Cambridge Festival celebrates pioneering women for International Women’s Day

07 March 2025

For International Women’s Day (8 March), the Cambridge Festival (19 March – 4 April) is celebrating some of the remarkable contributions of women across diverse fields. From philosophy and music to AI and cosmology, the festival will highlight the pioneering work of women who have shaped our understanding of the world in profound ways.

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The philosopher who wants us to think deeply about ordinary things

15 December 2021

Nikhil Krishnan, winner of a 2021 Pilkington Prize for outstanding teaching, says that what he loves about teaching is what he loves about philosophy: you can’t know in advance where it’s going to lead. Outside of the lecture hall he’s unravelling how philosophy came to be what it is today.

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Dr Lucy McDonald at St John’s College, Cambridge

Philosopher’s thumbs-down to social media ‘likes’ gets award thumbs-up from Royal Institute

12 May 2021

The Royal Institute of Philosophy has awarded (jointly) its 2021 essay prize to a University of Cambridge researcher for the first philosophical analysis of ‘liking’ on social media. The essay, which focuses on Facebook, warns that ‘likes’ encourage communicative laziness while ‘like tallies’ fuel fake news, ‘gamify sociality’ and play to our psychological weaknesses.

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Living with artificial intelligence: how do we get it right?

28 February 2018

Powerful AI needs to be reliably aligned with human values. Does this mean that AI will eventually have to police those values? Cambridge philosophers Huw Price and Karina Vold consider the trade-off between safety and autonomy in the era of superintelligence.

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Electrical brain 'signatures'. The patient to the left is in a vegetative state; the patient in the middle is also in a vegetative state but their brain appears as conscious as the brain of the healthy individual at the right.

Brain, body and mind: understanding consciousness

23 February 2016

A bedside device that measures ‘brain signatures’ could help diagnose patients who have consciousness disorders – such as a vegetative state – to work out the best course of treatment and to support family counselling. 

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Light cycles

Humanity's last invention and our uncertain future

25 November 2012

A philosopher, a scientist and a software engineer have come together to propose a new centre at Cambridge to address developments in human technologies that might pose “extinction-level” risks to our species, from biotechnology to artificial intelligence.

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