Over the past few weeks I have noticed the seemingly inexorable growth of anti-vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories across social media. Like opening a bag of bread and noticing a few...
Covid isn’t leaving us at any point soon. It’s the unwanted guest lingering in the kitchen, eyeing up the half-full bottle of wine on the counter, and menacingly staring at your elderly grandmother, writes Jean Balchin.
You may have seen one — a green and yellow sunflower-bedazzled lanyard hung casually around the neck of someone sitting on the bus or pushing a trolley around the supermarket. Perhaps the lanyard...
Two Saturdays ago, while collecting firewood in the back garden, my 65-year-old father collapsed from a heart attack. He was found by my little brother Jack, who alerted my mother, who then called...
I love cemeteries. I don’t mean this in a creepy, early-2000s-emo kind of way; I don’t drape myself in diaphanous dresses and wander pensively around, musing on Poe’s dark verses.
If I had a dollar for every time someone said to me “but you don’t look sick!” I would be a rich woman. Unless one encounters me in the morning, before I’ve put on makeup and had my coffee, I look...
I was scrolling through Twitter the other day, as I am wont to do when a thesis is due and I lack the energy or motivation to write said thesis, when I came upon a photo of an alarming medieval torture device on my timeline.
As a teenager, I was known by my family as "the hermit" due to my propensity for hiding out in my room outside of mealtimes, avoiding all church social gatherings, and disappearing as soon as...
It's that time of year again, when the days are longest, the sunshine brightest, and we are encouraged to reflect on the past year. 2021 is just around the corner, but before we list out our...
I was heartened the other day to hear Labour announce that, if re-elected, it will ban conversion therapy and make it a criminal offence to advertise, offer or perform the awful practice.
For this week’s column, Jean Balchin decided to ‘‘pass the mic’’ to dear friend and fellow Rhodes Scholar, Mimi Alyce Borders, who has penned this article in response to the murder of Oluwatoyin Salau, a young black woman from Tallahassee, Florida.
This past Sunday, the University of Otago’s Richardson building hosted a brilliant light show, exploring how the Victorians grappled with a world in transition.