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I spent decades dodging the true-crime documentary that showcased my family’s trauma. Then, just as Netflix was set to revive it, came my chance to show what happens after the credits roll. 

Tanja Bueltmann is a historian of migration and diaspora and holds a Chair in International History at the University of Strathclyde. Her research is focused primarily on Scottish, English and German migration, but she has recently also looked at migration in the context of Brexit. Brought up in Germany and a student of history at Bielefeld University, Tanja also brings her personal perspective on Vergangenheitsbewältigung, having been educated in Germany at a time when there was a particularly robust public discussion of how to deal with Germany’s Nazi past. 

Adult autism diagnoses are on the rise - and nightlife is finally catching up, offering more sensory options for neurodivergent adults.

A latex glove in one hand, a polishing cloth in another, the Chancellor tried putting a sheen on our worst downturn in centuries. It didn't take. 

Growing up in Germany, I was taught about the rise of Nazism. It’s vital to call out even the early symptoms.

George Gillett is a psychiatrist working in south London, academic researcher at King’s College London and a freelance writer. He has written for the Guardian, New Statesman, Spectator and Independent, among others. He tweets at @george_gillett and his writing can be found at www.georgegillett.com.

The film that dominated at the Oscars touched a nerve with generations that spend much of their time in online 'non-spaces', flitting between multiple realities and timelines, yearning for an escape. 

I am Englishman, a Christian, a teacher, a patriot, an admiral of the fleet, a golfer, a hunter and a chartered accountant - and trust me: Rishi Sunak's inquiry into sex education doesn't go remotely far enough. 

To the Chairperson of the BBC, Richard Sharp,

I am appalled by the BBC management's decision to suspend Gary Lineker from hosting Match of the Day, unless he agrees to stop voicing his personal view on a matter of great public interest - the government's appalling, dangerous rhetoric on asylum seekers. It is a blow to free expression in our country and a historic own goal for the Corporation. Only yesterday, the BBC said Gary will not be suspended or disciplined; less than 24 hours later, you choose to U-turn - and to lie about your decision, by issuing the false statement that Gary is stepping back of his own accord.

Let me be clear: Gary Lineker has absolutely nothing to apologise for.

First, Gary made his comment in his personal capacity, on his personal Twitter account, not on air. Second, he didn’t compare your patrons in the Tory party to Nazis - he merely said, as mildly as it can be said, that Suella Braverman’s rhetoric reminds him of the rhetoric employed in Germany in the 1930s. And third, he is far from the first to make this analogy - indeed, Joan Salter, an 83-year-old Holocaust survivor, made that same comparison, to Braverman’s face, as recently as last month.

We call on you to return Gary Lineker to Match of the Day before the next programme is out. And we call on all players, pundits and commentators to boycott the show until Gary is back in place. 

Yours,

Making their return to the UK this month with five live dates, Kælan Mikla explore the darkness and light of Iceland's rich history.

Maddy Howell is a freelance journalist and community specialist with focuses on features and profiles within music culture, feminism, and social affairs. Her work delves into the inspiration and emotion that bring art to life, and the ways in which communities form and thrive in modern culture.

Sian Norris is a freelance journalist and writer specialising in human rights. Her work has appeared in the Observer, the Guardian, the i, the New Statesman, openDemocracy, and Byline Times. Sian's book Bodies Under Siege: How the far right attack on reproductive rights went global is published by Verso in June 2023. She was the founder of the Bristol Women's Literature Festival. 

We asked the Home Office if they have any performance indicators for the cruel policies implemented by Sunak and Braverman. They said they do not - and the general statistics they referred us to suggest that so far, their policies are having the opposite effect. 

Jail Time Records has just released its eclectic first album, made exclusively with incarcerated artists - a selection from more than 500 songs produced by the studio. We spoke with producer and co-founder Vidou-H.

Margie Ratliff is a co-producer and key participant of the documentary Subject, where she examines her participation in the 2018 Netflix true-crime documentary, The Staircase. She is currently starting the non-profit, Documentary Participants Empowerment Alliance, to bring mental health, legal, counseling, advocacy, and mentorship resources to past, present, and future documentary participants.

Fred Garratt-Stanley is a freelance writer who specialises in music, culture, and football. He has written for a wide range of publications including GQ, NME, Huck, Dazed, The Quietus, and Vice.

Panic and greed fuel spike in tenants being evicted under the infamous "Section 21" - but the stage for the crisis has been set by decades of bad policy. 

Sabrina is a writer, filmmaker and anthropologist from London. Her first documentary, ‘Kings Of Our Own Right,’ was selected across multiple European festivals, and she is currently in post-production for a documentary about sex workers rights in North Macedonia. Sabrina has written for Girls On Tops, Trippin’ and Wonderland.

In his new football novel 'Your Show', Ashley Hickson-Lovence explores Rennie’s legacy and the shocking lack of diversity in British refereeing.
 

Aleksandar Brezar is a journalist, editor, and podcast host whose main motive in journalism is to take apart your misconceptions about Eastern Europe and the people who live there. After having lived and reported everywhere from Brussels to Kyiv, he currently resides in Rome. He edits opinion articles at Euronews View. 

 We look at why self-appointed crusaders, white supremacists and ultra-misogynists drift to Romania and the Balkans, and what they actually find. 

You have access to far, far more land than you think you do - but finding that out takes sleuthing. From slavery records to ancient tree maps, here is how to find out who owns what - and where you come in. 

The attack on a Black girl  by a gang of white teenagers makes clear the UK education system falls far short of its duty of care for Black children.

Charlie is an award-winning freelance journalist, book editor, columnist, host, and creative with focuses on features and profiles on identity, culture, lifestyle, travel, media, and social politics.

She is a Managing Editor at Skin Deep, a former Senior Staff Editor at the New York Times and the former Editor-in-Chief at gal-dem magazine. Charlie has written and edited for a variety of publications, including the Guardian and Observer, Dazed, and the Financial Times.

The play uses verbatim accounts from the contentious trial that followed the racially-motivated murder of Ahmaud Arbery.

Israel is teetering on the brink between an authoritarian overhaul to rival Orban's, a popular revolt and an economic implosion. What comes next - and where does it leave the Palestinians?

Yas Necati (they/them) is a writer and performance poet who explores queer and trans identity, diaspora identity, mental health, recovery, community and resistance. They also campaign for queer rights, run workshops with campaigners, and perform as their drag act alter-ego, Turkish pop star Tarkan. You can find them at yasnecati.co.uk and @yas_necati on social media.

“Cyprus is an identity crisis”: On an island with a long history of colonisation and criminalised homosexuality, LGBTQ+ communities - in the UK and in Cyprus - are building connections that transcend the border between north and south.

Danielle Evans is an Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins University and the author of short story collections, The Office of Historical Corrections and Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. Her first collection won the PEN American Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Hurston-Wright award for fiction, and the Paterson Prize for fiction; her second won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and The Bridge Book Award and was a finalist for The Aspen Prize, The Story Prize, and The LA Times Book prize for fiction. She is the 2021 winner of The New Literary Project Joyce Carol Oates Prize, a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts fellow, and a 2011 National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree. 

An extract from Virgins, the opening story in Danielle Evans’ frank and funny collection exploring the lives of African American teens struggling to find a place in their community. 

The East London singer-songwriter dives into the messy, turbulent world of modern love and dating on his delicate, humorous compilation, influenced by 90s slow jams. 

Jumi Akinfenwa is a freelance journalist specialising in music and culture. Her work has been featured in The Guardian, VICE and gal-dem amongst others and in 2020, she was listed as one of MHP’s 30 to Watch and PITCH Magazine's Superpeople.

Joana Ramiro is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and political commentator. 

In a world of Pornhub and dating apps, where desire is commodified and lucrative, tenderness can feel rare and subversive. Three artists explore it in the Liminal Gallery, Margate. 

From the UK to the US, under 25's are unionising in droves, with 60% to 156% leaps in youth membership in some cases. What does it mean for the future of work - and for the ballot box? 

Youds, who ran a not-for-profit cannabis shop, was apprehended by police on his way to deliver homemade, full-extract cannabis oil to a terminally-ill cancer patient near Birmingham. The case lays bare the patchiness of UK's drug laws. 

There’s an old adage that profit is reward for innovation and risk-taking. That’s BS. Shell and BP are raking it in because we’ve let them own the market - environment be damned. 

Kimberly McIntosh is a writer and researcher with a focus on racial justice and inequality. She has written for a range of publications including the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Independent, the Metro and Vice and discussed her work on BBC Radio 4 and 5 Live, BBC News and Sky News. 

From TikTok to the Church of England, reparations talk is going deeper, wider - and more practical

Neuroscientist and psychonaut Zeus Tipado on how psychedelics and virtual reality intersect, what it has to do with Voodoo and Jesus Christ, and why the most mind-blowing thing here is the human brain.  

Far from succeeding humans, machine learning desperately needs humans to succeed. But the emerging market for educating robots is a dark one. 

Adele Zeynep Walton is a British Turkish journalist, specialising in global inequality, politics and popular culture. She has written for The Independent, the i, Dazed, VICE, Metro, The Big Issue, Jacobin, Open Democracy, Tribune, Huck, gal-dem, The New Arab and more. Adele is also DAZED's first ever political book columnist.

The British national narrative of slavery and empire is as selective as it is crude. A new exhibition, These Things Matter, explores the items that embedded these atrocities into our everyday lives. 

Andra Simons is a Bermudian writer and performer living in London, UK. He studied theatre in Toronto, Canada. Andra’s first collection of poetry, The Joshua Tales (Treehouse Press) was published in 2009 and Turtlemen (Copy Press) in 2021. Andra has held workshops and lectured at various universities in the UK. He has also been published in several magazines, journals and anthologies as well as performed at numerous events, venues and festivals. Andra is the current Writer-in-Residence at the University of Greenwich. Photo ©Ajamu.

Gary Allen is a Labour and Co-operative Party Councillor for Victoria Ward in Hartlepool. 

Lian is a senior multimedia reporter for Rappler.com, one of the few independent media outlets available in the Philippines. She covers human rights, justice, corruption and international law. Currently in the UK as a Chevening scholar, she has been given express permission to write for The Lead. You can read her Rappler work here.

Unlike the U.S. and Brazil, who toppled their authoritarian populists, the Philippines replaced Duterte with Bongbong Marcos - the son of deposed dictators Imelda and Ferdinand. Rappler.com's Lian Buan explores where the opposition may have gone wrong.

More and more people are paying rent to their mates - but this leaves occupiers unprotected and unsure of their rights. 

My town just won Levelling Up money - but it'll go into building a "TV Production Village," even as hungry kids trudge to school in subzero temperatures. This isn't levelling up. This is Tory theatrics. 

Ruby Deevoy is one of the UK’s few dedicated cannabis and psychedelics journalists. Bylines include The Independent, The Mirror, The Times, The Sun, The Express, The Metro, Evening Standard, Stylist, Woman & Home, Top Santé, Natural Health, Red, Platinum, Chat! and others.

You're hardly saving democracy by shutting down George Galloway and his ilk.

Serial rapist David Carrick told his victims that as a police officer, he can get away with anything. He was right. And he’s neither the first nor the last. It's high time to consider tearing down the system that enabled him. 

Content warning: Mentions of sexual violence.

Shahed Ezaydi is a freelance journalist based in London, covering politics, race, culture, and social issues. She has written for gal-dem, The Face, Dazed, Glamour, and more. She's currently working on her first book, The Othered Woman: How White Feminism Harms Muslim Women.

The attempted coup against the left-wing Brazilian president was only the beginning: Bolsonaro left behind a state apparatus riddled with military men. Lula's future depends on whether he accommodates them - or brings them to heel. 

Jamil Chade is a Brazilian reporter in Europe for several news groups in Brazil and the author of seven books. He has reported from over 70 countries, and uncovered major corruption scandals in Brazil.  He was elected as the best Brazilian foreign correspondent twice - in 2011 and 2013, and  in 2015 he was chosen as one of the 40 most influential journalists in Brazil. Chade was one of the researchers of the National Truth Commission, created by the government of Brazil to investigate crimes and violations of human rights committed during the military regime in the country. 

Azeem is an anti-racism campaigner and former professional cricketer. Following his time as captain of the England under-19s, he played for several first-class county clubs, this included Yorkshire, where he suffered racist bullying. In 2020 he spoke out and pursued legal action. Since then, Azeem has become a cricket coach, and a powerful advocate for diversity and inclusion.

An FA panel has said John Yems is "not a conscious racist" - it's a familiar story of gaslighting victims and protecting perpetrators. 

This was supposed be the year of health and freedom. Instead, many of us seem to barely recover from one ailment before succumbing to another. Here's what can be done. 

Emmanuel is an educator, writer and speaker. He is also the director of the charity program called The Reach Out Project. 

The ultra-disciplinarian headteacher stepped down from her Social Mobilities role, but will continue to fan the flames of culture wars in education. Pity the children. 

Once upon a time, teaching offered social mobility, a great pension package, a chance to save for a house - and recognition and respect from the community. Today even writing this feels like a bit of a farce. 

The "Minimum Services" bill is so vague it would allow any passing minister to force as many people into work as they please - eliminating more that just the right to strike. It's among the most dictatorial laws proposed in Britain in recent memory. 

Why do the Tories insist on removing protections from children once they turn 16? 

We've been around journalism too long to think that merely telling a story changes much. Most failures have architects, and next year, we want to start holding them to account - with your help. 

Eman is a Nairobi-based freelance journalist. 

The triple whammy of pandemic, war and climate change is ending the age of abundance in the West. How will the near future look like, and what does it mean for the UK? 

Taking time out for yourself in the midst of a struggle can feel selfish. But avoiding burnout allows us to fight for longer. Can we take self-care and well-being away from influencers and back into the community and the movement? 

Omolola Ogunyemi is an author born and raised in Ibadan, Nigeria, before moving to the US to study. Her short stories have been published in Farafina and New Writing from Africa 2009. Her latest novel Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions was chosen as an Editor's Pick in the New York Times.

Boys accompanying women without hijabs. Women wearing hijabs protesting alongside those who refuse. Strangers sheltering beaten, tear-gassed protesters. And even a Free Hugs stall as an act of defiance. Filmmaker and poet Tara Aghdashloo chronicles the moments of light that keep her and other Iranians going into the new year. 

Children born in the first blush of the pandemic will be thirty years old in 2050 -  with “large-scale drought, famine, heat stress, species die-off, loss of entire ecosystems, and loss of habitable land" as the best-case scenario. But they are our last, best hope.

An extract from a powerful new novel that illuminates the lives of a generation of Nigerian women through a set of interlocking stories.

The Secret Paramedic is a veteran paramedic in the UK. He's writing anonymously to sidestep NHS guidelines on speaking to the press. 

I am a paramedic. We just want to help, but years of underfunding, scandals, privatisation, Brexit and COVID leave us at the gates of hell. 

The only effect of Suella Braverman and Rishi Sunak casting Albanians as a threat is more xenophobia in the UK, and anger and perplexity in Tirana. 

Alice Taylor is a British journalist based in Albania. She is news editor at EURACTIV and their Albania and Kosovo correspondent. She also covers the region for DW, BBC, and occasionally The Times Before Albania, she lived in Malta where she was a columnist in local media and worked for award winning investigative platform The Shift News. She is also a board member at the Ethical Media Alliance and she teaches and speaks on media freedom and ethics.

The five-point plan to combat illegal migration is a desperate tangle of half-truths draped mostly over reheated old policies. The only potential for change it holds is for the worse. 

Barrister and rights activist, specialising in migration, equality and international law. Practising law from Doughty Street Chambers since 2000.

Every year, young people working in Christmas retail are overworked, bullied and underpaid. I'm one of them. 

All life on our planet is interconnected and our future depends on treating it with compassion and respect. By recognising this, we can protect the world’s wildlife and soils as if our life depends on it – because it does. As things stand, we only have sixty harvests left. 

Oliver is the nom de plume of a retail worker currently working in fashion. They are anonymised because they fear their employer will fire them for speaking out about their working conditions. 

Text generators aren't coming for most newsroom jobs - yet. But news media dependency on search trends means AI already has significant sway over what journalists get assigned, and who gets to read it. 

While the world moves on, the UK government is trying to fob off northerners with an outdated project that is economically, socially and environmentally destructive - and that will entrench, rather than resolve, poverty in Cumbria. 

Bali, a longtime centre of Hinduism in Indonesia, has been transformed by Westerners seeking Instagrammable enlightenment. We take a look at the gurus and ley lines, crypto-bros and digital nomads - and speak to the indigenous healers still serving communities beyond the social media haze. 

Katie Hignett is a freelance journalist based in London. She has a background in health, science and anthropology, and has written for publications including Forbes, Metro.co.uk and Newsweek. Her investigative work on pandemic preparedness for HSJ was recognised as "Excellence in Reporting Coronavirus" by Press Gazette.

Philippa Nuttalll is an experienced journalist based in Brussels focusing on climate, energy and biodiversity. She was previously Environment Editor at the New Statesman and has written for the Financial Times, Prospect and the New Scientist.

It's tempting to greet the return of Benjamin Netanyahu for a sixth term as business as usual. His new allies, and the way he's accommodating them so far, suggests it's anything but. 

Minnie is a writer and campaigner specialising in migrants’ rights, climate change and social justice.  After working in both the European and UK Parliament for 5 years as a political advisor, she went on to lead campaigns at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants. 

We need a police investigation. 

Over the summer, brigades battling record wildfires were outnumbered, even as fire engines stood dormant in garages for lack of staff. Then came winter - and the prospect of a real-terms pay cut. We spoke to the firefighters gearing up for a desperate attempt to save their service. 

High-profile judicial review appeals have become a favoured tactic among liberals. But we're not in the United States - and these campaigns risk distracting from far more important battlegrounds. 

DR is a barrister at Garden Court and the author of Against the Law: Why Justice Requires Fewer Laws and a Smaller State. 

Western populists who attain power often have to unpick with democratic safeguards before indulging their appetite for autocracy. But in Italy, many fascist laws and attitudes never went away - and now have a 'post-fascist' prime minister unafraid to wield them. Long under threat, freedom of expression could be among the first to be hit. 

Rachael Pells is a freelance journalist and author who writes regularly about science and research, among other things. Her book, Genomics: How genome sequencing will change our lives is published by Penguin.

Jess McCabe is a deputy editor at Inside Housing magazine. She focuses on housing, sustainability and diversity. 

Angelo Boccato is a London-based freelance journalist. His work has appeared in publications like the Columbia Journalism Review, The Independent, and Open Democracy. He co-hosts the podcast Post Brexit News Explosion.

The division between "freehold" and "leasehold" is a monster hybrid of medieval law and postwar housing booms, unique to England and Wales. The cross-party move for reform has been stymied by Tory leadership convulsions. Now campaigners hope it can get back on track. 

Less frontline journalist memoir and more instruction manual for anyone navigating bullshit, How To Stand Up To A Dictator tracks Maria Ressa's journey: from young girl squaring up to bullies in a New Jersey school to Nobel Laureate seeing off the strongmen and kleptocrats of the Philippines. 

The e-vehicle revolution has been overwhelmingly confined to private cars. But what about HGVs? And can early morning waste removal trucks ever go truly green? We look at the challenges and opportunities ahead. 

Yes, this year's summit, like every summit, fell short of what is needed. But the overall trajectory is progress. This is not the time to give up on the world's only functional framework to tackle climate change. 

The Jeremy Hunt cuts are less radical than those of the 2010's, but they accumulate on top of the original austerity drive - the prime engine of Britain's epic economic slowdown. Here is how we break the doom loop. 

Initiatives by K-pop fandoms have planted over 100,000 trees worldwide, making a palpable contribution to offsetting emissions. Now fans up the pressure on Korean record companies to commit to greener operations, and hope global leaders take note. 

Dr. Mann is Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, with a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication. His research focuses on climate science and climate change. He was awarded the Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geophysical Union in 2012. He made Bloomberg News' list of fifty most influential people in 2013.  He has received the Friend of the Planet Award from the NCSE, the Award for Public Engagement with Science from the AAAS, and the Leo Szilard Award of the American Physical Society. He received the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement 2019 and was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2020. He is a Fellow of the AGU, AMS, GSA, AAAS, author of more than 200 publications, numerous op-eds and commentaries, and five books including Dire Predictions, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, The Madhouse Effect, The Tantrum that Saved the World, and The New Climate War.

Soo is a South Korean reporter based in London, UK. She is a South Korea expert who regularly covers Korean culture/entertainment, including the latest K-dramas, films and K-pop news. She has covered the COVID-19 pandemic at Newsweek and was a long-time travel reporter/editor at the Daily Telegraph.  She is the author of How to Live Korean, available in eight languages (English, French, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Slovak).

Alcohol, testosterone and emotion: Getting home from the pub surrounded by drunk football fans will be even more dangerous for women this winter.

The champion ocean rower reflects on pollution and rising sea levels from the close vantage point of a trans-oceanic rowboat, and considers why even today it's hard to make the global North grasp the scale and the urgency of the crisis. 

Rosalind Savage is an environmentalist and ocean adventurer. She has rowed solo across the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans to raise awareness of the ecological crisis and has earned four Guinness World Records and an MBE. A former management consultant, Roz has just finished writing The Ocean in a Drop: Navigating from Crisis to Consciousness, published by Flint Books.

Scott Benton, Conservative MP for Blackpool South, said his constituents could “only dream” of being as “well-cared” for as detained asylum seekers. Have 12 years of Tory rule left his town that destitute? We went to find out. 

"The end of the regime would be the ideal outcome. Stopping the killing of demonstrators would be an ideal outcome." The award-winning British-Iranian artist speaks to us about the ongoing uprising in Iran. 

Louisa Jordan is a pseudonym. The author is a community nurse in the NHS, and has asked to remain anonymous.

When ‘clap for carers’ was introduced, it made us feel appreciated. But little else was done, and we are at breaking point. Striking is our very last resort.

Conversations around race, gender and sexuality have evolved, but we still have a tendency to demand clear-cut answers. Which box do you tick? Which bathroom will you use? Alabanza is more interested in the spaces between the definitions: the murkier, more human realm of uncertainty. 

Netanyahu's return to power arm in arm with proudly homophobic racist is not "more of the same". It's a helluva lot worse. But it might spring new alliances, too. 

When Paul Powlesland moored his boat on the Roding in 2017, the river was choked with slime and garbage. Now the community that sprung up around is keeping its waters clear - and Powlesland is turning to the next challenge: securing rivers their human rights. Jon Moses reports. 

Matthew Williams is a Professor of Criminology and is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost experts in hate crime and hate speech. He advises and has conducted research for TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Google, EE, Deutsche Telekom, The Professional Footballers’ Association, the UK Home Office, and the US Department of Justice. Matthew also founded and directs HateLab, a not-for-profit academic unit with a mission to democratise technology amongst civil society organisations to routinely monitor and counter online hate speech and divisive disinformation.

There's no paper trail linking specific Conservative talking points to the firebombing of the immigration detention centre in Dover. But 12 years of consistently dehumanising asylum seekers  is what enabled this attack, and it may not be the last one. 

"Publishing tells us the majority voice is the white middle-class male - this just is not the reality."

Rishi Sunak's rise to No.10 is a great step for one British-Asian man, but a much smaller step for minorities. 

Just as with any civil war, the seemingly tiny conflicts on the fictional Irish island of Inisherin are deeply meaningful. An essential film in every sense. 

Blackouts weren't supposed to be happening to my generation of Britons. But it's increasingly likely we'll have hours of them this winter. Here is how people are stocking up. 

Western observers are trying to reduce the story of Iran's uprising to cliches. They fixate on sanctions or try to pretend a regime that butchers feminists is some kind of a reasonable alternative to US imperialism. As Iranians, our only weapon against these deadly fallacies is stories of those we lost - and those still fighting. 

Dhruti Shah is a multi-award winning journalist. Formerly a staffer at BBC News specialising on the social beat, she is now a freelance wordsmith with features appearing in The Guardian and New Arab among others. She's the author of Bear Markets and Beyond: A Bestiary of Business Terms, offers herself up as a brainstorm buddy, and loves magical mystery tours. 

Padraig Reidy is editor of Little Atoms. He has also written for the Observer, the Irish Times, the Guardian, Prospect and the New Statesman. 

Shaista Aziz is a journalist, writer, and campaigner. She’s a columnist for Hypen and writes regularly for The Guardian. Her writing has been published by The New York Times, The Times, CNN, Huffington Post, Gal-dem, Globe and Mail, and more.  Shaista presented a critically acclaimed BBC TV documentary on what it means to be young, French and Muslim, following the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack.

Omid Shams is an Iranian writer in exile, a member of Danish PEN and a PhD law academic at the University of Portsmouth specialising in freedom of expression, modern and indirect methods of censorship. He cooperates with human rights organisations and media outlets such as Justice for Iran and IranWire on documenting the human rights violations in Iran. 

A key argument made for Johnson's return goes something like this: we're not foisting on you another unelected prime minister, we're reverting to the prime minister you've already elected. That's a lie. Elections aren't won for life. 

A new art installation in Gladstone Park commemorates Black migration and evokes themes of collective renewal.

One the most dangerous home secretaries in recent history is out of office, barely a day after blaming "Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati" for all the country's ills.  Celebrating? We have just the recipe for you. 

Boris Johnson won in 2019 on a promise to end the devastation of the Cameron-Osborne austerity era. The newly unelected Hunt government has no moral or democratic claim to withhold even a penny of public finances. 

Mic Wright is a journalist and media critic based in Norwich.

Sweetly tell a labrador it’s a prick, and its tail will wag as if you said you loved it. This is how many political journos acted after Hunt's first media round.

Adam Wagner is one of the UK’s leading human rights barristers and the UK's pre-eminent expert on COVID-19 laws. He was described in the House of Lords as ‘the only person in the country who can make sense of this variety of regulations’. He practises from Doughty Street Chambers.

For two years, freedoms we thought untouchable were torn away, and immense, intrusive power over the smallest details of our lives was handed over to a small group of people in government. It is essential we understand how this happened and why.

Under Starmer, the Labour party has taken up an increasingly punitive tone on crime and prisons, to court right-wing voters. The collapse of the Tory vote is an opportunity to stop talking tough and adopt a crime policy that would actually work. 

Admitting you need help can be hard, but no hole in the ground is going to open up and swallow you. What's more, you're not alone. Accommodation, benefits, food, clothes and more - here's where to look. 

Ella Clayton's first album marks a transition from acoustic to folk-rock, and reveals a dogged songwriter fully coming into her own. 

Boyah J. Farah is an author, their writing has been featured in The Guardian, Harvard Transition, Scheer Intelligence at KCRW, Grub Daily and Truthdig. He is the winner of Salon's best essay of 2017. His essays have also appeared in Harvard's Kennedy School Review, Pangyrus magazine, and The Huffington Post.

Asking people about their salary history in interviews perpetuates discrimination. Let's give it a rest. 

An extract from the new memoir about a boy who escaped war in Somalia only to land on the battlefield of American racism.

Overworked, burnt out, and reduced to food banks - healthcare workers tell us why letting our NHS implode is even more dangerous than taking to the picket lines. 

Ella is a freelance journalist specialising in worker's rights, youth culture, social affairs and lifestyle. You can find her work in Tribune Magazine, Huck Magazine, Novara Media, VICE, Dazed, metro.co.uk and The Lead.

Marie Le Conte is a French-Moroccan freelance political journalist based in London. She writes for, among others, the New Statesman, the Guardian, GQ, Vogue, the Sunday Times and the Independent. Her latest book, Escape: How A Generation Shaped, Destroyed And Survived The Internet, is out now.

The wake-like atmosphere at the conference was a grim backdrop to the prime minister's increasingly hysterical-sounding optimism. 

Dr Naomi Elster is Director of Research and Communications for a cancer research charity. As a scientist she was involved in getting a new breast cancer therapy to clinical trial, and as a journalist she covered science and women’s health, for which she was co-recipient of a national award. She campaigned for abortion decriminalisation in Ireland and led a mental health-themed creative magazine. She is passionate about the potential of research to improve lives, healthcare disparities, and gender equality.

Taj Ali is a writer with a focus on class and socio-economic inequality. His work has previously appeared in the Huffington Post, Metro and The Independent.

Membership is growing, and support for strikes is on the up. But they are not yet the united national force they could be. 

Derek Bardowell is the author of Giving Back, which reimagines philanthropy through a reparative lens and CEO of Ten Years’ Time. His first book No Win Race was a Sunday Times and Financial Times Book of the Year in 2019. Derek is a Thirty Percy Foundation and Mission 44 trustee.

Kwasi Kwarteng's budget is cosplay Reaganomics - but the UK cannot possibly recover in the same way America did.

Dimi Reider is a journalist and an editor, including at The Lead. He is a co-founder of  +972 Magazine, and his writing has appeared everywhere from The New York Times to Haaretz and from Foreign Affairs to the London Review of Books. He also spent some time as a senior editor at Newsweek, but he doesn't like to talk about it much. Dimi is also a facilitator with background in conflict mediation and currently focusing on journalism and trauma. 

James is an economist and director of the Progressive Economy Forum.

Cira Robinson, Ballet Black’s principal dancer, on humble beginnings, overcoming elitism, and building true inclusivity.  

Three things to remember: It's not your fault, it's policy; you're not alone; and you can survive this. 

Leah is an award-winning documentary director and journalist with roots in international current affairs and an editor at The Lead. Their film The Mortician of Manila, the story of Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs through the eyes of an undertaker, was long-listed for an Academy Award, nominated for a Grierson Award and has won over twenty awards around the world. Leah became an ex-deputy foreign editor at Sky News after driving an armoured personnel carrier into the City of London during the 2009 G20 protests with a performance art group called the Space Hijackers. 

Krista is a writer and award-winning social justice activist from Hackney, East London. An expert in child poverty and working in community development for Volunteer Centre Hackney, she's the founder of the Hackney Community Closet, a volunteer-led non-profit focused on empowering families and communities through the gift economy. She is the author of a series of childrens' non-fiction books and is working on her first novel.

The pandemic gave us the space to redress imbalances in our working lives. Is it time to rekindle the fight for a four-day working week? 

Serena is a news editor at Dazed and a columnist for Prospect. She has previously written for Vice, Refinery29, Huck, i-D, British Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Stylist and Grazia. 

Yes, prices could crash. No, it won’t help you.

Journalist Faima Bakar explains why ignoring climate change will devastate the planet and Tory re-election hopes.

Institutional philanthropy has a problem - but there are better ways to support charitable causes.

Travel chaos, dystopian politics, a distinct lack of sex - this is why summer 2022 was a flop.

Natalie is a journalist, podcast host, and the author of Mixed/Other - she specialises in social justice, inequality, lifestyle, health and wellbeing, and everything in-between. When she's not writing and editing for The Lead, you can find her work in the Guardian, Metro, Stylist, gal-dem, the Independent, and others. Mancunian living in London.

Bethan is a freelance features writer and producer specialising in pop culture. She loves asking people way too many questions and gets her ideas from conversations at the pub or listlessly scrolling through social media. You can find her work in Vice, iD, Cosmopolitan, Refinery29, Metro UK, Pink News and now, here at The Lead.

Andy West is the author of The life Inside: A Memoir of Prison, Family and Philosophy  (Picador 2022). His writing has been published in The Guardian, Aeon, 3AM Magazine, and Huck.  He is philosopher in residence at HMP Brixton in London.

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Chaminda Jayanetti is a freelance journalist specialising in social affairs - housing, welfare and public services. He regularly writes for the Observer, Politics Home and Byline Times.

Jon is a freelance writer and the organiser of campaign group Right To Roam - a group fighting for free, fair and informed access to land and water throughout England.

We are an editorially independent politics and culture magazine with a campaigning heart. 

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