Series

Our place in Europe

“The EU would never have us back!” is often the reaction of despairing europhiles in this country when the subject of rejoining comes up. But would they?

We have launched an ambitious new project aimed at providing a platform for just that conversation. But it’s taking an entirely new stance. We will include important voices from Europe, and it will be a conversation.

What is the UK’s place in Europe if not in the EU? What does Europe really think of the UK? How much goodwill does the UK still have left? Would the EU at its every level – diplomatic, political, and the popular sentiment in the street – welcome this country’s return? We will try to answer these and many more questions.

This is an ongoing series.

Sewage in our rivers

East Anglia is a region of beautiful rivers, including most of the country’s rare chalk streams. Many have paths running beside them, enjoyed by walkers. They are also the source of popular sports, including canoeing, fishing, sailing and wild-swimming.

Anglian Water uses many of these rivers as its sewage overflow, pumping hundreds of thousands of tonnes of untreated sewage into them annually. This has resulted in growing grassroots campaigns around the region protesting this practice. East Anglia Bylines is closely following and reporting on them.

This is an ongoing series.

Violence Against Women and Girls

Our Violence Against Women and Girls series highlights the safety and security issues women and girls continue to face here in the UK and around the world. Close to one in three women and girls have been subjected to violence or violation in their lifetime. This series examines the root causes, the psychological and sociological effects on the victims, and ways as a society we can help to eradicate it.

COP26

The United Nations has, for the past three decades, been bringing together almost every country on earth for global climate summits. COP stands for ‘Conference of Parties’. In 2021, the UK hosted COP26 in Glasgow. By the end of the conference, governments around the world had agreed on a new set of targets to tackle climate change, building on the Paris Agreement negotiated in 2015.

While the conference was running, we asked writers – some of whom are scientists, ecologists and other climate or environmental experts – to write about what’s important to them regarding climate and the environment.

International Women’s Day 2022

International Women’s Day is an annual global celebration on March 8 to commemorate the cultural, political, and socioeconomic achievements of women. In 2022, we used the week this date falls on to ask our citizen journalists to write articles on the challenges and triumphs of women past and present. They ranged from the history of women’s suffrage in East Anglia (Millicent Fawcett grew up in Suffolk), how International Women’s Day in 1918 sparked the Russian Revolution to the gender gap of political leaders.

Rivers of East Anglia

As our Commissioning Editor Stephen McNair wrote, when he kicked off this series, “Rivers play a major role in the life of East Anglia, but many are at risk.” Our region is full of rivers – around 100 in Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex. Many are under threat from issues such as over-extraction in a water-stressed area to pollution from sewage dumping, a topic we continue to cover extensively.

Many of the rivers have a long and colourful history in local folklore, including Saxon funerals and smugglers.

This is an ongoing series.

Hymns named after East Anglia places

Aidan Baker, one of our editorial team, noticed that there are a number of hymns named after places in East Anglia. Some such as “Thaxted” – also known as “I vow to thee my country” – are very famous, and others have an interesting and intriguing history. He decided to research this topic in more detail.

This is an ongoing series.