Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ligin Joseph, PhD Candidate, Oceanography, University of Southampton

Across India, torrential rains over the past few months have swallowed an entire village in the Himalayas, flooded Punjab’s farmlands and brought Kolkata to a standstill. This all happened in a monsoon season in which total rainfall was technically only 8% above normal.

Climate change is not simply making India’s monsoon wetter. It’s making it wilder – with longer dry spells and more extreme downpours.

The Indian summer monsoon, which delivers about 80% of the country’s annual rainfall, usually sweeps in from the Arabian Sea in early June and retreats at the end of September. Growing up in India, I remember the joy of watching the rains arrive each year, the scent of wet earth and the relief they brought after a scorching April and May. Those memories still live in me. But today, the same monsoon that once filled our rivers and hearts with hope now brings fear and uncertainty.

This year, the monsoon arrived a week early, the fastest onset in 16 years. However, an early start does not necessarily translate to higher rainfall totals for the season. The modest 8% above average hides the real story: many regions experienced unusually intense and frequent downpours.

In the Himalayan village of Dharali, for instance, a cloudburst in early August triggered flash floods that left the local market buried under sediment as high as a four-storey building. Most parts of the village were completely washed away. Scientists suspect melting glaciers and cloudbursts – both linked to a warmer climate – were to blame.

In Punjab, a state of 30 million people often called India’s “food bowl”, heavy rains drowned crops across an area roughly the size of Greater Manchester. All 23 districts of the state were affected.

Scientists say the deluge was driven by an unusual interaction between regular monsoon weather systems and “western disturbances” – storm systems that originate in the Mediterranean and typically influence India’s weather in the winter. Their overlap this year amplified rainfall across northern India.

On the other side of the country, the huge city of Kolkata was not spared either. Some areas received 332mm of rain in just a few hours, more than half of what London gets in a whole year. The rains fell just before the major Hindu festival of Durga Puja, paralysing the city. The culprit was another low-pressure system that formed over the Bay of Bengal and carried vast amounts of moisture inland.

While the south escaped the worst flooding, cities such as Mumbai and Vijayawada also saw intense cloudbursts, demonstrating the spread of extreme rainfall.

Why the monsoon is becoming more extreme

Each disaster was driven by the same underlying trend: a warmer atmosphere that can hold more moisture. For every degree of warming, the air can store about 7% more water vapour – and when that moisture is released, it falls in heavier downpours over shorter periods. This trend is now clearly visible in India’s monsoon data.

The number of extreme rainfall days, when daily totals exceed the top 10% of the long-term average, has risen sharply across southern and western India since the 1950s. Some regions, meanwhile, are receiving less overall rain but in stronger and more erratic bursts, meaning both droughts and floods can be a threat in the same season.

Scientists have also noticed shifts in the monsoon’s circulation and in the low-pressure systems that drive it. Climate change is pushing the whole monsoon system westward, increasing rainfall over typically arid northwestern India, while decreasing rainfall over the traditionally wetter northeast.

All this extreme rainfall is turning the monsoon from a friend into a foe. Unless we act responsibly to limit greenhouse gas emissions and become more resilient to the consequences of a changing climate, the season that sustains life across India may increasingly threaten it.

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Ligin Joseph receives funding from the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (Nerc).

– ref. India’s monsoon is becoming more extreme – even though overall rainfall has hardly increased – https://theconversation.com/indias-monsoon-is-becoming-more-extreme-even-though-overall-rainfall-has-hardly-increased-267159

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Marc Collinson, Lecturer in Political History, Bangor University

When voters in Caerphilly in south Wales go to the polls later this month, it will be about far more than one seat in the Senedd, Wales’s devolved parliament.

Caerphilly, a postindustrial town just north of Cardiff, has long been considered safe Labour territory. But in recent years, economic upheaval and social change have made once rock-solid seats like these far less predictable.

The contest is therefore not just about who wins a single seat, but what kind of Wales will emerge from a period of upheaval. Will it be one clinging to the certainties of its industrial past? Or one looking toward Plaid Cymru and the prospect of Welsh independence as the political voice for such unease? Or, alternatively, will it turn to the populist right?

What happens here could indicate whether Labour’s hold on the Welsh valleys is starting to loosen, and whether new political forces are taking root. It’s a local contest with national stakes.

Labour remains Wales’s dominant political force, but the past 18 months have been turbulent. Mark Drakeford’s retirement as first minister was followed by Vaughan Gething’s brief and troubled leadership.

Meanwhile, the current first minister Eluned Morgan faces her own challenges. Fourteen members of the Labour group will step down before the 2026 Senedd election.

The Caerphilly byelection, triggered by the death of sitting Labour member Hefin David, comes at a difficult time for Labour across both the UK and in Wales.

Labour’s UK leadership remains focused on Westminster, while in Wales, divisions over candidate selection and policy have occasionally exposed cracks in the party’s valleys strongholds. History offers warnings.

For example, in 2005, Labour suffered a shock defeat in nearby Blaenau Gwent when former Labour member Peter Law stood as an independent after rebelling against the party’s candidate selection. His victory – and the byelection wins that followed his death – showed how local discontent can upend even the safest seats.

Whatever happens in Caerphilly, the real test for Labour will be what follows, as the result may affect its majority to govern and pass a budget. It could remain in office as the largest party, but without power.

The rise of Reform

Among the most striking developments in Welsh politics is the growing profile of Reform UK, now rebranding its Welsh operation as “Reform UK Wales”.

Analyses point to similarities with the Brexit Party and UKIP. Like these parties before, Reform taps into the undercurrent of discontent that runs through many post-industrial communities.

While some research suggests Reform may be perceived as even more racially divisive than its predecessors.

In Caerphilly, Reform has an active local campaign and a simple message: bring back money and decision-making to local communities. The party is positioning itself against both the Welsh government’s record in the Senedd while channelling resentment toward Westminster.

For some voters, Reform’s appeal is less about specific policies than about mood – frustration with established politics and a desire for something new.

Under changes due next year, the Senedd will grow in size and adopt a more proportional voting system. That could make it easier for smaller parties like Reform to win representation, giving this byelection added importance as a test of their strength.

A strong showing could signal a profound realignment in the political geography of Wales, and a measure of how far populist politics has embedded itself in areas once considered the bedrock of Labour Wales.

Stepping stone to a Plaid government?

Plaid Cymru, meanwhile, is keen to show it can turn rising national support into real gains.

The party has come close to winning Caerphilly before. In 1968, its candidate Phil Williams cut Labour’s majority from more than 20,000 to fewer than 2,000 votes.

More recently, former Plaid leader Leanne Wood’s surprise victory in nearby Rhondda in 2016 showed Plaid could break through in Labour heartlands. But her loss five years later underlined how hard it is to sustain momentum.

Polling suggests Plaid could form a government in 2026 if current trends continue, but that depends on building a consistent base in areas like Caerphilly. A victory here would not just be symbolic; it would demonstrate that Plaid’s message resonates beyond its rural and Welsh-speaking heartlands.

The upcoming electoral reforms could further boost Plaid’s chances, if it can show voters that it offers a credible alternative to Labour.

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Read more:
Is backing Welsh independence the same as being a nationalist? Not necessarily

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For other parties, expectations are modest. The Conservatives are struggling to make headway in Wales, while the Liberal Democrats remain on the margins. But the Caerphilly byelection will still send a message far beyond this one constituency.

Whatever the result, Caerphilly will offer a snapshot of a nation in transition. A comfortable Labour win would suggest its dominance in the valleys remains intact. A strong showing for Plaid or Reform, however, would point to deeper realignments. It’s evidence that Wales’s political future may look very different from its past.

Marc Collinson received funding from the Y Werin Legacy Fund.

Robin Mann receives funding from Economic and Social Research Council.

– ref. What the Caerphilly byelection could reveal about Reform, Labour and Wales’ political future – https://theconversation.com/what-the-caerphilly-byelection-could-reveal-about-reform-labour-and-wales-political-future-266545

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lucy Sors, Senior Lecturer, York St John University

The UK government’s strategy for early years education in England aims to get children in reception “school-ready”. But what school readiness means is debatable.

Education secretary Bridget Phillipson has pointed out that half of reception-aged children “can’t sit still”. And recent writing guidance outlines handwriting and spelling lessons for reception-aged children.

As experts in primary education, we take the view that children aged four and five should not be sitting still at tables. Expecting children to sit still and formally learn how to write at this early age conflicts with widely accepted theories around cognitive and physical development.

Research by theorists in child development emphasises the importance of active play and exploration. Children can develop their interests through free choice activities that support their language, communication and thought.

Researchers argue that young children should be encouraged to understand their world in a range of indoor and outdoor settings that can be explored through the power of play.

Not all children can or should sit still. Children need physical play to develop their strength, coordination, and motor skills before being given a pencil to write. They need role play to learn how to communicate, question, and hold conversations before following instructions.

They should be encouraged to move and explore through free play instead of sitting still. At an early age, children’s enjoyment of learning should be the priority. For every child this will be different, and practice should respond to children’s preferences and interests.

The government’s Plan for Change sets milestones for strategic national developments. In its mission to “break down barriers to opportunity”, the plan aims for 75% of children to achieve a “good level of development” (GLD) by 2028.

This means that children must meet 12 of the 17 prescribed early learning goals. These measure a level of development across areas like language, personal, social and emotional development, mathematics and literacy when children reach the end of their reception year at school, at age five.

But what does this value? Three of the early learning goals focus on literacy. Children cannot meet the “good level of development” if they have not met the early learning goal for writing.

As well as this, a child may excel in many of the learning goals, but still not meet the criteria. There are other considerations, such as a potential age difference of up to 11 months among children finishing reception.

This creates an uneven playing field, with some children needing more time to develop language and communication, physical, personal, social and emotional skills before a formal move into literacy and mathematics.

The government recommends that reception teachers should plan regular explicit handwriting and spelling lessons that directly target children who may choose not to write in their play. This directive approach might not suit every child and takes away their choice over opportunities to play.

Learning through play

In Finland, children start primary school at age seven. The Finnish educational model sees learning through play as “essential”.

New Zealand’s Te Whāriki is specifically a “play-based” curriculum. It understands that each child learns at their own pace. It explains the power of storytelling and play to build foundations in reading, writing, and maths.

Within the UK, Wales and Scotland focus on play as essential to improving outcomes. Play pedagogy in the Scottish curriculum emphasises responding to the unique needs of each child. Wales views “playwork” as vital for children’s health, wellbeing and overall development.

England’s Early Years Foundation Stage Framework sets the standards that school and childcare providers in England must meet for the learning, development and care of children from birth to five.

In this document the importance of play and following children’s interests is also highlighted. But this is overshadowed by government messaging and guidance on the importance of formalised academic skills such as phonics and writing.

Our research highlights the importance of connections between child development, culture, and responding to children and their environments.

Playful creativity, problem-solving, and experimentation help build strong foundations for learning. Valuing children’s experiences instead of focusing on prescribed milestones helps them learn to connect with the world around them as well as develop academically.

The English Early Years curriculum needs to return to basics. This keeps foundational learning through play at its heart, including all children and responding to their stage of development.

When we play, listen, read and talk with children, we give them a great start in life. This begins with looking at them as individuals. Learning in the early years should foster a love of learning, promote positive relationships and help children to understand the world.

Nurture, care, play and exploration should be prioritised to develop confident, resilient, and adaptable learners who can navigate a fast-changing world.

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. Four-year-olds don’t need to sit still to be ‘school ready’ – https://theconversation.com/four-year-olds-dont-need-to-sit-still-to-be-school-ready-261812

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Francesco Grillo, Academic Fellow, Department of Social and Political Sciences, Bocconi University

Nearly three decades after the first UN climate conference, emissions are still rising. The global system for tackling climate change is broken – it’s slow, cumbersome and undemocratic.

Even Donald Trump may not be totally wrong when he blames the UN for producing “empty words and then never [following] those words up”. If we assess the progress since the first UN Cop climate summit in 1995, the numbers on emissions confirm that not very much did, indeed, follow years of words.

We urgently need not just to redesign climate policies but also a new method for drafting those polices. Climate change could even be the right issue in which to experiment with an approach that might inspire a wider reform of multinational institutions.

A conference I have helped organise beginning October 16 in Venice on the global governance of climate change will discuss three ideas.

First, we need to gradually redesign the decision-making process to solve a deficit of both efficiency and democracy. Decisions today are slow and weak because they de facto seek unanimity.

The Paris agreement, for instance, only required 55 countries producing at least 55% of global emissions to enter into force. And yet diplomats worked so that it could be agreed by all 195 UN member states – including those that later dropped out – by adopting words that tend to be “empty” to avoid displeasing anybody.

At the same time, the process does not even include all the parties that really matter: technically, the microstate of San Marino is one of the signatories of the agreements; the megacity of Los Angeles is not. Current mechanisms also miss the opportunity to experiment with direct representation of groups for whom climate change matters more, such as young people, indigenous people or farmers.

One idea would be to leverage the relative concentration of the world economy. China, the US and India represent almost half of the world population (and much of the population living below the global poverty line), more than half of the GDP and emissions; and most of the private investment in artificial intelligence that may enable some of the most interesting solutions.

Reforms that go beyond current blanket consensus are necessary. For instance, some experts have proposed a qualified majority voting system, in which changes might require a supermajority of countries or perhaps a majority of both developed and developing countries.

But we must be even more ambitious than this: voting rights should instead reflect size.

This would create incentives for states to move towards pooling their votes into regional representations. Trade-based regional agreements, like South American Mercosur, the African Continental Free Trade area or the Association of South East Asian Nations could evolve into climate-related alliances.

This would be a gigantic opportunity for leadership by the EU, which has accumulated more hard-earned experience than any other multilateral organisation in how to pool national wills. It could set an example by merging its 27 seats into one, showing how its carbon border adjustments and other collective instruments can translate ambition into action.

Drastically reducing the number of parties could allow for the introduction of a high qualified majority (75% of the parties) to avoid a situation like the UN’s security council where vetoes of just five parties is enough for paralysis.

This would also open space for a more direct representation of vital interests. The existing alliance of climate-vulnerable small island states could get a vote that outweighs their modest populations and GDPs. The C40 group of major cities could get an institutionalised role.

Young citizens assemblies have long been experimented with and it is time to give them a formal vote. This would also force, in turn, their internal decision-making processes to be more transparent. Such a reform would be limited to the UN climate change conferences and if successful be scaled up to other UN decision-making process.

Simplify climate finance

Second, it is necessary to streamline the chaotic array of climate-related financial instruments. Colleagues and I recently counted about 30 facilities bridging developing and developed countries and meant to finance climate projects, with much overlap and confusion.

One possibility would be to merge many small funds into three to five bigger instruments. Only Germany and UK, for instance, fund ten of such facilities (and four of them are a joint effort). Each of the instruments resulting from the consolidation would be dedicated to a big-picture goal that every citizen, investor and asset manager can immediately understand.

There could be one fund for adaptation (including the problematic “loss and damage”); one for mitigation (and energy transition); one for financing research and development, and technology sharing; and one for encouraging, assessing and scaling up experiments.

Reinvent the Cop format

Third, we absolutely need to change the format of Cop itself. The cost of flying and accommodating 100,000 delegates at Cop28 in Dubai was probably higher than the total amount promised at that same Cop to compensate poorer countries for climate-related losses. This results-to-cost ratio is one reason why the climate agenda has lost some popular support.

One possibility is to transform Cop from a gigantic exhibition that changes location every year, into five permanent forums (one for each main continent) focused on generating and managing knowledge on five problems that we need to solve.

They are: climate adaptation; climate mitigation; governance of places that are beyond national boundaries (oceans, Arctic, Antarctic); AI and climate; geoengineering (a last resort technology in need of strong global control).

Distributing Cops around the world would focus the debate, make participation easier, cut costs and emissions, and could sustain a year-round dialogue rather than a single big moment.

Governance of the climate is not working. Yet the climate may be the best problem against which to apply a radically new method of global governance. It may become a blueprint for the much wider question of how we reinvent institutions that were conceived for a different, much more stable era.

And if we can fix how the world decides on climate, we might learn to fix how it decides on everything else, too.

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Francesco Grillo is affiliated with Vision, the think tank.

– ref. Why climate summits fail – and three ways to save them – https://theconversation.com/why-climate-summits-fail-and-three-ways-to-save-them-267470

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dan Gordon, Professor of Exercise Physiology, Anglia Ruskin University

Instead of wasting hours squatting weights in the gym or pounding miles of pavement in your running shoes, you could instead get all the benefits of a workout just by moving a little bit more like other animals.

“Quadrobics” is the internet’s latest fitness trend. This unconventional training method involves using all four of your limbs during a workout. Proponents claim it’s a highly beneficial form of exercise because of the large number of muscle groups that it uses. By running on all fours, muscles in the shoulders, upper and lower arms, as well as the legs, back and core are used.

Sounds good in theory but is it any more effective than your normal workout?

Although there’s limited research on quadrobics, research does show that the greater the amount of muscle used in a workout, the more benefits your cardiovascular fitness and health will see.

For instance, research which has compared cycling and running has shown that running leads to greater cardiorespiratory fitness gains than cycling does. This is probably due to the different amounts of muscles each activity uses.

Cycling focuses mainly on the legs and lower body, while running is more of a whole-body exercise. Since running places demand on a greater number of muscles, this may explain why it leads to greater fitness gains.

Quadrobics, which apparently uses almost all of the major muscle groups, should therefore lead to greater gains than either running or cycling.

However, when one study compared quadrobics to a standard walking programme, quadrobics oddly did not seem to use more energy – despite spiking heart rate to a greater degree. This finding probably comes down to the fact that both activities use the same muscle groups, but just to varying degrees.

But while quadrobics does not necessarily appear to be better than walking, it may have other fitness benefits.

During a quadrobics workout, you might end up using different muscles than you would during a more conventional type of workout. For instance, compared to running, quadrobics would place a greater emphasis on the shoulder muscles, but would require less work from the calves.

This suggests that quadrobics may have potential benefits for flexibility and balance. One study looked at the effect of an eight-week quadrobics training plan in young people.

It found that compared to the control group (who did two 60-minute sessions of typical physical activity), the quadrobics group saw greater improvements in shoulder flexibility and balance.

Meanwhile, although quadrobics does work many of the body’s muscles, there is currently no evidence to suggest it’s more beneficial than weight training in improving strength.

But something that cannot be discounted is the novelty of this exercise. One of the appeals of quadrobics is the playfulness of the exercise. This could have positive effects on mood and help relieve stress.

A number of groups describe quadrobics as “animal flow training” as it encourages us to adopt animal poses and attitudes. Since many find going to the gym can become uninspiring and boring over time, quadrobics could offer a solution to this.

If you’re looking to give quadrobics a try, two popular exercises are trotting and cantering.

In a trot lift your right hand and left leg at the same time, then your left hand and right leg. You will create a diagonal type of movement. While in a canter drive from the legs together and then land on your hands. This exercise can be done continuously or as repeated bouts of high intensity efforts, interspersed with periods of recovery.

For those new to the practice, it’s best to start slow when walking on all fours before advancing to these exercises. This is because there may be a risk of injury with these types of movement as they place much of the impact force on the elbows and wrists.

The potential risk of fracture or sprain is even higher in older adults, who experience more fragile bones and joint immobility, and those taking certain prescription drugs – such as corticosteroids.

The fitness benefits of walking like an animal might not be any greater than those seen with more conventional exercises, but the novelty of quadrobics may provide an entrance point to health and fitness – especially for those who may find conventional workouts boring.

Dan Gordon 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. Quadrobics: is the trend for walking on all fours like an animal good for your fitness? – https://theconversation.com/quadrobics-is-the-trend-for-walking-on-all-fours-like-an-animal-good-for-your-fitness-266524

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Frances Fowle, Personal Chair of Nineteenth-Century Art, History of Art, University of Edinburgh

The Van Gogh Museum’s new exhibition, Van Gogh and the Roulins – Together Again at Last, celebrates an important family reunion. It brings together 14 portraits of the wife and three children of the postman Joseph Roulin – Vincent van Gogh’s closest friend and supporter while he was based in the southern French town of Arles.

The exhibition is a work of art in itself: tightly focused, beautifully designed and accompanied by an excellent catalogue. Additional works and props (such as Roulin’s chair) contextualise the show, but it is the portraits of the Roulins – Joseph, Augustine, 17-year-old Armand, 11-year-old Camille and baby Marcelle – that take centre stage.

Hung in three rooms on contrasting deep blue and orange walls they demonstrate the new direction that Van Gogh’s work was taking during a crucial period of his artistic development.

As a group they represent, on one level, the artist’s personal longing for the stability of a wife and family and, on another, his radical rethinking of portraiture as a genre. They were painted at a time when, in correspondence with his two friends, Paul Gauguin and Emile Bernard, he was struggling with the idea of art as “abstraction”. That is, as a fusion of the real and the imaginary.

Van Gogh wanted to paint ordinary people as he “felt” them and to raise them to the level of the universal. He was interested in creating symbolic “types”, of portraiture such as “the poet” or “the soldier”, and also sought to evoke the character and soul of the sitter.

As the exhibition cleverly demonstrates – through the careful placement of comparative works and “glimpses” via various sight-lines – he was inspired by artists such as Rembrandt, Frans Hals and even Honoré Daumier, all of whom devoted themselves to what Van Gogh termed “the painting of humanity”.

In July and August 1888 Van Gogh painted two expressive and colourful portraits of the bearded Roulin, whom he viewed as the modern equivalent of Frans Hals’s painting, The Merry Drinker (1628-1630). The first portrait shows this jolly barfly in his smart blue cap and uniform leaning awkwardly on a table in the Café de la Gare.

It recalls the artist’s description of the postman in a letter to Bernard as “something of an alcoholic, and with a high colour as a result”. He was also a “raging republican” and the two spent long hours conversing about politics.

In October Van Gogh moved to the “little yellow house” in Arles, where he rented two rooms and a studio for only 21 francs 50 centimes a month. A reconstruction of the house is installed on the first floor of the exhibition, which is devoted entirely to wider interpretation and family activities.

It was close to the station, where Roulin often worked, and also had a pleasant aspect, opposite the leafy Place Lamartine. Gauguin soon joined him there and for the next two months they enjoyed a fruitful relationship.

In November 1888, Van Gogh decided to paint all five members of the Roulin family, including baby Marcelle in her mother’s arms. Gauguin, too, produced his own somewhat austere portrait of Augustine, and it is interesting to compare his more abstracted approach with Van Gogh’s more personal interpretation.

Rather than pay the family to sit for him on numerous occasions, Van Gogh then embarked on several “repetitions” or variations of his own paintings. The exhibition devotes a whole section to these repeated portraits of the family, inviting the visitor to compare the first version with its copy. Although dating them is a challenge, the repetitions appear more systematic, producing a calmer, more contemplative image, in emulation of Rembrandt.

Particularly curious are two portraits of Marcelle who, with her intense blue eyes and chubby features, takes on an almost grotesque appearance. She is dressed in a white christening robe, with a gold bracelet and pinkie ring, which were common christening gifts.

At the end of December 1888, Van Gogh’s mental state deteriorated dramatically, culminating in him severing most of his left ear with a razor. He was admitted to hospital in Arles, where both Joseph and Augustine paid him regular visits. As a selection of touching letters in the exhibition testify, Roulin also kept in touch with Vincent’s brother Theo.

Once back at the yellow house, Van Gogh continued to work almost obsessively on his repetitions, producing five extraordinary portraits of Madame Roulin, portraying her as the universal symbol of the comforting mother.

Dressed in green, she is seated in a red chair and set against a background of swirling daisies. She holds the rope of a baby’s cradle, evoking the idea of the comforter. Van Gogh even imagined the perfect location for the portrait as the cabin of a ship, where it would rock with the waves, reminding the sailors of their own mother.

This is a wonderful, absorbing exhibition, but with a salutary message. For, before he left Arles, Van Gogh gave the five original Roulin portraits to the postman as a token of their friendship. In 1900, in desperate need of money, Joseph sold all five, together with three other paintings, to the art dealer Ambroise Vollard for a pittance. If only he could have held on to them – today the portraits are recognised as among Van Gogh’s greatest achievements.

Van Gogh and the Roulins – Together Again at Last is at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam until January 11 2026.

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Frances Fowle 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. Van Gogh and the Roulins: a family reunion of the artist’s greatest portraits – https://theconversation.com/van-gogh-and-the-roulins-a-family-reunion-of-the-artists-greatest-portraits-267349

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Antonio Cerella, Senior Lecturer, Social and Political Studies, Nottingham Trent University

There’s no doubt that artificial intelligence (AI) will have a profound impact on our economies, work and lifestyle. But could this technology also shape the way we think and speak?

AI can be used to draft essays and solve problems in mere seconds that otherwise might take us minutes or hours. When we shift to an over-reliance on such tools, we arguably fail to exercise key skills such as critical thinking and our ability to use language creatively. Precedents from psychology and neuroscience research hint that we should take the possibility seriously.

There are several precedents for technology reconfiguring our minds, rather than just assisting them. Research shows that people who rely on GPS tend to lose part of their ability to form mental maps.

London taxi drivers once memorised hundreds of streets before the advent of satellite navigation. These drivers developed enlarged hippocampi as a result of this. The hippocampus is the brain region associated with spatial memory.

In one of his most striking studies, the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky examined patients who suffered from aphasia, a disorder that impairs the ability to understand or produce speech.

When asked to say “snow is black” or to misname a colour, they could not. Their minds resisted any separation between words and things. Vygotsky saw this as the loss of a key ability: to use language as an instrument for thinking creatively, and going beyond what is given to us.

Could an over-reliance on AI produce similar problems? When language comes pre-packaged from screens, feeds, or AI systems, the link between thought and speech may begin to wither.

In education, students are using generative AI to compose essays, summarise books, and solve problems in seconds. Within an academic culture already shaped by competition, performance metrics, and quick results, such tools promise efficiency at the cost of reflection.

Many teachers will recognise those students who produce eloquent, grammatically flawless texts but reveal little understanding of what they have written. This represents the quiet erosion of thinking as a creative activity.

Quick solutions

A systematic review, published in 2024, found that over-reliance on AI affected people’s cognitive abilities, as individuals increasingly favoured quick solutions over slow ones.

A study that surveyed 285 students at universities in Pakistan and China found that using AI adversely affected human decision making and made people lazy. The researchers said: “AI performs repetitive tasks in an automated manner and does not let humans memorise, use analytical mind skills, or use cognition.”

There is also an extensive body of work on language attrition. This is the loss of proficiency in language which can be seen in real-world scenarios. For example, people tend to lose proficiency in their first language when they move to an environment where a different language is spoken. The neurolinguist Michel Paradis says that “attrition is the result of long-term lack of stimulation”.

The psychologist Lev Vygotsky believed that thought and language co-evolved. They were not born together, but through human development they fused in what he called verbal thought. Under this scenario, language is not a mere container for ideas, but is the very medium through which ideas take shape.

The child begins with a world full of sensations but poor in words. Through language, that chaotic field becomes intelligible. As we grow, our relationship with language deepens. Play becomes imagination and imagination becomes abstract thought. The adolescent learns to translate emotions into concepts, to reflect rather than react.

This capacity for abstraction liberates us from the immediacy of experience. It allows us to project ourselves into the future, to reshape the world, to remember and to hope.

But this fragile relationship can decay when language is dictated rather than discovered. The result is a culture of immediacy, dominated by emotion without understanding, expression without reflection. Students, and increasingly all of us, risk becoming editors of what has already been said, where the future is built only from recycled fragments of yesterday’s data.

The implications reach beyond education. Whoever controls the digital
infrastructure of language also controls the boundaries of imagination and debate. To surrender language to algorithms is to outsource not only communication but sovereignty – the power to define the world we share. Democracies depend on the slow work of thinking through words.

When that work is replaced by automated fluency, political life risks dissolving into slogans generated by no one in particular. This does not mean that AI must be rejected. For those who have already formed a deep, reflective relationship with language, such tools can be helpful allies – extensions of thought rather than substitutes for it.

What needs defending is the conceptual beauty of language: the freedom to build meaning through one’s own search for words. Yet defending this freedom requires more than awareness – it demands practice.

To resist the collapse of meaning, we must restore language to its living, bodily dimension, the difficult, joyful labour of finding words for our thoughts. Only by doing so can we reclaim the freedom to imagine, to deliberate, and to reinvent the future.

Antonio Cerella 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. How generative AI could change how we think and speak – https://theconversation.com/how-generative-ai-could-change-how-we-think-and-speak-267118

Source: The Conversation – UK – By David Cook, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, Nottingham Trent University

If you ever visit my office, you’ll be greeted by a crowd of tiny footballers frozen in mid-stride. These are Corinthian football figures – the big-headed, plastic, caricature miniatures that once filled the shelves of 1990s stores and the pursuits of football-mad kids like me.

For me, what began as a childhood hobby has evolved into something more meaningful. In my academic life, it is now a lens through which I explore how communities co-create value, preserve culture and sustain brand legacies long after the original companies disappear.

Corinthian Marketing Ltd, the firm behind these figures, ceased operations several years ago. Yet the brand lives on. Not through corporate revival, but through the passion of collectors.

Fan-led online communities, social media content, websites and even a convention to celebrate the figures’ 30th anniversary have helped restore prominence. Many collectors buy, sell and trade figures with one another. Some go to great lengths to catalogue and showcase their collections.

A handful of more artistically minded fans even repaint them into different retro kits or sculpt and 3D-print new ones. This grassroots revival is more than nostalgia – it’s a form of co-creation.

In my doctoral study and subsequent work I have explored the concept of creating shared value (CSV). It’s an outlook originally advanced by Michael Porter, often considered the father of modern business strategy, and Mark Kramer, a social impact strategist focused on social change.

CSV encourages organisations to generate both economic and social value through collaborative engagement. It has gained traction in a variety of contexts, where value is increasingly understood as emerging from networks of people rather than isolated firms.

The Corinthian collector community exemplifies this. This community has re-energised and evolved a brand without any formal commercial backing, demonstrating how value can be cultivated and shared through community-led action.

Collecting as co-creation

This co-creation is deeply emotional. The figures tap into powerful memories — from family holidays spent hunting for rare finds in unfamiliar shops to negotiating swap deals with school friends between (and sometimes during) lessons. They also evoke the thrill of watching childhood footballing heroes in action.

Their exaggerated features and iconic kits aren’t just design quirks – they’re symbolic anchors for identity. Recent research shows that emotional branding and brand love are key drivers of consumer loyalty, especially when products evoke personal and cultural meaning.

In my own research, I have examined how emotional engagement fosters brand attachment, particularly in sport where fans form lasting bonds with teams, players and merchandise.

I still remember the thrill of stumbling upon my first ever figure on a trip to the local corner shop – right-back Warren Barton in England’s iconic Euro 96 kit. While Barton only ever made three appearances for England and didn’t even make the final Euro 96 squad – and the model itself isn’t worth anything monetarily – it represents the beginnings of my passion for collecting, and remains the most treasured piece in my collection.

Collecting is in itself a form of shared value creation. It generates cultural and emotional value, not just economic. The act of curating a collection, trading with others and preserving football history contributes to a broader ecosystem of fandom and identity. In CSV terms, this reflects the idea of “value in context” – where meaning is derived through interaction, not passive consumption.

If you’re part of a collector community like the Corinthian Collector’s Club, you’re not just helping to shape how a brand is remembered and talked about, you’re actively reviving and reinvigorating it. This kind of involvement is what research calls “actor engagement”: the process of investing time, emotion, and creativity into shared platforms that keep a brand’s legacy alive.

What’s striking is how this mirrors the dynamics I have studied in sport sponsorship. In my research, I have explored how sponsors and event hosts co-create value with other stakeholder groups such as fans — not just through advertising, but by enabling meaningful interactions, such as educational initiatives or reducing plastic waste.

Similarly, Corinthian collectors have taken on the role of sustaining and evolving brand meaning, not through corporate strategy, but through dedicating their energy, sharing information, and taking collective action. In both cases, value is co-created through relationships – whether that be between brands and fans, products and memories, or communities and culture.

The Corinthian story shows that even in the absence of the very company that founded the product themselves, shared value can flourish when people care enough to keep it alive.

In a world increasingly dominated by digital platforms and ephemeral content, these little plastic figures can remind us that tangible artefacts still matter. They offer lessons in emotional branding, community cultivation and the enduring power of nostalgia. And they show that real, resonant value can be created not only by commercial organisations, but by the people who love what those companies once offered.

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David Cook 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. Miniature Heroes: what collecting big-headed football figures revealed to me about fan culture – https://theconversation.com/miniature-heroes-what-collecting-big-headed-football-figures-revealed-to-me-about-fan-culture-266082

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Natasha Lindstaedt, Professor in the Department of Government, University of Essex

Donald Trump has posthumously awarded the rightwing influencer Charlie Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the US.

In an emotional ceremony at the White House on October 14, Trump told his Kirk’s widow Erika that her husband “was a martyr for truth and for freedom … From Socrates and St. Peter, from Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King, those who change history the most — and he really did — have always risked their lives for causes they were put on earth to defend.”

Martyrdom has a long and successful history in US political mythology. This arguably began with Joseph Warren a Boston physician and American patriot who was killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775.

Warren was involved in almost every major insurrectionary act in the Boston area before dying in battle and became a rallying point for the American independence movement.

Another martyr was abolitionist John Brown of “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave” fame. While he was alive, Brown was seen by many as difficult and fanatical.

But after he was captured and hanged for treason in 1859, he was elevated to martyr status as a folk hero of the Unionist side in the American civil war. As the song says: “his soul goes marching on”.

Some martyrs have been tied to civil rights, democratic and independence movements – think of Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers in the US, Patrice Lumumba in Congo and Mahatma Gandhi in India, whose memory has inspired resistance to tyranny and injustice.

Bobby Sands, the imprisoned IRA MP who died in 1981 after a lengthy hunger strike that aimed to get IRA prisoners political status, is now widely credited as an important figure in the Irish republican cause. At the time, Sands and his fellow IRA soldiers were treated as terrorists by the British government.

Mythmaking for legitimacy

But it’s authoritarian movements and regimes for whom martyrs often become almost central to their ideology, helping them manufacture legitimacy through mythmaking. Authoritarian movements use martyrs to exploit people’s emotions.

They storify their deaths – exaggerating their significance and reinforcing grief, pride and vengeance through elaborate ceremonies and in monuments and school curriculums. It’s a way to shape collective memory in ways that provide a moral justification for repression and provide a rallying point for loyalty.

In fascist Italy, after the dictator Benito Mussolini took power in 1922, he had the remains of 300,000 soldiers transferred to massive new ceremonial graveyards with great ceremony and accompanied by priests loyal to Il Duce’s regime. Guidebooks, pamphlets, films and newspaper articles were used to publicise these ossuaries. They became a must-see destination for schools, universities and clubs.

Mussolini was adept at using these “fallen heroes” as a central tool of Italian fascist propaganda. From then on, any Italian fascist who had died for the cause was glorified as a hero.

His aim was to inspire others to have similar levels of loyalty and religious devotion. It’s a lesson that clearly hasn’t been lost on the current Italian prime minister, Georgia Meloni, pursuing a similar tactic in sanitising the memory of prominent figures from the country’s fascist era.

Martyrs were also important to the mythology of the Bolsheviks. Bolsheviks killed in the cause were given red funerals, which were theatrical and verged on the religious. They offered a release and motivation for zealous members in support of the movement. Graves were treated as shrines and the stories of those who died would fill Soviet schoolbooks.

Adolf Hitler and his propaganda chief Josef Goebbels also used martyrs to great effect. The 14 Nazi party members killed during the unsuccessful Munich “beer hall putsch” of 1923 were memorialised in a square in the centre of Munich and given their own day (after the war, the four police officers killed defending the Weimar republic were given a plaque in the same square).

But the Nazi movement’s most famous martyr was Horst Wessel. A young stormtrooper who was shot in a street brawl with a communist agitator, Wessel had written a song glorifying the Nazi movement’s struggle against communism. After his death in 1930, the “Horst Wessel lied” became the Nazi anthem and his death became a justification for fighting (and after the Nazis took power, imprisoning) opponents of the Nazis.

They also serve

In North Korea, Kim Jong-suk – the wife of eternal leader Kim il-Sung – is still portrayed as a martyr for the regime in the fight against Japanese occupation and in supporting her husband. Her death is commemorated each year as a quasi-sacred event.

It all helps to reinforce a culture of unquestioning loyalty to the Kim clan dynasty. By the early 2000s, her biography became a separate subject in the North Korean curriculum, while a museum was set up in her honour.

Martyrs also play an important role in Iran. Iranians who died for the revolution have been heralded as heroes. Their photographs adorn city streets and commemorations fill the calendar.

Those that died in the Iran-Iraq war are venerated in massive murals, monuments, billboards and comic strips. Massive pictures of more recent “martyrs”, such as Qassem Soleimani, the former head of the Revolutionary Guard’s al-Quds force who was assassinated in 2020 in a US drone strike, line some of the main thoroughfares in the capital Tehran.

There is an enduring power of political martyrdom that is useful to both democratic and authoritarian movements. Democrats tend to use martyrs to broaden participation and protect pluralism, while in authoritarian movements, martyr narratives often fuse faith with politics and, in some cases, glorify violence.

In the case of Charlie Kirk, some scholars have even argued that Kirk’s elevation to martyr status appears part of a Trump administration campaign to vilify the liberal left.

The deaths of key figures that are attached to certain regimes or movements can be used to persuade people beyond reason, inspire undying loyalty and bind followers more tightly to each other and to their leaders. The US is more polarised than ever over what kind of martyr Charlie Kirk has become – and what, exactly, his death is meant to symbolise.

Natasha Lindstaedt 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. Charlie Kirk: the latest in a long line of political martyrs, from left and right – https://theconversation.com/charlie-kirk-the-latest-in-a-long-line-of-political-martyrs-from-left-and-right-266264

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lynn Hilditch, Lecturer in Fine Art and Design Praxis, Liverpool Hope University

Following on from the success of Kate Winslet’s biopic Lee, released last year, Lee Miller has never been more in vogue. Unsurprisingly perhaps, tickets for the new Lee Miller retrospective at Tate Britain sold out during its first weekend.

Curated mostly in chronological order, the exhibition steers viewers through a series of gallery spaces each documenting a key era in Miller’s multi-faceted career, from Vogue model to surrealist muse, fashion photographer to war correspondent, and finally to hostess and cordon bleu cook.

Tate’s exhibition is certainly not the first UK retrospective of Miller’s work, but it is arguably the most large-scale show since The Art of Lee Miller at the V&A in 2007. This new exhibition tells Miller’s complex story through approximately 250 modern and vintage prints, film and selected original publications.

Beginning at the height of the jazz age in fashionable New York, we first encounter a striking photomaton self-portrait of Miller taken around 1927. Here, at 19, she became one of the first supermodels, posing for the likes of celebrated fashion photographers Edward Steichen and George Hoyningen-Huene.

With a letter of introduction from Steichen, she entered the exciting and hedonistic world of 1920s Paris. Here she apprenticed herself to surrealist artist Man Ray and rubbed creative shoulders with artists, writers and intellectuals, many of whom appear in the exhibition in portraits taken by Miller.

A screening of Jean Cocteau’s 1930 film The Blood of the Poet (Le sang d’un poète) shows Miller in her only film role as a statue that comes to life, placing her directly within the Parisian avant garde.

In another short, newly restored and rarely seen experimental film, Miller and Man Ray are seen filming each other with a handheld camera revealing a playful intimacy in their relationship as Man Ray blows bubbles from a clay pipe while Miller giggles as she caresses a phallic sculpture by Romanian artist Constantin Brancusi.

Many photographs in this exhibition are very familiar having been widely reproduced – from the torn curtain exposing a desert landscape (Portrait of Space, Al Bulyaweb, near Siwa, Egypt, 1937), to the portrait of Miller defiantly washing off the dirt from Dachau in Hitler’s bath, to the surreal and occasionally humorous portraits of a devastated London captured during the blitz.

However, there are several previously unseen photographs printed from Miller’s original negatives or borrowed from the archives of other creatives. Two examples include a portrait of Miller’s friend and fellow artist Eileen Agar with one of her sculptures (Eileen Agar, London, 1937), and the wonderfully disorientating shot of the Helwan Cement Factory taken in Cairo in 1936, demonstrating Miller’s innovative modernist sensibility.

Miller’s war photographs are, by their very nature, difficult viewing. Sensitively curated by Hilary Floe in consultation with Dr Andy Pearce at the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education, scenes from the concentration camps are a dramatic change in tone from the humour and pun of her Egyptian and blitz images.

In razor-sharp contrast, Miller’s photographs from Buchenwald and Dachau are like a sucker punch to the stomach – hard-hitting and painful to absorb. There was a noticeable silence in the gallery as cameras and phones were lowered, Miller’s photographs inviting us to reflect and question our own humanity.

“I usually don’t take pictures of horrors,” Miller wrote to Audrey Withers, editor of British Vogue. “But don’t think that every town and every area isn’t rich with them. I hope Vogue will feel that they can publish these pictures.” Many of them were published, transforming the fashion and lifestyle magazine into an important platform for reporting the war in Europe – particularly to the magazine’s American readership.

Miller’s photographs of refugees and children in the immediate aftermath of the war are some of her more poignant images: the haunting gaze of two children waiting for gruel soup; opera singer Irmgard Seefried singing an aria from Madam Butterfly among the ruins of the Vienna Opera House; and an old woman scavenging for scraps in the “Field of Blood” park in Vérmezõ, Budapest.

The final gallery space concludes the exhibition with a selection portraits of Miller’s friends, many taken for her final Vogue photo-essay Working Guests (1953), transporting us from the devastation of post-war Europe to the more peaceful setting of Farley Farm in East Sussex (now home to the Lee Miller Archives).

Here, Miller lived with her second husband Roland Penrose, whom she married in 1946, and her son Antony, born in 1947. Suffering from what would today be diagnosed as PTSD, and struggling with severe bouts of depression and alcoholism, Miller took on her final role. Replacing the darkroom with the kitchen she became a hostess and an established cook – a more ordinary end to an extraordinary life.

Lee Miller is showing at Tate Britain in London till 15 February 2026.

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Lynn Hilditch 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. Lee Miller retrospective confirms her as one of the most important photographers of the 20th century – https://theconversation.com/lee-miller-retrospective-confirms-her-as-one-of-the-most-important-photographers-of-the-20th-century-267452