Topic description and stories

Evacuees leaving Afghanistan in 2021.

Afghanistan: the inside story of the withdrawal

05 Jun 2024

It is nearly 3 years since the US and the UK withdrew from Afghanistan. A key figure in the evacuation was the UK’s last ambassador to Afghanistan...

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The doctor using smartphones to save lives in war zones

04 Feb 2019

Having survived the civil war in Afghanistan, alumnus Waheed Arian arrived alone in the UK aged 15. He went on to study medicine at Trinity Hall...

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Diana Carnegie with her husband James and her children Charlotte, Sue and Sophie

Stolen World War Two letters help author uncover the hidden lives of army wives

09 Sep 2016

A 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...

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Pakistan schoolgirl

Opinion: Confronting the Taliban – an educational encounter

09 Mar 2016

Dr David Gosling (Faculty of Divinity) discusses his time on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, his encounters with the Taliban and why education is...

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Topography of Hindu Kush.

Earthquake rocks Afghanistan and Pakistan – an area prone to magnitude 7 quakes

27 Oct 2015

Professor Simon Redfern (Department of Earth Sciences) discusses the devastating earthquake that struck Afghanistan on October 26 and the geological...

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Surgeons in the field hospital in Camp Bastion

Welcome to Bastion: warzone ethnography with the combat surgeons

27 Jun 2012

A Cambridge academic was given unprecedented access to the military hospital at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan, to study the teamwork of the combat...

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Poet Clare Holtham and Uzbek chieftain in Afghanistan, early 1970s

For lust of knowing what should not be known

12 Nov 2011

Clare Holtham (1948-2010) had a huge enthusiasm for learning. After a troubled childhood, which led to a spell of homelessness, she became an...

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