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Hilary Graham, Pete Lampard
Climate change is driven by the fossil fuel consumption of past and current generations. Its effects will disproportionately fall on today’s children and those yet to be born (‘future generations’). We chart the historical contribution of high-income countries, including the UK, to their climate futures before exploring the intergenerational orientations of two key actors in climate politics: the United Nations (UN), the collective voice of sovereign states, and adults with the right to vote in these states. Taking UK adults as our example, we suggest that adults share the UN’s commitment to protecting children and future generations from accelerating climate change. We conclude by noting the importance of this ethical alignment at a time of polarised debates about climate change and the increasing fragility of global institutions like the UN.
26 March 2026
Dominic Davies, Kremena Dimitrova, Reed Puc
This online exhibition of photographs and artworks provides documentation of ‘Power Grids: Reimagining Energy Infrastructure in Comics’ (2024–2026). The project is funded by the BA/Leverhulme Small Research grant scheme and the images included here were exhibited at the British Academy’s Summer Showcase in June 2025. The project brings together two discrete yet growing social movements: community energy and comics-based research. It uses comics co-creation workshops to conduct research into the way communities across England are organising to produce sustainable energy and in that way to lower fuel costs, catalyse the green transition and combat the climate crisis, and build place-making cultures of empowerment and belonging.
24 March 2026
Professor Patricia Hayes, in conversation with Professor Elizabeth Edwards
In this ‘Conversation’ piece, Professors Patricia Hayes and Elizabeth Edwards discuss the relationship between photography and history as it manifests itself through the photographic legacies of Southern Africa. The specific historical experience of the Southern Africa has given rise to a realisation of the potential of photographs as drivers for historical thinking and analysis, the way photographs ‘move history forward’. The Conversation addresses major questions that resonate through the discourse and politics of global photographies—about the conditions of visibility, the problematics of Western photo-theory and of the language of photographic and historiographical analysis as viewed from the Global South.
23 March 2026
Dominic Davies, Kremena Dimitrova, Reed Puc
This online exhibition of photographs and artworks provides documentation of ‘Power Grids: Reimagining Energy Infrastructure in Comics’ (2024–2026). The project is funded by the BA/Leverhulme Small Research grant scheme and the images included here were exhibited at the British Academy’s Summer Showcase in June 2025. The project brings together two discrete yet growing social movements: community energy and comics-based research. It uses comics co-creation workshops to conduct research into the way communities across England are organising to produce sustainable energy and in that way to lower fuel costs, catalyse the green transition and combat the climate crisis, and build place-making cultures of empowerment and belonging.
24 March 2026
Professor Patricia Hayes, in conversation with Professor Elizabeth Edwards
In this ‘Conversation’ piece, Professors Patricia Hayes and Elizabeth Edwards discuss the relationship between photography and history as it manifests itself through the photographic legacies of Southern Africa. The specific historical experience of the Southern Africa has given rise to a realisation of the potential of photographs as drivers for historical thinking and analysis, the way photographs ‘move history forward’. The Conversation addresses major questions that resonate through the discourse and politics of global photographies—about the conditions of visibility, the problematics of Western photo-theory and of the language of photographic and historiographical analysis as viewed from the Global South.
23 March 2026
Katy Hayward
We are entering an era of ‘AI everywhere’, in which Artificial Intelligence is not merely being utilised but integrated into countless aspects of human interaction and occupation. Such is the nature of this integration that AI is not only changing our behaviour but our capabilities. It is also exposing new societal vulnerabilities—particularly in our use of language and the way we access, accumulate, and process information. Communication and information are all-important for the exercise of power, including political power. To hold such power to account, it is imperative that human intelligence remains distinctive and discerning. The inculcation of neoliberalism and endemic thoughtlessness has compromised the capacity of the contemporary University to meet this challenge. This article argues that the need for the University to foster the freedom of human intelligence is not only a moral obligation but an urgent democratic necessity.
23 March 2026
Andrew Hadfield, Elizabeth Edwards, Fiona Williams, Angela McRobbie
The Editors introduce the fourth issue of Volume 13 of the Journal of the British Academy. This Introduction includes an overview of the content of the issue.
5 December 2025