In 2009 the International Division of the Institute of Continuing Education celebrates its eighty-sixth year of arranging International Summer Schools. At least one thousand visitors will come to the University for periods of study lasting from one to six weeks. At the core of each Summer School are small special study classes, usually taught by members of the University. Each programme also offers plenary lectures for all participants in that Summer School, and experts from within the University and beyond are invited to contribute to these series.
These lectures have been very well received in the past, and the organizers of the Summer Schools would like, where possible, to make them more widely accessible to those with research and teaching interests in the subject concerned. The lectures are not open to the public, but where space in the lecture hall or venue permits, we are willing to make places available for members of the University to attend the plenary lectures which interest them most.
Please note: members of the University may be asked to confirm their status to one of the Institute's staff in attendance at the lecture hall. We would be grateful if those wishing to attend any of these lectures would notify us in advance. Contact details are given at the end of this list. Any unavoidable changes to the list of venues or speakers will be posted in the main Summer Schools Office (Foyer, Lady Mitchell Hall, for all except the Science Summer Schools): we suggest attendees arrive a few minutes in advance in order to allow time to check the location.
Please note: * indicates joint lectures (those offered for more than one Summer School). These lectures take place in the Lady Mitchell Hall.
The first term of the Institute of Continuing Education's eighty-sixth International Summer School will take place from Monday, 6 July to Friday, 31 July 2009. The talks in this series of lectures follow the theme of Understanding. The topics have been chosen to stimulate interest amongst a group of students from a broad range of disciplines. Lectures take place on weekday mornings, in the Lady Mitchell Hall. They begin promptly at 10.30 a.m., and finish at 11.30 a.m. The series is arranged for the c. 250 participants on the International Summer School, but members of the University are cordially invited to attend.
Wednesday, 8 July | Understanding the University of Cambridge, by Dr Kate Pretty |
Thursday, 9 July | Understanding major world changes in the next fifty years, by Professor Colin Humphreys |
Friday, 10 July | Understanding stem cells: hope, hype, and reality, by Professor Austin Smith |
Monday, 13 July | Are we stardust or nuclear waste?, by Dr Robin Catchpole |
Tuesday, 14 July | Literature now: the place of literature in contemporary British life, by Adrian Barlow |
Wednesday, 15 July | Understanding biodiversity: trees and immortality, by Professor John Parker |
Thursday, 16 July | Understanding English, via Greek, by Professor Paul Cartledge |
Monday, 20 July | Towards the new horizon: world order in the twenty-first century, by Professor James Mayall |
Tuesday, 21 July | Understanding how governments work, by Lord Wilson of Dinton |
Wednesday, 22 July | Understanding our masters' voice: interpreting Parliament's will, by Dr Roderick Munday |
Thursday, 23 July | Understanding cancer as a Darwinian process, by Professor Ron Laskey |
Friday, 24 July | Understanding Middle English, by Dr Fred Parker |
Monday, 27 July | The ape on your bird table, by Professor Nicky Clayton |
Tuesday, 28 July | How the universe came to understand itself: evolution's dark secret, by Professor Simon Conway Morris |
Additional evening lectures, at 8 p.m., are scheduled for:
*Tuesday, 7 July | Cambridge and the Colleges, by Dr Rob Wallach |
*Wednesday, 8 July | Cambridge 800: creation of a 'son et lumière', by Ross Ashton |
*Friday, 10 July | Understanding the British hero figure: from Boudica to Bond, and beyond, by Dr Sean Lang |
*Monday, 13 July | Understanding boomerangs and other spinning things, by Dr Hugh Hunt |
*Tuesday, 14 July | Understanding the British, by Dr Nicholas James |
*Wednesday, 15 July | Nuclear proliferation and Iran: a building crisis, by John Jackson |
*Thursday, 16 July | Cutting-edge technology: the art of forging a medieval sword, by Magnus Sigurdsson |
*Monday, 20 July | History and the decline of memory, by Professor Jonathan Steinberg |
*Tuesday, 21 July | Understanding codes and the Enigma machine, by Dr James Grime |
*Thursday, 23 July | Understanding English history from evidence in changing landscapes, 900-1300 AD, by Dr Sue Oosthuizen |
Monday, 27 July | Understanding the origins of Islam, by Piers Bursill-Hall |
The Science Summer School takes place from Sunday, 5 July to Saturday, 18 July 2009 (Term I), and from Sunday, 19 July to Saturday, 1 August 2009 (Term II). The theme for this year's plenary lecture series is Atoms to galaxies. Lectures are given in the Little Hall, with the exception of asterisked joint lectures, which are held in the Lady Mitchell Hall.
Monday, 6 July | 9.15 a.m. | Understanding stem cells, by Professor Austin Smith |
11 a.m. | Galaxies, by Dr Carolin Crawford | |
8 p.m. | Making surfaces: what is the next number in the sequence 4, 8, 20, infinity?, by Dr Keith Carne | |
Tuesday, 7 July | 9.15 a.m. | Origins and evolution of the brain and the emergence of behaviour, by Professor Seth Grant |
Wednesday, 8 July | 9.15 a.m. | Beyond quantum computing, by Professor Peter Littlewood |
8 p.m. | *Cambridge 800: creation of a 'son et lumière', by Ross Ashton | |
Thursday, 9 July | 9.15 a.m. | Materials for aircraft: why they don't fall down, by Dr Rob Wallach |
Monday, 13 July | 9.15 a.m. | Dancing algae, by Professor Raymond Goldstein |
11 a.m. | Material efficiency: how can we serve more people with less material?, by Dr Julian Allwood | |
8 p.m. | *Understanding boomerangs and other spinning things, by Dr Hugh Hunt | |
Tuesday, 14 July | 9.15 a.m. | Examining the biological world: a plant's eye view, by Professor John Parker |
Wednesday, 15 July | 9.15 a.m. | From eggs to animals: evolving complexity, by Professor Michael Akam |
8 p.m. | *Nuclear proliferation and Iran: a building crisis, by John Jackson | |
Thursday, 16 July | 9.15 a.m. | Rubber band electronic circuits: can electronic materials stretch?, by Dr Stéphanie Lacour |
Thursday, 16 July | 11 a.m. | The science of getting electricity from burning coal, blowing winds, and shining sunshine, by Niraj Lal |
8 p.m. | *Cutting-edge technology: the art of forging a medieval sword, by Magnus Sigurdsson | |
Friday, 17 July | 9.15 a.m. | Bang in the middle: life and the predictability of evolution, by Professor Simon Conway Morris |
11 a.m. | The search for extra-terrestrial life, by Dr Lisa Jardine-Wright |
Monday, 20 July | 9.15 a.m. | Materials in living systems, by Professor Lindsay Greer |
11 a.m. | Back to the future: the development and evolution of mental time travel, by Professor Nicky Clayton | |
8 p.m. | Humans on the move: can migrations and diasporas in prehistory explain human biological and cultural variation?, by Dr Maru Mormina | |
Tuesday, 21 July | 9.15 a.m. | Sustainable energy (without the hot air), by Professor David Mackay |
8 p.m. | *Understanding codes and the Enigma machine, by Dr James Grime | |
Wednesday, 22 July | 9.15 a.m. | Rogue molecules of the cancer cell, by Professor Ron Laskey |
Thursday, 23 July | 9.15 a.m. | Foundations of a world shaking theory: Henslow's influence on Darwin, by Professor John Parker |
8 p.m. | Are we stardust or nuclear waste?, by Dr Robin Catchpole | |
Friday, 24 July | 9.15 a.m. | Unpredictability and chance in science and technology, by Professor Sir John Meurig Thomas |
11 a.m. | Light the messenger: understanding and exploiting nature, by Dr Lisa Jardine Wright | |
Monday, 27 July | 9.15 a.m. | Cloning, stem cells, and cell replacement, by Professor Sir John Gurdon |
11 a.m. | Power to the people. Materials science: the key to sustainability, by Dr Rob Wallach | |
8 p.m. | Free drugs from your tap - the emerging problem, by Dr Oliver Jones | |
Tuesday, 28 July | 9.15 a.m. | Of maize and men or peas and people: how studies with plants help point the way to new ways of treating disease in man, by Professor David Baulcombe |
Wednesday, 29 July | 9.15 a.m. | The Hog's Bosun and where to find him: CERN and the Large Hadron Collider, by Professor Christopher Lester |
8 p.m. | DNA - beyond the double helix, by Dr Julian Huppert | |
Thursday, 30 July | 9.15 a.m. | Brain damage and repair, by Professor James Fawcett |
11 a.m. | Parasitic disease: the silent killer, by Dan Neill | |
8 p.m. | Challenging sociality? Exploring robots as terminators and friends, by Dr Kathleen Richardson | |
Friday, 31 July | 9.15 a.m. | The puppet master: how the brain controls the body, by Professor Daniel Wolpert |
11 a.m. | Serendipity in astronomy, by Professor Andrew Fabian |
The Summer School in Art History will take place from Sunday, 5 July to Saturday, 18 July, 2009. The theme for this year's plenary lecture series is Paint and passion. Morning lectures take place in the Runcie Room, Faculty of Divinity, on the Sidgwick Site, and evening lectures are held at Wolfson Court, Clarkson Road.
Monday, 6 July | 9.30 a.m. | Art in the service of emotion, by Nicholas Friend |
11.30 a.m. | The art of illusion: painting at the time of Van Eyck, by Dr Richard Williams | |
8 p.m. | British passions for Spanish art, by Gail Turner | |
Tuesday, 7 July | 9.30 a.m. | Art in the service of religion: the body of Christ in sixteenth-century Venetian art, by Norman Coady |
8 p.m. | Poussin's passions, by Nicholas Friend | |
*Wednesday, 8 July | 8 p.m. | Cambridge 800: creation of a 'son et lumière', by Ross Ashton |
Thursday, 9 July | 9.30 a.m. | Picturing the passions: the tragic mode in late sixteenth-century Venetian painting, by Dr Michael Douglas-Scott |
Friday, 10 July | 9.30 a.m. | Passion, paint, and the sea, by Jo Rhymer |
11.30 a.m. | A passion to possess, by John Myatt | |
Monday, 13 July | 9.30 a.m. | Self-seeking: self-portraits from Rembrandt to Van Gogh, by Nicholas Friend |
11.30 a.m. | Cy Twombly: passionate scribbling, by Nicholas Cullinan | |
8 p.m. | A passion for their art: Italian women artists of the seventeenth century, from Fontana to Gentileschi, by Clare Ford-Wille | |
Tuesday, 14 July | 9.30 a.m. | A passion for painting and poetry: from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to the Aesthetic Movement, by Dr Jan Marsh |
8 p.m. | Passionate about paint - but what is it and how do we know?, by Dr Spike Bucklow | |
Wednesday, 15 July | 8 p.m. | Art for the sake of art? The Ruskin/Whistler debates, by Nicholas Friend |
Thursday, 16 July | 9.30 a.m. | A passion for trees: the English landscape between park and wilderness, by Tim Wilcox |
8 p.m. | The magic of marks: passionate abstractions, by Nicholas Friend | |
Friday, 17 July | 9.30 a.m. | Europe and America's passion for Japan, 1858-1914, by James Malpas |
11.30 a.m. | Francis Bacon: the sacred and the profane, by Michael Peppiatt |
The Literature Summer School will take place from Sunday, 5 July to Saturday, 1 August 2009. The theme for this year's plenary lecture series is Imagined worlds: creative imagination. Morning and evening lectures are held in the Lecture Block, Room 3, on the Sidgwick Site, with the exception of asterisked joint lectures which are held in the Lady Mitchell Hall.
Monday, 6 July | 11.15 a.m. | 'Why, this is hell': Doctor Faustus, by Dr Fred Parker |
8 p.m. | Questions of context: is History the new English?, by Adrian Barlow | |
Tuesday, 7 July | 11.15 a.m. | Second natures and new worlds, by Dr Gavin Alexander |
Wednesday, 8 July | 11.15 a.m. | 'Brain-man' and the medieval imagination, by Dr Jacqueline Tasioulas |
Thursday, 9 July | 11.15 a.m. | How novelists portray other writers in fiction, by Adrian Barlow |
Friday, 10 July | 11.15 a.m. | 'The Groves of England, vanished now so long': landscape, art, and ideology in picturing the lost domain, by Dr Charles Moseley |
Monday, 13 July | 11.15 a.m. | Coleridge's conversation poems, by Clive Wilmer |
8 p.m. | Cambridge writers, by Dr Charles Moseley | |
Tuesday, 14 July | 11.15 a.m. | London and ruins after World War II, by Dr Leo Mellor |
Wednesday, 15 July | 11.15 a.m. | Pastoral, by Dr Mina Gorji |
8 p.m. | Poetry reading: Heaven, home, and exile, by Dr Stephen Logan | |
Thursday, 16 July | 11.15 a.m. | Idris Davies inside out: imagining Wales in England, by Dr Stephen Logan |
8 p.m. | The leap of imagination: fresh approaches to understanding the world in the Renaissance, by Dr Paul Suttie | |
Friday, 17 July | 11.15 a.m. | Chaucer's 'Miller's Tale', by Dr Jacqueline Tasioulas |
Monday, 20 July | 11.15 a.m. | Travellers, lies, and uncomfortable truth: the case of Sir John Mandeville, by Dr Charles Moseley |
8 p.m. | Tragedy and ritual: the 'maimed rite', by Dr Fred Parker | |
Tuesday, 21 July | 11.15 a.m. | Poetry's elsewheres, by Dr Deborah Bowman |
Wednesday, 22 July | 11.15 a.m. | Imagining hell: John Milton's 'Paradise Lost', Book I, by Dr Gavin Alexander |
Thursday, 23 July | 11.15 a.m. | Creating fictional worlds, by Salley Vickers |
8 p.m. | Imagined worlds: Gulliver among the Houyhnhnms, by Dr Alexander Lindsay | |
Friday, 24 July | 11.15 a.m. | Tennyson and the tears of things, by Clive Wilmer |
8 p.m. | *Introduction to 'Julius Caesar', by Dr Fred Parker | |
Monday, 27 July | 11.15 a.m. | Venice imagined: Shakespeare and La Serenissima, by Adrian Barlow |
8 p.m. | The possible world of poets, by Dr Jonathan Hart | |
Tuesday, 28 July | 11.15 a.m. | 'The Waste Land', by Dr Leo Mellor |
Wednesday, 29 July | 11.15 a.m. | John Keats: cockney rebel?, by Dr Stephen Logan |
8 p.m. | Poetry reading, by Clive Wilmer | |
Thursday, 30 July | 11.15 a.m. | Imagining England: memory and performance in Shakespeare's Histories, by Dr Hester Lees-Jeffries |
Friday, 31 July | 11.15 a.m. | Bulgakov's 'Master and Margarita': the Devil comes to Moscow, by Dr Fred Parker |
The Summer School in History will take place from Sunday, 19 July to Saturday 1, August 2009. The theme for this year's plenary lecture series is History and memory. Morning lectures take place in the Runcie Room, Faculty of Divinity, on the Sidgwick Site, and evening lectures are held in the Lecture Block, Room 1, with the exception of asterisked joint lectures which are held in the Lady Mitchell Hall.
Monday, 20 July | 9.15 a.m. | Tricks of memory, by Professor Tim Blanning |
8 p.m. | *History and the decline of memory, by Professor Jonathan Steinberg | |
Tuesday, 21 July | 9.15 a.m. | Can these dry bones live? Death and memory in Victorian Britain, by Dr Michael Ledger-Lomas |
8 p.m. | *Understanding codes and the Enigma machine, by Dr James Grime | |
Wednesday, 22 July | 9.15 a.m. | Memory and narrative identity, by Dr Philip Gardner |
Thursday, 23 July | 9.15 a.m. | Time of the Nazis: past, present, and future in the Third Reich, by Professor Christopher Clark |
8 p.m. | Why did Cromwell commit the Drogheda Massacre? Misremembering in Britain and Ireland, by Professor John Morrill | |
Friday, 24 July | 9.15 a.m. | 'Palaces on Monday': reconstruction of memory and construction of the socialist city after World War II, by Dr Barbara Koenczoel |
8 p.m. | Memories of slavery, by Dr Betty Wood | |
Monday, 27 July | 9.15 a.m. | Ancient Greeks: remembering their past, by Dr Paul Millett |
8 p.m. | Age before beauty: the rise of historical consciousness in the nineteenth century, by Dr David Gange | |
Tuesday, 28 July | 9.15 a.m. | History and memory and the resurgence of Fascism in contemporary Italy, by Professor John Pollard |
Wednesday, 29 July | 9.15 a.m. | New memories of Old Russia: post-Soviet 'retrievals' of pre-Soviet Past, by Professor Simon Franklin |
8 p.m. | Speaking up for justice: memory, witnessing hope from Las Casas to Obama, by Dr Jonathan Hart | |
Thursday, 30 July | 9.15 a.m. | History and memory in the shadow of the Bastille: the long legacies of the French Revolution, by Tom Stammers |
Friday, 31 July | 9.15 a.m. | The politics of memory in seventeenth-century England, by Dr David Smith |
The Medieval Studies Summer School will take place from Sunday, 2 August to Saturday, 15 August 2009. The theme for this year's morning plenary lecture series is War and society. Morning lectures take place in the Runcie Room, Faculty of Divinity, on the Sidgwick Site, and evening lectures are held in the Lecture Block, Room 1, with the exception of asterisked joint lectures which are held in the Lady Mitchell Hall.
Monday, 3 August | 9.15 a.m. | The Just War in the Middle Ages, by Dr Rowena E. Archer |
8 p.m. | The De re militari of Vegetius (c. 400 AD) and its influence on medieval military thought and practice, by Professor Christopher Allmand | |
Tuesday, 4 August | 9.15 a.m. | The non-combatant in time of war: theory and practice in the Middle Ages, by Professor Christopher Allmand |
8 p.m. | War and society in the Age of Beowulf, by Dr John Maddicott | |
Wednesday, 5 August | 9.15 a.m. | Stirling Bridge to Bosworth Field: the rise and stagnation of the English war machine, by Magnus Sigurdsson |
8 p.m. | The Calais Garrison, 1436-1558, by Dr David Grummitt | |
Thursday, 6 August | 9.15 a.m. | Dearth and destruction: Durham before the Black Death, by Dr Benjamin Dodds |
Friday, 7 August | 9.15 a.m. | What can the dead tell us? Chivalry and church monuments in the Hundred Years War, by Professor Nigel Saul |
Monday, 10 August | 9.15 a.m. | The Mongols, warfare and world conquest, by Professor Jonathan Phillips |
8 p.m. | Reading: Medieval war poetry, by Professor Tony Spearing | |
Tuesday, 11 August | 9.15 a.m. | 'More like houses of Gods': castles in Britain, 1066-1500, by Dr Marc Morris |
8 p.m. | The use of military techniques and metaphors in civic violence in late medieval France, by Dr Hannah Skoda | |
Wednesday, 12 August | 9.15 a.m. | Japanese arms and armour to 1500, by James Malpas |
8 p.m. | The problems of reconstructing medieval battles: a case-study of Shrewsbury, 1403, by Dr Philip Morgan | |
Thursday, 13 August | 9.15 a.m. | The afterlife of battlefields in the Middle Ages, by Dr Philip Morgan |
8 p.m. | Discussion: war and society, by Dr Rowena E. Archer | |
Friday, 14 August | 9.15 a.m. | Control of the seas during the Hundred Years War, by Dr Rowena E. Archer |
The Shakespeare Summer School will take place from Sunday, 2 August
Monday, 3 August | 11.30 a.m. | Staging 'The Tempest', by Dr Catherine Alexander |
8 p.m. | Shakespeare without chairs: a practical exploration, by Ian Hughes | |
Tuesday, 4 August | 11.30 a.m. | Hamlet's soliloquies and the problem of relevance, by Professor Sir Brian Vickers |
8 p.m. | Shakespeare's cutting-edge craftsmanship: cross-dressing, bed-swaps, and rulers in disguise, by Clare Smout | |
Wednesday, 5 August | 11.30 a.m. | Selling Shakespeare, or, What's in a name?, by Dr Charles Moseley |
8 p.m. | *'The very butcher of a silk button': language and the use of arms and armour in Shakespeare's plays, by Magnus Sigurdsson | |
Thursday, 6 August | 11.30 a.m. | Stage directions: their exits and their entrances, by Dr John Jowett |
Friday, 7 August | 11.30 a.m. | Shakespeare's self-conscious theatricality, by Dr Jonathan Hart |
8 p.m. | *An introduction to 'As you Like It', by Dr Catherine Alexander | |
Monday, 10 August | 11.30 a.m. | A view from the balcony: Shakespeare's stagecraft in 'Romeo and Juliet', by Tim Cribb |
8 p.m. | *Analysing the acting process, by Eunice Roberts | |
Tuesday, 11 August | 11.30 a.m. | Pretty rooms: the architecture of the Elizabethan sonnet, by Professor Russ McDonald |
8 p.m. | 'Nothing if not critical': the past, present, and future of Shakespearean theatre reviewing, by Dr Paul Prescott | |
Wednesday, 12 August | 11.30 a.m. | 'Is this the promised end?': staging Shakespearean (anti-)closure, by Dr Paul Prescott |
8 p.m. | Reading: The Dark Lady sonnets, by Clive Wilmer | |
Thursday, 13 August | 11.30 a.m. | Time and the visual sense in Victorian staging, by Professor Stuart Sillars |
8 p.m. | Shakespeare through the looking glass: the portraits (again), by Professor Stuart Sillars | |
Friday, 14 August | 11.30 a.m. | The Blackfriars Theatre and Shakespeare's Company, by Dr Alexander Lindsay |
The second term of the Institute of Continuing Education's eighty-sixth International Summer School will take place from Sunday, 2 August to Saturday, 15 August 2009. There is no morning plenary lecture series for this programme but evening lectures on a variety of subjects are organized for the c. 210 students. Evening lectures are held in the Lady Mitchell Hall at 8 p.m.
Monday, 3 August | Cricket: more than just a game, by Dr Rex Walford |
Tuesday, 4 August | Understanding and misunderstanding, by Dr Jonathan Hart |
*Wednesday, 5 August | 'The very butcher of a silk button': language and the use of arms and armour in Shakespeare's plays, by Magnus Sigurdsson |
*Friday, 7 August | Introduction to 'As You Like It', by Dr Catherine Alexander |
Monday, 10 August | Analysing the acting process, by Eunice Roberts |
Tuesday, 11 August | Crown Imperial: the British Monarchy and India, by Dr Sean Lang |
Wednesday, 12 August | Newton: cosmic genius and misfit, by Piers Bursill-Hall |
There are a number of general evening lectures arranged for more than one summer school. These are held in the Lady Mitchell Hall at 8 p.m.
*Tuesday, 7 July | Cambridge and the Colleges, by Dr Rob Wallach |
*Wednesday, 8 July | Cambridge 800: creation of a 'son et lumière', by Ross Ashton |
*Friday, 10 July | Understanding the British hero figure: from Boudica to Bond, and beyond, by Dr Sean Lang |
*Monday, 13 July | Understanding boomerangs and other spinning things, by Dr Hugh Hunt |
*Tuesday, 14 July | Understanding the British, by Dr Nicholas James |
*Tuesday, 21 July | Understanding codes and the Enigma machine, by Dr James Grime |
*Friday, 24 July | Introduction to 'Julius Caesar', by Dr Fred Parker |
*Friday, 7 August | Introduction to 'As you like it', by Dr Catherine Alexander |
Any unforeseen or last-minute changes to this lecture programme will be posted in the main Summer Schools Office (Foyer, Lady Mitchell Hall).
We would be interested to hear your response to any of the plenary lectures you have heard. If you have comments, or wish to know more about teaching on the Summer Schools, please write to Sarah Ormrod, Director of International Programmes, Institute of Continuing Education, Greenwich House, Madingley Rise, Cambridge (tel. 01223 (7)60851, email sjo1001@cam.ac.uk).