Author: Ishita Shetty

The Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025 that took place between August 22nd and September 27th is certainly a notable highlight this year in Loughborough University’s sports scene, as Lightning members Emily Scarratt, Sadia Kabeya, Lilli Ives Campion, and Helena Rowland joined the line-up alongside former players such as  Lark Atkin-Davies, Abi Burton, and Morwenna Tallingat at the upcoming Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025. Even better? They won the whole tournament! In a staggering 33 points against the Canadian team’s 15 points, it’s safe to say the members of England’s red roses earned its well-deserved victory after a gruelling set of matches against France, Scotland, Australia, Samoa and USA. Adding to England’s impressive 3-year winning streak on the fields of Twickenham. Current Lightning Flanker Sadia Kabeya had this to say in…

Missed having a community you can call your own? Members of the ACS have been there, done that! Hoping to uplift and inspire Loughborough University’s Afro-Caribbean student community, they’ve worked hard this year to give students a wide selection of opportunities and experiences throughout the academic year that cater to various interests and passions. Whether that includes sports activities such as Netball, Football and Basketball or annual events such as the Afro-Caribbean Cultural Night and Origin: their showcase and talent show, there’s something here for everyone to enjoy. For this year’s Black History Month campaign, Elizabeth Boafo, chair of ACS 2025-2026,…

If you were thinking about a room filled to the brim with unique wall art, posters of your favourite films, a shelf of cacti and the scent of lemongrass from a scented candle when I brought up the word “Safe space”, I’m happy to report – you’re not the only one.  While it’s not as cozy as the picture I’ve painted in the introductory paragraphs of this article, safe spaces are important to have everywhere. Whether that’s your home, university or your place of work. That’s cool and all, but how do we do that? I’d say, it’s a matter of treating others the way you want to be treated. Taking the time to…

Manchester City’s Women Super League and Arsenal win over crowds on Saturday as players from both sides take a stand against racism for Black History Month. Across each month of October across the UK, fans and players alike gather around to celebrate the successes of African and Caribbean challengers and game changers who fought to share their stories, heritage and culture all over the world. The movement has gained notoriety within this country since 1987, with the arrival of Ghanian analyst and activist Akyaaba Addai-Sebo, as an escape from the regime of Jerry John Rawlings. Stating in 2017: “I was stirred…

Just when you thought I was done talking about the war between AI and creativity, I rise from the ashes and find a way to always come back. Because if AI can persist over the years and grow stronger despite the backlash it faces from workers and protestors alike, then why can’t we? Especially when popular celebrities of the likes of Elton John, Kate Bush, Dua Lipa or my personal favourite, Paul McCartney throw themselves into this silent battlefield. As over 400 of them hold up the flag of creativity high up in the sky for the whole nation to…

Photo Credits: ‘Money, Paper Plane’, from Pixabay As we eagerly count down the days till the end of the semester, finishing up that last paragraph in our coursework, sitting that last essay, we can find ourselves daydreaming about the perfect summer holiday. New adventures, beach tans, and scenic spots. Once we cheer our last hurrahs and celebrate a job well done, we ask ourselves one important question – now what? Scholars like Nanxi Yan et. al (2023) prove to us that everyone deserves a good holiday. A chance to let your hair down and unwind so to speak, if we…

Photo Source: Jakob Rosen on Unsplash. It’s 2025 and we’re playing back the era of vinyl! With EP and single records being sold for up to 1.2 billion dollars, the demand for vinyl seems to build up with every passing year. But will this new fad lead to nothing more than a crescendo or will it continue to stay alive, like a broken record of our past? We have to ask- why is vinyl making such a comeback? Why the playback? It could be argued that it’s simply romanticized nostalgia for older generations and the past by the younger generations…

AI prompt: “write a 500 short story on the topic of the magic of creativity.” Surely, we’ve all done something like this before… Whether out of curiosity for the latest fad in Silicon Valley, or perhaps because we just couldn’t get out of writing block this morning! I’ve certainly been there. And for those who are curious about trying out this prompt in software such as Gemini or Chat GPT or Copilot, you are able to generate all sorts of results in varying measures of quality. You can reset the responses until they are tailored to your preferences. The best…

It seems like the days of GamerGate restricting women’s gaming experiences are not only coming to an end but crashing hard, like Skyrim! As the organiser of the Guildford Games Festival Lauran Carter states, that the gender split has recently evolved from 90% male to an equal 50-50% ratio. We have to ask: What does a more female-centred gaming industry look like? Why don’t we log on and find out for ourselves? In terms of e-sports, women are stepping up to the challenge to show that they aren’t about to ‘get rekt’ anytime soon just because ‘they’re girls’. With players…

Ever wondered what it’s like to talk to a therapist for free? What if I told you that you could? As one’s probably stated before, you can’t spell ELIZA without AI. Before the age of AI chatbots such as Chat GPT or Gemini, there stood ELIZA. Developed back in the 1960s by MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum in just 420 lines of code, more specifically – Michigan Algorithm Decoder Symmetric List Processor (MAD-SLIP) as a programming language – software researchers and “historians” call this AI  the pioneer of chatbot simulations. Hidden away in MIT’s archives for 60 years, it was reconstructed from those archives by…