The Conversation
A unique collaboration between academics and journalists.
Germany pulled the plug on flagship FCAS fighter jet – the implications for European defence are worrying
The effective collapse of the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) fighter jet programme is a major setback for European defence cooperation. France, Germany and Spain have spent nearly a decade trying to develop what was intended to become Europe’s premier next-generation combat aircraft, only for the programme to succumb to disputes over leaders...
How Taiwan is balancing between American and Chinese visions of energy dominance
U.S. President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national energy emergency on his first day back in office framed fossil fuel production as a geopolitical weapon. “Energy dominance” — flooding global markets with American oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) — would reassert American power, undercut China’s clean-technology leverage and disciplin...
The Gulf Stream suddenly moved north during an ancient cold snap – and it’s a warning for our future
The Gulf Stream shifts warm water across the Atlantic to Europe. NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, CC BY-SAAround 13,000 years ago, as the world was emerging from the grip of the last ice age, much of the North Atlantic region plunged back into near-glacial conditions. Sea ice expanded across the North Atlantic...
Appolonia: the story of an African kingdom that resisted the Atlantic slave trade
Hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans were shipped from the Gold Coast, today's Ghana. National Maritime Museum, London, CC BYThe transatlantic slave trade was a multilayered, highly commercialised global enterprise that lasted from the early 1500s to the mid 1800s. The events over this period are far too complex to fit into a straight...
Conspiracy theories that emerged from a civil rights shooting 60 years ago resonate today
James Meredith looks at Aubrey Norvell, partially hidden behind foliage, after Norvell shot him in Hernando, Miss., on June 6, 1966. AP Photo/Jack ThornellOn June 6, 1966, on a stretch of Highway 51 just south of Hernando, Mississippi, a portly, middle-aged white man named Aubrey Norvell stepped out of a gully, lifted his shotgun and fired thr...
Trump’s ‘narco-terrorism’ war in Latin America evokes Reagan – then as now, it’s more about fighting leftists than drug runners
Peruvian army personnel during operations against alleged drug trafficking. Cris Bouroncle/AFP via Getty Images, CC BYMore than any other U.S. president in decades, Donald Trump has aggressively pursued military interventions in Latin America. On Jan. 3, 2026, U.S. special forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on charges of nar...
Ukraine war now longer than the first world war – but the similarities are unsettling
A Ukrainian soldier near the frontline in Kharkiv Oblast in 2022. podyom / ShutterstockThe war in Ukraine has now exceeded the first world war in duration. And while the comparison between these two conflicts is imperfect, it is becoming difficult to ignore. Some of the similarities are obvious. At the tactical level, the conflict in Ukraine ...
Ukraine war now longer than the first world war – the similarities are unsettling
A Ukrainian soldier near the frontline in Kharkiv Oblast in 2022. podyom / ShutterstockThe war in Ukraine has now exceeded the first world war in duration. And while the comparison between these two conflicts is imperfect, it is becoming difficult to ignore. Some of the similarities are obvious. At the tactical level, the conflict in Ukraine ...