lectures

2013 marks the six-year anniversary of the Festival of Ideas, a University of Cambridge public engagement initiative that celebrates the arts, humanities and social sciences by showcasing a diverse mix of inspirational talks, performances, films, exhibitions and other creative displays. 

Cambridge Festival of Ideas 2013

Festival Of Ideas

Ideas

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academic.podcasts

Professor Benjamin Keatinge (South East European University) at the Samuel Beckett and the 'State' of Ireland III Conference. The event was supported by the UCD Humanities Institute and the John Hume Global Irish Institute of Irish Studies. Professor Keatinge's paper was entitled  : ”but to hell with all this fucking scenery”: Beckett, Ireland and the Topographical Imaginary.

Professor Benjamin Keatinge - "Beckett, Ireland and the Topographical Imaginary"

The problem of violence against women and girls has been prominent in media coverage with many distressing cases coming to light over the last year and more. What steps are being taken through legal processes, by organisations and academia to tackle the issues involved? Speakers include Norah Al-Ani of Cambridge Rape Crisis centre.

How far have we come? Ending violence against women and girls

Writer and influential political commentator Owen Jones talks about his strong opposition to Government cuts and proposes a fight-back alternative to austerity.

Owen Jones is a columnist, author and influential commentator associated with left-wing politics, he appears regularly on Question Time, Newsnight and in newspapers. In this talk, he examines the alleged failings of the current Government's austerity measures and proposes what some might consider a radical alternative.

Owen Jones was born in Sheffield and grew up in Stockport. After graduating, he worked as a trade union and parliamentary researcher. His first book, Chavs: the Demonization of the Working Class, was published in June 2011. He writes a weekly column for the Independent, is a regular broadcaster and is a policy and media advisor to the trade union think tank Class. He is currently working on his second book, on power in Britain, for Penguin. He was named 2012 Stonewall Journalist of the Year and Young Writer of the Year at the 2013 Political Book Awards.

An alternative to austerity: a talk by Owen Jones

Join Dr Miranda Griffin, College Lecturer in medieval French literature, in her fascinating investigation of medieval tales of transformation, exploring the way in which the Middle Ages imagined the frontiers between the human and the animal.

Werewolves and snakewomen

Lord Byron’s death on 19 April, 1824, ‘in Greece, and for Greece’, created a legend that is still with us. Professor Roderick Beaton traces the real story behind Byron’s mission to help the Greeks in their revolution against Ottoman Turkish rule and shows its effects are still with us.

Roderick Beaton is Professor of Modern Greek & Byzantine History and Director at the Centre of Hellenic Studies at King's College, London. He is also Chair of the Academic Committee overseeing the International Byron Conference this year. His research interests are Greek literature since the 12th century; the history of the novel; and nationalism in Modern Greece.

What Byron really did for Greece and why it still matters

What can patterns of history and business teach us? Join a discussion with: Dr Victoria Bateman, Lecturer and Fellow in Economics; Alan Turner, Managing Director, Global Head of Debt and Co-Head of Product at Barclays; and Aditya Chakrabortty, Economics leader writer at the Guardian, to explore turbulence in the UK economy across centuries and the balance sheets of more recent times.

The cycle of confidence

Football meets French philosophy. Albert Camus was a goalkeeper. Sartre preferred boxing. After his stint at Paris Saint-Germain, is it possible that David Beckham has become an existentialist? Andy Martin, lecturer in French, explores the links between the ex-captain of England and France’s left-wing thinkers.

Writer, teacher, surfer, Andy Martin is currently researching FBI files on French philosophers. He is the author of ‘The Boxer and the Goalkeeper: Sartre vs Camus’, ‘Waiting for Bardot’ and the tumblr blog, ‘BecksinParis’. He is also a contributor to BBC radio and the pages of The New York Times.

Becksistentialism

Joshua Marinacci tells us what he's been thinking about in terms of the future of the Internet of Things. How will the future look when every object is networked? Do we need to look to Isaac Asimov's Laws of Robotics?

The Internet of Things and the Laws of Robotics

Humans are social creatures using communications that are ‘regulated’ by trust, ethics, social systems and law. Our world of interactions and networks is increasingly complex and automated. What happens when events and decisions become too fast for us to perceive, let alone control? Professors Huw Price and Murray Shanahan join Dr Jonathan Cave and Dr Hermann Hauser.

The Internet of Things and the boundaries of humanity

Today's bookshops are helpfully categorised - crime, biography and memoir, fiction - and we rarely venture into unknown territory. Some writers are breaking down the barriers, but are publishers increasingly pushing their writers to write books with the same 'DNA' and will the digital revolution make any difference? Panel discussion with authors MJ Hyland and Trevor Byrne, digital publisher Daniel Franklin and literary agent Rachel Calder. 

Opening up literature: pushing the boundaries between genres

How far do conspiracy theories undermine trust in government and shape history? From 9/11 to the rise of Holocaust denial, three leading academics will explore and reveal some surprising answers. Sir Richard John Evans is an academic and historian, best known for his research on the history of Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly the Third Reich. Professor John Naughton is an academic, journalist and author. He is a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at Cambridge, Vice President of Wolfson College, Cambridge, Emeritus Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology at the British Open University, Adjunct Professor at University College, Cork, and the Technology columnist of the London Observer newspaper. Professor David Runciman is a political scientist who teaches political theory at Cambridge University. He specialises in the development of the theory of the modern state and on aspects of contemporary politics.

Conspiracy theories: the impact on world history

Times have never been better for single women. Then why is it still so hard? Four women, experts on relationships and sex, share their insight and suggestions.

The s word- spinster - has been virtually outlawed, and ladies of all ages are encouraged to seek out the sex and relationships that suit them online or in person. Being single is all about being free, having fun, doing things your way or the highway...or is it?

This event brings together four experts on relationships and sex to discuss their own unique take on single womanhood at all ages - it's pitfalls, freedoms and the pressures. If it's as great as we think it should be in 2013, why do so many women, particularly those over 30, still find being single such a trial? How can they get the most out of it? Join in the discussion with Rowan Pelling, broadcaster, writer and founder of The Erotic Review; Cecilia d'Felice, award-winning clinical psychologist, author and relationships expert; Susan Quilliam, sex and relationships educator and author of the revised Joy of Sex and panel head Zoe Strimpel, internet dating and gender scholar and author of The Man Diet: One Woman's Quest to End Bad Romance (Avon).

How to be a single woman in 2013, whether you're 25 or 60

The Government's welfare reforms are starting to bite, but are they radical enough, given projected demographic changes, or do we need a complete rethink of our social values? With Rory Meakin, Professor Simon Szreter, Bill Davies, Jeff Miley and chaired by Gaby Hinsliff.

Rory Meakin is Head of Tax Policy at the TaxPayers' Alliance. He has contributed to projects on a variety of subjects from local government spending to an influential paper on simplifying taxes on income called Abolish National Insurance. Simon Szreter is Professor in History and Public Policy at Cambridge. He teaches modern British economic and social history since 1700. His main fields of research are demographic and social history, the history of empirical social science and the relationship between history and contemporary public policy issues. Jeff Miley is Lecturer of Political Sociology in the Department of Sociology at Cambridge. His research interests include nationalism, language politics, identity politics, immigration, religion and politics, regime types, and democratic theory.

Is Britain's welfare system ready for the 21st century?

Cloudera Co-Founder Mike Olson shares his insights on the present landscape and possible future of big data and the data management industry. In conversation with Ping Li of Accel Partners, Olson also discusses the advantages of building a business on top of open source technologies and the many surprising benefits of competition.

Mike Olson, Ping Li - Opportunities Abound in the Big Data Space

Professor Tim Ingold (University of Aberdeen)

Title: Towards an Ecology of Materials

Tim Ingold is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, and a Fellow of both the British Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Following 25 years at the University of Manchester, where he was appointed Max Gluckman Professor of Social Anthropology in 1995, Ingold moved in 1999 to Aberdeen, where he went on to establish the UK’s newest Department of Anthropology. 

About the lecture: Both material culture studies and ecological anthropology are concerned with the material conditions of social and cultural life. Yet despite advances in each of these fields which have eroded traditional divisions between humanistic and science-based approaches, their respective practitioners continue to talk past one another in largely incommensurate theoretical languages. Through a review of recent trends in the study of material culture, the reasons for this are found to lie in: (1) a conception of the material world and the nonhuman that leaves no space for living organisms; (2) an emphasis on materiality that prioritises finished artefacts over the properties of materials, and (3) a conflation of things with objects that stops up the flows of energy and circulations of materials on which life depends. To overcome these limitations, an ecology of materials is proposed that focuses on their enrolment in form-making processes. The paper concludes with some observations on materials, mind and time.

Tim Ingold. Towards an Ecology of Materials

A lecture  by Professor Rosi Braidotti (Utrecht University): 'Nomadic Feminist Theory in a Global Era'.

Rosi Braidotti is Distinguished University Professor at Utrecht University and founding Director of the Centre for the Humanities since 2007. She was the founding professor of 
Gender Studies in the Humanities at Utrecht (1988-2005) and the first scientific director of the Netherlands Research School of Women's Studies. 

Rosi Braidotti’s research and writing engages feminist philosophy and cultural studies. She is especially interested in poststructuralism and critical theory as well as epistemology and Deleuze studies. Her books include, Nomadic Theory. The Portable Rosi Braidotti (Columbia University Press: New York, 2011); Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics (Polity Press: Cambridge, 2006); Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming (Polity Press: Cambridge, 2002); and Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory, (Columbia University Press: New York, 1994); 2nd ed. 2011). 

Rosi Braidotti - Nomadic Feminist Theory in a Global Era.

RIGHT SAID FRED - I'M TOO SEXY - CLIP

Hoola! Acá dejo un cover Acapella, me gusta muchisimo esta canción, espero también les guste :) Saludos. PD: Gracias por escucharme!

Padre Mio - Christine D'clario (Acapella by Anna)

Redimi2 Ft Christine D'Clario - El Nombre De Jesús 2014

Dream - Priscilla Ahn Cover

Des Traynor, Intercom co-founder, and Margaret Gould Stewart talk about product design at massive scale, the aesthetics of business software and the importance of diversity on design teams. 

Margaret Gould Stewart, Director of Product Design at Facebook

Drawing on a decade of research and interviews with company founders, Harvard Business School Associate Professor Noam Wasserman explores many of the momentous early decisions and pitfalls faced by entrepreneurs and investors. Wasserman outlines paths and options for founders, with an emphasis on the frequently challenging people issues that can inhibit startup success.

Noam Wasserman - The Founder's Dilemmas

The internet of things at South Kenn. Tube Station

Simon Blackburn, Professor of Philosophy, and Chris Blackhurst, editor of The Independent
Trust in British public life has now reached catastrophically low levels for parliament, the press, the banks, the police and the NHS. Just as the National Rifle Association in the USA claims that the solution to gun crime lies in more guns, our government (and, for instance, The Times) preaches that the cure for decline in trust lies in less public service and more profit motive. The conversation will reflect on this alarming state of affairs.