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Five little-known facts about Dracula
The 26th May 2022 marks the 125th anniversary of Dracula’s publication. Despite its reputation as one of the great Gothic novels, there are facts about Dracula that might surprise even the most hardcore fans.
What does UK law say about sexual harassment in the workplace?
What does the law say about sexual harassment in the workplace? Barrister Astra Emir provides a guide to UK law on harassment for employers and employees.
Idioms: a historian’s view
Idioms are phrases and often pose questions not directly connected with linguistics. Linguists interested in the origin of idioms should be historians and archeologists.
The possibility of a world without intimate violence
Today, stopping violence against women falls to few. The criminal legal system is charged with enforcing laws. A school delivers prevention programming to the children in attendance that day. A doctor privately addresses a survivor’s pain.
The French presidential election: Macron’s strange victory [long read]
After the Fall of France in 1940, historian Marc Bloch famously spoke of France’s “strange defeat” by Germany. Emmanuel Macron’s victory on April 24 might just as appropriately be called a “strange victory”.
Beyond the Anna Karenina principle in economic development
The opening sentence of Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina–All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way–is popular among development practitioners, who often offer their own version as follows: All rich economies are alike; each poor economy is poor in its own way. This idea, which we can call the Anna Karenina principle of economic development, is meant as a recognition of the value of context and local knowledge.
A long look at the origin of idioms
Idioms are a thankful subject: one needs no etymological algebra or linguistic preparation for suggesting the origin of phrases. And yet it may be useful to explain how a professional goes about studying idioms.
A Florence Price mystery solved (part two)
To my knowledge, Price’s Boston address remained inconclusive until I visited Special Collections at the University of Arkansas Mullins Library this past January to find new leads for the Price biography I am co-authoring with Samantha Ege, the Lord Crewe Junior Research Fellow in Music at Lincoln College, Oxford. The recovery of this information fills a void in a life story for which “the necessary evidence to write a detailed biography,” as preeminent Price scholar Rae Linda Brown once put it, “is surprisingly scant.”
Five ways to support international students studying in the UK
Going to university for the first time, or embarking on graduate study, is a significant transition for anyone. Doing it in an unfamiliar country, with no support network, unaccustomed to the idiosyncrasies of the daily life and daunted by an alien academic culture, can be overwhelming—and that’s before we even consider that students may be doing all this in a second language!
The curious popularity of “however” in research articles
There are many ways to signal a change of direction in a piece of text, but the most common is by inserting a “but.” Alternatives such as “although,” “though,” “however,” “yet,” and “nevertheless” generally run a poor second. In research articles, though, the prevalence of “however” increases—especially in some disciplines.
The sour milk of etymology
The time has come to write something about the etymology of the word milk. Don’t hold your breath: “origin unknown,” that is, no one can say why milk is called milk, but then no one can say why water is called water either.
A Florence Price mystery solved (part one)
To my knowledge, Price’s Boston address remained inconclusive until I visited Special Collections at the University of Arkansas Mullins Library this past January to find new leads for the Price biography I am co-authoring with Samantha Ege, the Lord Crewe Junior Research Fellow in Music at Lincoln College, Oxford. The recovery of this information fills a void in a life story for which “the necessary evidence to write a detailed biography,” as preeminent Price scholar Rae Linda Brown once put it, “is surprisingly scant.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is another tragic setback in our efforts at building a sustainable future
To say that wars cause disruption and hardship is stating the painfully obvious. Regardless of attempts—real or professed—at limiting civilian casualties, military conflict always unleashes suffering on the civilian population. History also shows us that the disruptive effect of war also runs deeper and far beyond the geographic limits of fighting with far-reaching consequences for sustainability.
A literary history of Modernism [timeline]
In this timeline, we explore key figures and events that contributed to shaping modernism and celebrate 100 years since 1922: the pinnacle year of modernist publishing!
Renewable solar energy: how does it work and can it meet demand?
While it is impractical to have solar panels dotting virtually every available surface of the earth, it does show the awesome potential of solar energy as a renewable energy to meet our needs for generations to come.
We are what we breathe: environmental factors in biological ageing
Volcanic eruptions, floods, and heatwaves have forced us to think seriously about whether the air we breathe will allow us to age healthily. To try to answer this question, we selected a unique sample of five middle-income countries on four continents and used NASA satellite remote sensing data to assess the associations between long-term exposure to ambient PM2.5 and frailty in older populations.