Recent work

Thought I’d share links to some of my recent work. Last week I wrote a piece for the New Statesman about the “I, too, and Oxford” and “I , too, am Cambridge” campaigns which highlighted racism at elite institutions.

Of course, whiteboards do not have the space for the full complexity of the arguments about racial insensitivity, about prejudice at elite institutions, or about where curiosity ends and offensiveness begins – and nor did the original campaign pretend to. But those whiteboards serve the important purpose of articulating the small instances – the mundane comments, not always intended to offend – that are difficult to confront in the moment, but add up to a painful whole.

You can read the full piece here.

I’ve also continued to blog regularly for the New Humanist, including this piece on Turkey’s Twitter ban, this on foreign fighters in Syria, and this on Burkina Faso’s “pleasure hospital”.

On Sunday 16th March I appeared on the BBC news channel’s paper review. I’ve also been on numerous Monocle radio shows, most recently this discussion of the day’s foreign news headlines (25 March).