Mandy Fransz was working a nine‑to‑five office job in Dublin for a big American tech firm when she made a life‑changing switch. In 2018, the Dutch tech worker quit her office job to try remote work in search of a better quality of life. She travelled to Bali, southeast Asia, for a month
Richard Youngs, University of Warwick Compounding the alarm triggered by Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the erratic unpredictability of the second Trump administration has made the need for European security autonomy obvious. On a number of occasions over the past year, Donald Trump has loosely intimated that he might leave the Nato
Pier Luigi Parcu, European University Institute Europe has spent years building effective tools to measure media pluralism within its member states. This made sense because newspapers, broadcasters, regulators, ownership structures and public service media were organised within national borders. But the media environment is changing. News is now distributed through global digital platforms,
Ph. PM Keir Starmer and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen have reset the UK-EU relationship – but UK alignment would take things a step further. Alexandros Michailidis/Shutterstock Ursula F Ott, Nottingham Trent University It is now almost a decade since the UK voted for Brexit and since the tariffs of US president
Many people expect a raging wildfire to leave a blackened, lifeless landscape in its wake. But after a blaze swept through Las Hurdes in Extremadura, Spain, in 2009, the scene was quite different. In the midst of the scorched earth were patches of green where healthy trees remained standing and unscathed. From a
From his bedroom desk in the Belgian town of Dendermonde, Gert Everaert used to watch the river Scheldt flow past. Barges and small boats drifted by. Birds fished. But the river also carried something less picturesque – a steady stream of litter and plastic waste. “Cars would stop and people threw rubbish straight into
Ph. A protester’s sign reading ‘For peace and justice. No to war’ in Spanish, at a demonstration in Logroño on March 12, 2026. Www.mariomartija.es/Shutterstock Waya Quiviger, IE University The war in Iran has yet again exposed the tensions between Spain’s Pedro Sánchez and Donald Trump. The two leaders have clashed repeatedly over the
Florian Borgwardt and Tibor Erős, ecologists and life-long freshwater enthusiasts, have set their sights on helping restore the mighty Danube. They are working within an international partnership of scientists, conservationists and local communities to restore the river’s ecosystem and biodiversity. Flowing through 10 countries and 4 capitals, Europe’s second-longest river is a vital
Getting children ready and on time for school can be stressful. In Finnish Lapland, where winters are long and snowy and some students travel long distances by bus, the challenge is even greater. In two Lapland communities, a school transport app developed through an EU-funded initiative called AURORAL has streamlined school bus pick-ups,
Across Europe, researchers are using AI to tackle everything from underwater noise pollution to media fact-checking and smarter farming. Until recently, there was no widely used common gateway where they could easily share tools, data and computing power, but that is all changing. Europe’s AI research and innovation is now being brought together