The Conversation

The global housing crisis continues to grow, with the UN’s urban development agency estimating 40% of people worldwide lack access to adequate housing. Datshiane Navanayagam talks to female architects in Tanzania and Spain designing cheaper, more sustainable homes.

Victoria Heilman founded the Tanzania Women Architects for Humanity (TAWAH), a group of architects, engineers, quantity surveyors and scientists. TAWAH tackles housing po...

Two women from Greece and Sweden tell Datshiane Navanayagam about the dog training process and the prejudices service dogs still face when it comes to broader societal acceptance.

Lia Stoll is a Greek-Canadian guide dog trainer and co-founder of Lara Guide Dogs school in Greece. She was inspired by her father, who was also a guide dog mobility instructor, as Lia grew up with guide dogs and working with people who are blind and parti...

Two women from Italy and the US tell Datshiane Navanayagam about following the movements of growing wolf packs in Yellowstone National Park and the Italian Alps.

Elisa Ramassa started work as a park ranger in Italy's Gran Bosco di Salbertrand, near Turin, in 1997. That same year the park recorded the first sightings of a wolf pack. They'd been extinct in the Italian Alps since the 1920s. She's spent the whole of her career tracking ...

Two women from Australia and Germany tell Ella Al-Shamahi about their work in robotics: from tackling loneliness with humanoid companions to making industrial robots more accessible.

Australian Grace Brown began building robots at 15, but it was the isolation of pandemic lockdown - five months without human contact - that led her to create Abi, a friendly humanoid companion robot inspired by Disney and Pixar characters. Working in ...

Two women from Nigeria and the Czech Republic speak to Ella Al-Shamahi about what it's like to lead adventurous expeditions for other women to countries not usually on the tourist trail.

Lenka Hrabalová is an expedition guide and academic from the Czech Republic. Her PhD focused on the destruction of cultural heritage in the Muslim world. Lenka uses her knowledge to lead adventurous expeditions across the Middle East and North Afric...

Two doctors from South Africa and Australia tell Ella Al-Shamahi about rewards of working in rural communities and the challenges of being hundreds of miles from the nearest large hospital.

Dr Melanie Matthews runs a medical centre in Maningrida, about 500km east of Darwin. She’s a GP with the Mala'la Indigenous health service in the Arnhem Land, an Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (ACCHO). GPs working in these se...

An Indian chef who opened a patisserie in Jaipur and a Syrian chef with two pastry shops in the heart of Paris tell Datshiane Navanayagam about adding new layers to French classics.

After training at le Cordon Bleu school in Paris Tejasvi Chandela returned to her hometown of Jaipur to open Dzurt, the first pastry shop in the city. She also teaches masterclasses at cookery schools around the world to show to what extent the technique...

Two women from Hungary and the UK talk to Datshiane Navanayagam about the intensity, skill and resilience required for modern glassmaking. Mira Davida is a Hungarian glass artist based in Stockholm, Sweden. She specialises in flameworking, a technique that uses a high-temperature hand torch to shape borosilicate glass. Her sculptural works often draw inspiration from botanical forms and the natural landscapes of Sweden.

Phoebe Stu...

Two women in Iceland and Bolivia talk to Ella Al-Shamahi about creating female-centred walking tours that help people get to know the cities of Reykjavík and La Paz.

Tinna Eik Rakelardóttir from Iceland says that the urban planning of her country's capital doesn't necessarily reflect its progressive values. Inspired by a tour she took in Ljubljana in Slovenia, Tinna combined her expertise in anthropology and business development to...

Ella Al-Shamahi speaks to an ex-circus performer from Bulgaria and a skydiver from France to find out what it takes to achieve some of the world’s most extreme records.

Bulgarian Getti Kehayova grew up performing in the circus alongside her world-record-holding family. Inspired by her sister, who once held the record for spinning 97 hula hoops at once, Getti wanted a record of her own. After a year of intense training, she earned th...

Whitley Fund for Nature 2025 winners from Brazil and Nepal tell Datshiane Navanayagam about their efforts to save the plants and animals they love from extinction.

Reshu Bashyal is working to stop illegal poaching of wild orchids and Maire’s Yew trees in Nepal. Both plants are prized for their medicinal properties. Reshu is the research lead at Kathmandu-based Greenhood Nepal and has interviewed hundreds of yew harvesters to underst...

What happens when children break the law - and how does juvenile punishment vary across countries? Ella Al-Shamahi speaks with two women from the Netherlands and Finland about what’s working, what isn’t and what needs to change to better support young people in the justice system.

Marlen Salonen from Finland used to be a personal trainer but two years ago became a prison officer at Vantaa Prison in Finland, a remand facility for mal...

Ella Al-Shamahi speaks to professional wrestlers Xia Zhao from China and Divya Aale from India about their passion for the sport and what it’s like to be a woman in this industry.

Xia Zhao from China started martial arts at eight years old and later became a professional athlete in Chinese martial arts, known as wushu, including kung fu and kick-boxing. In 2016, she attended wrestling try-outs in Shanghai, which led her to move to t...

Datshiane Navanayagam talks to women from Nigeria and the UK who are trying to ensure what we throw away doesn’t go to waste.

Esther Fagbo is a partner at Wecyclers in Nigeria – a for-profit social enterprise that pays waste pickers and households for their recyclable rubbish in densely populated Lagos. Alongside her work at Wecyclers she has carried out projects with Fair Plastic Alliance, an NGO that supports the health and liveli...

Spoken word poetry is a powerful tool for storytelling, activism and self-expression. Ella Al-Shamahi speaks to two award-winning poets who use the craft to amplify issues they care about.

Sofie Frost is a Norwegian actor, slam poet and spoken word artist. She won the Norwegian Poetry Slam Championship in 2017 and was a finalist for Norway's Got Talent the following year. Sofie's poems have repeatedly gone viral, amassing millions o...

How does it feel to meet someone who connects you to a darker chapter of your family history? Datshiane Navanayagam is joined by two women whose experience of this has led them to delve deeper into their own family’s ties to both slavery and enslavement.

Diana McCaulay is a Jamaican novelist. She discovered that she’s related to both enslaved people and enslavers when an ancestry-tracking TV programme contacted her out of the blue. ...

A Muslim woman from South Africa and Christian from Kenya talk to Ella Al-Shamahi about how their faith influences their thoughts on addressing climate change, inequality and restoring nature.

Dr Najma Mohamed grew up in South Africa and made a link between her faith and nature early in life. She writes often about the ecological message of Islam, supporting faith-based climate and environment action. Najma is a trustee of the Islam...

A Mongolian and a South African palaeontologist speak to Ella Al-Shamahi about dinosaurs and education, as well as the fight to preserve their prehistoric legacy and stop illegal fossil trade.

Dr Bolortsetseg Minjin from Mongolia is the director of the Institute for the Study of Mongolian Dinosaurs. She is renowned for her discovery of 67 dinosaur fossils in the Gobi Desert within just one week. Bolorsetseg founded Mongolia’s first ...

An academic from India and writer from Denmark talk to Ella Al-Shamahi about how the way economies are measured influences policy and undervalues both unpaid and paid care work, and affects the lives of women on every level.

Emma Holten is a Danish feminist commentator whose book, Deficit: how feminist economics can change our world, became a best seller in her home country. It highlights how economics have shaped a world in which ...