As the much-lauded Downton Abbey returns to our screens this Sunday, social historian Dr Lucy Delap sets the gripping fictional drama of the English country house within the context of a much more gritty and complex reality of domestic service in the 20th century.
With recent reports stating that almost three quarters of those charged with offences during the London riots had prior convictions, attention has turned to Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke’s description of Britain’s “broken penal system”. Johann Koehler, from the Institute of Criminology, discusses some of the latest projects to reduce reoffending, and how politicians may have to risk the ‘soft on crime’ label to move forward.
To mark Roald Dahl Day on September 13th and the 50th anniversary of James And The Giant Peach, Professor Maria Nikolajeva explains why he remains such an important figure for young readers.
Having just returned from a year spent documenting the language and culture of the remote Inughuit community of north-western Greenland, Dr Stephen Leonard describes how he witnessed first-hand the manner in which globalisation and consumerism are conspiring to destroy centuries-old cultures and traditions.
Over the past month, the University of Cambridge has been profiling research that addresses one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century – how to guarantee enough food, fairly, for the world’s rapidly expanding population. As part of this, we asked whether you had a question that you wanted us to answer, and put them to a panel of academics who specialise in research to do with food security. Here's what they had to say. Thanks to everyone who sent questions in!
Hundreds of millions of people in Europe alone are “non-religious”, but non-religion remains an understudied field. To mark the launch of a new journal on the subject, associate editor Lois Lee discusses its significance and its role in defining the identities of the “silent majority” in Europe.
As World Water Week, an annual week-long global conference on water provision and sustainability, begins in Stockholm, Dr Douglas Crawford-Brown explains how the world needs to prepare for the consequences climate change is likely to have on people's access to this vital resource.
Now mid-way through a year-long 21st-century pilgrimage to the settings of Iceland’s famous medieval Íslendingasögur (‘sagas of Icelanders’), Dr Emily Lethbridge has crisscrossed the country in her ex-MOD Land Rover ambulance on the trail of outlaws, shapeshifters, mound-dwelling viking-zombies, and ordinary men and women who lived in Iceland a thousand years ago.
Author of the recently published 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, Dr Ha-Joon Chang studies how international markets succeed and fail, asking what steps might be taken to rebuild the world economy.
Professor Jane Clarke’s laboratory was one of the first in the world to combine atomic force microscopy with protein engineering to ‘visualise’ the mechanical unfolding of a single protein at the molecular level.
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