The Cambridge series at the Hay Festival 2013 has now been announced. Taking place between 23 May and 2 June this year, the Hay Festival brings together writers from around the world to debate and share stories in the staggering beauty of the Welsh Borders. A host of Cambridge academics and alumni will speak about subjects ranging from obesity and smart drugs to US politics and domestic service at this year’s Hay Festival. 2013 is the fifth year that the University has run it Cambridge Series at the Hay Festival, one of the most prestigious literary events in the world. This year for the first time speakers include alumni such as Chris Blackhurst, editor of The Independent who will speak with Professor Simon Blackburn on the current crisis of trust in major institutions including the press, the police and parliament following a series of scandals.

The Hay Festival will also see the announcement of the winner of the Michael Ramsey Prize for theological writing, set up by Lord Rowan Williams, Master of Magdalene. Judges include Lord Williams, Professor Sarah Coakley, Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge and Father Alban McCoy, Catholic Chaplain to the University.

Please visit the Hay Festival website for further details on the festival – bookings, transport, accommodation etc.

Below are details of the various events as part of this series:

24th May

14.30pm

Jonathan Haslam, professor of the history of international relations and a Fellow and Director of Studies at Corpus Christi College: The history of the Russian Secret Service

Jonathan Haslam will talk about his new history of Soviet intelligence entitled ‘Near and Distant Neighbours 1917-1989′. It incorporates within short compass – 100,000 words – the history of all the Soviet intelligence organisations, including the GRU (military intelligence) and the Special Service (codes and ciphers) as well as KGB. Hitherto organisations other than the KGB have found no place. It is to be published by Fahrar Straus in the United States and OUP in the UK in 2014.

4pm

Sir Mark Welland, professor of nanotechnology and a Fellow of St John’s College: The future is nano

There’s been a lot of hype about nanotechnology, but what is it and what is a realistic expectation of what it can do? Professor Welland will look at how nanotechnology developed, how it is one step in the progress of technology and at the kind of areas it can be applied to such as the understanding and treatment of human diseases as well as the more obvious miniaturisation of electronics that provides ever smaller but more complex mobile phones.

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25th May

11.30am, 4.30pm

Charlie Gilderdale, secondary coordinator of NRICH, the University of Cambridge’s maths outreach programme

Thinking Mathematically

Exploring, questioning, working systematically, visualising, conjecturing, explaining, generalising, justifying, proving… are all at the heart of mathematical thinking. Come and take part in some stimulating activities designed to develop your capacity to work as a mathematician. 10+. Parents welcome too!

11.30am

Barbara Sahakian, professor of neuroscience, a Fellow of Clare Hall College and Bye-Fellow of Christ’s College: Bad moves: how decision-making goes wrong

Making decisions is such a regular activity that it is mostly taken for granted. However, damage or abnormality in the areas of the brain involved in decision-making can severely affect personality and the ability to manage even simple tasks.

Professor Sahakian will discuss the process of normal decision making – our strategies for making decisions, biases that affect us, and influential factors – and will describe the abnormal patterns found in patients with conditions such as severe depression, Alzheimer’s, and accidental brain damage.

Looking at the ways in which the brain can be manipulated to improve cognitive function in these patients, she will consider the use of ‘smart drugs’ that alleviate these problems and the ethical questions that arise about the availability of these drugs for cognitive enhancement.

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26th May

10am

Simon Blackburn, professor of philosophy and a Fellow of Trinity College, and Chris Blackhurst, editor of The Independent: Do nice guys finish last – or first?

Trust in British public life has now reached catastrophically low levels. Parliament, the Press, the banks, the police, and the NHS have all had their bad patches, while just as the National Rifle Association in the USA claims that the solution to gun crime lies in more guns, our government (and, for instance, The Times) preaches that the cure for decline in trust lies in less public service and more profit motive. The conversation will reflect on this alarming state of affairs.

11.30am

Charlie Gilderdale, secondary coordinator of NRICH, the University of Cambridge’s maths outreach programme

Thinking Mathematically

Exploring, questioning, working systematically, visualising, conjecturing, explaining, generalising, justifying, proving… are all at the heart of mathematical thinking. Come and take part in some stimulating activities designed to develop your capacity to work as a mathematician. 10+. Parents welcome too!

7pm

Sadaf Farooqi, professor of metabolism and medicine and a Fellow of Trinity College: What makes us fat

In an age of obesity where sugary, fatty food is available 24/7, will it ever be possible to control our appetites? Professor Farooqi will describe how the brain and not the stomach controls what and how much we eat and how scientists are working to conquer the many triggers for overeating.

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27th May

11.30am

James Jackson, professor of earth sciences and a Fellow of Queen’s College: Living with earthquakes: know your faults.

Earthquakes in the last decade have revealed that rich nations have become very resilient in terms of loss-of-life, while much smaller earthquakes have killed up to 30% of urban populations in countries that are far less well prepared. This contrast is related to wealth, development and education, but also to the geological setting and the nature of the hazard involved. This talk will examine what is behind the sombre conclusion that ‘the rich pay and the poor die’.

14.30pm

Martin Rees, The Astronomer Royal, former Royal Society President and Master of Trinity College: A post-human future?

Lord Rees discusses his hopes and fears for the coming decades, and then speculates about more distant time-horizons, and a possible post-human era.

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28th May

11.30am

Tony Badger, Paul Mellon professor of American history and Master of Clare College: The lessons of the New Deal: has Obama learnt the right ones?

In 2009, as in 1933, a charismatic president succeeded a discredited president at a time of economic crisis and with resounding majorities in Congress. Obama and his advisers explicitly looked to FDR’s New Deal for policy models. Despite his re-election in 2012, Obama has lost control of the House where Republicans stymie attempts to avoid the fiscal cliff. Economic recovery is partial and largely jobless. The prospects for his second term look unpromising in a highly polarised politics. Did Obama learn the right lessons from the New Deal?

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29th May

11.30am

Dr Alex Jeffrey, lecturer in geography and Fellow of Emmanuel College, and Guardian journalist Ed Vulliamy: Justice and recovery in Bosnia

They will be speaking about the challenges of attempting to end the impunity of war criminals in Bosnia and Herzegovina, focusing on the creation of the war crimes chamber in Sarajevo. The process of establishing justice after the war in Bosnia 1992-5 has been orientated around retributive concepts of justice: identifying individuals as perpetrators of crime and seeking to punish them accordingly. But this approach has overlooked more collective and restorative initiatives, which have taking place in Bosnia on a small-scale and voluntary basis. This discussion examines how we can learn from these activities and their implications for justice after conflict in a range of settings.

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30th May

11.30am

Jacqueline Scott, professor of sociology and Fellow of Queen’s College, in conversation with Gaby Hinsliff, author of Half a Wife

Do women need equality at home to be equal in the workplace?

Despite much progress in the world of work, women are still often held back by carrying the domestic burden and effectively doing a double shift. However, research shows that greater equality in the home and workplace makes both sexes happier. Nevertheless, many organisations still make decisions which challenge or reinforce traditional ideas about what men and women can or cannot do. If these decisions are not joined up, it can limit real gender equality overall.

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31st May

11.30am

Dr Lucy Delap, Fellow of St Catharine’s College

Domestic servants, housewives and the twentieth century home

Historian Lucy Delap will explore the conditions of life for servants in twentieth century Britain, ranging from those working in the great houses so familiar from Downton Abbey, to the much less well known lives of servants in middle or even working class homes. She will look at how changes in technologies and ideas about what made a ‘home’ changed the ways in which domestic labour was undertaken – yet did not do away with the perceived need for domestic servants in many homes. The rise of the housewife is set alongside the new categories of twentieth century domestic worker – the cleaner, the au pair, the ‘help’.

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1st June

11.30am

Dame Fiona Reynolds, Master of Emmanuel College and former Director-General of the National Trust: what is Britishness today?

In a world of rapid change and global, multi-cultural influences, Dame Fiona will explore the place that landscape, history and nature play in people’s sense of Britishness today.

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2nd June

11.30am

Renaissance scholar Abigail Brundin, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Italian and a Fellow of St Catharine’s College

“Only a pen can ease my pain”: voices from renaissance convents

In seventeenth-century Italy, the number of girls and young women entering convents rose rapidly as dowries became increasingly expensive, yet not all the girls went willingly and some left powerful written accounts of their experiences. 14+

11.30am

Tim Minshall, senior lecturer in technology management

Building the future

Engineers are fantastic – they are the people who change the world. Engineers put a man on the moon, developed the internet, build skyscrapers, re-build bodies… and so much more. Yet not many people know what engineers actually do. This talk will reveal – in just ten words – the secrets of what engineers really get up to as they work hard to build a better future for us all. If you want to know why engineering is important, exciting and fun, this is the talk for you. 12+

Also speaking are Professor Jaideep Prabhu, Dr Brendan Simms, Dr Robert Macfarlane, Rowan Williams, Dr Rachel Polonsky and Simon Mitton.

The US election seen from East Asia: what is at stake? – audio recording

When China Rules the World – audio recording

Are we being sold online? – recording of the panel debate

Produced by Colour Films www.facebook.com/ColourFilms

The competition – which in its inaugural year saw the winning poets perform their entries to a packed house at St Edmund’s College in the company of Zephaniah himself – is now open to a greater range of local writers who need to submit their work by Saturday 17, October 2012.

Last year’s competition was open to Cambridge University students only. It was won by Isabella Shaw, a student of English Literature at Clare College whose lyrical Variations on the Western Wind, a poem inspired by a song from the early 16th century, captivated the judges and held the audience spellbound when she read it at the prize giving.

Read the full article here

Neuroscientists have been criticised in recent books by feminist writers such as Natasha Walter’s Living Dolls for bolstering gender stereotypes.

Simon Baron Cohen, professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge, says critics who argue that gender difference is all a question of socialisation are in danger of oversimplifying the interaction of biology and experience. He says: “Some gender differences in the mind and behaviour may in part be the result of our biology (prenatal hormones and genes) interacting with our experience. The old nature vs. nurture debate is absurdly simplistic and a moderate position recognises the interaction of both.

Read the full article here

The Festival of Ideas presents Kate Adie, the BBC’s former Chief News Correspondent and the longest-serving presenter of Radio 4′s ‘From Our Own Correspondent’, in conversation with Professor John Naughton. Adie is considered to be among the very finest reporters, with assignments including both Gulf Wars, four years of war in the Balkans, the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster at Zeebrugge, the massacre at Dunblane and the Hatfield rail crash.

We are living in a world which is in the midst of huge upheaval and uncertainty. Will progressive forces be stronger than repressive ones and is our increasing interconnectedness a force for good in international politics?

Join us on Friday, 26 October for this free event. Bookings are now open! Book your tickets here.

The app, SingSmash, is a game similar in style to ‘Pong’, where the gamer sings into their device to hit a ball back and forth across the screen. The key to completing different levels is using different vocal harmonies. Once a user completes the level, the app gives them a breakdown of some of the music theory that they just engaged in.

SingSmash, which can also be played with an instrument, will be available to view at this year’s Festival of Ideas. More details closer to the time!