‘At Oxford I could pause, think about my life, think about what I wanted to do in the future.’ — Tope Folarin is an award-winning author and Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC. See topefolarin.com for information about Tope’s writing. This is an edited transcript of a conversation with Tope as part of our series of conversations with Rhodes Scholar alumni. What are you working…

It took a pandemic to scale up a technology for assessing people at a distance that was first reported in the psychiatric literature in 1957. — I began to write We Can Do Better: Urgent Innovations to Improve Mental Health Access and Care just prior to the onset of the pandemic. It was squeezed into weekends and evenings after full days at the hospital, seeing patients and training senior residents in psychiatry. Like most of my…

Dr Elizabeth Kiss, Warden of Rhodes House, describes why un-like-minded leadership is crucial to overcome the profound challenges of a polarised and fractured international politics. — Our world is fraying and fracturing in frightening and dangerous ways. We’re seeing dramatic declines in trust in core institutions, from government to universities to the media. Political institutions are in crisis, from Boris Johnson’s resignation to Donald Trump’s insurrection against the U.S. Capitol to the breakdown of the Sri…

Dr Lennard Lee, Academic Medical Oncologist, University of Oxford — The United Kingdom has announced plans for a Cancer Vaccine Launchpad, building on lessons learnt during the pandemic. Cancer vaccines help stimulate the immune system to recognise and attack cancer cells. If successful, it would save tens of millions of lives from cancer globally. The United Kingdom’s Department of Health…

The young feel much better represented by Labour, but the retired are less sure about the Conservatives — by Zack Grant, Jane Green & Geoffrey Evans, University of Oxford The growing age gap in voting behaviour is one of the most important and striking trends in recent British elections. The old are increasingly Conservative; the young are increasingly Labour. Using newly released British Election Study (BES) data from…

The view that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, wants to restore territories of the Soviet Union has been a big part of the commentary on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But how much is he in tune with the wishes of the Russian people? Our research suggests that while Russian citizens increasingly identify with the USSR, this is only partially explained by their desire to expand Russia’s borders.

It should have been obvious. Vladimir Putin made clear he was going to do it. He said Ukraine was not a legitimate country. He maintained NATO was a threat. And his invasion plans were leaked, just before it started. But for all the warnings, the months of planning, the stockpiles of weapons and overwhelming superior force, the worst kept secret strategy has not worked out the way the Russian president intended.

There is understandably great interest in the political consequences of the economic sanctions imposed on Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Will sanctions help to shift opinion against Putin and stir Russians into political action to protest the war and help end it? Or will they have the effect of leading Russians to rally round the flag and solidify Putin’s coalition? — By Professor Paul Chaisty, Associate Professor of Russian Government, Department of Politics and International Relations and Professor Stephen Whitefield, fellow in politics.

So, day 11. I still can’t believe that. It’s been tough in Chernihiv and it doesn’t seem to get better. Yesterday, at night, the plane was [shot down] above where we hide. News is shocking and depressive so we try not to discuss it … I’ve lost track of days. It all seems like a very long dream. No one believed the war [would] last more than two or three days. — In one of her daily messages from her bomb shelter in the Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, a close friend unambiguously described the reality that most Ukrainians are currently facing: that the increasing tensions along the Ukraine-Russia border seen a month ago have turned into a full-blown nightmare.