These are just some of the social issues being debated at this year’s Cambridge Festival. The Festival runs from 13th to 28th March and is teeming with hundreds of events, most of them free, which celebrate the rich research being done at the University of Cambridge and beyond.
Speakers on key social issues of the day include Professor Jason Arday, Darren Lewis, assistant editor of the Mirror and philosopher Professor Clare Chambers.
The topics up for debate include:
Race and society: Have we made any real progress since Black Lives Matter? Cambridge sociologist Professor Jason Arday will be in conversation with Dr Claire Hynes from the University of East Anglia about race and society, about where we are now, where progress has been made and how much further there is to go. Chaired by Darren Lewis, Assistant editor and columnist of the Mirror. 8:00pm-9:00pm on Wednesday 27 March, Cambridge Union Society.
Seeing the mess: Gender, housework and perception. Cambridge philosopher Tom McClelland leads this discussion on recent research into perceptions of housework and how men are generally less likely to notice mess than women and argue why it doesn’t give men a free pass to let women shoulder more of the cleaning. 3:00pm-4:00pm on Thursday 21 March, Whipple Museum of the History of Science
Masculinity and the 'natural' body sees Cambridge philosopher Clare Chambers, author of Intact, putting the focus on men and explores what the history and current practice of bodybuilding shows us about masculinity, about the idea of nature and about the philosophical and political significance of our bodies. Professor Chambers has a new book out in March, titled Freedom & Equality: Essays on Liberalism and Feminism and is currently working on the philosophy of hobbies. 7:30pm-8:45pm on Monday 18 March, Jesus College.
Unveiling the shadows: Modern-day slavery panel discussion, a discussion by a panel of Anglia Ruskin University experts: Professor Nick Drydakis, founding Director of the Centre for Pluralist Economics (CPE) and a spokesperson at the IZA World of Labor for a series of areas such as inequality, poverty and discrimination; sociologist Dr Anna Paraskevopoulou who specialises in work and employment; and Antoinetta Balestra, a Lecturer in International Business. 6:00pm-8:00pm on Tuesday 26 March, Anglia Ruskin University
Several of the events draw on new, forthcoming or recent books:
Monstrous Archives: Colonialism and the emergence of data is linked to the forthcoming first book by Siddharth Soni, the Isaac Newton Trust Research Fellow at Cambridge Digital Humanities, which is based on a proposal which won the 2023 Ideas Prize for Non-Fiction. It tells the story of the industrial transformation of the archive into a large and inscrutable monster. Dr Soni will take us on a journey through the technologies that underpin the archive, whether card catalogues in a colonial library, or computer bots scraping and assembling bytes in a data centre, to illuminate the anxieties and ideologies that underpin the archive today.
Solitude: The Science and Power of Being Alone sees Dr Thuy-vy Nguyen and Dr Netta Weinstein discussing their new book [out on 24th April]. Published by Cambridge University Press, it draws on research at the Solitude Lab and the SOAR Project into the restorative power of short periods of solitude and how these can guard against loneliness and build resilience. Dr Weinstein will tell the stories of people, from busy parents to retirees, who have found everyday solitude moments that restore them. 7:00pm-8:00pm on Thursday 21 March, Cambridge University Press, Bookshop and Showroom
In Shakespeare’s White Others, Dr David Sterling Brown talks about his new book, published by Cambridge University Press last summer, which examines the racially white 'others' whom Shakespeare portrays in characters like Richard III, Hamlet and Tamora – figures who are never quite 'white enough'. This bold and compelling work emphasises how such classification perpetuates anti-Blackness and re-affirms white supremacy, even in the absence of somatically, or physically, Black people.
Dr Sterling Brown says: “I wrote this book to other whiteness. It’s always bothered that when people think of the “Other” they think of people who are not white. As a Black man, I saw that mindset as generating harm for my lived reality, especially given the pervasiveness of anti-Blackness globally. Thus, I contemplated how I could collapse the boundary between white people and the so-called Other.” [14th March]
Empire of Normality will see the book’s author Robert Chapman, a neurodivergent philosopher, in conversation with Joanne Limburg, Teaching Associate at the Institute of Continuing Education (ICE), whose most recent book is Letters To My Weird Sisters: On Autism, Feminism and Motherhood. Empire of Normality, published in 2023, is described as a groundbreaking book which exposes the very myth of the ‘normal’ brain as a product of intensified capitalism.
At a time of great uncertainty and constant change, good leadership is vital and several events focus on the changing nature of leadership today.
One panel, From resilience to leadership: A journey of change and empowerment, will hear from leaders and experts from various industries and backgrounds who will share their personal stories of resilience in the face of setbacks and failure and how it has shaped their leadership style. They will focus on the importance of taking time for self-care and mental wellbeing.
Leadership and followership: The rise of the follower investigates the future of the leader-follower dynamic and considers how, far from a passive function, the role of follower is as significant as any other role in creating success, impact and transformation across contexts. Perhaps no institution knows this better than the Army. Speakers from the Centre for Army Leadership, based within the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, will examine what the interplay between leader and follower really is, and how a better understanding of it can help all organisations to unlock the untapped potential they contain. 5:30pm-7:00pm on Tuesday 26 March, Møller Institute.
Leadership and followership: Shaping opinion draws on the rich collection of material held at the Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College to understand the leader-follower dynamic. These include the papers of multiple Prime Ministers, politicians from across the spectrum, diplomats, armed forces leaders, scientists and leading social scientists such as Mark Abrams, who was a pioneer in statistical surveying and opinion polling. 5:30pm-7:00pm on Tuesday 19 March, Møller Institute.
Other events touch on death rituals as well as religion and gender:
Shadows and light: Exploring death through art is a drop-in print workshop at the Museum of Technology which will look at art relating to death ceremonies around the world. Attendees will be able to look through different examples of such art and design, and then print their own memento mori or memorial piece. This event is run in association with Dying for Life.
Dr Jean Wilson (MBE) from the Church Monuments Society will talk about how funeral monuments tell us much more than we think about the social mores and rituals of the times. 'Splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave’: the usefulness of funerary monuments will discuss how funeral monuments widen our understanding of the ages in which they were manufactured and may cause us to question common assumptions about the past. 7:00pm-8:00pm on Friday 15 March, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research
In Victims of the patriarchy? Faith, gender and the question of agency a panel of experts will discuss their research into women’s agency in religious movements and communities connected to Islam, Judaism and Christianity, to shed light on their lived realities. 11:00am-12:30pm on Sunday 24 March
And in Can a Saint Wear Makeup? Cosmetics and Dress in the Middle Ages Cambridge PhD student Alexandra Zhirnova explains how the medieval church’s ideas about modesty and appearance became a lasting barrier for women’s access to power. 3:00pm-3:30pm on Saturday 23 March, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic.
© 2024 University of Cambridge
