Lulu Shasha

Epigram • 15th November 2025

Turning on the pressure to turn up the heating

By Lulu Shasha, Third Year, HistoryAs the pressure mounts to turn on the heating, we face ramifications that extend far beyond the initial annoyance of the seemingly simple question, ‘Shall we turn the heating on?’My own relationship with heating at university has been like a long-distance relationship: runs hot and cold and is disproportionately expensive.Transitioning from my first-year accommodation (where heating was included in the rent and felt abundant) to my second-year house was like be...

Epigram • 7th November 2025

Was the ASSL's £1.8m makeover worth it?

By Lulu Shasha, Third Year, HistoryPhew! What a relief, the Arts and Social Sciences Library (known to students as the ASS) has finally reopened its doors.So, what’s changed after a £1.8 million facelift? The two upstairs library floors, home to the humanities collections, reading rooms, suffused with the familiar glow of fluorescent lamps that keep students blissfully unaware of the time of day, remain reassuringly the same. Downstairs, though, things are quite different. The ground floor has b...

Epigram • 10th October 2025

Review: Armour at Arnolfini

The traditional images of the circus that populate our imaginations are filled with bright, garish colours, exaggerated costumes, unbelievable bodies in motion, and animals leaping through rings of fire. It is a world of spectacle and excess, a stage for those positioned outside the boundaries of conventional society; a space where ‘misfits’ and ‘outsiders’ could fit in through their performance of difference within the circular confines of the tented walls.Armour, created by Gilles Polet and Ar...

Bristol Women's Voice • 1st September 2025

Commentary: The Cost of Caring | Bristol Women's Voice

Written by Lulu Shasha27 February 1970. Five hundred women, packed shoulder to shoulder on the austere wooden benches of the Oxford Union’s debating hall. Some arrived with sleeping bags, others with babies in tow, for the first official National Women’s Liberation Conference. The energy was palpable, some of the most prominent women in Britain’s Left, frustrated by the male-dominated culture of socialist organising and its failure to confront the intersection of class and gender, claimed the Ox...

Bristol Women's Voice • 11th July 2025

The Mirror We Never Had: A History of Queer Women's Visibility | Bristol Women's Voice

Written by Lulu Shasha“I knew something was up” — a phrase I’ve heard repeatedly when queer women talk about the moment they began to acknowledge their sexual identity.The language used is often one of abnormality and otherness: “I was different” or “I was weird.” Whether it’s on podcasts, in conversations with friends, or through my own mother’s stories, this theme echoes again and again. And what always follows is a reflection that these feelings of dissonance often arose from a lack of repres...

Bristol Women's Voice • 25th June 2025

Commentary: Do We Still Live by the Double Standard of Ageing? | Bristol Women's Voice

Written by Lulu ShashaWhen Susan Sontag published The Double Standard of Aging in 1972, she exposed a stark cultural imbalance. She argued that while men are permitted to grow older without consequence, even gaining credibility as they do, women are treated as though their value declines with age. For women, ageing was not a neutral process, it came with a social penalty.Nearly three decades later, in The Whole Woman (1999), Germaine Greer revisited similar terrain. In the opening pages, under a...

Bristol Women's Voice • 4th March 2025

Commentary: A Monument to Misogyny - What Trump’s Inauguration Symbolises | Bristol Women's Voice

Written by Lulu ShashaOn 20 January 2025, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th President of the United States.Outside the Capitol, the crowd of red hats stood like statues against the cold, their faint chants swallowed by the wind. Inside, standing behind Trump, were faces that reflected the forces driving his return—not just political allies, but influential figures from the tech world and beyond, whose platforms and power have helped shape the cultural landscape that made his comeback possibl...

Bristol Women's Voice • 21st January 2025

Commentary: The Quiet Erosion of Reproductive Rights in Britain | Bristol Women's Voice

Written by Lulu ShashaOn 22 January 2025, the 52nd anniversary of Roe v Wade will pass—a landmark ruling that once safeguarded the right to abortion in the United States. Nearly three years after its reversal, the ripple effects continue to spark outrage, casting a long shadow over reproductive rights.For many in Britain, the rollback of Roe v Wade feels like a distant political tragedy, yet it serves as a sobering reminder: hard-won rights can vanish in the blink of an eye. Closer to home, Brit...