Step into a natural history museum, sometimes called a ‘dead zoo’, and you will find yourself surrounded by silence. Behind glass cases and inside drawers lie animals long gone: the Tasmanian tiger, the quagga, birds that no longer take flight, creatures whose skins and bones now carry only the weight of memory. These preserved remains are meant to represent care – careful handling, careful storage, and careful cataloguing, in a tribute to the long dead and sometimes extinct. But as Dr Katrina Schlunke, from the University of Potsdam and Sydney, argues, the care offered by museums is not so simple. It is bound up with histories of colonialism, extinction, and exclusion, which are typically not explored or acknowledged in the displays we encounter.

Professor Michael Saward from the University of Warwick examines how Tate Liverpool’s Democracies exhibition used curatorial methods to explore democracy in ways that fundamentally differ from traditional academic approaches. By analyzing several artworks displayed between 2020 and 2023, and how the exhibition was presented by the gallery, Saward reveals how art galleries can generate knowledge, challenging democratic theorists to reconsider their methodologies and pay greater attention to embodiment, visceral experiences, and situated actions.

Penelope J. Corfield’s groundbreaking book, entitled Time-Space: We Are All in It Together, presents a multidimensional framework for understanding how humans exist within the cosmic continuum of time and space. Corfield agrees with the modern scientific consensus post-Einstein, where time is understood not as a separate dimension but as being integrally yoked with space. Together, time and space form one dynamic system, which shapes all of existence. But Corfield argues that the continuum should properly be named time-space rather than spacetime, because time is the dynamo and space is its physical manifestation. The book then explores how this great time-space continuum frames the entire cosmos, including all human existence and our collective journey through history.

In the 18th century, Scottish philosopher David Hume posed a confounding question about the nature of the scientific method. By questioning the logic behind making predictions based on past observations, he exposed a fundamental problem that has vexed logicians to this day. But now, through a new analysis, philosophers Prof. Gerhard Schurz and Dr. Paul Thorn at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf offer a fresh perspective – one that could finally help us escape Hume’s logical trap, through a concept known as regret-based meta-induction.

Communication research from Texas Christian University reveals how the killing of Atatiana Jefferson in Fort Worth exposed fundamental failures in how cities listen to Black residents. Through in-depth interviews and a national survey, Dr. Ashley English, Dr. Jacqueline Lambiase and Dr. Julie O’Neil demonstrate that meaningful organizational listening requires not just hearing community voices, but implementing changes based on their input. Their findings show that without authentic engagement and accountability, municipal listening processes perpetuate rather than disrupt systemic racism.

In our increasingly interconnected world, sharing knowledge freely and fairly is crucial for ongoing development and progress. Increasing the overall size of our store of knowledge is important in dealing with the challenges we face in the modern world, but determining who can access and add to that knowledge is a key question. Prestigious academic journals and global conferences aim to help disseminate our most important discoveries and innovations, but researchers do not have equal access to such resources to promote their ideas and consequently not all voices are heard equally. Scholars from low- and middle-income countries continue to face invisible walls that limit their participation in the global exchange of ideas. This systemic imbalance is the focus of a deeply insightful study by Dr. Angel Ford of the University at Albany and Dr. Daniel Alemneh of the University of North Texas, who call for a more just and healthier scholarly communication system.