For member of 15-strong group Hamsaz Ensemble Freesia, folk music can build connection and understanding across difference ...

Despite Afghanistan being governed by the Taliban – known for their human rights violations and practices of gender apartheid – Afghan refugees are globally at risk of being denied pathways for asylum ...

In December 1948, a group of prominent US Jews, including Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt, wrote a letter to the New York Times expressing concern over the emergence of ‘The Freedom Party’ (Tnuat ...

In summer 2022, I wrote here about Russia’s co-option of cultural institutions in Ukraine. That ongoing war effort seeks in part to re-write ‘official’ histories through seizure of artefacts and ...

I was 15 when I attended my first Radiohead concert in Dublin and was thrilled to see a Free Tibet banner hanging on the stage. In 2000, this was a cause celebre and my little activist heart – usually ...

The epithet ‘tankie’ began as an insult from one group of communists to another. It was coined by those in the Communist Party of Great Britain who opposed the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw ...

Just along from the Hungarian parliament building, visitors to Budapest can find Shoes on the Danube Bank. Consisting of 60 shoes facing the river looking westwards, it is a deeply poignant memorial ...

Rave subculture has attracted considerable infamy over its relatively short lifetime. However, among all the lurid tabloid reporting of hedonistic free-for-alls, rave also developed a reputation for ...

In 2025 I have resolved to escape the clutches of my smartphone, which has turned out to be no small task – it encroaches on every aspect of my day-to-day life, from communication and banking to two ...

War is indiscriminate in every sense: As thousands of people are killed, the land they live on, the food and water sources they depend on, and the air they breathe are also being destroyed. As ...

The Soviet Union, in the 74 years of its existence in one form or another, was a society that was all about building. The Soviets claimed in the 1970s to have ‘built’ socialism, and while they never ...