Clare Hall Colloquium

As part of a visiting fellowship at Delhi University in the mid 1990’s the speaker set up seminars relating to nuclear power, one of which was attended by a Russian diplomat who offered payment in return for information about Britain’s nuclear waste disposal facilities.

 In this talk, Dr Taltavull will explore the importance of understanding the likelihood of a certain volcanic ash adhering into a substrate by taking into consideration both ash properties and environmental conditions.

This talk offers an introduction to technology enterprise in and around Cambridge for those unfamiliar with the Cambridge tech scene. It will examine ways in which scientific knowledge is translated into practice, with a focus on technology-based spin-out companies originating in the university. 

The talk compares Japanese and English illustrations in various editions of Gulliver’s Travels published in Japan between 1880 and the early 1920s.

Global recessions and structural economic shifts are motivating government and business leaders worldwide to increasingly look to “their” universities to stimulate regional development and to contribute to national competitiveness. The challenge is clear and the question is pressing: How will universities respond?

In a series of Riddles written in about the year 1000, animals, plants, and even ore from the earth complain about being torn from their homes and deprived of life so as to become things useful to humans – a book, a bow, an inkwell.

Yes: hard to believe as it may be, sexual education was taught in the Middle Ages throughout Western Europe.

The recently completed Freedom Park provides a profound representation of South Africa’s troubled past, evoking memories of forgotten names and long suppressed South African identities.

Greek myths have always been powerful resources for thinking and feeling: they are ‘good to think with’. We shall illustrate this with the example of Polyphemus, the best known of the one-eyed, anthropophagous, pastoral giants known as the Cyclopes.  

How should humans define themselves in relation to other animals? This familiar question has recently attracted new attention in several disciplines, with some radical results.

I shall focus most of the discussion on the standard English used in the south east of England to describe very briefly some changes in the structures and use of English over the last 500 years.

In about 1100, Zhang Zeduan painted a horizontal scroll that took as its theme the return journey that a family made back to Kaifeng, capital city of the Northern Song Dynasty (960­‐1127). 

We look at some examples of such Internet surveillance and censorship, and give an overview of some of the more popular technologies used by journalists, activists, and others to safely communicate online without observation or interference.

Silicon development cannot last forever so two complementary strategies are being pursued at research level: one seeks to extend the life of silicon technology, and the other seeks alternative materials.

In this colloquium I explore the phenomenon lying and its comic potential. This talk should appeal not only to those working in French literature, cultural studies and intellectual history but to anyone interested in how we communicate or miscommunicate and why we continue to be fascinated by trickery and deception.

Malcolm Longair is Emeritus Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy, Emeritus Professorial Fellow and former Head of the Cavendish Laboratory.

Every schoolchild knows that water is H2O, but it was a terribly difficult thing for scientists to learn originally.

While unrestricted egoism is certainly a vice, I argue that the more serious moral defects in finance lie somewhere else.

What ethical judgments are at stake when we ‘translate’?  What is ‘lost in translation’ when theories of human agency are translated into practices, or when practices are re-inscribed, or translated into theory?

Henslow is remembered for recommending Darwin to the Beagle expedition but his research is less well known – the nature of species through understanding natural variation.

Tom Burton presents poems of William Barnes.

Jon Abando argues that the 'Washington consensus' should be reversed: in his view it IS possible for governments and public bodies to assure long-term competitiveness and prosperity at national level without hindering the free market.

Maria Freddi introduces some of the new tools for language analysis provided by the digital revolution. She then shows how the tools are used to study how scientists use language to argue their case and disseminate knowledge.

The speaker argues that from the time of Jesus the Christian movement consciously engaged with the broader Graeco-Roman world in many different ways.

A fascinating look at some unexpected applications of simple mathematics to the arts: painting, sculpture, medieval manuscripts, architecture and poetry.

The nature of Divine knowledge is a problem that has preoccupied philosophers in the monotheistic traditions; the speaker challenges the view that certain knowledge, such as self-awareness, cannot, by definition, be accessible to the divine intellect.

The life of Lady Anne Clifford and her record as a family historian reflect an unusual, indomitable woman of interest to any modern historians and historiographers.

This talk will consider the recent trend in research towards projects which are 'collaborative' across academic disciplines.

This talk focuses on the work of Sir Edwin Lutyens between 1920 and 1939. By seeing his work in the City as at once both ‘commercial’ and ‘imperial’ I will argue that an analysis of the evolution of Lutyens’s interwar design practice can provide a useful window on the complex process of ‘imperial building’ at this key site at the heart of empire.

This talk will consider the ways in which insights from the recent history of science and technology can help to unlock the secrets of Victorian steamships in the context of an age of faith in engineering and empire.

I will discuss the competing English and Scottish origin myths as they developed in 12th through 15th centuries, and how these myths are taken up by Scottish poets and used to articulate a national identity.

This talk will point to ways in which the Near East legal systems perhaps mark an important step forward in the development of law in the world before the rise of Greece and Rome.

The speaker discusses the classic film Night Mail about an express train travelling through the night from London to Glasgow.

Jenny Rampling poses a seemingly simple question: what did early modern alchemists think they were doing and why?

Michael Dunne analyses the legacy of JFK's presidency through speeches and other documents.

Peter Marks explores the irony that George Orwell never experienced the fame, authority and controversy that his name and writing command over sixty years after his death.

This podcast introduces a unique story of people who have rejected almost everything we as “moderns” assume to be true and good: ease, progress, knowledge, certainty, popularity, self-actualization and upward mobility. 

How our reactions to emotion cause depression, anxiety, anger, stress, rage and other psychological problems and what can be done about it.

On the Leiden research project “Bridging the Unbridgeable: Linguists, Prescriptivists and the General Public”, a study on attitudes to English usage.

Michael Loewe, is a University of Cambridge academic and renowned sinologist who has authored dozens of books, articles, and other publications in the fields of Classical Chinese and ancient Chinese history. In this remarkable talk, he describes the twenty-five Chinese dynastic histories that range from 221 BCE to 1911, a continuous account without parallel anywhere and anytime, and he ponders over what these unique records do tell us about the Chinese sense of history.

American policy toward Germany in the years before Pearl Harbor can be approached from any number of angles. I shall in this talk explore an interpretative line that has been less fully developed in the historiography, namely, the viewpoint of U.S. diplomats posted in Berlin.

Having been involved in the management and the leadership firstly of the British university system, Martin Harris talks among other topics related to education, on the changing nature of the student body and how this has been financed, including attitudes to Fair Access, and on the funding of the system more generally. 

In this talk, Robert Anderson explores how the academic world and industry came together in unpredictable ways in Scotland in the later eighteenth century.

Trudi Tate and Keir Reeves engage in a conversation about their work on Australia’s involvement in foreign wars, and how this is remembered (or not) in the years which follow.

I present the findings of my research on the recruitment and promotion of women by ‘excellent’ British organizations (as defined by the European Foundation for Quality Management criteria). Drawing on their best practices I make recommendations on how gender equality may be encouraged. Slides for this talk can be found on the ASH pages of the Clare Hall Website at http://www.clarehall.cam.ac.uk/index.php?id=312.

An ethicist and palliative care physician examines end of life questions from both analytic and practical angles.

Many people have asked me why I became interested in the Greek Bible, not the Hebrew Bible.  When I published my translation into Japanese of the first five books of the Greek Bible almost ten years ago, many people asked me if I would keep translating the Greek Bible to its very end.  I am here at Clare Hall to continue the task.

In this postdoctoral project Russian historiography is used as a case study, tracing the formation, changes and interpolations of narratives of famous medieval battles, such as the Kulikovo Battle (1380), from the middle ages to the present.

Michael Loewe relates his personal experience of work at Bletchley Park during WW2. The high-level intelligence produced at Bletchley Park, codenamed Ultra, provided crucial assistance to the Allied war effort. Sir Harry Hinsley, a Bletchley veteran and the official historian of British Intelligence during the Second World War, believed that Ultra shortened the war by two to four years and that the outcome of the war would have been uncertain without it.

The question of how language is acquired has fascinated scholars of linguistics and philosophy since ancient times. In this talk, I discuss the status of language universals and gaps in relation to this debate.

What is the evidence for, and why do some people confess to, crimes they have not committed? How reliable is the testimony provided by eyewitnesses, especially by children? Can false memories be created?  What non-legal factors have been shown to influence jury verdicts and sentences imposed by magistrates and judges? Are humans better at detecting lies than machines?