Why I dreamt of becoming a housewife
When I was 16, my life aspirations were pretty simple. I wanted to be a housewife. I wanted to graduate from a good uni, get a good job at a law firm, marry a guy who would be successful in later life,...
View ArticleStaying positive with HIV: Nathaniel Hall’s ‘First Time’ comes to Oxford
Image Description: Nathaniel Hall spraying an aerosol can in front of him and smirking. Starring in Russell T Davies’ channel 4 series, Its a Sin, Nathaniel Hall is a director, actor, and storyteller....
View ArticleDon’t Touch My Hair
Image description: A woman with her head thrown back “Don’t touch my hair, cause it’s the feelings I wear” is the first line of Solange’s song of the same name. A line which as a black mixed-race...
View ArticleMicro-plastics: big problem, small item
Image description: plastic waste floating in the ocean by a small fish The earliest investigations of microplastics focused on microbeads found in personal-care products and pellets of virgin plastic...
View ArticleA budding love for Oxford
Image description: Christ Church Meadow It goes without saying that the past year and a half has turned everyone’s world upside down. Every email I’ve received in the last 18-odd months has started...
View ArticleDates of Our Lives: The thief of joy
Image description: A pile of heart shaped sweets in different colours After our fifth date, the American teacher physically recoiled from my tentative lean-in on the tube platform. I didn’t hear from...
View ArticleHell’s Kitchen: A recipe for broken democracy
Image description: Measuring spoons filled with different spices, surrounded by coriander leaves and chillies Over the coming weeks I hope to provide my readers with various recipes with which they...
View ArticleAgony Aunt: I put the “agony” in “agony aunt”
Image description: Hi everyone, and a belated welcome to Oxford to anyone who is attending their first term here! I’m really glad to be back, and among seeing very few familiar faces (*pretentious...
View ArticlePederasty, Pornoi and parties: the Greek symposium and homoeroticism
Image description: Ancient Greek pottery art of two men in the Greek symposium TW: Mentions of pederasty and non-consensual sexual activities. The Greek symposium was a respectable affair… until it...
View Article‘BreadTube’: irrelevant to power?
Image Description: the YouTube search page, reading ‘YouTube,’ ‘Home,’ and ‘Trending’ If you have ever dared to enter the quagmire of online political discourse, you may well have heard the term...
View ArticleOn the importance of safe spaces
Image description: two LGBTQ+ pride flags waving in the wind According to the Oxford Dictionary, a safe space is a “place or environment in which a person or category of people can feel confident that...
View ArticleMy first Oxford crewdate
Image description: an array of red plastic party cups for imbibing cheap wine such as Echo Falls This time two weeks ago I would’ve been hard pushed to explain to you what on earth an Oxford Crewdate...
View ArticleAgony Aunt: another ag, another aunt
Image description: A cartoon figure holding a sign saying ‘Agony Aunt’ stood in a green field with a pink flower. Welcome, welcome one and all to this week’s agony aunt session with yours truly,...
View ArticleCOP26: What is it and what will it achieve?
Image description: An aerial view of Glasgow, where the COP26 Summit is being held Often described as Earth’s last best hope to limit the effects of global warming, pressure begins to mound as state...
View ArticleRefusing to Vanish into Thin Heir: Why we remain obsessed with the royals,...
Image Description: Buckingham Palace and the Queen Victoria memorial Time reported in August 1981 of “A splendid Prince, his beautiful Princess, a carriage, a crowd: fantasy come to life, a dream.”...
View ArticleCould the next pandemic arise from industrial farming?
Image description: Chickens being farmed in battery cages Last December a new strain of avian flu caused concerns at a Russian factory farm. Chickens started to collapse and die, and over the course of...
View ArticleThe ‘BookTok’ phenomenon
Image description: a large wooden book case with many books As a French student at Oxford, I do a lot of reading, whether it be entire volumes of poetry, chunky novels, philosophical texts or the...
View ArticleNostalgia and the Dark Academia aesthetic
Image description: a human skull on a black background Do you keep a journal? Do you write it in black pen? Do you only wear dark clothing and tweed? Do you drink coffee in old cafés and only enjoy...
View ArticleHelping aslyum seekers: why legal aid is necessary
Image Description: a brown gavel with a shadow against a white backdrop It’s been a while since the papers were flooded with images of camps in Greece, proclaiming there was a “refugee crisis” which...
View ArticleMy parodic performance of gender
Image Description: the trans flag drawn in chalk on concrete There’s a sense in which I love that I am transitioning. I see my own development into who I want to be as a kind of art form. After a...
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