Socialist reform and modernization in post-WWII Poland opened the higher-education gate to underprivileged students. But early streaming to vocational school and societal expectations remained as barriers. What became of the working-class freshers who made it to the lofty heights of academia?
The ongoing repression of Belarusian society now extends to the banning of literary works by Belarusian writers seen as seditious. The reason can only be that they offer the regime its true reflection, writes one of the country’s leading poets.
When content is freely available in droves, paying for journalism almost seems like a scam. Can journalists media outlets keep up with the changing landscape of information? Find out on this episode of Standard Time.
Economic and political transformation post-1989 exposed state-planned technological production in the former GDR to global markets. Uncompetitive operations soon led to closures and mass unemployment. But some workers, taking the crisis into their own hands, regrouped to found innovative tech companies.
Russia’s passivity towards Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing of Nagorno Karabakh marks a shift of power in the region with potentially wider consequences. It would not be the first time that the Kremlin’s fortunes have been decided in the South Caucasus.
The euphoria of anti-fascists from WWII-occupied countries, meeting at international events, was a short-lived reprieve from oppression. Hungarian socialist groups, bringing women from all social classes together, went from publishing starstruck articles to testifying in Stalinist show trials, their solidarity forced into betrayal.
European cities are a hotbed of real estate speculation and affordable housing is growing out of reach. Millennials and younger will not only not own homes, but are also losing their grip on renting. The new episode of Standard Time delves into the housing crisis.
Syria, Ukraine, Nagorno-Karabakh and now Gaza: connecting all recent wars is disregard for national sovereignty as recognised by international law. Confident of impunity, anti-democratic regimes cite sovereign interests as justification for their politics of annihilation.
Water use has always been an indicator of social relations. In western societies, most treat drinking water as a simultaneously infinite and hyper-individualised resource. But plastic pollution and the climate emergency are forcing us to question our consumption habits.
There are times when reacting on instinct surpasses consciously weighing up decisions. But what lies behind precognition? Tracing gut feelings back along their evolutionary path leads to C. elegans. What might the inconspicuous worm, with its belly full of serotonin, help illuminate about scientific scepticism, ‘happy pills’ and experienced intuition?
Time – we’re all running out of it. Most of Europe’s time zones are still tuned to Hitler’s clock and it stumbles circadian rythyms. Time is a very judgmental area already, even before throwing policies into the mix.
If we define culture as a set of values and practices around which communities identify and cohere, then few things are more cultural than food. Where else is the narcissism of small differences greater than in matters gastronomic?
Society’s fatal dependence on artificial fertiliser has its roots in the industrial revolution and the western world’s search for food security. Today we are on the brink of another breakthrough in human nutrition: but as history shows, new food technologies have unforeseen consequences.
Come Together’s groundbreaking training program is designed to address challenges in the media industry. This 30-hour initiative aims to reshape newsrooms by fostering diversity, expanding collaboration networks, and equipping underrepresented groups with essential skills. The primary goal is to ensure a more comprehensive and accurate portrayal of the world in media.
What makes Ukraine a geopolitically crucial borderland and why has the Ukrainian question become acute at the most critical turns in global history? Historian Yaroslav Hrytsak talks to Review of Democracy about his new book ‘Ukraine: The Forging of a Nation’.
Writing open letters of protest, quoting Václav Havel, led to incarceration for a young Chinese woman. How deep do comparisons between communist China today and Czechoslovakia of the 1970s and 1980s run? And what can Jan Patočka’s thoughts on evading passivity tell us about the compulsion for dissident acts?