Deep dives
The health topic is the centre of Peter Mellow’s current work: a large, active watchlist for understanding modern health in society. It moves from public guidance to intimate consequences, using everyday news to ask how people make decisions when evidence, risk and access are uneven.
Dense breasts or breast cancer in the family? What screening changes mean for you
The strongest pattern is not narrow clinical reporting but health as a social system. Walk-in mental health centres, urgent care pressures, telehealth controversies and technology failures sit beside stories about families, loneliness, grief and the places where care actually happens.
New walk-in mental health centres to open in banks and libraries across England
He also returns to what medicine leaves unsaid. Stroke recovery, sexual wellbeing, terminal lucidity and diagnostic uncertainty point to an editorial instinct for the human residue of illness: the questions patients and families carry after the formal appointment ends.
Stroke recovery and sexual wellbeing: Why survivors are often left without guidance, and how to start the conversation
In education, Mellow tracks leadership through strain rather than slogans. The recurring story is Australian higher education under pressure: funding gaps, domestic student losses, staff discontent, rankings, governance disputes and the widening gap between institutional ambition and public trust.
NSW universities financial report: Why institutions are losing $12,000 on every domestic student
The topic reads like a long audit of universities in transition. Global rankings and international appeal appear, but they are rarely isolated from staff conditions, equity, accountability and the question of what universities owe to students and society.
Australian universities make 'historic' global rankings as report reveals staff discontent
Technology is treated as a leadership test, not a novelty. Chatbots, hacks, online lectures and the intelligent age appear as pressure points where institutions must decide whether digital tools deepen care, expose weakness or simply accelerate old problems.
How the University of the Western Cape Layers a Chatbot Into Its Mental Health Support Ecosystem
The student voice topic gives the education coverage its ethical centre. It foregrounds access routes, ATAR pressure, study weeks, placements, money stress and the experience of young people navigating systems designed largely by adults.
‘I struggled a lot with ATAR’: there’s another way high school students can qualify for a uni degree
Mellow’s selections often notice who is helped by alternative pathways and who is left out. Stories on autistic young people entering cyber security, enabling courses and remote placements show a steady interest in practical routes into learning and work.
Curtin University program helps connect young autistic people to cyber security industry.
The topic is also alert to the culture students inherit: misogyny in schools, digital literacy gaps, phone use, AI anxiety and campus life. The result is a student-centred lens that treats learning outcomes as inseparable from belonging, safety and confidence.
Misogyny in Australian schools: How the ‘manosphere’ is fuelling a classroom crisis among young students
