Pigeon slippers, Nobel weirdos and cakes at dawn: 24 things we learned in 2019
13 Dec 2019From lettuce-picking robots to feathery hipsters, we look back at some of this year's biggest research stories.
News from the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Cambridge.
Now we’re talking: the project helping teenage refugees and asylum-seekers build a new life in Britain
20 Nov 2019A new collaboration involving Cambridge linguists and a student-led charitable group is helping young refugees and asylum-seekers develop their confidence and communication skills.
Sir David Attenborough: "Our planet hangs in the balance"
18 Nov 2019Forests burn, glaciers melt and one million species face extinction. Can we humans save the planet from ourselves? Here, Sir David Attenborough speaks to us about the climate crisis and his hopes for the future. His words begin our new focus on Sustainable Earth, looking at how we transition to a carbon zero future, protect the planet's resources, reduce waste and build resilience.
Visualising heat flow in bamboo could help design more energy-efficient and fire-safe buildings
13 Nov 2019Modified natural materials will be an essential component of a sustainable future, but first a detailed understanding of their properties is needed. The way heat flows across bamboo cell walls has been mapped using advanced scanning thermal microscopy, providing a new understanding of how variations in thermal conductivity are linked to the bamboo’s elegant structure. The findings, published in the journal Scientific Reports, will guide the development of more energy-efficient and fire-safe buildings, made from natural materials, in the future.
Did the Sixties dream die in 1969?
01 Nov 2019The year 1969 is held up as the end of an era, but fifty years on are we still buying into a dangerous myth? Counterculture expert James Riley delves into the darkness of the Sixties to sort fact from psychedelic fiction.
Discovering a world of languages
21 Oct 2019A Cambridge-led team seeks to revitalise languages in the UK with a series of interactive pop-up exhibitions and an online game designed to set tongues wagging.
Vice-Chancellor’s awards showcase University’s societal impact and public engagement
14 Oct 2019Twelve students, academics and professional members of staff from across the University of Cambridge have received Vice-Chancellor’s Research Impact and Engagement Awards in areas as diverse as prostate cancer, family law, museum public engagement and police mental health.
Shakespeare’s mystery annotator identified as John Milton
17 Sep 2019A Cambridge literary scholar suggests that the handwriting on a Shakespeare First Folio in Philadelphia matches that of the Paradise Lost poet, John Milton.
Lost Irish words rediscovered, including the word for ‘oozes pus'
30 Aug 2019Researchers from Cambridge and Queen’s University Belfast have identified and defined 500 Irish words, many of which had been lost, and unlocked the secrets of many other misunderstood terms. Their findings can now be freely accessed in the revised version of the online dictionary of Medieval Irish (www.dil.ie).
Shelley’s Peterloo poem took inspiration from the radical press, new research reveals
16 Aug 2019Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Mask of Anarchy, the most celebrated literary response to the Peterloo massacre – which has its bicentenary on 16 August – drew on accounts of the tragedy written by the radical journalist and freethinker, Richard Carlile.
