Questions of diversity are becoming more prominent in academic circles. Initially focused on the lack of minorities within particular disciplines, the conversation has now grown to include racial, gender and class biases within curricula, teaching practices and research activities. Diversity is not just about numbers, although the figures themselves are certainly distressing: the Equality Challenge Unit’s 2017 report shows that 92 per cent of UK academics identify as white. Unsurprisingly, these figures translate to negative experiences of racism and sexism at the individual level, as revealed by the ‘I, too, am …’ campaigns at various universities.

‘[I]n evaluating any given person,’ Allen Frances writes in his book Saving Normal, ‘we lack a general definition of mental disorder to help us decide whether he is normal or a patient, mad or bad.’ The admittedly porous, but nonetheless vitally important line between mental illness and mental health has been one of the threads in my academic work for the last couple of years, so it is with growing wariness and frustration that I have been watching the debate on Donald Trump’s mental health play out.

I’ve never known quite how to feel about Alan Moore. Perhaps my feelings are best expressed by the time I found myself drunkenly screaming, ‘Alan Moore is a sex pervert’ in a public park immediately after declaring him one of the greatest living writers. His fondness for sex scenes has always left me prudishly uncomfortable and I’ve been very disturbed by the gendered violence in his work.

At the start of the election campaign, the Labour Party’s position on immigration was clear. Armed with a raft of new policies and an inflammatory vow to stop ‘tens of thousands’ from coming to New Zealand, Labour signalled loudly that reducing migration was one its key electoral pledges. With the recent turnover in leadership and accompanying guarded sound bites on immigration, one could be fooled into believing that the party has softened its stance.