OxPods

For such a popular genre of music, Grime is too often ignored in academic musicology. When it is studied, it is often the words rather than the music itself that receives the most attention, ignoring…

Media and extremism have a complex relationship, from the evolution of fringe beliefs into mainstream discourse to the strategies extremists employ to influence public opinion. In the modern context,…

Dire effects of climate change and biodiversity loss seem to encompass almost everything, from the news stories, documentaries, and many forms of literature. Climate pessimism highlights the narrativ…

The literature of the Renaissance is full of fascinating undercurrents, and using different approaches to these works opens conversations around some difficult themes, indeed certain works of literat…

Nostalgia is often framed as a uniquely modern phenomenon, but scholars have increasingly noticed that a longing for ‘the good old days’ stretches much farther back in history than you might think. S…

Depression has developed from a taboo topic to one that is highly spoken about and investigated. There are a number of debates surrounding the theme: its heritability, its symptoms, and whether diagn…

Superconductors are fascinating. When sufficiently cooled, they lose all their electrical resistance, becoming an effective perfect conductor of electricity. This intriguing property already sees use…

The Literature of the Classical world can seem distant to us, separated by 2000 years and all the changes that came during those years. But throughout that time, Classics has been understood and used…

Postmodernism - the idea that human language can never fully capture reality - has been a buzzword since the second half of the 20th century. But how have postmodern ideas influenced historiography -…

Within evolutionary anthropology, a persistent yet pervasive question is that of the traits of the LCA. The LCA is the last common ancestor shared by the humans, or the Homo genus, and chimpanzees an…

In a time of great global challenges and injustices, international institutions are vital in tackling these shared problems. Yet, while positive in intention, many international institutions have bee…

The trajectory of evolving species is strongly affected by the environment in which they exist, and one particularly interesting example of this is when organisms evolving on islands differ predictab…

The works of William Shakespeare are synonymous with English identity, but why is this? Why is a 16th-century playwright still considered relevant today? And why are some of our favourite rom-coms ba…

Intelligent life on our planet arrived relatively late on a geological timescale, but why did life take so long to evolve and how have major catastrophic events, such as meteorite impacts, shaped the…

England was mired in the political and theological pressures of the Reformation under the Tudor dynasty, but popular perception of its monarchy and people have often obscured the true nature of relig…

Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, medical experts ranging from statisticians and demographers to virologists and consultants were depended upon by politicians. Their advice had serious implications f…

Sex is so widespread that you could assume it’s essential for life as we know it, playing a central role in the evolution and development of animal and human societies. However, it’s not the only way…

The 2023 Barbie movie was a massive box office hit, with an incredible construction of 'Barbie World'. The soundtrack played a huge role in this world-building, with its heavy use of synthesised inst…

Niccolò Machiavelli was one of the foremost political theorists of the Renaissance. His treatise ‘The Prince’ has enjoyed immense notoriety as an instruction manual for good leadership of a state, …

Literature is full of talking animals, from modern works like Paddington to Middle English works like The Owl and The Nightingale. But why do writers create non-speaking animals that speak? And why e…