This year got off to a flying start. In 2025, 48 articles have been published, clocking up 985,000 views in The Conversation. Most readers are in the United States (28%), followed by Japan (13%), Australia (11%) and the United Kingdom (9%).
This year's most popular topics so far include everything from China’s and Japan's social development to adoption scandals and authoritarian regimes. Unusual medical findings, such as the world's rarest blood group, and new research on frontal lobe dementia have also attracted many readers. Historical and symbolic topics with cultural significance, such as Denmark's new coat of arms and its connection to Swedish-Danish relations, are also of great interest.
Historian Ming Gao is the author of four of the ten most-read articles of the year by Lund University researchers. How has he managed to reach such a wide audience?
“I follow global developments and zoom in on the three East Asian countries I am most interested in – Korea, Japan and China – drawing on my language skills in English, Korean, Japanese and Chinese,” he says.
As a researcher, he looks for the unique perspective he can bring to issues that profoundly affect people.
“I often use gender and women's studies as analytical lenses to examine politics and policy, violence and exploitation, and justice in issues of ethnicity, society and crime. My recent article on child sex tourism and its historical development in Asia touches on several of these areas, and I am pleased that my perspectives on both historical and contemporary issues have reached such a wide and engaged audience.