I wanted to write, very briefly, about Cambridge, and clinging on to narratives past their sell-by date. Because the events of recent weeks have forced a reckoning in me that it will take me some time to digest.

I had a narrative. It was such a strong narrative I plotted out a seven-book children’s novel series on which I planned to dedicate much of the next decade (Pullman started writing His Dark Materials at 47 so I thought, ok that will be my timeline, get all your other novels out the way and then at 47 start writing your life’s work), about two cities with magical libraries and maps that led into other worlds, one where the knowledge was used for good and one where the knowledge was used for evil. The narrative almost became part of my identity. I made a hundred jokes. And brought it to several therapy sessions at one point, I think, drawing my therapist a map….

The narrative was about Cambridge, being the good one. Or, more specifically, “Oxford being the evil twin of Cambridge”. With my friend with whom I am working on a book about Tolkien, I’d joke “Cambridge is the shire and Oxford is Mordor”, or I’d text him “I’m back in Mordor this summer, send solidarity” (Oh the years I couldn’t set foot in Oxford without having an anxiety attack). The binary worked because it was, to an extent, anchored in truth:

Cambridge is about knowledge, Oxford is about power.

Cambridge was Crick and Watson discovering DNA, Oxford was Bullingdon club sociopaths cosplaying their future role running the empire. Cambridge has the Nobel prize winners; Oxford the narcissistic-disordered-Prime-Ministers. In the 1990s, when my family moved from the north west to Cambridge, we used to see Stephen Hawking crossing the bridges by the backs. Nothing bad could happen in Cambridge (except, of course, the Soham murders, which leaves a watermark in the lives of my teenage-year'd friends) because Cambridge was further away from the poison-cauldron of Britain’s nastiest machinations of power and class — it wasn’t classless, going to state school in Cambridgeshire changed the trajectory of my life and middle-class-ified me in ways going to the best schools back in Runcorn never could have (when I did get to Mordor, as an undergraduate, my still-favourite politics tutor taught me about “class realignment or class dealignment” during the post-war consensus and I realised most my friends were the offspring of that little hiccup of history in which, through the imperfect-but-useful grammar school system, their parents — mainly fathers, because the grammar school system was highly gendered — ‘made it out’, only for the lake to freeze over again and for us, again, to all die in the class in which we’re born).

“Oxford is the evil twin” worked as a narrative partly because there was enough evidence (Bullingdon club; PPE-as-bootcamp-of-empire; my own horrendous experiences). Plus binaries are a fun gimmick to lean in to — Yale is the evil twin of Havard, for instance, and Australia is the evil twin of Canada (I’m Australian and studied at McGill so I’m allowed to say that); like Springfield and Shelbyville, we understand places by that which they are not. I used to take the hour long bus between Jerualem and Tel Aviv thinking of how they are opposites and twins — Jerusalem as history and Tel Aviv as future — in the same way I think much of how I understand myself was born out my twin-like relationship with my older sister. My older sister was a maths genius, so I would be a twin-opposite and be of languages, words. (Once, in Mordor, as an undergraduate, I was walking outside the Radcliffe Camera and a young woman ran up to me and threw her arms around me shouting "[my sister’s name] I haven’t seen you all term!” She was studying maths in an adjacent college and I suppose to some we had twin-like resemblance; so I made clear I was an opposite.

One of the corollaries, for me, of the ugly saga that was the Cambridge Analytica scandal was that, for once, Cambridge was being the evil twin (Oxford Analytica is a respectable think tank my friend was working for during our Egyptian revolution years when, well, when the Egyptian revolution did what it did to our lives). I used to catch the X5 bus* back to Cambridge at the end of term and feel this palpable relief that I was returning to the shire, where I didn’t have to watch my back, where there was no nasty cliquey gossip because, well, mainly because people had work to be getting on with. (*20 years ago people were saying “within a year or two here will be a train between Oxford and Cambridge” and I might write another day on how that is all finally transpiring). Even this week I was watching Ludwig and lazily (as I always do) plotting out my own crime novel/ crime tv series idea, and thinking “Cambridge and crossword-setting — perfect, perfect”. I think my Twitter (lol, Twitter, oh the 2010s and their metastases…) bio still reads “always Cambridge never evil Oxford” as a nod to the years in which I had anxiety attacks as the train went past Didcot Parkway.

But it doesn’t work. The crutch I needed as a little map to navigate the world, like psychological hopscotch — don’t jump on Oxford, floor is lava, Cambridge is safe zone (I’ve been told this is one of my autistic traits, mapping out places, objects and concepts as opposites) was already ruptured years ago — ten years ago precisely, after my academic-twin, studying at Cambridge, was murdered and, well, nothing came of any investigation at the university.

And nothing, I know, will come of any investigation into the events surrounding the hounding and death of Arday. I won’t comment on that further except to say that I agree with Ash Sarkar’s piece in Novara that the only reason this became news was because of the racist media, so any ‘academic misconduct’ or otherwise, is a footnote to the main horror of how this played out. I also agree with Charlotte Proudman’s point that no white man accused of — or found to have committed — sexual misconduct, ever faced the level of hounding Arday did. I am, of course, mainly horrified at the British media, a self-ingesting body-horror beast that I once got close enough to that I ran away to the edge of the world and changed my name to try to de-pollute myself from its clutches. But if Cambridge tries to pass all the buck to the vile xenophobes at the Telegraph and has no self-reflection on its own role in setting up Arday (without mentorship, media training, or being treated as a human being rather than a ‘cipher’ — the most dehumanising way in which the worst of both the right and the left interact with other human beings), it will break my neat narrative in two completely. I remember a friend once saying to me as her parents divorced “the worst feeling in the world is to be on bad terms with both your parents, when they both hate each other — who are you then, if you’re cut off at both ends?” That’s how I feel now about Cambridge; cut the other side of the rope.

Cambridge Analytica, Giulio, Arday — Cambridge isn’t the angel to Oxford’s devil, they’re both as grubby as each other; a plague on both their houses.

I was on BBC Radio 4 comedy last week, with a teeny tiny little cameo at the end of my amazing friend Andrew Hunter Murray’s show, The Naked Week. Waiting backstage before I went on to the stage in front of the live audience in Brighton I felt like it was 2005, and I was about to go on stage at the Wheatsheaf, the pub in Oxford where I performed weekly with my improv group as an undergraduate. The excitement was just as fresh; the energy just as palpable as ever. Except this time I was backstage with real professional comedians who did this for a living. One of them, Andy, I’ve been fortunate enough to know since we were little 19 year olds together, performing weekly at the Wheatsheaf and in summers at the Edinburgh festival. Except in the meantime he has written three novels and become one of the deservedly-recognised famously-funny people of my generation.

I had an amazing time. And then I went home and had a 3am meltdown. Why hadn’t I kept up comedy? The Edinburgh festivals had been the highlight of my undergraduate years. But then, I’d run away from Oxford and England as soon as I graduated (that prehistoric novel I wrote may explain why…); admittedly to McGill in Montreal, another epicentre of comedy, but I never kept it up. At some point, members of my improv cohort began to bubble up into national recognition and I was so delighted for them, but never took it as a sign that maybe I could have kept comedy in my life.

Keeping ‘half a foot’ in academia was maybe the reason: by graduate school, I felt all the things I enjoyed (making macarons at the local patisserie; writing fiction; caring for children) seemed to be held up as signs I ‘wasn’t a real academic’. Then there was the actual ‘comedy’ piece I wrote for Salon, in 2012, ‘How to screw up in Arabic’, which later got cited, er, in a end-of-decade-crescendo involving this little document and how it all went a little bit awry. Back in Oxford for my doctorate, I’d walk past the Wheatsheaf pub on the high street and think — whoever is there now, I hope it brings them as much happy as it once brought me.

But why not me? This might be the cliche of ‘turning 40 and no longer caring what anyone thinks’, but I think the solution to this yearning is just to, well, resume it. There’s no law stopping me (when I think back to why I stopped comedy I do also recall — I did spend a lot of my 20s in authoritarian countries where taking the piss out of the powerful got you into pretty sketchy situations). It is, thankfully, too late for me to bring something to Edinburgh this year so a room of two and a half American tourists yawning through my standup will have to wait one more week. But in the meantime I’ll be back at my old haunt from autumn, doing one of the things that has made me happiest.

Maybe I should’ve waited another year to write this to have the neat symbolism of two decades – but 2007 doesn’t feel like two decades ago, it feels like 200 years and yesterday ago. The changes are obvious in many ways: the internet was present but not all-consuming, and social media was only beginning to seep into daily life (I’m not sure how much of a flex this is, but I think I was one of the first few thousand people to join Facebook – we called it ‘the facebook’, imported to Oxford from Harvard, and thought of it as a site to pass notes in the back of class, little idea of the election-warping, brain altering behemoth it would become). Most literary conversations happened in person or on paper, in my little writing group at LMH, my spooling emails with writer-embryo friends far away; the idea of launching a novel into the world felt both intimate and mysterious, untethered from the instant feedback and public scrutiny of today. The pace of life seemed slower, and the boundaries between private and public selves were more easily maintained. Even the thrill of seeing my name in print carried a different weight, not yet diluted by the constant stream of online content and commentary. This is an easy line to tell myself, of course, but I’ve often thought of what I would have written if I’d been born ten years earlier, the same age as Zadie Smith – what books would have been written if the device on which I write was not linked up to a dystopia-playground carousel of infinite cascading entertainment and horror.

The moment I learned my novel had won a literary prize remains etched in my memory: an event under a blazing sun at LMH where my lovely then-boyfriend from my comedy group met my father for the first time then stood with me through a surreal awards ceremony. There was a rush of disbelief and elation, tinged with something deeper—an acute awareness of being seen. For a young writer, this recognition felt both thrilling and intimidating, as though the world had suddenly turned its spotlight in my direction and I’d forgotten to clean myself up properly for it (there was, in fact, an unexpected photoshoot, preserving me forever in my 2000s owl-necklaced proto-state, standing next to an impossibly handsome Tobias Hill and an impossibly exuberant Fay Weldon – two Real Grown Up Writers there, praising my little embryo-work). I remember the trembling hands, the wild pulse, and the thought that maybe, just maybe, this was the beginning of my whole life. But the news arrived amid exam revision and mounting stress, making the experience feel almost disembodied—a bright flare of joy in a fog of worry. My boyfriend and I took the champagne bottle they gave me to the university parks, got drunk and then went home to revision notes tacked to our dorm room walls.

Earlier this year, I found out Tobias Hill had passed away in 2023 – I’m not sure how I missed the news at the time, except that I now have various mechanisms in place to limit my consumption of the internet. Even aside from the fact he was devastatingly young (53, dying of an aggressive form of cancer), it felt like a sick lie that he had died – he had so many books still in him, everything about the way he wrote, in the Love of Stones and the Cryptographer, shouted out that he had a third and forth act within him. Fay Weldon had passed away the year before: I did hear of that news, staying at the time with my friend (the prolific famous writer one) in the post-covid Ukraine-invasion fog of 2022, and we reread The Life and Loves of a She-Devil in homage to Weldon’s complex, thorny brand of feminism. I thought back to the awards ceremony in 2007, dizzy in the heat outside LMH, Fay Weldon had told me that “if I kept it up I’d take my place amongst the best in the land.” This isn’t a boast, because – dear reader, I did not keep it up. Hill and Weldon’s encouragement had shaped my early sense of possibility, and knowing they were gone brought a quiet ache—a feeling of gratitude intertwined with loss, of them, and for that moment, and for that time. 2007 forever.

Being a published novelist in my early twenties was both exhilarating and bewildering; I was, mainly, very lost, as all young people are, but lost in a see-saw teetering way of being half-celebrity half-waitress (I spent the summer after the novel was published opening mail at the New Statesman as an editorial assistant, then ran away to a foreign country because I needed to be lost around people who hadn’t heard about the book). I spent much of that decade navigating a landscape of expectation, self-doubt, and occasional bursts of confidence. I felt out of place, as everyone young probably always does, uncertain about my voice and my place in the literary world, yet buoyed by the memory of that prize and the generosity of those who believed in me. I got reviewed in the Guardian and then couldn’t pay my rent. I got letters from fans and then got my heart broken. Success did not shield me from insecurity; rather, it exposed my vulnerabilities and forced me to confront my ambitions and fears head-on.

I re-read my first novel for the first time in over a decade last year. It is, mainly, complete bilge, not bildungsroman brilliance-amidst-the-youthful-angst, really just old school slop before AI made it popular. There is always the pain reading work produced long ago: if it is better than you could do now you become wistful at the passage of time, if its tripe you feel a full-body cringe that it was ever released into the world. With Psalm 119 I feel both. I’m slightly astonished, now I read it as if encountering a stranger, that it is so meticulously structured (I took the longest Psalm in the Bible, which uses each letter of the Hebrew alphabet as demarcations of verses, and mapped three stories on to it – I think the idea came to me from an exhibit in the Ashmolean of Caravaggio’s paintings, where it showed how he blocked a canvas out square by square and I thought “ok great, I’ll block a book out square by square and paint each quadrant”), and how well-read I was (although, that’s all I had done by that point in my life? Read and read and read). But none of that offsets – how stupidly young, and young and stupid, and stupid about my stupidness, and stupid about my youngness, I was when writing it, and that the grown ups in the room should probably have checked in on me instead of letting that just drift out into the world, and then leave me adrift in the aftermath. Post-MeToo I reflected on the fact I wrote a novel about a lecherous professor messing up the life of an undergraduate – while I was an undergraduate – and no-one of the twenty-years-older-than-me adults involved in the publishing process said – hey, are you ok? But I also look back and wince at how ungrateful I must have seemed to the kind publishers who took a chance on me, and I wish I could undo that.

Now, after a decade spent fearing the act of publishing, I find myself on the cusp of releasing several novels at once. The anxiety that once paralysed me has softened, mainly through time, a little through a series of concerted efforts to unpick it. The years of hiding behind drafts and unfinished manuscripts are finally giving way to a new chapter. The journey has been long and complicated, and (worst of all) hurt other people, as I spent most of the 2010s either in a revolution or war-zone or trying to figure out who I was after the 2007-LMH-moment, but – as it is all finally untangling, I feel all the stories are finally ready to be born.

At the end of the last decade, I moved to the edge of the world and I changed my name. I planned to build myself a little fort – though I had no idea, then, what avalanches awaited me. I found ‘Bifrost University’ while looking for somewhere in Iceland from which I could work on the Icelandic constitution drafting process – the country had had a constitution-writing process during the same period as the constitutions of the Arab world that I had watched warp and buckle (and drag me into the disintegration in ways from which my life will never fully un-dent). Nestled in the cracked-toothed beauty of Iceland’s west coast, the university was an emblem of Nordic learning and community spirit. Its history traces back to cooperative movement prior to Iceland’s independence, founded as an outpost for creative thinking, environmental stewardship and cultural exchange.

The apocryphal story I was told is that an Icelandic man went to Ruskin College, Oxford, and liked it so much he decided to rebuild it in Iceland’s barren and lava-strewn land. When I returned to the UK post-covid, my friend Laurie (yes the famous prolific writer one) told me the story of how William Morris had run away to Iceland to heal from heartbreak; I wish I’d known that story when I was there. The campus, set against windswept hills, Baulan mountain watching over us, and the waterfalls gurling down the valley, felt like a world apart—a place where the boundary between classroom and nature blurred into insignificance.

Living at Bifrost during the covid years was surreal. Isolation was nothing new; after all, the landscape itself was a lesson in solitude. Yet, as the pandemic swept across the globe, the sense of community took on a new significance. Lectures shifted online, corridors echoed with silence, and the usual rhythm of campus life was replaced by anxious anticipation. Despite the uncertainty, bonds formed in adversity: shared walks beneath the midnight sun, watching the aurora with our masks on, remote collaborations, and small acts of kindness made life bearable, even memorable.

I needed to return to the UK in 2021 for the necessities of covid, health and family, and – while I don’t wish to over-use the language of trauma – I experienced a series of brutalising shocks upon returning to England. The first was the disrespect for nature – I nearly vomited seeing more rubbish strewn on the side of the road than I had seen in two years in Iceland. The second was at how the ravaging of covid had layered over – or been exacerbated by – a decade of Tory austerity policies, the health services worn bare and the fabric of communities strained by the corrosive effect of the decimation of state support. The third, relatedly, was the corrosion of higher education itself. I left the UK as soon as I could after my doctorate, for reasons I won’t go into here (complete an Oxford degree and run away is a habit of mine) so hadn’t had the experiences of early career researcher life in UK institutions. Re-engaging with UK higher education as covid waned was a devastating experience for me – my friend and I started writing a sitcom called ‘University Challenged’ about the absurdities of post-Brown-report commodified college life, but my heart deeply ached for Bifrost, teaching my students as the sun rose at 11am, discussing collaborative constitution drafting as the snow fell outside, watching the death of American democracy in real time (I was giving a lecture on ‘the concept of the rule of law’ on Jan 6^th 2021, and eventually we all agreed to just sit down and watch the storming of the Capitol as a historical event), feeling that we had made a little sanctuary from the violence of the world in this tiny, improbable place in a lava field. I don’t think I will ever have such a beautiful experience in education ever again. And it is a hard feeling - that the best is over, that the height of an intensity has passed and everything from now will be only echoes - reaching my age in life has hardened me to understanding that there are fewer ‘firsts’ than in the early stage of adulthood, that I am no longer composing the first movement of the symphony and there are now more variations of earlier melodies than introductions of new notes, but it hurts to think that the alchemy I felt in Bifrost during those times will never again be replicated.

Today, Bifrost University is no longer fully there in the way it once was. The campus has changed, its centre relocated to Reykjavik, and the vibrant spirit feels dispersed. For those of us who called it home as the world fell apart, there is an undeniable feeling of wistfulness. The physical place may have faded, but its legacy remains—a mosaic of experiences, friendships, and dreams that shaped us during those strange times. I carry with me both a quiet longing for what once was, and gratitude for what continues to endure. And the hope that perhaps one day I will come close to recreating the good of that experience – as I am trying to, now, with Astralship.

Porter’s lodges are strange things, they – like Oxford colleges – shouldn’t really exist in the 21^st century, as glad as I am that I met my favourite porter through them. They demarcate a threshold – in the woke language of ‘gatekeeping’, they are literally a gate, saying ‘do not enter here’ to those outside of the bubble. Cambridge has – as in many other ways – struck me as being more healthy than Oxford in prioritising departments over colleges as the main focus of academic life; you’re there to learn after all, not be in a guild or secret society (or at least you should be). Students who got fixated on college politics, particularly in graduate school, always seemed like sad aimless creatures to me – I remember a 43 year old obsessing about who would be college student president and thinking “people your age run countries, actual real countries, get a grip”. The cloistered world, or human petri dish, cultivates the worst kind of elbowy cliquey nastiness, and the line (an unfortunately good line by a vile human) that in academia ‘the fights are so vicious because the stakes are so low’ is never more true than in closed worlds where people writing books three people will read jostle with each other for their little corner in beautiful buildings that deserve better.

I spent the covid years in a field in Iceland in an astonishing set of university buildings on the edge of a lava field, where a nearby hot spring was redirected to heat our floors; it was the best experience I’d ever had in a university (and subject of a forthcoming substack). It had been set up by an Icelandic man who had gone to Ruskin college Oxford and decided to rebuild it on Iceland’s cracked and lava-strewn land. I taught environmental law to farmers and maritime law to sailors and had a lovely time. There was no porter’s lodge because the campus was open to everyone, although the reception of Hotel Bifrost, in an adjoining building was an alternative entrance where, on my first day, I turned up and confused the manager who thought I was a hotel guest.

My experience at Bifrost was such a tonic it has shaped my experience of higher education ever since. Coming back to the UK after Iceland was a very challenging experience for me, re-encountering the brutalising impact of the 2010s Tory reforms to higher education and how a decade of neglecting social and health provisions reached a crescendo just as covid hit. I had a visceral reaction as my Dad picked me up from the airport on my flight back from Iceland and drove me to Oxford in 2021, and I saw more garbage on the side of the road than I had seen in the last two years in Iceland. As I settled back into English life, I missed the tranquil Icelandic countryside and the gentle rhythm of the university life there.

At the funeral last week, I thought of how, as in Philip Pullman novels, the people who were the greatest force of good in my life in Oxford were people who weren’t anointed with prestige by the institution. But I also remembered there was another reason porter’s lodges mattered so much to me: one changed the course of my whole life.

When I was an undergraduate at Keble college, way back in those pre-MeToo, pre-woke 2000s, I found a leaflet for a competition for ‘best first novel for someone under 25’, pinged off a manuscript I had been working on for the last year, and – to my astonishment – won the competition, which led to the publication of my first novel, Psalm 119. I remember the awards ceremony for the novel, down the road at Lady Margaret Hall, where I shook the hands of the judges, Fay Weldon and Tobias Hill (it regularly haunts me to think that both these writers have since passed away); my finals were a month later. I’ve written elsewhere about how I feel about that novel now, but I’m glad the porter’s lodge opened up that world: as I’m gearing up for my new novels to come out later this year, I might not have a book launch in Oxford, but I’ll stop by the resting place of my favourite person in the city.

My fortieth year has been both transformative and steady. The world did not shift beneath my feet, nor did I wake to overnight revelation, but as much as I tried to resist cliché ‘life begins’ mottos, the last year has been marked by a solidifying and a renewed sense of focus. This psychological shift, quietly persistent under my daily routines and nightly thoughts, prompted reflection on my two decades of adulthood spent – more often than not – within university institutions: why did I learn what I learned? Why did I study what I studied? What would I study now if I were to begin this all again?

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Why the Future of Space Exploration Must Be Inclusive, Ethical, and Sustainable

As humanity stands on the threshold of a new era in space exploration, with exponential activity in both the public and private sectors, the cosmos beckons not only as a frontier of scientific discovery but also as a mirror reflecting our societal values. The choices we make now will determine whether outer space becomes a domain sustained for all, or yet another arena dominated by the interests of the few. The necessity of decolonising the cosmos and ensuring space sustainability is no longer a distant debate; it is an urgent imperative for our collective future. This is the topic of much of my forthcoming work and as such I’d like to briefly set out my position on this topic.

Throughout history, the urge to explore and expand has often been coupled with the desire to claim, control, and exploit. The colonial ventures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, were marked by the assertion of power over territories and peoples under the guise of progress, from the seedy mercantile allegiances of the East India Company as handmaidens to the state, to the orchestrated deprivations documented by Mike Davies in Late Victorian Holocausts. As the ‘second generation of space exploration’ continues in its exponential increase, it is crucial to recognise that the patterns of conquest, resource extraction, and exclusion that defined terrestrial history are at very real risk being repeated beyond our planet’s bounds, enacting the same worst dynamics of imperialism to a new terrain. The cosmos offers an opportunity to chart a different course—one grounded in equity, stewardship, and shared benefit.

The Outer Space Treaty: Principles and Limitations

In 1967, at the height of the Cold War, the international community adopted the Outer Space Treaty—a landmark agreement that declared outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, as “the province of all mankind.” The Treaty enshrined the notion that space shall be free for exploration and use by all states, and explicitly prohibited national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, use, occupation, or any other means. In effect, it established space as a common good, belonging to no nation or entity.

Yet, while the Outer Space Treaty articulates noble intentions, its efficacy is increasingly called into question, including by those who championed it in earlier eras: it is simultaneously an astonishing achievement and, today, no longer fit for purpose. The absence of robust enforcement mechanisms, ambiguities in interpretation, and the rapid evolution of space technology have exposed the Treaty’s limitations. As more actors—both governmental and private—venture into space, the principle of space as a common good is often overridden by competing interests and ambitions. In particular, the ‘black hole’ (forgive the pun) of legal provisions for

Current Realities: Overriding the Common Good

Recent years have witnessed a dramatic acceleration in space activity. Nation states are establishing lunar programmes and announcing plans for Mars missions, while private enterprises are launching constellations of satellites, mining asteroids, and even selling plots of land on the Moon. The commercialisation of space, fuelled by technological advances and the promise of vast resources, has reframed space as an arena for ‘resource competition’. The first generation of space exploration may have been underpinned by the mutual goading of the USA and USSR, but there was no vying for resources, only the clout of securing ‘firsts’ to demonstrate national prowess: in the second generation of space exploration, we are dangerously close to private companies and super powers enmeshing in a dance of a scramble for resources.

This scramble for space assets and territory echoes the “scramble for Africa” and other colonial land grabs, where the race to claim and exploit outweighed considerations of justice or sustainability. In the absence of clear, enforceable rules, powerful actors are able to shape the contours of space governance, often sidelining the voices and interests of less powerful states and future generations. Without proactive intervention, the cosmos risks becoming an exclusive domain, reinforcing the inequities and excesses of our colonial past.

Imperialist Excesses: Lessons from History

The legacy of imperialism is not merely a matter of historical record; it is a living reality that continues to shape global inequalities. Colonial ventures were marked by the extraction of resources, environmental degradation, cultural erasure, and the marginalisation of indigenous peoples. The justification of these practices often rested on the rhetoric of civilisation and progress, masking the profound harms inflicted on societies and ecosystems.

Applying these lessons to space, it is evident that unchecked expansion and exploitation could repeat these patterns on a cosmic scale. The rush to extract lunar minerals or establish private colonies, for instance, could create new forms of exclusion and environmental harm. By failing to learn from history, we risk exporting the very systems of domination and unsustainability that have proved so damaging on Earth.

Why Decolonising the Cosmos Matters

‘Decolonising the cosmos’ is an ethical, social, and environmental necessity. Ethically, it demands that we recognise the rights and interests of all humanity—including those yet unborn—in shaping the future of space. Socially, it requires inclusive governance structures that give voice to all nations, particularly those historically marginalised or excluded from space ventures. Environmentally, it calls for stewardship of celestial bodies, recognising that the fragile ecosystems of space are not immune to harm.

Moreover, decolonising space challenges the narratives of inevitability and entitlement that have pervaded historical expansion. It asks us to imagine new models of cooperation, shared benefit, and responsibility, rather than replicating the competitive logics of the past. In doing so, it offers a pathway to a more just and sustainable future—on Earth and beyond.

Space Sustainability: Definition, Importance, and Challenges

Space sustainability refers to the ability to maintain the long-term health and accessibility of the space environment for current and future generations. This encompasses not only the mitigation of physical threats, such as space debris and orbital congestion, but also the preservation of legal and ethical standards that ensure equitable access and use.

The proliferation of satellites and spacecraft increases the risk of collisions and the creation of debris, which could render orbits unusable and jeopardise critical services on Earth. The unchecked exploitation of resources could exhaust or irreparably damage celestial environments. The absence of inclusive governance could entrench inequalities and foster conflict, undermining the very spirit of space as a global commons.

Achieving space sustainability requires overcoming significant challenges, such as developing and enforcing international norms, balancing commercial interests with the public good, and integrating the perspectives of diverse stakeholders. It also demands humility and foresight, recognising that our actions today will shape the possibilities of tomorrow.

Steps Towards Inclusive and Sustainable Space Ventures

To avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, the international community must take proactive measures to decolonise and sustain the cosmos. First, the principles of the Outer Space Treaty should be reaffirmed and strengthened, with clearer mechanisms for enforcement and dispute resolution. International bodies should be empowered to regulate activities such as resource extraction, orbital traffic, and environmental protection, ensuring that all states have a voice in decision-making.

Second, the participation of the Global South, indigenous groups, and civil society in space governance must be prioritised. This means creating platforms for meaningful consultation and collaboration, and ensuring that the benefits of space exploration are shared equitably. Efforts to diversify the space sector—educationally, economically, and culturally—are essential for building an inclusive future.

Third, sustainability must be embedded in all space ventures, from mission design to end-of-life planning. This includes investing in technologies for debris removal, adopting responsible practices for resource use, and conducting rigorous environmental assessments before any activity is undertaken. Transparency, accountability, and international cooperation are key to ensuring that space remains safe and accessible for all.

The cosmos offers humanity a chance to reimagine our relationship with the unknown—not as conquerors, but as stewards and collaborators. Decolonising space and ensuring its sustainability is not simply a matter of policy, but a test of our collective imagination and moral resolve. By learning from our imperia past, reaffirming space as a common good, and acting proactively to prevent imperialist repetition, we can forge a future in which the benefits of space are truly sustained for all.

Astralship is a space and an idea. Between Angelsey and the foothills of Snowdonia, in a constellation of places in north Wales embroidered with Hebrew names (Deniolen, Bathesda, En-Gedi — I felt like I was back in another life as we wove through the lush green village lanes and passed names I’d last encountered in a very different context), a converted deconsecrated church that has, since its owner bought it in 2010, served various functions for humane tech communities and as a space for retreats, and is now entering a new chapter. Liam, Astralship’s founder, has a wonderfully dynamic way of thinking that reminds me of my engineer father’s brain, and has devised uses of the space of Astralship into ‘voyages’.

I’m moving here and I couldn’t be more excited. Here’s my profile on their website: Heather Allansdottir

My voyages will be :

-the voyage of the constitutions

-the voyage of the stars

-the voyage within

I will be working on a number of podcasts and online courses, and writing about my time there. Iceland is also becoming a bigger part of my life again — which is the subject of my next post.

One thing that was quite a knot to untie in my mind as I explored Astralship and its environs over a long weekend last week is the fact the landscape and area was very familiar to me — during my pre-teens in Runcorn in Cheshire (before my family moved down south and I got middle-classified and Oxbridge-shaped by Hills Road…) we’d spend half terms and bank holidays in nearby Machynthleth or Llandudno, where my sisters and I “invented” a sport called ‘bracken rolling’ where we’d hug each other and tumble down the hills safely cushioned by bracken. I am conscious of the history of ‘English tourists’ and also Merseyside/Liverpool in particular with the flooding of Capel Celyn. In a strange serendipity, I’d actually begun learning Welsh on an app about six months before I learned of Astralship, and then just as I came back from Wales, my favourite app Drops released Welsh (and Greenlandic!).

On which note — I’m going to resume my “language learning experiment” videos. It’s so surreal watching back these videos (eg Heather Allansdottir - resources for learning Icelandic) a fossil of covid limbo, where we were all continuing to live and create and at the same time in strange stasis (my stasis including being on the miracle-island of Iceland and yet full of heartache for my loved ones far away). I’ll focus on Welsh, Greelandic and Nordic languages, but very keen to expand it beyond that too. This will dovetail with a project on Tolkien which I’ve been keeping under wraps for quite some time… on which more soon…

Also - my favourite word in any language is ‘geimfari’ - the Icelandic word for ‘astronaut’. So now I’m off to find out how to say ‘astronaut’ in Welsh…

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