• History

    Celebrating Australia Day


    Michael Pezzullo |  January 25, 2025


    Public support for Australia continues to grow, despite a media campaign to portray it as an imperialist anachronism, as modern Australia is a product of its recent as well as ancient history.


  • Russia

    Understanding Russia


    Paul Dibb |  January 25, 2025


    This essay examines the sources of Russian power and aggressive outlook from an historical, cultural and geopolitical perspective to help predict Russia’s future behaviour.


  • History

    80 years after Auschwitz


    Denis Monneuse |  January 25, 2025


    On the 80th anniversary of liberation of Auschwitz, a new study looks at the different ways the survivors came to terms with the horrors of their ordeal.


Latest Story

  • Albanese on the back foot on antisemitism

    Michelle Grattan     |      January 24, 2025

    Anthony Albanese points to the array of measures his government has taken to tackle the scourge of antisemitism but he can’t escape the impression of seeming perennially on the back foot and often lacking adequate empathy and sensitivity in dealing with the issue.

  • Song and dance man

    Open Forum     |      January 24, 2025

    Bob Dylan once described himself as ‘just a song and dance man’ but he remains the greatest songwriter of our times and a new biopic – A Complete Unknown – does justice to his massive influence on music and youth culture.

  • America first

    Elizabeth Buchanan     |      January 24, 2025

    The litany of executive orders that have dropped on the White House website tell us plenty about what Australia can expect from a second Trump term’s foreign policies.

  • Delving into dementia

    Alan Stevenson     |      January 23, 2025

    Dementia affects nearly 60 million people around the world, and air pollution is emerging as a major contributing factor to this global scourge.

  • Analysing social media ‘clusters’

    Open Forum     |      January 23, 2025

    Analysing social trends, disaster responses or customer insights using large language models to organise short text clusters just got easier thanks to a new project at Sydney University.

  • Quantifying ‘life satisfaction’

    Open Forum     |      January 23, 2025

    Data on almost 57,000 people from 65 countries suggests that a widely used research tool – the Satisfaction With Life Scale – holds up well when applied across diverse groups of people, underscoring its potential value in research and policymaking.

  • Antisemitism on the agenda

    Michelle Grattan     |      January 22, 2025

    After months of rejecting calls to confront and combat the growing wave of antisemetic violence across the country, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has finally summoned a national cabinet meeting to discuss the problem.

  • The consolations of philosophy

    Oscar Davis     |      January 22, 2025

    A new book “Anxiety – a philosophical guide” outlines four strands of philosophical inquiry – Buddhism, existentialism, psychoanalysis, and critical theory – might offer comfort to the worried and distressed.

  • Revenge and retribution

    Emma Shortis     |      January 22, 2025

    In his inaugural address, Trump outlined a radical agenda to reshape American life and the United States’ role in the world.

  • The fact of the meta

    Mark Andrejevic     |      January 21, 2025

    A new Australian survey finds that people who rely on social media for news tend to have less regard for traditional civic values than those who rely on newspapers and non-commercial broadcasters such as the ABC.

  • Safeguarding Australia

    Joseph Zeller     |      January 21, 2025

    The government’s failure to address critical vulnerabilities in defence, energy security, and economic resilience exposes the nation to unprecedented risks.

  • Power and progress

    Marina Yue Zhang     |      January 21, 2025

    In their latest book, Nobel laureates Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson challenge the assumption that technology inevitably drives social welfare, contending that strong institutions and deliberate policy directions are just as important in shaping better outcomes.