Tom ChiversGoldsmiths, University of London So farewell to Sir David Clementi, the outgoing Chairman of the BBC. Most previous Chairs are remembered only by an anorak’s shorthand of reforms, scandals and political conflicts: Real Lives, ‘internal markets’, the Hutton Inquiry, Savile, DMI, and so on. By modern standards Clementi’s four years in office have been uneventful, …Continue Reading

Kulraj PhullarIndependent Scholar “Decolonisation” is a term that has become familiar to many of us in recent years. Last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests across the UK contributed to the global wave of solidarity with African Americans following the killing of George Floyd, and raised the political stakes of decolonising our disciplines, histories and institutions. …Continue Reading

Julian PetleyBrunel University London In his triumphant and swaggering Brexit speech at the Greenwich Royal Naval College on 3 February 2020, we find one of Boris Johnson’s earliest mentions of the coronavirus. It is a warning, but not of imminent peril. Rather it is a warning of the danger posed to the economy by what he regards …Continue Reading

Simon CottleCardiff University As our academic field gears up and sets about interrogating the ways in which media and communications have variously engaged with and communicatively enacted this unprecedented – though in truth long-predicted – global pandemic, it is worth considering what appears to be on the research agenda and, importantly, what seems to be …Continue Reading

Alison Scott-Baumann & Simon PerfectSchool of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) There’s no such thing as free speech and it’s a good thing too, according to American academic Stanley Fish. By this he means that there is no situation where speech is truly ‘free’, without constraint; in every scenario there are rules, explicit or implicit, which …Continue Reading

Abigail GardnerUniversity of Gloucestershire So, we’re off the podium then. No more Gold, Silver or Bronze. The OfS has listened to Dame Shirley Pearce on this one. The TEF gongs were too simplistic and the Pearce review pointed out exactly why. No-one likes to come third. Recognising that ‘bronze’ played particularly badly internationally, the OfS …Continue Reading