Aro Velmet
is a PhD candidate in History and French Studies at New York University and a recipient of the De Karman fellowship. He is also an editor at Vikerkaar.
Articles

The secret history of radiation
An interview with Kate Brown
In the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident, international agencies dismissed local doctors’ warnings about a ‘public health catastrophe’ in order to suppress scandal over nuclear tests carried out by the West since the 1950s. Kate Brown talks to Aro Velmet about the secret history of radiation and what Chernobyl means in the era of climate change.

An ominous sign
UK, Estonia and Latvia after the EP election
What next for Britain and the EU? Though the Brexit Party will now be one of the largest national parties in the European Parliament, combined support for the ‘hard Remain’ parties is greater still. The EP election played out as a referendum on Estonia’s government too, while Latvia was spared a populist surge.

Anarchism, work and bureaucracy
An interview with David Graeber
‘On a deep, cultural level, people actually believe that if you don’t do something that at least mildly frustrates you, then your work is not valuable.’ Anthropologist, activist and bestselling anarchist David Graeber on the police state, bullshit jobs and why people need no telling that capitalism is bad.

Universalist politics and its crises
A conversation with Camille Robcis
Human emancipation was always a more complex issue than it might at first seem, and never more so than in today’s France. Historian Camille Robcis discusses the evolution of French Republicanism since the 1980s in relation to controversies over same-sex marriage, integration and racism.