RUMS Review: Vol. XI, Issue I
We are excited to share the Winter 2025 online edition of the RUMS Review magazine, now available to read here.
A note from our Editor-in-Chief, Anna Baker:
Welcome to the 11th volume of the RUMS Review! I am looking forward to the year ahead after taking over from Nilay Sah, who did an excellent job as Editor-In-Chief over the past two years.
This is our largest edition to date, with nearly thirty articles in our Journalism section and six in our Medical School Reporting (MSR) section. From hard science (see our Research subsection) to medical anthropology and critique on current medical practices (see Features and Perspectives), there is surely an article that will be of interest to you.
Foregoing an overarching theme (as has been done for some editions), a collection of writers have nevertheless organically created threads, or subthemes, by way of individually writing about the same medical specialties and topics. These include AI & Digital Health, Medical History, Mental Health, Neurodiversity and Neurology & Neurosurgery; the colour-coded tabs in the corner of the articles will guide your reading.
We have created a team that is stronger and more passionate than ever this year, with a large influx of first-time RR writers spanning the year groups, several former writers and designers being elected to committee and some former committee members being elected into different positions. Our Journalism section is under the dual leadership of two excellent writers in their own right: Adiyat Zahir (read his beautiful article on the impact of Jane Goodall in this magazine) and Daniella Baruch (her article Sonder: A Discussion of Its Power in Medical Practice was shortlisted for Best Science Piece at the 2025 Student Publication Awards National Conference). The MSR section has been expanded and given new life under Zara Ahmad, a former Deputy Editor (her photojournalism piece from Summer 2023, Travels Through Pakistan, was re-worked in our first zine as well). Sreeja Roy took over as Design Team lead this year – she has done a wonderful job at overseeing the amazing work of the medical student artists who’ve produced the stunning visuals for this magazine. I must commend our Social Media Leads, Rujuta Kulkarni and Megan Kwok, who have increased our visibility, engagement and readership significantly through their work on our Instagram.
It has already been a great first term, ahead of even publishing this edition of our magazine. Our Events and Socials Lead, Saarah Chowdury, helped to organise two extremely informative speaker events in collaboration with UCL Friends of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), UCL Student Inclusion Health Society and UCL Students for Global Health. In October we had a record turnout for Dr James Smith, Deputy Director of UCL’s MSc in Humanitarian Policy and Practice, whose work with institutions and foundations like Johns Hopkins and MSF focuses on humanitarian health ethics and global health governance. We welcomed Dr Eslam Elbaaly in November, who has extensive managerial and field experience with MSF, and whose expertise ranges from strategic planning and data-driven impact assessments of humanitarian operations, to migrant health and response to gender-based violence. We will continue hosting more speaker events like this in the future to foster cross-disciplinary discussion, to prompt topics for our medical student journalists and to expose medical students to the diverse paths that their careers could take.
Last year, as Deputy Editor, I began organising meetings to plan the creation of a zine. This ever-popular format of self-published media can be bent and crafted to suit any purpose, and the core team that emerged from those meetings wanted ours to explore medicine through art, photography, poetry and prose. We put our plans into action this autumn, releasing the first edition of STAT!: The RUMS Review Zine on the theme of ‘Culture and Medicine’. We have now found our rhythm and this winter began accepting submissions (open to anyone at UCL) for our next theme: ‘shame’ in relation to medicine, illness and the body. For those who don’t manage to snatch up a hard copy when it is released in the coming months, both zines will soon be digitalised and uploaded to our website.
From joining as a first-year writer, to being Journalism Editor for two years, then Deputy Editor and now Editor-in-Chief, the RUMS Review has been such a vibrant society to be part of and to expand throughout medical school. I am honoured to have been Editor in what will be my last year on committee as I go into my final year of medical school. This society is a place to not only research and write, but to also collaboratively discuss and critically think about medicine in all its breadth and depth with like-minded medics. After all the rote learning of Anki and question banks are done and gone, we will always have our writing to look back upon.
I would like to thank our sponsors, MDU, Elsevier and our own UCL Medical School who support us with the grants we need to continue publishing excellent medical journalism and running insightful and motivating speaker events. And to our wider 60+ team – thank you for your writing, editing and artwork, and the hours of brainstorming, research and drafting dedicated to producing this magazine.
Enjoy your read!
Anna Bostrom Baker
Editor-in-Chief
2025-2026
