By Abdullahi Mahi I’ve watched young people across Europe, mostly my own generation, Gen Z, take to the streets, and I understand why. They are protesting against rising living costs and poor school conditions. I believe protests work when they have two things: a human face and a clear demand. Looking at Italy, France and...
Category: Present Issues
You’ve got to be in it to win it
By Emre Alex Aslan I was watching a TikTok video, a person doing a funny skit, when halfway through he pulled out his phone, opened Rainbet (a gambling app), bet $200, and slipped the phone back into his pocket. He had doubled his money in a few seconds. When did gambling become this easy? And...
The boulders arrived before the consultation did
Huray Demirci This is the first of four blogs I am writing for my module, Democratic Engagement in an International Context, at the University of Westminster. The module asks us to find a problem in our own community and follow it across the whole year: what the problem is, why it exists, how to investigate...
The Death of the Old in the Face of Populism
By Liam Pender As we pass through the first quarter of the 21st century, we have seen monumental changes in society in response to threats of a global, domestic, climate, economic and military nature. There has been war in Europe on a scale not seen since the Second World War. Multiple conflicts in the Middle...
The Collapse of the Left in Hungary
By Tristan Kovats, History & Politics, University of Westminster Introduction On 12 April 2026, Hungarians turned out in record numbers: a 79% turnout, the highest since 1990. For the first time in more than a century, no party of the left won a single seat in the National Assembly. The Democratic Coalition, the last major...
Sebta and Melilla: The African cities that belong to Spain
By Najia Benhamza, University of Westminster In this blog, I refer to Ceuta as “Sebta,” reflecting its Arabic name. As a Moroccan, my heritage matters deeply to me. We have a rich culture and a long history, but our country has also lived through colonisation and its aftermath. A clear example is the case of...
A safe space does not mean a challenge-free space
By Ribana Cristescu· Democratic Education Network, University of Westminster What happens when a diverse room of curious students gathers, not out of obligation, but out of a shared desire to make a genuine difference? Today I took part in the first in-person meeting of the Democratic Education Network (DEN) at the University of Westminster...
“Trust the lab over the feed.”
A Westminster Biomedical Science student on TikTok wellness culture, the “fertility juice” myth, and why real endocrinology cannot fit inside a viral video Afsana Riya, BSc Biomedical Science, University of Westminster * * * Open TikTok right now, and you will find millions of young women diagnosing their own endocrine systems based entirely on viral...
An Impostor in Your Own Skin
From a conference built on personal experience to a community project on impostor syndrome. Rida Butt invites you in. Rida Butt, final-year Medical Sciences student, University of Westminster * * * My name is Rida Butt. I am a final-year Medical Sciences student at the University of Westminster, and I was once told, on two...
To Pass the Knife
In some families, the inheritance isn’t money… It’s a knife. A baton of survival, passed silently from one generation to the next. On streets like Church Road, among communities of colour, that baton became a legacy. The truth for many young black boys is that the knife isn’t about power; it’s about protection, identity, or...
Home in the Diaspora: Memory, Identity, and Belonging
To belong to a place you never lived in is a strange inheritance. For many diasporic Africans, “home” is more a presence than a location, felt in names, rhythms, stories, and the hushed pull of a continent that lives inside us even when we may never have stood on its soil. It is important as...
AI and the Irregular Architecture of Digital Participation: Who Speaks, Who Decides, Who Benefits?
In this digital age, questions of who speaks, who decides, and who benefits have become central to understanding how technology reshapes democracy. Digital activism has redefined participation, transforming communication and civic power through Artificial Intelligence or AI. In the context of this discussion, it will be argued that AI will continue to expand accessibility...
