The Cambridge Series Hay Festival
The Cambridge Series Hay Festival
The University of Cambridge is delighted to offer a second series of Cambridge academics speaking at the Hay Festival in 2010. This is your chance to sample outstanding speakers from across the sciences, arts and social sciences. We hope you enjoy the Festival.
27 May, 10am Climate Change
Dr Chris Hope is Reader in Policy Modelling at Judge Business School. He was Lead
Author and Review Editor for the Third and Fourth Assessments Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was awarded a half share of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.
29 May, 11.30am The Body 
Ben Barry, founder of the Ben Barry Agency, a modelling agency and consultancy known for its use of diverse models, who is researching models and their impact on female health at Cambridge’s Judge Business School: Based on his research of over 3000 women between the ages of 14 to 65, Ben explores whether there has been a change in the consumer mindset when they look at models in fashion advertising and, in particular, whether they will increase their purchases when they see models who reflect their ages, sizes, and ethnicities versus models who reflect the beauty ideal.
30 May, 11.30am What do stem cells tell us about ourselves?
Professor Roger Pedersen is the first Director of The Anne McLaren Laboratory for Regenerative Medicine, the translational stage of the Cambridge Stem Cell Initiative, and the Director of the MRC Centre for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, which supports the Stem Cell Initiative.
30 May, 5.30pm The uncensored Jane Austen: her juvenilia and unpublished works
Jane Austen, a byword for artistic restraint, left unpublished manuscripts that dealt with an unrestrained, almost surreal world of bodily excess, drunkenness, gluttony, murder, and matricide. Janet Todd is President of Lucy Cavendish College and a Professor at the University of Aberdeen. She will read from works written when she was a child and from her last unfinished novel.
31 May, 11.30am America and the Challenges of “Popular” History
Professor Reynolds will discuss his award-winning Radio 4 series America, Empire of Liberty and the accompanying book, reflecting on the challenges of popularizing academic research and on the different demands of the spoken and written word.
31 May, 5.30pm Understanding and tackling gender equality in work and within the family at home
Professor Jacqueline Scott is the Head of Department of Sociology. She directs the Research Network on Gender Inequalities in Production and Reproduction, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.
1 June, 11.30am MI5 - Secret Intelligence and the Cambridge connection
The talk is based on his best-selling book The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5. Professor Andrew will discuss the MI5 files on Cambridge. The KGB rated five Cambridge graduates, recruited in the mid 1930s, as its ablest group of foreign agents. The files show them to be both talented but sad, for instance, by the time his interrogation by MI5 had finished, Anthony Blunt was spending £100 a month on alcohol. Times have changed. The main intelligence presence at Cambridge today is the weekly Intelligence Seminar, which brings together postgraduates from around the world.
1 June, 4pm Secrets of the Universe: How we discovered the cosmos
Paul Murdin is an astronomer at the Institute of Astronomy. He has a secondary career as a broadcaster, commentator and writer on astronomy, and was awarded an OBE for this and his work in international astronomy.
1 June, 5.30pm Newman's unquiet grave: the life and writings of the distinguished cardinal and poet
John Cornwell is Director of the Jesus College Cambridge Science and Human Dimension project, a public understanding of science programme. His special interests are links between neuroscience and the humanities, and ethics in the public domain.
2 June, 11.30am Democracy
The author of Ancient Greece: A History in 11 Cities, Professor Paul Cartledge, discusses the Greek contribution to democracy. Democracy in ancient Greece - where the word as well as the thing itself were originally invented - was as massively controversial then as its supposed avatars are today. For some, it was all about freedom and equality - for others, sheer folly. Discuss - as we shall, in homage to another key feature of ancient Greek democratic thought and practice.
2 June, 1pm Carthage must be destroyed. The rise and fall of an ancient civilisation
Richard Miles teaches Ancient History at the University of Sydney and is a Fellow Commoner of Trinity Hall Cambridge. He was previously a Newton Trust Lecturer in the Faculty of Classics at Cambridge. He is the author of Carthage Must Be Destroyed and a History of the Vandals (co-written with Andrew Merrills).
3 June, 11.30am Sisters
The author of The Sister Knot, Dr Terri Apter, discusses why we fight, why we’re jealous and why we love each other no matter what. The powerful and ambivalent feelings about siblings play a significant role in development. A study of sisters, in particular, challenges many common assumptions about girls’ psychology, and offers a framework for new understanding of a range of human experience – from tiffs on the playground to jealousy in the boardroom.
3 June, 5.15pm Education and class - Is social class still the hereditary curse of the English educational system?
In this talk Professor Reay discusses the extent to which social class is still ' the hereditary curse' of the UK educational system, examining the myths and realities surrounding social mobility and working class underachievement.
4 June, 11.30am The Evolution of Empathy: Perspectives from autism and psychiatry
Empathy is the drive to identify another person’s mental state and to respond to this with an appropriate emotion. There are several ways in which one can lose one’s empathy, and this is clearly seen in psychiatric conditions such as the personality disorders. However, there is one condition, autism, which not only entails difficulties with empathy but can lead to a talent in ‘systemizing’. Systemizing is the aptitude to spot patterns in the world, the drive to analyse or build a system. Professor Simon Baron-Cohen explores the curious link between empathy and systemizing in autism: why should losing your empathy render you better at systemizing? Finally, since autism is ultimately genetic this suggests that there may be ‘genes for empathy’, and that empathy may therefore be the result of our evolution. Go to: The Autism Research Centre,The Transporters or Mind Reading.
4 June, 1pm Elegance in Science
Ian Glynn is Emeritus Professor of Physiology and a Fellow of Trinity College. His work on the ‘sodium pump’ (the molecular machine that keeps the brain batteries charged) led to his election to the Royal Society.
5 June, 11.30am How (Not) to Write the History of Empire
How do writers engage with the controversial afterlife of the British empire? From demanding reparations for slavery to denouncing immigration, from fostering multiculturalism to celebrating Britishness, and from the partition of Palestine to women's rights in Afghanistan, how does one engage with the controversial afterlife of the British empire? A talk by Dr Priyamvada Gopal.
6 June, 1pm The principle of equal treatment
Dr Jude Browne, Frankopan Director of the University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies will talk about the 'Principle of Equal Treatment' - using gender in the context of employment as an example, Browne will discuss what the principle means, who should be treated equally and why?
If you enjoy the Cambridge Series at the Hay Festival, you may like to find out more about two free festivals for all ages, offered each year at the University:
The Cambridge Festival of Ideas takes place from 20 to 31 October 2010
The Cambridge Science Festival is the UK’s largest free science festival and will take place from 14 to 27 March 2011
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