The Open University

Award-winning author and broadcaster is keynote speaker at OU global challenges festival

8 June 2023

Gary Younge is one of the headliners at a four-day hybrid festival staged at the OU to give voice to research into real-life global challenges and social justice to aid change. The former Guardian columnist, who is also a Professor of sociology at the University of Manchester, has made several radio and TV documentaries on […]

Flash Fiction: Literature’s Delinquent Offspring

6 June 2023

The OU is due to launch its forthcoming flash fiction competition #OU50words. The multi-award-winning campaign invites those interested to write a piece of flash fiction in no more than 50 words, in response to the university’s daily video writing prompt. To support the competition, OU academic Gwyneth Jones shares the content below about ‘Literature’s Delinquent […]

Award-winning 50-word flash fiction competition returns!

5 June 2023

Back by popular demand, our multi-award-winning flash fiction competition #OU50words is returning to The Open University’s social media channels. Every day for seven days (starting on Monday 12 June) we’ll be sharing a different storytelling prompt designed to inspire you to forge a 50-word, fictional footpath. We invited award-winning photographer Laura Jones from Atmospheric Images to spend […]

Lovers of detective-fiction have the chance to study Agatha Christie’s writing for free

1 June 2023

If you ever wanted to know the secrets of writing detective fiction, The Open University is staging a free short course of the work of 20th Century whodunnit queen Agatha Christie. According to Guinness World Records, Christie is the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies. Now […]

From rags and pads to the sanitary apron: a brief history of period products

26 April 2023

Professor Emerita of Classical Studies Helen King writes about the history of period products and how women used them through the ages. Period blood: it’s not something many people want to talk about. Taboos around menstruation and menstrual blood have been around for centuries. Even today, despite menstrual blood being featured in contemporary art, this […]

Putin’s visit to Kherson, electronic call-up papers and the latest dissenter deterrent

20 April 2023

Dr Precious Chatterje-Doody is a politics and international relations academic at The Open University and specialises in communication, misinformation and security, particularly in Russia. Here she talks about what Putin’s latest visit to Kherson means, his new plan for drafting men into the Russian army and how he continues to manage dissent. President Putin’s recent […]

Super-student mother notches up three degrees in six years while working

18 April 2023

When a mother-of-two climbed the stage at London’s The Barbican in celebration of passing her Open University degree the audience was left agog when they discovered she was there for not one degree but three. In fact, Diana de Vega de Ceniga, 50, from Surrey, doesn’t have just three degrees, but a total of FIVE! […]

OU academic chosen out of hundreds for a broadcast project

5 April 2023

An OU academic has won one of the nation’s ten coveted places as a “New Generation Thinker” to bring fresh thinking to a range of topics on the world around us. The project is run by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and BBC Radio 3, and Dr Dan taylor, Lecturer in Social and […]

What to know about tax-free savings before the 5 April ISA deadline

31 March 2023

If you want to know about tax-free individual-savings account and why you may need to take one out now – see what Jonquil Lowe, senior lecturer in economics and personal finance at The Open University, has to say. The window for making the most of your savings this tax year is closing. As the final […]

Four ways the UK economy is being hampered by the private sector

27 March 2023

Alan Shipman is a senior lecturer in economics at The Open University. Here he talks about ways the private sector is hampering today’s UK economy and points to four ways it is doing so. The UK government has decided to go ahead with a rise in corporation tax in April 2023. The move is a […]

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