Jude Kelly is known to millions of people around the world. She is a theatre director, with more than 100 productions to her name....

‘If we are to end violence against women and girls, we need to create seismic shifts across our social norms’. So says Marai Larasi,...

When Birkbeck was established in 1823, it was called the London Mechanics’ Institution. It was one of the first ‘mechanics’ institutes’...

On 4 March 2020, the Black feminist organisation Imkaan launched a report in the Houses of Parliament on sexual violence against...

On 12 June 1993, the editors of the British Medical Journal published an account by a male doctor of being sexually assaulted by another...

The Covid-19 pandemic is a stark reminder of human vulnerability. To be vulnerable (from the Latin ‘vulnus’, meaning ‘wound’) is to be...

Covid-19 exposed girls, women, and other minoritised groups to increased domestic violence. As has happened throughout the world, calls...

Andrea Quinlan’s 2017 book The Technoscientific Witness of Rape: Contentious Histories of Law, Feminism, and Forensic Science ...

What if nurses in A&E wards or staff at rape crisis centres could give rape victims a drug that would make them feel emotionally composed...

In 1918-19, the world was in the midst of a global influenza pandemic, that killed 50 million people (more than the 1914-18 war). When...

Evil women. This is the first of a series of blogs about evil women, so, before turning to Eve’s evil legacies, I want to draw attention...

Each generation invents evil. And evil women have incited our imaginations since Eve first plucked that apple.   One of my favourites...

Amelia Dyer was a serial killer of babies and infants. She was the most prolific mass murderer (at least on British soil) in modern...

‘Sharing a Birthday with Mata Hari’ is a poem by Susan Gubernat:   She refused the blindfold, faced twelve raised guns, Men’s erections...

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,  Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend  More than cool reason ever comprehends.  The...

Friday, 15 October 1965. Saddleworth Moor, near Oldham in Lancashire, England. On Boxing Day the previous year, Lesley Ann Downey...

Pain is a phantom, a spectre that haunts clinical encounters. Physical suffering is the chief symptom impelling people to seek medical...

25 February 1946. ‘Poor Mary’ (a.k.a. Mary of Hendon) lies murdered in a field, her petticoats in disarray. Trainee detectives pile out...

Cicero (106-43 B.C.): ‘Nature has given us eyes to declare our internal emotions’. Paulo Coelho (1947-): ‘The eyes are the mirror of the...

Punch divided the stomach into four ‘Faculties’. It called the first the ‘Sustaining Faculty’, which dealt with foods that were essential...