Cutting welfare to protect the economy ignores lessons of history, researchers claim
02 Dec 2016Amid ongoing welfare cuts, researchers argue that investment in health and social care have been integral to British economic success since 1600.
Opinion: How to climb the social ladder in ancient Rome
22 Nov 2016Jerry Toner, Director of Studies in Classics, Churchill College, University of Cambridge, discusses the stratification of Roman society.
Before race mattered: what archives tell us about early encounters in the French colonies
16 Nov 2016As Europe expanded its overseas colonies, fixed ideas of racial differences took hold. Historian Dr Mélanie Lamotte, whose forebears include a slave, is researching a brief period when European notions of ethnicity were relatively fluid. Early French settlers believed that non-white inhabitants of the colonies could be ‘civilised’ and ‘improved’.
A very hairy story
07 Nov 2016Beards are back in fashion. But today’s hipster styles convey rather different messages to the hair men cultivated in the early modern period. Historian Dr Stefan Hanß investigates the ways in which daily ‘performances of hair’ for men and women reflected the profound religious and social changes sweeping through Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Opinion: Thirty years on as 'new Cold War' looms, US and Russia should remember the Rekyjavik summit
21 Oct 2016David Reynolds (Faculty of History) and Kristina Spohr (London School of Economics and Political Science) discuss current relations between the US & Russia, and whether there are any lessons to be learned from the era of détente and the end of the Cold War in the 1970s and 1980s.
Opinion: Pirate, turncoat, survivor: the life and times of Anthony Knivet, a Briton in 16th-century Brazil
14 Oct 2016Vivien Kogut Lessa de Sá (Department of Spanish & Portuguese) discusses the life and times of Anthony Knivet, a young soldier from Norfolk who spent nine years living in Brazil in the 16th century. She will be discussing Knivet's life on 22 October as part of the Cambridge Festival of Ideas.
Stolen World War Two letters help author uncover the hidden lives of army wives
09 Sep 2016A stolen chest of letters – penned by an army wife to her husband on the battlefields of the Second World War – has helped a Cambridge academic and biographer trace the history of the women behind the men in uniform.
Beyond the harem: ways to be a woman during the Ottoman Empire
12 Aug 2016A new volume of essays looks afresh at women’s lives during the 600 years of the Ottoman empire. The book challenges the stereotypes of female lives confined to the harem and hamam – and reveals how women were surprisingly visible in public spaces.
Bringing Berber empires into focus as contributors to Islamic culture
06 Jul 2016The Almoravid and Almohad empires flourished in the western Mediterranean of the 11th and 12th centuries. Despite controlling vast tracts of land, these Berber dynasties are little known in the English-speaking world. In her latest book, Dr Amira Bennison looks at the rise and fall of Berber empires that made a lasting contribution to the history of Islamic culture.
Just your cup of tea: the history (and health claims) of the nation’s favourite brew
09 Jun 2016How do you take your tea – with a drop of poisonous chemicals or a spoonful of sheep dung? Throughout history, the health benefits – and harms – of this popular beverage have been widely debated. In an article originally published in the student science magazine BlueSci, Sophie Protheroe, an undergraduate student at Murray Edwards College, examines the global history of tea and its effect on our health.
