Topic description and stories

Professor Ioanna Sitaridou (right) with a 100 year-old Romeyka speaker in Turkey's Trabzon region.

Last chance to record archaic Greek language ‘heading for extinction’

03 Apr 2024

A new data crowdsourcing platform aims to preserve the sound of Romeyka, an endangered millennia-old variety of Greek. Experts consider the language...

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Saving Turkey's Children

12 Jun 2020

Exiled by Hitler, Albert Eckstein turned his medical expertise to saving Turkey's poorest children from the curse of infant mortality.

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Yesim Yaprak Yildiz, PhD student

Postgraduate Pioneers 2017 #4

31 Oct 2017

With our Postgraduate Open Day fast-approaching (3 November), we introduce five PhD students who are already making waves at Cambridge.

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Deliberations among a Local Women's Council in Qamişlo, Rojava

Can the Revolution in Kurdish Syria succeed?

02 Feb 2015

We can but hope, argue sociologist Dr Jeff Miley and Gates Scholar Johanna Riha, who here summarise some of their observations following a recent...

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Prehistoric ‘book keeping’ continued long after invention of writing

14 Jul 2014

An ancient token-based recording system from before the dawn of history was rendered obsolete by the birth of writing, according to popular wisdom...

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Salaheddin, Aleppo

Syria's Muslim Brotherhood looking to return from exile

26 Nov 2012

The exiled Muslim Brotherhood in Syria is preparing to exploit the current crisis in the country to make its return, but is unlikely to link up with...

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Detail from the tablet found at Ziyaret Tepe. Inscribed with Cuneiform characters, the tablet consists of a list of women's names, many of which appear to be from a previously unknown language.

Archaeologists discover lost language

10 May 2012

Evidence for a forgotten ancient language which dates back more than 2,500 years, to the time of the Assyrian Empire, has been found by...

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Men display their scars after kidney removal

What price a human kidney?

14 May 2011

A public talk at Cambridge University on Saturday will draw attention to the growing illegal trade in human organs and invite discussion of the...

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Trabzon area of Turkey

Against all odds: archaic Greek in a modern world

01 Jul 2010

An endangered Greek dialect spoken in Turkey has been identified by Dr Ioanna Sitaridou as a "linguistic goldmine" because of its closeness to a...

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