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Languages
Can I use 'we' and 'I' in my essay? Introducing corpus linguistics
An introduction to using a corpus to get answers in linguistics.
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History & The Arts
How the sausage links us together
Sweet versions, meat free versions; some with skins and some without. The sausage takes many forms, but is always with us.
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History & The Arts
What sort of Victoria Sponge would Queen Victoria have eaten?
The Queen did enjoy her namesake cake - and thanks to the work of food historians, you can recreate Victoria's Victoria sponge.
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History & The Arts
How the potato fuelled the rise of liberal capitalism
It can make chips. It can make mash. And the potato can even help create an entire political-economic system. Rebecca Earle explains how.
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Education & Development
Are we taking the fun out of reading?
Enforcing reading on small children - and treating books as unclean - risks putting kids off literacy before they've even started, worries Ingrid Piller.
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Science, Maths & Technology
How network science can unravel Al Capone's criminal associates
In new research which studies the social relationships of organized crime in Chicago in the 1920s, Chris M. Smith and Andrew V. Papachristos were able to take advantage ofthe availability of thousands of notes and documents on Al Capone’s criminal network. By applying network analysis to the criminal relationships in Capone’s gangs they find ...
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History & The Arts
Is science fiction a field in its own right?
Fiction is a topic for study. Science, clearly, is an area where a lot of thought is directed. So why is it science fiction is often shunned as unworthy as a subject for academic enquiry?
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Society, Politics & Law
The ethics and politics of the migration and refugee crisis
We've shared some of the Who Are We project - but this isn't the first time the OU's academics have come together with artists. Discover some earlier collaborations.
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Society, Politics & Law
Beyond the Babble: A conversation about the art of listening
‘Beyond The Babble’ is an interactive and participatory audio focused installation. It explored questions of identity, belonging and the fragile nuance of power-shifts around the impact of voices may have -- beyond the noise which perhaps social media create.
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Science, Maths & Technology
The Perseid meteor shower 2017
The Perseid meteor shower reaches its peak this year on the nights of 11th-13th August. Find out more about meteors, Perseus and what meteors have to do with ancient Egypt here...
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History & The Arts
Do fictional characters shift perceptions of transgender people?
New research in America suggests that characters like Laverne Cox's Sophia Burset in Orange Is The New Black may have more impact on how society reacts to transgender people, than the reported experiences of real people. Erica L Rosensthal and Traci Gillig share some of their findings.
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Society, Politics & Law
Hope for UK nationals living abroad after Brexit
How might ending free movement - or not - affect the British with lives and homes overseas?