“Are We Allowed to Find Beauty in the Face of Death and Destruction: Ishiuchi Miyako’s Hiroshima and Postwar Japan”

Photographer Ishiuchi Miyako (b. 1947) began photographing cloths and artifacts left by Hiroshima’s nuclear bomb victims and survivors in 2007. Published as three separate volumes and exhibited at numerous venues both inside and outside Japan, her Hiroshima photos have powerfully represented the absent presence of bodies that used to wear and touch these objects garnering critical acclaim from art critiques. Their bright colors and high aesthetic quality separate her works from other preceding photographic—often monochromatic—representations of life after the nuclear attack in Hiroshima.

“They Didn't Understand Anything, Just Spoiled People's Lives": Brutality, Incompetence and Historical Echoes in Russian-occupied Ukraine

Anne Applebaum is a journalist, a prize-winning historian, a staff writer for The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, where she co-leads a project on 21st century disinformation and co-teaches a course on democracy. Her books include Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine; Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956; and Gulag: A History, which won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction. Her most recent book is the New York Times bestseller, Twilight of Democracy, an essay on democracy and authoritarianism.

Does non-commitment undermine the hypocrite’s standing to blame?

According to an influential account of standing to blame, hypocritical blamers lack standing to blame in virtue of their lack of commitment to the norm etc. to which they appeal in their blame. While this account has several attractive features, it is not, so I argue, clear what exactly commitment to a norm in the relevant standing-affecting sense amounts to. First, I show how three prominent accounts of commitment differ importantly and point to several unresolved issues regarding the nature of commitment that must be addressed in any more fully worked-out commitment account.

What did COVID-19 teach us about preparing for mega-crises?

Before 2020, the UK was seen as well prepared for a crisis. In the first half of 2020, this belief was sorely tested. With “long emergencies” likely to be an increasing feature of our modern world, what can governments learn from COVID-19 to prepare for future crises, whether health-related or not?

Join us online to hear about a new report by Professor of Practice Ciaran Martin and colleagues examining aspects of how the first six months of COVID-19 played out in the UK and in four comparator countries: Italy, Germany, Australia and Singapore.

Escaping toxic newsroom spaces and online hate

Dhanya is co-founder and editor-in-chief of The News Minute, and the recipient of the 2022 Chameli Devi Jain Award. Under her leadership, The News Minute has grown to become one of the most trusted and widely read news portals in South India, with a focus on providing in-depth coverage of regional news and politics. Dhanya is also known for her active presence on social media, where she often shares her views on current affairs and social issues.

Journalism in exile: lessons from Latin America and East Africa

Louisa is a PhD candidate at University College Cork studying the phenomenon of contemporary exile journalism through interviews with journalists exiled from East Africa and Latin America. She has previously worked with Burundian exiled journalists in Rwanda and done further research on topics including internet shutdowns, local conflict reporting, press freedom in (post-)conflict settings, and genocide denial. We'll hear about her findings from Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Eritrea and Burundi.
Subscribe to