Blog & Opportunities

Debate among citizens about society’s functioning is a core attribute of the public sphere. Yet with the onset of recent crises across Europe—including health emergencies, economic insecurity, and border porosity—the significance of the public sphere appears to be increasing in some societies while declining in others. More information on how citizens engage with the public sphere is needed to understand its evolving character amid various crises today. There is a cultural element to understanding such Read more…

Information around the world has become increasingly decentralised, making it easier than even to disseminate it.  Consequently, the risks of increased decentralisation have become apparent; the ease of disseminating false information online has allowed fake news to become a dominant force in the public debate. The endemic nature of fake news is a difficult phenomenon to tackle, but the need to address is clear. The consequences of inadequate and unchecked efforts to counter the spread Read more…

176 women were killed in the first 169 days of 2021, in Turkey. Most of these women were killed by their husbands or partners in their own houses. Data from 2020 shows that the situation can get much worse: of the 300 women killed in 2020, 97 were murdered by the men they were married to, 21 were murdered by the men they were married to previously, 18 were murdered by their sons, 17 were Read more…

The climate crisis began to take precedence in an international context with the dawn of the new millenia. Global warming and climate change quickly became commonplace in the vernacular of political debate, along with the blossoming notion of sustainability. As the years stretched on and little effective solution was achieved, the need to devise a system of collective action became paramount. In 2015, the Paris Climate Agreement was created, referred to as “an agreement of Read more…

In March 2021, France’s senate passed a significant amendment to an already controversial bill. This amendment bans the wearing of hijab by any minor, or by women who accompany their children on school trips. France, and by extension Western Europe, has long grappled with the issue of public displays of religion, particularly the wearing of face/head veilings by Muslim women. The attempt to control what Muslim women can and cannot wear within the public sphere Read more…

2020 was without a shadow of a doubt one of the most challenging years in the history of the European Union (‘EU’), with the COVID-19 pandemic relegating even the interminable Brexit process to secondary importance. Events and traditions that had not been interrupted since the Second World War ground to a halt, with no exception made for elections. As 2021 dawned, the prospect of a vaccinated Europe and ‘COVID normal’ have returned election politics to Read more…

Taken from the executive summary of Alex Weltin’s research project undertaken as part of the Australian National Internships Program. Link to the full report available below The German meat industry has long been known for the precarious conditions under which its production employees are working. The affected workers are almost always posted workers. The recent Covid-19 outbreak at the Tönnies meat factory in Gütersloh and the scandalous working conditions which necessitated the outbreak are only Read more…