University of Cambridge

We talk to Nicole Horst about her journey from the body shop of a car manufacturing plant to a research project studying obsessive compulsive disorder, and about finding her true passion for advocacy and supporting other young researchers. As this is our first episode recorded remotely during the coronavirus lockdown, we also talk about her role in a volunteering project that’s supporting NHS work...

ExoMars is Europe’s first Rover mission to Mars, a mission in search of life, past or present, to answer one of humankind’s oldest questions: are we alone in the Universe? Abbie Hutty, Platform Delivery Manager, discusses the mission’s aims and objectives, the major challenges and design drivers of a mission to Mars, and how the team are engineering solutions to meet those challenges.

How much garlic did the medieval Irish use in baking bread? The answer to this and other questions about daily life in medieval Ireland can be found in written and material sources used to construct the past. Sharon Arbuthnot and Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, and Aidan O’Sullivan and colleagues, University College Dublin, bring to life the everyday objects of medieval Ireland.

By 2050, the global population is estimated to hit 10 billion, and we're going to need to feed them all. Around a third of our food depends on pollinating insects, but they're in decline. Hamish Symington explores how food relies on insects, and how research at the Department of Plant Sciences aims to make flowers more efficient at being pollinated, helping to feed all those mouths in future.

An asteroid impact 66 million years ago may have wiped out the giant dinosaurs, but it also resulted in the rapid evolution of birds. From this point onwards, bird body size and genomes were changed forever. Dr Daniel Field, Department of Earth Sciences, explores the evidence and sheds light on the way modern animals may respond to Earth’s current biodiversity crisis.

Horizons Public Lecture Nick White, Head of University Catering Service, Emma Garnett, Department of Zoology and Amy Munro-Faure, Environment and Energy Section, discuss how a Sustainable Food Policy at the University of Cambridge, which includes removing beef and lamb from the menu and promoting plant-based food options, has dramatically reduced food-related carbon emissions.

What does the future hold for China in a world of global trade wars, rising concerns about human rights and regional expansion in the form of the Belt and Road Initiative? With historian Professor Hans van der Ven, human rights expert Professor Eva Pils, Agnes Chong, visiting at POLIS and Bhavna Dave from Soas . Chaired by Rana Mitter Talk recorded at event Wednesday 23 October: 6:00pm - 7:30pm St...

When he’s not monitoring seals from space, Prem Gill is laying down Grime tracks featuring the voices of seals and live-streaming his Antarctic expeditions to secondary school students in the UK. He hopes that his efforts will encourage others from ethnic minority or working-class backgrounds to consider a career in polar science. My PhD research, which is jointly funded by the Scott Polar Researc...

What has Brexit revealed about how we view ourselves and how others see us? Listen again to our panel discussion with Professor Robert Eaglestone, Ali Meghji, lecturer in social inequalities, anthropologist Professor Katharine Tyler and international relations expert Ayse Zarakol. Chaired by David Reynold. This event took place as part of the Cambridge Festival of ideas on 19 October 2019.

Will automation make us redundant or are there qualities that are essentially human which will become more sought after? Listen again to robots expert Hatice Gunes, Allegre Hadida, University Senior Lecturer in Strategy at Judge Business School, author and lecturer Laura Dietz and Stephen Cave from the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. Chaired by Julian Clover from Cambridge 105 Ra...

Risk expert Professor David Spiegelhalter and social psychologist Dr Sander van der Linden explore how we can discuss risk sensibly without causing conspiracy theories and mass panic.

Our current stance on Class A drugs is not working. Is the lack of success in reducing the harm drug-users do to themselves or others a matter of economics, politics, ethics or education? Rowan Williams, Master of Magdalene College, chairs a discussion on safer drug use and the research on drug consumption rooms. Panel Chair: Dr Rowan Williams Panel members: Fiona Godlee Editor in Chief of The BMJ...

The scientific consensus on climate change is clear so how do we get everyone on board for the kind of radical action required to save the planet? With writer Hugh Warwick, composer and environmental activist Lola Perrin, Professor Matthew Gandy and Laura Diaz Anadon, Professor of Climate Change Policy. Chaired by Steve Evans from the Centre for Industrial Sustainability.

How much did your health shape your fate in the Middle Ages? If you were a typical peasant or townsperson, how much was your fate in your own hands? How much did it really depend upon chance encounters with random microbes, runaway carts, crop failures, and the like? In this talk, members of the After the Plague: Health and History in Medieval Cambridge project experiment with several ways of gett...

The Balkans has long been Europe’s most unstable region. After a series of devastating conflicts in the 1990s, the Balkans was pacified when the US intervened militarily to impose a settlement which transformed the internal boundaries from Yugoslavia into international borders, resulting in a set of multiethnic states such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Kosovo. However, this settle...

Revolution is everywhere, from people power uprisings in Sudan and Algeria to the rise of Islamic State and the emergence of populism. But how should we understand this new age of revolution? And what links contemporary movements to their predecessors in history? George Lawson, from the Department of International Relations LSE, will explore how revolutions begin, unfold and end. His talk aims to...

What would it be like to live in a metropolis where horses and livestock abound, and influence every aspect of daily life? How would this affect your attitudes and conduct towards man and beast? Tom Almeroth-Williams answers these questions by exploring how human–animal interactions shaped Georgian London.

Researcher Tyler Shores on how the move from books to screens is affecting our reading habits, whether digital distraction alters how we take in information and what this means for the future of reading.

The third edition of David Crystal’s Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language published this year. There have been huge developments in English in the 15 years since the previous edition. Not all of the developments have been predictable. Among the expected changes were a continuing spread of English as a global language and the remarkable growth of new internet varieties. But who would ever...

Hiraeth participant Hussein talks about friends and family

Two girls on the Hiraeth programme discuss their confidence to speak English

Welcome to We are the University. A podcast about the alumni, staff and students who make Cambridge University unique. In this episode we chat to Julian Hargreaves about his life in the music industry discovering talent like So Solid Crew and why he chose to leave the music industry and pursue a career in academia. We talk about Julian’s research with British Muslim communities; the issues around...

Dr Amy Erickson talking about Women Entrepreneurs in 18th-century London: change or continuity? and her exhibition: City Women in the 18th Century at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas. The outdoor exhibition City Women in the 18th Century (Cheapside, London, 21 September – 18 October 2019) highlights the extraordinary number of women who ran manufacturing and commercial businesses in the heart of 18...

Didier Queloz from the University of Cambridge was jointly awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics along with James Peebles and Michel Mayor for their pioneering advances in physical cosmology, and the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star. Listen to Professor Queloz talk to journalists at the Science Media Centre in London just a few hours after finding out about the award.

Final-year chemist Shadab Ahmed reflects on his sabbatical year as Cambridge University Student Union Access and Funding Officer, the importance of role models, and how increasing diversity within universities could be the start of seeing real change in society as a whole.