The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the failings of our society into sharp relief – exposing inadequate healthcare systems, social security nets and incompetent governments worldwide. And, due to its very nature as a health crisis, the pandemic has laid bare the rampant ableism that permeates our individual and collective lives.As a 25-year-old with multiple invisible chronic illnesses – which have left me immunosuppressed and limited my physical capacity – I am intimately acquainted with ableism....

Like thousands of other students, I study Media and Communications, and am one of those people looking to get a job in journalism, PR, marketing, or something similar when I graduate from UNSW.

Studying this area is a careful balancing act, as you have longstanding academic theories on one side, and the practical application of them in our constantly evolving media environment on the other. So when I was given the option of undertaking a three-month internship as one of my units of study, I jum...

Growing up, Michelle Kuo was never close to her Grandpa, Yi-Ceng Chen. The distance between her home in Taiwan and his home in Sydney meant that she didn't grow up surrounded by the tastes and smells of his cooking, and only got glimpses of his lively personality."The only contact with my grandparents was on the phone. Every Chinese New Year, we would call," she said. "We were not close at all, not close." It was only when Kuo moved to Sydney for high school six y...

She reached into her pocket for a light, not to smoke or encourage a smouldering fire; she merely wanted to watch the flame flicker, to remember the warmth that was now so hard to come by.But she had to be careful, a little too close and her layers of insulation would become a fiery death sentence.She was thankful though, for the people who left their newspapers with the crossword untouched. She didn’t bother with any other part; their greatest use was filling the gaps between her clothes — shel...