On 20 November, 1975, Spanish dictator Francisco Franco passed away. His death closed the door on an era of torture and censorship that lasted 36 years. According to Modern Languages professor Jordi Larios, however, reparations have yet to be made. Larios, born in 1959, grew up under Franco’s regime, with the year of his birth marking twenty years since the end of the Spanish Civil War. Several of his family members were victims of Franco’s oppressive rule. “My maternal grandmother and my...

An art historian walks into a botanic garden… no, it’s not the start of a joke. Against a backdrop of golden leaves and a setting sun, Anne Daffertshofer, the Arts and Cultural Programmes Curator for the St Andrews Botanic Garden, took me on a walk. Daffertshofer joined the team in April 2025 after finishing her PhD at the University. Her thesis, titled ‘Anthropocene Mobilities in Contemporary Art: Exploring a Movement-Oriented Lens in Times of Ecological Crisis,’ served as a perfect...

“It's a funny place to raise a family, to be honest, because it's sort of like a lot of very young people and very old people,” Emma Crowe, mother of Hugo and Amelia, told me. If you look beyond the crowds of the elderly trying not to get run over by throngs of students rushing to tutorials, you’ll see that St Andrews is very much a family town. In fact, the University contributes to the younger generation of St Andrews residents.  “All the kids' things we go to are just so popular that there...