Each story for Insights , The Conversation's longform investigative series , typically takes months to produce, building on years of academic research. And of course, these deep-dive investigations don't just stop when the story is published.
Authors
- Mike Herd
Investigations Editor, Insights
- Paul Keaveny
Investigations Editor, Insights, The Conversation
So, as another eventful year draws to a close, we've asked our authors to update us on how their research has progressed since publication - and about any unusual opportunities that may have arisen from writing for Insights. Here's a selection of their responses.
Sam Carr , reader in education and psychology at the University of Bath, has written three Insights articles exploring people's struggles with loneliness and 'tiredness of life'.
One major benefit of articulating the abstract concepts I work with for a wider public audience is that people may then recognise aspects of loneliness or "tiredness of life" in themselves - and this seems to offer them a sort of "permission" to acknowledge the experience.
My colleagues and I have received letters from people all over the world eager to tell us about nuanced and extended versions of the phenomena we are studying, and wishing to be part of further research. We have recently begun considering whether we can create a repository or network based upon such responses, that will help refine and direct where our research might head next.
Off the back of my first loneliness long read in 2021, I was asked whether I'd like to write a book about loneliness. This eventually developed into All the Lonely People: Conversations on Loneliness - a book published by Picador (2024) which has had a great global reach and been a mechanism to ignite public debate around loneliness in many ways. It wouldn't have been written if the Insights article on loneliness had not stimulated that initial interest.
In July 2024, Arwyn Edwards , reader in biology at Aberystwyth University, won the Association of British Science Writers' Dr Katharine Giles Award for his article revealing the catastrophic impact of climate change on the Arctic's invisible microbial life.
Since writing my story in June 2023, the world has continued to warm. This year, our team has been heavily committed to fieldwork in the high Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, around 1,000 miles from the north pole. Nearly 60% of Svalbard is covered by glaciers and it is home to several thousand polar bears, which are increasingly restless as they roam the fastest-warming region of our planet.
Our goal is to understand the microbial ecology of glaciers in all seasons. This includes working in the perpetual darkness of polar night, navigating through blizzard conditions by head torch, ever alert to the possibility of encountering a bear, for they do not hibernate.
We have also collected ice cores, travelling on snowmobiles in temperatures of -30°C in March. Windchill in these conditions freezes exposed flesh in mere minutes. But we have also explored glaciers in temperatures of +20°C this summer, with hot winds blowing across the ice of some of Svalbard's largest glaciers. For a region where summer temperatures recently used to hover just above freezing, this is exceptional and concerning.
But our work is not just in the field. The fate of glaciers and their microbial life is sparking important conversations closer to home. Our community of glacier biologists is quietly building networks and raising our ambitions for understanding and protecting frozen life while we can. The UN has determined that 2025 will be the international year of glaciers' preservation, and the start of a decade of action by cold-region scientists. Time is short, but the legacy of acting now to understand and safeguard the microbes of the Arctic will be felt long after us.
Gianluca Fantoni and Andrea Pisauro , senior lecturers at the universities of Nottingham Trent and Plymouth respectively, are reinvestigating the murder of Italian politician Giacomo Matteotti in 1924 - one of Italy's most infamous cold cases.
2024 was an important year for Italian democracy, which a century ago saw its demise with the beginning of the fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini. Last May, the Italian parliament honoured a man who paid with his life for his strenuous attempt to defend democracy from that fascist threat.
Socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti's murder on June 10 1924 is still a conflicted part of Italian collective memory. Was Matteotti killed on the order of Mussolini himself? Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni published a note on the 100th anniversary of Matteotti's last parliamentary speech where she blamed the murder on unnamed fascists, thus exonerating their leader Mussolini.
Yet our detailed reexamination of documents relating to the investigation - which have now been digitised and publicly released by the LSE library in London - provide compelling evidence linking the murder to Mussolini. Our research has uncovered fresh new leads about the motive for the murder, including Matteotti's international connections in London, where he had travelled just two months before being killed.
Our team is now working with the Matteotti Foundation in Italy to compare the LSE documents with documents in Italy, and to expand our research on Matteotti's London connections. We have also submitted a grant proposal for a project aimed at determining, once and for all, why Matteotti was murdered - including plans for an international conference to be held in London in December 2025.
Sophie Watt , lecturer in the University of Sheffield's School of Languages and Cultures, wrote an expose of the realities of life for refugees in France's informal coastal camps next to the Channel.
This article significantly contributed to the development of my new research project focused on the lived experience of migrant families, and was instrumental in the organisation of a field trip I led in the summer of 2024 to the [autonomous Spanish cities of] Ceuta and Melilla [on the coast of North Africa]. I am now examining the concept of "hospitality" and the experiences of individuals navigating these borders. I was also asked to work as a visiting research associate for the Migration Collective based at Lahore University in Pakistan.
Eyal Poleg , professor of material history at Queen Mary University of London, co-wrote an investigation into how Thomas Cromwell used 'cut and paste' techniques to insert himself into Henry VIII's great bible when it was printed in 1538-9.
Our work leading up to publication of this Insights article has been instrumental in securing a major research project, Hidden in Plain Sight: Historical and Scientific Analysis of Premodern Sacred Books . In partnership with Cambridge University Library, we are extending the use of heritage science to explore a range of historical books and artefacts - including liaising with the London Museum on the analysis of a book binding found in the Thames, and visiting Bhutan to work with its government on employing heritage science to support conservation and fight theft.
James Muldoon , associate professor in management at the University of Essex, authored our most-read Insights article of 2024 - an investigation of the 'wild west world' of human-AI relationships.
I've expanded the article into a book project which is tentatively titled "Love, Sex and Death with AI Companions". The title will probably change, but writing The Conversation long read convinced me there was an interesting angle there that could be fleshed out more fully with longer stories.
Emily Zobel Marshall , reader in postcolonial literature at Leeds Beckett University, investigated the roots of Beatrix Potter's famous children's tales.
I have expanded on my work for The Conversation for a book chapter for the new edition of The Routledge Companion to Media and Fairy-Tale Cultures (to be published in 2025). My chapter is entitled Postcolonial Tricksters: African Diasporic Folklore in Contemporary Culture. I was also a keynote speaker at Emory University in Atlanta, drawing from my research on Brer Rabbit, entitled A Tricksters Tale: The Politics of Race and Storytelling, and am working with the film producer Marina Warsama on a potential TV documentary based on my research.
Leigh Riby , professor of cognitive neuroscience at Northumbria University, revealed how and why music of all kinds has the power to heal us.
Writing this article actually prompted myself and colleagues to develop the neuroscience methods described in it more quickly, enabling us to apply them in other areas of research. For example, we recently secured industry funding to use these methods to explore the effects of aromas on mental health. This has been a fantastic opportunity to extend the application of our work into new and exciting areas beyond the topics mentioned in the article.
Appearing on Steve Baker's Curious Producer podcast encouraged me to explore new avenues for sharing my research through popular science platforms. I've also contributed to an upcoming feature in The Guardian's Saturday magazine on how to regain energy. Music might be one outlet after we have over-indulged over Christmas!
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