush hour contributed to stronger overnight warming, with its air temperature from traffic peaking around 3am, on average.

In both cities, the traffic-related warming effect was stronger in winter than summer. In Toulouse, our modelling found it raised air temperature by an average of 0.5°C in winter and 0.3°C in summer, while in Manchester the increase was 0.35°C in winter and 0.16°C in summer.

The role of traffic in urban heating

Awareness of urban heat risk is increasing, but the role played by traffic is still rarely considered in urban climate adaptation and transport planning.

As cities continue to grow and climate extremes become more common, governments need better tools to understand where urban heat comes from and how it can be reduced. Our work is another step towards more realistic simulations of future cities.

Our model could offer more accurate answers to important questions such as: how much will electrification of vehicles reduce heat levels? How will changes in road design, vehicle use and congestion patterns affect local heat exposure? And to what extent can changes in urban transport methods limit the effects of predicted future heatwaves?

These are, of course, not just scientific questions but policy and design issues. Concerns around cities getting hotter often focus on trees, parks, cool roofs and building design. But traffic is not just a source of pollution and carbon emissions – it can also be part of how we plan cooler, healthier and more resilient cities.

Dr Zhonghua Zheng receives funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

– ref. How traffic makes cities warmer – https://theconversation.com/how-traffic-makes-cities-warmer-283195

May 19, 2026

Six tech-free tips from history for designing your garden

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Camilla Allen, Lecturer in Landscape Architecture, University of Sheffield

Three gardens at the 2026 RHS Chelsea Flower Show have found themselves mired in controversy rather than the more usual mud.

This year’s show gardens include one designed by Matt Keightley, who has used Spacelift, a design app he developed that incorporates AI. Advocates of such tools praise their potential to democratise garden design and make it more accessible. Critics, however, argue that these technologies risk reproducing or appropriating existing designs, and could ultimately threaten the livelihoods of professional garden designers.

Happily, gardening is an ancient practice and has long been managed and enjoyed without the use of technology. Here are six tech-free lessons from history to help you get started designing your garden without turning to AI.

1. Get back to books

Not sure where to start? A book is still one of the richest sources of guidance, and the history of gardening bestsellers offers a revealing window into changing tastes, practices and traditions.

This list of the 20 most popular titles for American public libraries suggests that food growing, biodiversity and design are key interests for budding gardeners.

Painting of two girls sat on a bench in dappled sunlight. One reads, the other rests her head on her shoulder. — Two Girls Reading in Sunlit Garden by Laura Knight (1910).
Danum Gallery, Library and Museum

And it’s not just books from today that have something to offer. I’d recommend travelling back to the 17th century with diarist and polymath John Evelyn. His Elysium Britannicum, written in the 1650s, records a deep fascination with nature and design, showing that ingenuity and gardening have long gone hand in hand.

2. Go for a walk and imagine what is possible

The landscape painter and designer William Kent is said to have “leapt the fence and [seen] that all nature was a garden”. This moment is often taken to mark the shift away from the formal aristocratic gardens of the 17th century towards a more naturalistic style.

This philosophical turn helped shape the development of the English landscape garden, but it can also speak to the present moment, when we are being encouraged to make our own gardens – most of which are not landscape-scale – more welcoming to nature.

One of the simplest ways to begin is to look closely at your surroundings: explore your neighbourhood, observe what thrives and take note of what you like and what works well.

3. Consult the genius loci and start with the bones

Painting of an elderly man with a moustache sat among bright pink flowers, his gardener's spade resting against his leg. — Old Scott, the Gardener by Robert Lillie (1867).
Lillie Art Gallery

Cartoonist Osbert Lancaster and his wife Anne Scott-James lightly ribbed 20th-century suburban gardens in their 1977 book The Pleasure Garden: An Illustrated History of British Gardening. Post-second world war urbanisation gave many more people the opportunity to have their own gardens, reflected in a kind of “consistent inconsistency” of patios, lawns, borders and vegetable plots.

The eclecticism they observed can instead be read as an invitation to consult the genius loci – the “spirit of the place” – and to engage with the features and atmosphere that give a garden its character, rather than treating it as a blank slate.

Indeed, in her 1971 book Down to Earth, Anne Scott-James recognised that most gardeners do not have perfect sites. Working with “the bones” of a garden, she argued, is therefore essential, achieved through creating harmony within the broader context.

4. Follow the rules and put things in perspective

There are plenty of principles and approaches that can be applied to garden design, from formal symmetry and a carefully chosen material palette to planting styles that range from sculpted topiary to naturalistic meadow.

Beginning with an aspiration can help to focus these choices, and looking at what has constituted garden design through the ages through the ages can be a useful way of anchoring your own vision.

5. Visit gardens

In 2027 the National Garden Scheme will be 100 years old. It represents a wonderful continuum of curiosity and conviviality as members of the public gain access to otherwise private gardens.

Painting of a Victorian lady by a rock pond — Lady Barber in Her Rock Garden by Nestor Cambier (1916).
The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, CC BY-NC

The scheme was set up by Elsie Wagg, a council member of the Queen’s Nursing Institute and has subsequently evolved into an organisation that funds a range of health charities.

Being able to see what other gardeners have achieved – and the effort that has gone into making those spaces – is one of the most effective tech-free ways of learning. Taking a camera or sketchbook can be a simple way to observe more closely and carry those ideas back into your own garden.

6. Gardening is technology

Painting of a man using a scythe to cut grass. — The Reaper by Ralph Hedley (1900).
Pannett Art Gallery, CC BY

When economic historian Roderick Floud turned his attention to the history of gardening in An Economic History of the English Garden (2019), he revealed the scale and long-term economic impact of the sector.

Did you know that many innovations in central heating, water engineering and glasshouse construction have their roots in gardens? It’s a point many people may not be aware of, making it a useful story to share when showing visitors around your dahlias – while also quietly recognising that technology has always been embedded in gardening, even when we don’t immediately see it.

What’s your favourite gardening tip from history? Let us know in the comments below.

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, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Camilla Allen is a trustee of the Yorkshire Gardens Trust.

– ref. Six tech-free tips from history for designing your garden – https://theconversation.com/six-tech-free-tips-from-history-for-designing-your-garden-283008

May 19, 2026

Why wise leadership pays off. Here’s how to apply it in the workplace

Source: The Conversation – France – By Abderrahman Hassi, Associate Professor of Management , Al Akhawayn University

In a global context marked by chaos and turbulence, technological advancements, health crises, marketplace alterations, shifting demographics and organizational foolishness, the demand for more adaptive and reflective forms of leadership has become a necessity. Given this context, wisdom can provide a meaningful understanding of “good” leadership to navigate such turbulence and seize the opportunities that come along with it. As such, wisdom constitutes a cornerstone of effective leadership and serves as a key driver of organizational excellence.

How do leaders ‘wise up’?

To put wisdom to good use in leadership, in one of our research pieces, we developed a valid “wise leadership scale”, designed to assess the extent to which leaders and managers demonstrate wisdom within organizations by gathering data in France and Morocco. In a recent research output, we validated the new wise leadership scale using data collected from Canada, China and Morocco. How do we define wise leadership?

Wise leadership is oriented toward enabling others to contribute meaningfully to the flourishing of individuals, organizations, and the wider community.

We conceptualised wise leaders as individuals who enact normatively positive behaviours through four mechanisms:

Intellectual shrewdness

This involves the ability to recognise, comprehend, and make sound decisions in both predictable and unpredictable situations. It entails quickly detecting subtle cues and underlying dynamics, anticipating potential difficulties, and generating actionable insights, even in ambiguous and uncertain contexts.

Wise leaders grasp what needs to be done and are acutely aware of the repercussions of their decisions and actions. To establish facts and provide deductive explanations without rushing to judgement, they rely on reasoned and circumspect observation. Wise leaders also possess the intellectual abilities required to realise their envisioned future by selecting the appropriate course of action at the right moment,

while carefully considering the prevailing circumstances.

A lack of intellectual shrewdness along with sound judgement and foresight among high-ranking executives and engineers resulted in Volkswagen’s Dieselgate scandal in 2015.

The latter was about setting up unauthorised software to evade nitrogen oxide emission regulations. The individuals concerned were intelligent leaders with remarkable engineering and financial abilities. Nonetheless, they exhibited poor judgement and unwise behaviour as they did not adequately assess the potential repercussions or anticipate the harmful consequences for both the company and themselves of tampering with emission tests. The scandal resulted in a colossal loss of over €33 billion in penalties and settlements for Volkswagen.

Spurring action

This refers to the capacity to inspire and mobilise others around a compelling vision. Wise leaders help subordinates perceive a positive future vision as both meaningful and attainable.

Spurring action involves directing followers toward actions that yield desired outcomes that followers themselves recognise and appreciate as wise. To this end, wise leaders display specific traits and behaviours that enable them to align individual and organizational goals. Wise leaders additionally, actively develop the potential of their followers, elevating them to new levels of performance and growth. On top of this, wise leaders are also able to bring people with varying interests together, even by resorting to power if necessary. Lastly, by fostering a sense of purpose, nurturing trust, building strong human connections, and creating opportunities for organizational members to work collaboratively, wise leaders entice subordinates to achieve positive work outcomes.

When Tadataka Yamada took over as chairman of R&D at Glaxo SmithKline (GSK) in December 2000, his company was one of 39 pharmaceutical companies suing the South African government for violating price protections and patent infringement for AIDS medicines over access to drug therapies for needy patients.

Given the patients’ powerless position to alter the course of the legal process, Yamada opted to be a part of the solution to global health problems, rather than a party to a lawsuit that prevented such treatments from reaching those in desperate need.

In one-on-one meetings with each GSK board member, Yamada emphasised GSK’s moral obligation to relieve human suffering and associated it with the company’s long-term performance. All 39 corporations withdrew their legal action against South Africa in April 2001. GSK’s business strategy in developing countries, stakeholder relations, and reputation were all positively impacted by this decision.

Moral conduct

This refers to how far morals, values, and principles guide wise leaders’ day-to-day interactions with stakeholders in a consistent, truthful, and ethical manner. Wise leaders avoid excess and greed, uphold high ethical standards and prioritise virtuous outcomes. In practice, wise leaders balance their own interests with those of others, carefully

evaluate the moral implications of their decisions and actions, and consistently adhere to their ethical principles. To achieve this, wise leaders rely on a strong moral compass that provides clear behavioural guidelines, ensures consistency between words and deeds, and reinforces

their moral commitment. As a result, they serve as role models for their followers; their organizations function harmoniously, grounded in a noble purpose aimed at delivering benefits to the greatest number of people.

As an example, Mario Rovirosa, CEO of Ferrer – Spain’s first B corp pharmaceutical company, stresses that the brand’s slogan “Ferrer for good” says it all: it is the company’s purpose to “do good” in society and on the planet, and asserts that Ferrer harnesses its pharmaceutical activity to obtain the required resources to do good.

Rovirosa spearheaded Ferrer to become the first Spanish pharmaceutical laboratory to obtain the B Corp certification that is awarded by B Lab to firms that meet high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.

Ferrer takes into account the effects corporate decisions have on their employees, customers, suppliers, community, and the physical environment. Recently, the company conferred more than half of its profits to social and environmental initiatives.

Cultivating humility

Cultivating humility involves a balanced sense of self-worth that lies between the vices of deficiency and excess. Wise leaders deeply value their expertise and knowledge yet continually subject them to critical scrutiny. They are committed to lifelong learning as they strongly believe that true wisdom also stems from the vast realms of knowledge that remain unexplored. Wise leaders remain open to learning from all sources, including subordinates, and readily acknowledge that they do not know everything.

Moreover, the humility of wise leaders is evident in their willingness to openly admit mistakes and draw valuable lessons from them. Finally, wise leaders willingly adopt the perspectives of others, rather than

exclusively rely on self-focused stances. In so doing, they truly guard against intellectual arrogance and ignorance.

When Anne Mulcahy took the reins of Xerox in 2001, it was recommended that she announce the company’s bankruptcy. Xerox was losing 300 million dollars each year. However, she chose not to take the “easy path”. When confronted with daunting obstacles, Mulcahy favoured dialogue over speeches and exhorted staff to share critical viewpoints and even discordant stances, and hence succeeded in accommodating diverse perspectives and expectations.

Anne Mulcahy’s tenure as CEO at Xerox is a shining example of operational efficiency and cultivating humility, which is part of wise leadership.

Mulcahy did what the vast majority of leaders would not do: she approached junior subordinates to mentor her in product development, engineering, and finance. Mulcahy ended up saving Xerox and improving its profitability by slashing both its capital expenditures and total debt in half, and cutting its general and administrative expenses by one third.

The proposed wise leadership model broadens the scope of existing approaches, such as authentic, ethical and transformational leadership, by incorporating the core components of judgement, action, morality, and humility.

This new wise leadership scale can serve as a practical tool to assess the degree of wise leadership demonstrated by current employees and to identify individuals with (un) wise tendencies during leadership recruitment and selection processes.

It also offers a valuable mechanism to design and deliver targeted leadership training and development programmes aimed at fostering wisdom in leaders, which may lead, in turn, to generating positive organizational outcomes.

The European Academy of Management (EURAM) is a learned society founded in 2001. With over 2,000 members from 60 countries in Europe and beyond, EURAM aims at advancing the academic discipline of management in Europe.

A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. It provides an introduction to the diversity of research coming out of the continent and considers some of the key issues facing European countries. Get the newsletter!

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.

– ref. Why wise leadership pays off. Here’s how to apply it in the workplace – https://theconversation.com/why-wise-leadership-pays-off-heres-how-to-apply-it-in-the-workplace-282900

May 19, 2026

Why Washington’s Hilton hotel connects Reagan and Trump: when violence becomes a test of power

Source: The Conversation – France – By Florian Leniaud, Docteur en civilisation américaine. Membre associé au Centre d’histoire culturelle des sociétés contemporaines, Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ) – Université Paris-Saclay

The assassination attempt targeting Donald Trump and several of his most senior cabinet members on April 26 took place at Washington’s Hilton Hotel, the very site where Ronald Reagan had been seriously wounded in a shooting 45 years earlier.

This parallel invites us to examine how the physical attacks suffered by the two Republican presidents reshaped their public image, as well as the ways in which they responded to them.

Forty-five years after the assassination attempt against Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981, another attack targeting Donald Trump has occurred in the very same place: Washington’s Hilton Hotel.

This detail is far from insignificant, because it transforms an isolated event into a sense of continuity. The location itself becomes a stage. Political violence no longer appears merely as a singular event; instead, it seems to reenact itself, linking two presidential figures through a shared ordeal.

A place that turns violence into narrative

In 1981, Ronald Reagan, whose lung had been punctured by a bullet fired at point-blank range by John Warnock Hinckley Jr.., emerged from the episode profoundly strengthened.

Images of his discharge from the hospital, his humour in the face of mortal danger, and the media narrative surrounding the event all helped to durably establish the image of a leader who had endured, and survived, a major ordeal. Only hours after being shot, Reagan joked to his surgeons, “I hope you are all Republicans.”

The remark immediately spread across the country and helped shape the image of a courageous president, composed and self-assured even in the face of death.

Today, Trump – who had already experienced a similar moment on July 14, 2024, when he emerged with a raised fist and a bloodied ear after surviving an assassination attempt at a campaign rally — appears in a different yet comparable situation in one crucial respect: exposure to violence reinforces the posture of a besieged leader. For nearly a decade, his
political rhetoric has largely rested on the idea of an America under threat, surrounded by enemies both foreign and domestic. Each attack therefore strengthens an already established narrative: that of a leader targeted precisely because he embodies a form of political resistance.

In both cases, the event therefore extends beyond the violent act itself, as it is immediately absorbed into a political narrative. Yet this narrative does not operate on its own. It relies on sustained media coverage that transforms violence into a major political sequence. If
violence creates the event, the mediated narrative turns it into a political moment.

A premeditated attack in a highly symbolic space

The information now available about the April 25 attacker, Cole Tomas Allen, confirms that he had planned the attack well in advance. The 31-year-old man had crossed the United States carrying several weapons and had booked a room at the Hilton weeks beforehand.

According to investigators, he intended to target Donald Trump as well as several political officials attending the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

His writings, a mixture of confession, political manifesto, and farewell message, reveal an accumulation of personal and political grievances directed at the Trump administration.

Authorities also indicated that he did not expect to survive the attack, anchoring his actions in a sacrificial logic that has become relatively common in contemporary mass violence. This dimension is important because it moves away from the idea of a purely impulsive or irrational act. Research on mass shooters has highlighted trajectories often marked by social isolation, forms of humiliation, or a search for recognition. In many cases, the act of violence emerges within an environment saturated with violent and highly mediatised narratives.

Media coverage therefore does not merely function as a channel of information. Through the repeated circulation of images and attackers’ names, it can, for certain individuals, contribute
to making such acts seem genuinely possible — that is, imaginable. As violence is replayed continuously, it becomes embedded within a familiar mental horizon in which acting out violently may come to appear as a brutal means of attaining public visibility.

The location as a political stage

The choice of location plays a central role in this dynamic. These attacks do not occur in neutral spaces: schools, shopping malls, universities, sites of political power, and government buildings all concentrate visibility and media resonance. They function as stages exposed to the nation as a whole.

The Washington Hilton functions, in this respect, as a space of political memory. Already associated with the assassination attempt against Ronald Reagan, it instantly transforms the event into part of a historical continuity. This site of memory generates meaning even before any political interpretation takes shape and extends far beyond the individual act itself.

The comparison between Cole Tomas Allen and John Warnock Hinckley Jr.. nevertheless highlights important differences. Hinckley acted within a deeply personal and obsessive logic combining media fascination with a fixation on the actress Jodie Foster. Allen, by contrast, appears to have been engaged in a far more overtly political and ideological undertaking.

Yet one common feature remains: in both cases, the act targeted a highly visible space now heavily charged with symbolic meaning.
Contemporary political violence therefore does not target individuals alone. It also targets places, symbols, and narratives.

A media polarisation that immediately transforms violence into political confrontation

This evolution cannot be understood without situating these events within the recent history of the American media landscape. The Ronald Reagan presidency marked a major turning point with the gradual disappearance of the Fairness Doctrine in the late 1980s. Until then, this regulation had required broadcast media to cover controversial issues in a balanced
manner.

Its repeal gradually paved the way for a far more polarised media system, in which information became a space of permanent ideological confrontation. The rise of conservative talk radio, followed by cable news networks and social media platforms, fragmented the American public sphere into competing narratives.

In this context, every violent event immediately becomes the object of competing interpretations. For Donald Trump supporters, the attack reinforces the idea of a leader persecuted for challenging parts of the political and media establishment. For his opponents,
by contrast, the attack reflects a climate of political tension to which Trump’s rhetoric and his tendency to polarise public debate are seen as having contributed.

Violence thus ceases to be merely a shared tragedy and becomes instead an element of political struggle, used by each side to reinforce its own interpretation of the country, power, and threat.

Firearms as a political imaginary

The issue of firearms occupies a central place in this dynamic. Their widespread circulation sustains a political imaginary grounded in self-defence and the perception of permanent threat. In the United States, firearms are not merely associated with security or recreation;
they also function as a cultural and identity marker deeply rooted in sections of American conservatism.

This system operates in a self-reinforcing loop: fear encourages armament, while the omnipresence of firearms makes violence more likely. Each new attack generates a sense of insecurity that, in turn, further legitimises gun ownership.

It is precisely within this tension between gun culture and the direct experience of violence that the comparison between Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump becomes particularly revealing. Reagan, despite being a major figure of American conservatism and a defender of the Second Amendment, gradually shifted his position after surviving the 1981 assassination attempt, notably in an op-ed published in The New York Times. In the 1990s, after leaving office, he publicly supported the Brady Act, legislation strengthening background checks on firearm sales — named in honour of James Brady, the White House press secretary who was severely wounded alongside the president on March 30, 1981, and left permanently disabled by his injuries. Reagan then acknowledged that stricter gun regulations could have saved lives.

Donald Trump, by contrast, has maintained a firmer defence of gun rights, including after having personally been targeted by violence. This difference reflects a deeper transformation within the Republican camp: for Ronald Reagan, violence led, at least partially, to a form of reassessment, whereas for Trump it has tended instead to reinforce an already consolidated political narrative centred on danger and confrontation.

When the place outlives the event

The attack against Donald Trump is not an isolated event. It occurred within a broader context of political polarisation and violence targeting public officials in the United States.

The January 6 United States Capitol attack had already revealed the intensity of a polarisation in which part of the political conflict has now shifted onto the physical and security terrain.

Perhaps most striking, however, is the persistence of the place itself. Forty-five years after Reagan, Washington’s Hilton Hotel reemerges as though certain spaces retain the memory of the violence that has passed through them. The location no longer merely hosts the event;
it gives it an immediate historical depth and connects multiple moments of American political life through the same stage.

From Reagan to Trump, the political effects may differ, but one constant remains: exposure to violence can strengthen the symbolic power of political authority. While political violence has long been part of American history, its constant media circulation and its inscription
within a deeply polarised landscape now give it a particular resonance, in which every attack immediately becomes a political and media confrontation that extends far beyond the event itself.

Florian Leniaud 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. Why Washington’s Hilton hotel connects Reagan and Trump: when violence becomes a test of power – https://theconversation.com/why-washingtons-hilton-hotel-connects-reagan-and-trump-when-violence-becomes-a-test-of-power-283095

May 19, 2026

Urban gardens may contain lead — here’s what the research says about the hidden health risk

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Melody Lynch, Adjunct Professor, Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia University

You skip the pesticides, you remove weeds by hand, you choose heirloom seeds. Organic methods give you comfort in knowing that your vegetables are grown without excessive chemicals.

But what many careful gardeners don’t know is their gardens can carry a hazard that organic methods alone may not prevent: lead.

Lead has no safe level of exposure and it’s present in the soil of some Canadian urban gardens. Where does it come from? Leaded gasoline emissions from historical use, deteriorating lead-based paint that seeps into the soil around older buildings and industrial activities like mining.

Luckily there are many simple and affordable ways to reduce lead exposure and make our gardens safer.

Lead affects us all differently

Lead has no function in the human body and is harmful in any concentration.

Though estimates vary, adults absorb around three to 10 per cent of the lead they ingest, while those who are fasting or malnourished may absorb up to 60 to 80 per cent. The number is higher for children, who may absorb up to 50 per cent — or up to 100 per cent on an empty stomach.

For adults, lead accumulates primarily in our bones and teeth due to repeated or prolonged exposure before slowly being released into the rest of the body. For children, a greater proportion of lead is absorbed in soft tissues, causing serious health problems to begin earlier in life.

Over time, exposure can cause long-term irreversible health effects on the brain and nervous system, the kidneys and the cardiovascular system.

Each year, lead exposure is responsible for 1.5 million deaths and over 33 million years of healthy life lost to disability around the world.

Gasoline, paint and time

Lead can occur naturally, but most lead pollution results from human activity, like manufacturing, or from products like batteries.

The use of leaded gasoline has been eliminated around the globe, but historically deposited lead remains in the environment because it does not degrade over time.

Unfortunately, there are no regulations for leaded paint in many global contexts where it is still widely available and used. This contributes to global health inequities.

Furthermore, low-income and racialized communities may experience disproportionate exposure to lead, an example of environmental injustice.

Why the risk is worth taking

Despite the risk, gardens can be an important source of healthy foods, especially for economically marginalized communities. There are many other benefits too.

When we take care of a garden, research shows this reciprocally enhances individual and community well-being. Gardens can strengthen our immune function, help regulate endocrine responses, support emotional stability and improve psychosocial behaviours, especially among children. They can also foster empathy toward nature and other people.

For some Indigenous Peoples and other groups with long agricultural histories, gardens can contribute to cultural continuity through practices rooted in intergenerational knowledge and spirituality.

It’s important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to managing risk and reward. Food safety concerns have been used to negatively stereotype marginalized populations who have limited alternatives, or to pre-empt public debate on land-use decisions that ultimately displace community gardens.

How to make your garden safer

Lead can get into your plants from the air or soil. Each plant will uptake lead differently depending on factors including plant type and soil characteristics. Leafy greens and root vegetables are generally more likely to absorb lead than other vegetables, for example.

Luckily, there are many simple ways to prevent lead from ending up in your homegrown foods.

Position your garden away from busy roads, parking areas, railways, waterways and industrial areas.
If you think lead may be present in your soil, you can send a sample to get tested.
Be cautious with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Attempt non-chemical solutions when possible; otherwise follow recommended dosages carefully.
Use raised beds or pots with fresh soil if you are concerned about your soil being polluted.
Use compost. While it will not remove heavy metals, high-quality compost can prevent lead from moving into your produce from the soil.
Maintain soil pH with use of a pH meter available at the hardware store. Ensure your soil is not too acidic to prevent lead from moving from your soils into your plants.
Look to soil texture. Avoid soils that are too sandy, as they encourage the movement of lead into your garden plants.
Look to soil colour. Red and yellow soils often indicate the presence of iron oxides, which help prevent lead from moving into plants. Dark black soils often indicate high organic matter content, which helps with this protection too.
Use mulch, such as wood chips or decaying leaves, to prevent lead from entering your soils from the air.
Avoid burning waste in or near the garden, which may cause lead to enter your food. The open burning of waste is an urgent global health problem in places where waste collection infrastructure is insufficient, including some Indigenous communities in Canada.
Prevent young children from putting soil in their mouths while in the garden, as they are at higher risk of developing health problems if they consume lead.
Wash fruits and vegetables with clean water before eating to remove residues.

Perhaps the biggest action that we can take to make our gardens safer is to hold our governments accountable for clean communities. If you are worried about pollution, contact your local representative or join a cause to demand tighter regulations and improved planning policies.

For many families, a garden is not just a hobby. It’s where lunch or dinner comes from. And while progress has been made, lead exposure remains a hidden health risk for Canadians. It’s preventable if we take the right measures.

Melody Lynch received funding for this research from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Mitacs.

– ref. Urban gardens may contain lead — here’s what the research says about the hidden health risk – https://theconversation.com/urban-gardens-may-contain-lead-heres-what-the-research-says-about-the-hidden-health-risk-280552

May 19, 2026

Rivals season 2: Jilly Cooper’s Rutshire drama shows good sex from a woman’s point of view

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Amy Burge, Associate Professor in Popular Fiction, University of Birmingham

Good sex on the screen seems to be having a moment. Steamy gay ice hockey romance Heated Rivalry made stars of its unknown leads Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie. The most recent season of Bridgerton – in which the titular family’s son and their lady’s maid fall passionately in love (and into bed) – garnered 39.7 million views in four days.

The final season of Outlander is currently airing, enduringly popular more than a decade after its episode The Wedding was heralded as a game-changer for representations of explicit, woman-centred sex on television.

These three shows have something in common: they are all adapted from romantic fiction written by women – Rachel Reid, Julia Quinn and Diana Gabaldon, respectively.

They have also all been credited as examples of shows that, like the romance novels they are inspired by, prioritise the female gaze in their depictions of sex. The Guardian has described this as “storytelling that highlights the meandering, textured, sublimely messy inner worlds and wants of women” (even when, as in the case of Heated Rivalry, women are not actually partaking in the on-screen sex).

The second season of Rivals, now streaming on Disney+, is also adapted from a romantic novel by a female author: the 1988 book of the same name by the late Dame Jilly Cooper. Season 1, first broadcast in 2024, was critically acclaimed, and became Disney’s most successful drama of 2024.

Sex and the bonkbuster

Cooper was particularly famous for writing “bonkbusters”: a form commonly associated with the 1980s, described pithily by comedy writer and author Sue Limb as “a big, thick book with lots of bonking in it”.

Sex is central to the bonkbuster, which glories in wild, over-the-top sex scenes. More than half of Rivals’ 52 chapters describe sex between characters – and many of these sex scenes have made it onto the screen.

These range from the tender – such as the first time between Freddie Jones (Danny Dyer) and Lizzie Vereker (Katherine Parkinson), in which he declares her body “an area of outstanding natural beauty” – to the ridiculous. One of our earliest encounters with protagonist and Conservative MP Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell) is via him playing a naked tennis match with fellow MP’s wife Sarah Stratton (Emily Atack).

Notably, not all – not even most – of the sex scenes in Rivals occur in the service of a romantic plot, which sets it apart from shows like Heated Rivalry and Bridgerton. This reflects the difference in genre between the source texts: while bonkbusters have a lot in common with romance novels – including, but not limited to, their predominantly female readership – they are not quite the same thing.

However, for many readers, the depictions of sex in bonkbusters felt as groundbreaking in the 1980s as the sex depicted in these lauded screen adaptations of romantic novels.

Sex education and female pleasure

In 2022-24, we spoke to dozens of people who read books like Rivals in the 1980s, while conducting research for our recent book The Bonkbuster.

A key takeaway for many was bonkbusters’ role as supplementary sex education. For example, one of our participants appreciated the comparative sexual progressiveness of Rivals, which contrasted with her memory of a 1986 biology textbook “which showed the female reproductive organs but did not point out the clitoris”.

By representing sex on the page, books like Rivals filled a silence about sex in these readers’ lives. One of the most remarked-upon aspects of bonkbusters by those we spoke to was not just the explicit sex, but that the sex depicted was overwhelmingly positive for the women involved – and it was men who had to work at it.

For example, when Rupert and Cameron (Nafessa Williams) have sex for the first time, she “ordered him around like a sergeant-major”. This is reflected in the TV adaptation, where, when Cameron demands more clitoral stimulation, Rupert’s reply – taken directly from the book – is to say “I am, after all, a member of the Cli-Tory Party,” and obliges.

While Rupert is sleeping with Cameron under sinister pretences (corporate espionage), she still benefits in short-term sexual pleasure. Good sex in the bonkbuster tends to happen because men are willing to put in an effort to make it good for women.

Sex adaptation – nostalgia v discomfort

However, bonkbuster sex is not always pleasurable, and Cooper has an eye for the unsexy, darker side of the 1980s. Many such details have been included in the TV adaptation. For example, several female characters in Rivals are assaulted, but in the first season, none of the male perpetrators are held accountable – something which many of our readers also found disquieting in the book.

The TV adaptation, though, has taken the opportunity to redress some of the imbalances from the original text.

In the novel, Cameron requires stitches after being badly beaten by Tony (David Tennant). But in the TV adaptation finale of season one, it is Cameron who strikes Tony. The first season ends unclear as to whether Tony is alive or dead (although Tennant’s presence in the trailer for season two is a bit of a giveaway).

And while Cooper’s novel mentions HIV/AIDS in passing, the TV adaptation places more emphasis on the discrimination against gay men at the time, and introduces a new relationship between two gay characters – Charles (Gary Lamont) and Gerald (Hubert Burton).

The second season has taken this even further. Even Rupert – who got away with everything short of murder in Cooper’s books – has to face the consequences of his past bad behaviour.

These changes are indicative of the different climate of 2026. While some aspects of the 1980s bonkbuster are clearly still important and pleasurable for readers and viewers – the nostalgia, the sex positivity – some things are best left in the 1980s.

– ref. Rivals season 2: Jilly Cooper’s Rutshire drama shows good sex from a woman’s point of view – https://theconversation.com/rivals-season-2-jilly-coopers-rutshire-drama-shows-good-sex-from-a-womans-point-of-view-283032

May 19, 2026

Andy Burnham: what has made the king of the north so popular?

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alex Nurse, Reader in Urban Planning, University of Liverpool

The mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham looks set to contest the Makerfield by-election. His announcement that he was putting himself forward forced others seeking to oust Keir Starmer as prime minister to slow their pace. And it now seems unlikely that anyone will fire the starting gun on a leadership contest until Burnham has at least had a chance to join the pack.

In UK politics right now, the only certainty is that nothing is certain. But what we do know is, as Labour politicians go, Burnham is unusually popular. His selection was well received among his colleagues, and he is regularly the only UK politician of any political stripe with a net-positive favourability rating.

Importantly, Burnham also enjoys strong popularity ratings across his own patch of Greater Manchester. In the borough of Wigan – where Makerfield sits – he won 66.1% of the vote in the last mayoral election in 2024.

But over the next few weeks, Burnham will face important questions on how well that popularity stands up in the face of devastating local election results for Labour, in which the party failed to win a single seat in Wigan.

Policy wins – and missteps

The single biggest policy win Burnham can point to is his work on the buses. As mayor, Burnham championed the foundation of the Bee Network. The centrepiece of this integrated transport scheme was the renationalisation of bus routes across Greater Manchester, as well as support to cap fares at £2 at a time when nationally they were rising.

The vibrant yellow buses have become ubiquitous in Manchester?, and a visible reminder of Burnham’s policy presence. It seems that this approach has worked, with people in the street citing Burnham’s support for the bus network as a clear plus point.

Bee Network buses are recognisable on the Manchester roads. — Burnham stamped his authority on Manchester with the yellow buses.
Terry Waller/Shutterstock

Another winning card in Burnham’s hand is his building of “Brand Manchester”. He has cultivated a profile as a politician who cares deeply about his patch, and has consistently and publicly reinforced it. Burnham stood up to the Conservative government over what he felt was a weak and confusing support package during the COVID pandemic. This was what cemented his title as “king of the north”.

In broad terms, Burnham’s building of the brand coincides with Greater Manchester being at a particular zenith under his watch. It is the fastest-growing place in the UK, for example. But this growth is very heavily centred on Manchester city centre. Given concerns about who is actually benefiting from high-rise, high-value developments, this might not be something Burnham will shout too loudly about on the streets of Makerfield.

Of course, his nine years as mayor have included missteps. The development of the Greater Manchester spatial plan – a long-term blueprint for housing, jobs and infrastructure – has been a fraught process, with local authorities withdrawing their support over disputed housing allocations. The struggles of his administration on the thorny issue of housing show that Burnham has no miraculous ability to reach consensus on the difficult issues.

And in 2022, Burnham bowed to political pressure and retreated from plans to introduce a clean air zone in Manchester. This now appears to be a misstep – over a similar period as mayor of London, Sadiq Khan faced down similar pressures. But Khan can claim to have been vindicated, as London hit its air quality targets 184 years ahead of scientists’ predictions.

Ultimately, the English devolved mayors face a very different set of problems to national government. Equally, the powers afforded to them under devolution remain limited in scope, and reliant on whatever funding national government is prepared to release. Complex headaches like national debt and taxation, defence funding or managing geopolitics in an increasingly uncertain world are certainly way beyond the remit of a metro mayor.

Having been outside of Westminster politics for nine years, Burnham is unattached to any preconceived agendas. This blank canvas is both an asset and a risk – although he has said that he would have no plans to change the government’s fiscal rules.

Makerfield is by no means a safe seat, and Burnham’s path is fraught with peril. However, it’s clear that he has been able to use his mayoralty to build a strong local and national profile, while also being sheltered from the crosswinds of national politics as a prince across the water.

Now, Burnham must see if he can realise his own promise or if he will find that he waited too long to make his move. One thing is for sure: his decision to leave Westminster and position himself as the outsider, and his track record as mayor of Greater Manchester, make him a formidable opponent in the by-election.

Alex Nurse receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council

– ref. Andy Burnham: what has made the king of the north so popular? – https://theconversation.com/andy-burnham-what-has-made-the-king-of-the-north-so-popular-283231

May 19, 2026

After the COVID-19 pandemic, thousands more kindergarteners faced developmental challenges

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Magdalena Janus, Professor, Department of Pediatrics, University of British Columbia

Children with special needs often experience a range of early developmental challenges that can affect their readiness for learning and their participation in school.

This population includes children with a wide range of neurodevelopmental conditions (like autism and ADHD) as well as physical or sensory conditions and impairments.

Overall, children with special needs are more likely to experience challenges in one or more areas of their development compared to other children their age. For example, about 80 per cent of kindergarten children with identified special needs do not yet have the skills needed to fully benefit from classroom learning, compared to 27 per cent of children without special needs.

In Canada, children with special health needs are more likely to live in lower-income neighbourhoods and to experience poorer developmental outcomes.

The COVID-19 pandemic, declared in March 2020, changed many aspects of everyday life for young children across Canada. Although all children were affected, those with special needs were often impacted more deeply.

Public health measures disrupted many of the resources and supports they and their families relied on, such as health-care visits, child care and early education programs. In some cases, these supports stopped altogether.

Many pandemic policies did not fully consider the needs of vulnerable groups, including children with special needs. As a result, these children and their families were more likely to experience negative impacts during this pandemic, highlighting gaps in support and services that may have affected their development.

Status of inequities

Our team at the Offord Centre for Child Studies at McMaster University produced a report that provided a comprehensive description of the status of inequities in early childhood development in Canada for children with special needs, both before and after the onset of the pandemic. The Public Health Agency of Canada commissioned the report.

We used population-level data and five different neighbourhood-level socioeconomic measures of inequities, including neighbourhood income after tax. The child development data came from the Early Development Instrument (EDI), a 103-item, teacher-completed questionnaire that assesses kindergarten children’s ability to meet age-appropriate developmental expectations across five developmental domains.

We examined EDI data collected before and after the onset of the pandemic to see whether there were differences in teachers’ reports of children’s development in kindergarten.

The EDI database consisted of data from both a pre- and post-pandemic
cohort of children (2017-20; 2020-23). This cohort comprises a total of 540,005 children with special needs from seven provinces and one territory: Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Québec, Ontario, Manitoba, British Columbia and Northwest Territories.

We only selected provinces and territories with EDI data collection in both pre- and post-pandemic onset periods.

Defining special needs

“Special needs” encompasses a broad range of conditions affecting behaviour, communication and physical and intellectual development. A child was identified on the EDI as having special needs if they received a medical, physical or mental-health diagnosis by either a medical or a health practitioner or if they received special education support or services at school.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, a higher percentage of children with special needs didn’t meet age-appropriate developmental expectations in one or more developmental domains: physical health and well-being, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive development, communication skills and general knowledge. These children are considered developmentally vulnerable.

While the overall rates of developmental vulnerability increased, the general pattern remained the same: children in lower-income neighbourhoods or areas with greater social and material disadvantage were more likely to face developmental difficulties.

Neighbourhood income

This pattern was especially strong when looking at neighbourhood income. As income decreased, the percentage of children experiencing developmental challenges increased. For other neighbourhood characteristics, such as how remote or rural an area was, the patterns were less clear.

For example, while children in very remote areas sometimes had higher rates of vulnerability, this was not consistent across all levels of remoteness, and in some cases, children in the most remote areas had lower vulnerability rates than those in more accessible regions.

Importantly, even though these patterns were similar before and after the pandemic, the overall number of children with special needs who were developmentally vulnerable increased after COVID-19.

On average, there was a 2.5 percentage-point increase in developmental vulnerability. While this may seem small, it represents thousands more children facing developmental challenges than just a few years earlier.

This increase is important because early developmental challenges in kindergarten are linked to greater risks for difficulties later in life, including academic struggles and social or emotional challenges.

These risks are especially pronounced for children with special needs, even though some difficulties may improve over time. Even modest increases in developmental vulnerability can have meaningful impacts — not only for children and families, but also for education and health-care systems that support them.

Girls with special needs: possibly more affected

In both the pre- and post-COVID-19 groups of children with special needs, there was a higher percentage of boys who were developmentally vulnerable compared to girls, with only a few exceptions.

For example, 83 per cent of boys with special health needs were considered developmentally vulnerable before the pandemic, rising to nearly 85 per cent after, compared to about 73 per cent and 77 per cent of girls, respectively.

Boys showed higher rates of vulnerability in most areas of development, except for language and cognitive skills. This pattern is consistent with previous research showing that boys often face more developmental and academic challenges in the early school years.

However, while boys had higher overall rates, the increase in developmental vulnerability after the pandemic was larger among girls. Rates rose by just over one percentage point for boys, but by more than four percentage points for girls. This suggests that girls with special needs may have been more affected by pandemic-related disruptions than boys.

Implications for essential services

Our findings have important implications for policy and practice. Understanding how developmental vulnerability is associated with neighbourhoods can help identify where support is most needed. There is a need to ensure children in more disadvantaged areas have access to health care, early intervention and specialized supports.

Schools play a key role by identifying special needs early, ideally starting in kindergarten, so that appropriate supports, such as individualized education plans, can be put in place as soon as possible.

The increase in both the number of kindergarten children with special needs and the proportion experiencing developmental challenges since the pandemic means that there will be more children requiring specialized assistance and accommodation in later grades.

Our findings highlight the growing pressures on children, families and health and education systems, and underscore the importance of responding with timely and targeted support.

– ref. After the COVID-19 pandemic, thousands more kindergarteners faced developmental challenges – https://theconversation.com/after-the-covid-19-pandemic-thousands-more-kindergarteners-faced-developmental-challenges-280245

May 19, 2026

AI interviewers can’t connect with people the way human researchers can – they can produce only data, not meaning

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Kelley Cotter, Assistant Professor of Information Sciences and Technology, Penn State

AI models can pose questions and follow up on them, but the answers they solicit may be limited in scope and depth. Andriy Onufriyenko/Moment via Getty Images

Anthropic, the company behind the generative AI tool Claude, claimed in March 2026 that it used an AI interviewer to conduct “the largest and most multilingual qualitative study” ever done. The AI tool collected responses from nearly 81,000 people about their visions for AI, spanning 70 languages and 159 countries. Anthropic contends that tools like this can enable researchers to conduct “rich, open-ended interviews at a very large scale.”

Qualitative research is useful for understanding the lived experiences of people. “Qualitative” refers to both the type of data that researchers collect and their purpose for conducting a study. Qualitative data includes text, images, audio, video and anything that isn’t a number. This is why the term “qualitative” is often discussed in contrast to “quantitative” – that is, numerical – data.

Qualitative research enables researchers to deeply explore the tensions, ambiguities and paradoxes that characterize everyday life. It also helps unpack how social norms, cultural dynamics and subjective experiences shape people’s perspectives, beliefs and attitudes.

So, can an AI model without lived experience or a capacity to self-reflect connect with people enough to understand their worlds?

We are researchers who specialize in qualitative research on digital technologies. Collectively, we have decades of experience developing, conducting and publishing interview studies, and we teach qualitative research methods to undergraduate and graduate students.

While AI tools can support social science research, they also have significant limitations. Not taking these limitations into account risks undermining the unique value of research that relies on human connection.

What is qualitative research?

Broadly speaking, qualitative inquiry is about exploring the meaning people give to experiences.

Qualitative inquiry often involves face-to-face interviews with individuals and groups. What this looks like in practice varies based on a researcher’s academic discipline, their philosophical approach and their personal background.

While the goal is to produce explanations about the world, qualitative inquiry is designed to reveal the nuanced ways people make meaning while accounting for the different contexts that shape their experiences.

Qualitative and quantitative research approach questions from different angles.

For instance, our team has used qualitative inquiry to explore how parents, children and teachers navigate digital privacy issues. We’ve also used qualitative data to analyze how influencers, activists and everyday users make sense of and respond to social media algorithms.

Anthropic Interviewer can pose questions to participants and present follow-up questions based on a participant’s response. However, we argue that qualitative inquiry requires human capacities that an AI model lacks.

AI is programmed, human conversations are not

Unlike studies focused on quantitative data, qualitative inquiry relies on flexibility.

Research that collects quantitative data requires carefully managed study conditions. They often aim to test specific hypotheses and measure the relationship between variables. To establish the validity of their findings, researchers need to demonstrate that they controlled for confounding factors.

In contrast, qualitative studies are more open-ended. They typically consider how people understand or experience the world in context. Since the world is complex, messy and nuanced, interviewers may need to change their initial questions or add new ones to collect insightful data. In other words, researchers adapt the interview to follow the conversational flow.

To plan out the interactions Anthropic Interviewer would have with study participants, researchers need to specify core interview questions and give the program instructions on how to engage with participants. For its recent study on people’s visions for AI, some of the core questions Anthropic used include “What’s the last thing you used an AI chatbot for?” and “If you could wave a magic wand, what would AI do for you?” The company did not specify what prompts or hypotheses they fed the system to come up with follow-up questions for this study.

By relying on fixed instructions, Anthropic Interviewer does not have a conversation with a participant the way a human researcher does. Instead, it executes a series of tasks in response to prompt engineering. In a conversation, a human interviewer absorbs a variety of information from a participant – their words, tone, demeanor – and responds organically in a way that meets the moment. An AI interviewer, being a machine, can act only within the parameters set by the system designers. This means that even if it is trained on large datasets, as the Anthropic Interviewer is, it will not be able to account for the unique, often unspoken relational dynamics of new interviews.

Using an AI tool can generate qualitative data, but it is not the same as conducting qualitative inquiry.

AI does not have positionality

Most qualitative researchers see their identity, lived experiences and relationships to the people they study as central to their work. This positionality can be thought of as a series of lenses through which researchers approach their studies, such as their race, gender, beliefs, values, biases and life circumstances. These factors position researchers in relation to their area of focus – as insiders, outsiders or somewhere in between, depending on the context.

Anthropic Interviewer has no position in relation to the research it is meant to support, because it has no body, identity, life history or lived experiences. Even if prompted to imitate a particular perspective – such as from “one woman to another” – it will not “contain multitudes,” as poet Walt Whitman put it, like real people do.

As opposed to a real person with a personal perspective who can genuinely respond to a live conversation, AI models use probabilities to match the patterns of how a person may commonly act or speak. It may also be alienating for participants if an AI interviewer assumes a particular persona and changes how they respond. In some ways, Anthropic AI can present only what philosopher Donna Haraway called “a view from nowhere.”

Moreover, an absence of a personal lens does not imply neutrality. Because AI systems are trained on existing data, they can reflect the dominant stereotypes and worldviews of the time, including that of their developers, curators and the companies behind them.

Two people sitting in armchairs facing each other, the person in the foreground holding a stylus and touchpad — A researcher’s own background shapes how they relate to – and subsequently study – their participants.
Fiordaliso/Moment via Getty Images

The AI tool’s lack of positionality matters because this quality shapes every stage of research. This includes what questions researchers ask in interviews and how they ask them; how researchers filter information and interpret responses; and which topics they follow up on. Sharing things in common with participants – even just as a fellow human who can have firsthand experiences, thoughts and emotions – can be critical for data collection and analysis. It enables a deep, intuitive understanding of how participants perceive and interpret what they share.

A researcher’s personal lens also shapes how participants respond to them: what they choose to share and how comfortable they feel. For example, someone who grew up poor may feel more comfortable discussing debt and public assistance with someone who has a similar background than with someone who does not.

Without a personal lens, interviews can become flat and lack context. Questions may become mechanical, and the development of mutual understanding is limited. Participants may also respond differently when they sense the interviewer lacks a clear perspective.

AI cannot be reflexive

When researchers are able to reflect on their own assumptions, they can produce more thoughtful and responsible findings that avoid misrepresenting their participants. This reflexivity is another key human aspect of qualitative inquiry: researchers’ ongoing efforts to self-monitor the ways their personal background and choices over the course of a study may affect the work.

Good qualitative researchers do not try to eliminate their biases but instead try to account for them. They continually think about how their identity, experiences and perspectives shape their work and publicly share these reflections. While quantitative researchers see bias as a source of error, qualitative researchers see their viewpoints as assets in producing meaning.

Close-up of two people clasping hands — Empathy helps researchers hold themselves accountable to their participants.
dragana991/iStock via Getty Images Plus

For example, when our team interviews students for our studies, we consider how our dual roles as college professors and researchers may influence how we interpret our participants’ experiences, what they feel comfortable sharing and how they share it. Openly sharing such accounting provides important context for readers considering the findings, judging how far they can be applied elsewhere and building trust in the findings.

Anthropic Interviewer is not capable of reflexivity, because it has no frame of reference or capacity for self-reflection. As a machine, it cannot self-monitor its “choices” in interactions, consider how participants perceive it, or reflect on how these factors may shape what participants share or hold back. When readers cannot take stock of the ways researchers’ assumptions, values, beliefs and choices affected how they collected data, this can make the research seem less trustworthy.

Interviewing often helps researchers develop an empathetic connection to their study participants, which can help ensure their work is ethical and accountable. This deeply felt connection can guide researchers in respecting boundaries in interviews.

Empathy also helps researchers take care in honoring the thoughts, feelings and experiences of their participants by representing them as faithfully as possible.

Qualitative interviews still need humans

Anthropic Interviewer introduces new possibilities for qualitative research by enabling data collection at an unprecedented scale and speed. However, this does not mean that it does what human interviewers do in qualitative inquiry.

Research interviewing is not about extracting ready-made insights from research participants as efficiently as possible. It is about entering into other people’s realities and leveraging shared human experiences that make mutual understanding possible, both cognitively and emotionally.

As sociologist Douglas Ezzy once said, good interviews are about communion, not conquest.

Kelley Cotter has received funding from the National Science Foundation.

Priya C. Kumar has received funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

Ankolika De 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. AI interviewers can’t connect with people the way human researchers can – they can produce only data, not meaning – https://theconversation.com/ai-interviewers-cant-connect-with-people-the-way-human-researchers-can-they-can-produce-only-data-not-meaning-279437