Dr. Amelia Morris, Royal Holloway In recent years, self-care has become a ubiquitous buzzword that has been utilised to sell anything from beauty products, spa days, boozy brunches and holiday retreats. As Spicer writes for The Guardian, self-care has a vague definition that: […] includes nearly any activity people use to calm, heal and preserve themselves in the face of adversity. Some common forms of self-care include getting enough sleep, eating well, physical exercise, meditating and doing things you like such as watching an 80s teen film. Other suggestions for self-care include tracking ..read more

By Charlotte Galpin CW: sexual harassment This is a story of resisting as a woman, and as a feminist, in a public space. Of being, to use Sara Ahmed’s words, a feminist killjoy. I gave a public talk at a university and afterwards I was sexually harassed. What followed my talk was a response to the content of my research, punishment for explicitly naming, challenging, resisting toxic masculinity in public spaces. My talk drew on initial findings from a small-scale, qualitative study of pro-European activism during Brexit using in-depth interviews. I argued that Brexit, and Euroscepticism more b ..read more

Dr. Amelia Morris Photo by Hassan OUAJBIR on Pexels.comFor those on the Left, today is a crushing blow. As the exit poll results came in, I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. Being out on the doorsteps these past few months, I had let myself become hopeful and felt like there was a change in the air. The visibility of the suffering caused by the government is now inescapable – whether it be the high numbers of homelessness on the high street, or the public services that are buckling under the strain of cuts – and it truly seemed as though people were ready for something different.  A ..read more

Roxana Pessoa Cavalcanti What is the connection between the university strikes, transparency and male entitlement?  Sixty universities across the UK went on strike for 8 working days over a range of issues including deteriorating pensions, increasing workloads, casualization of work and the gender pay gap. The strikes are one example of the deleterious effects of the neoliberalization and marketization of universities, and by that I mean issues such as the commodification of education through student fees, increasing staff exploitation and the growing disparity between the pay receive ..read more