This is a talk I presented at the 109 th  Rectors’ Assembly of Greek Universities on 10 th  July 2025.  (For the video-ed version of the talk, go to the 'Video and Audio section of my website: https://www.joannabourke.com/home-3 )   The high point of The University was from the postwar period (1940s) to the 1980s, a period characterized by the rapid expansion of Higher Education, coupled (albeit patchily) with a dedication to the value of knowledge and critical thinking. It w

My views on Open Play. The Case for Feminist Sport by Sheree Bekker and Stephen Mumford (Reaktion Books, 2025)     Sport is a feminist issue. We also know that it is highly gendered. But what if what we know about gender and sport is wrong?   Sheree Bekker and Stephen Mumford set out to show that physical differences between men and women are artificial ('socially constructed'), not ‘natural: they are the result of social and cultural forces including differences in opportu

Why aren’t gay, lesbian, trans, and queer people full citizens in law? This question enraged gay activists in 1990s Britain. The HIV/AIDS...

Caption: Reception for the Shameless! Festival of Activism Against Sexual Violence. Left to right: Professor Joanna Bourke, Julia...

I loved working with the SHaME (Sexual Harms and Medical Encounters) team over 5 and a half years. SHaME’s Public Engagement Lead, Dr...

The SHaME project have talked to some incredible people who reflect on sexual violence and ways to create rape-free worlds. You can...

The events I have enjoyed most in connection with the SHaME project were our two Shameless! Festivals of Activism Against Sexual...

For five and a half years, I have been privileged to work with the SHaME team at Birkbeck. It has been the most intellectually rewarding...

On the 29 June 1864, a military surgeon in the 21st Kentucky Infantry wrote to his wife. ‘It has been almost one continued stream of...

Robairt Clough was a long-term patient at Holywell Psychiatric Hospital in Antrim (Northern Ireland). In the Christmas 1972 edition of...

Sleep is necessary to life. However, it remains shrouded in mystery, despite the fact that most people spend one third of their lives...

In August 1812, eminent novelist Frances Burney described with alarming precision her mounting sense of terror as she prepared to undergo...

On 12 June 1993, the editors of the British Medical Journal published an account by a male doctor of being sexually assaulted by another...

The Covid-19 pandemic is a stark reminder of human vulnerability. To be vulnerable (from the Latin ‘vulnus’, meaning ‘wound’) is to be...

Covid-19 exposed girls, women, and other minoritised groups to increased domestic violence. As has happened throughout the world, calls...

Andrea Quinlan’s 2017 book The Technoscientific Witness of Rape: Contentious Histories of Law, Feminism, and Forensic Science ...

What if nurses in A&E wards or staff at rape crisis centres could give rape victims a drug that would make them feel emotionally composed...

In 1918-19, the world was in the midst of a global influenza pandemic, that killed 50 million people (more than the 1914-18 war). When...

Amelia Dyer was a serial killer of babies and infants. She was the most prolific mass murderer (at least on British soil) in modern...

Friday, 15 October 1965. Saddleworth Moor, near Oldham in Lancashire, England. On Boxing Day the previous year, Lesley Ann Downey...