The Humanities took centre stage in the House of Lords as Professor Arlene Holmes-Henderson MBE, from our Department of Classics and Ancient History, celebrated the launch of three new books exploring the impact and relevance of Classics in the modern world.

Across Syria’s shattered cities, the scars of war remain visible, but so too are the people and communities working to rebuild their future. Here Professor Bahar Baser from our School of Government and International Affairs, alongside colleagues from the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies give a powerful account of recent travels through Syria and reflect on the long and complex path from conflict towards recovery.

Iraq’s archaeologists are often portrayed as recipients of support, rather than equal partners in shaping future research of this important part of the world. Professor Jaafar Jotheri, Honorary Research Fellow in our Department of Archaeology, and Claudia Glatz and Daniel Calderbank, of the University of Glasgow, tell us more about how the narrative is being shifted.

Knowing emperor penguins' movements during the polar winter could help support future conservation efforts. Dr Grant Macdonald, in our Department of Geography, explains how for the first time freely available satellite radar images are giving us a year-round view of their movements and improving our understanding of their response to a changing environment.

We’re hosting a new £1.3m (€1.5m) research project, led by Dr Amanda Hsieh, shedding light on the history and impact of the Japanese Empire on the Pacific through music.

For the first time our geographers have used freely available satellite radar images to track emperor penguins through the polar winter – giving a year-round view of their movements.

The UK could store enough green hydrogen in depleted North Sea oil and gas fields to meet the country’s future electricity demands for seven years. The researchers behind this discovery, Professor Stuart Jones, Professor Chris Groves, and Associate Professor in Practice Dr Andrew Crossland, tell us how using the depleted fields for hydrogen storage could take conventional gas power stations off the grid altogether by 2040.

Dr Kaweh Kerami of our School of Government and International Affairs reflects on whether Afghanistan has found the peace that the Taliban claim, five years after the group seized power.

Our astronomers are part of an international team which has discovered a new object – a mash-up of a black hole and an enormous star.

Reputation mattered deeply in medieval England. Dr Alex Brown, Associate Professor in Durham University's Department of History and a member of IMEMS, examines how people turned to the courts to defend themselves against rumours, slander and damaging accusations.

Mathematicians working at the computational forefront of algebra, geometry, and combinatorics gathered in Durham earlier this month for MEGA 2026 (Effective Methods in Algebraic Geometry), one of the world's leading conferences in computational algebraic geometry. The event, held from 6–10 July, marked the 19th edition of the prestigious biennial conference series and only the second time it has taken place in the UK.

A major new digital mapping project could help protect some of the world's most important heritage sites from the growing threat of climate change.