Topic description and stories

Unexpected experiences: Stephen J Toope concludes the series with a sense of optimism for the future

22 Oct 2020

"It fills me with enormous gratitude that – at the moment of greatest challenge – our collegiate community rallied and rose to the occasion."

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Unexpected experiences: Catherine Arnold reflects on a curious first year as Master of St Edmund's College

09 Oct 2020

What links two large furry Loch Ness Monsters, key-cards, and donning a gown to eat pot noodles? The answer is the unexpected creativity that...

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Unexpected experiences: Meet the volunteers behind the masks at the Cambridge Testing Centre

05 Oct 2020

They juggled their jobs and sacrificed sleep to volunteer at the Cambridge Testing Centre, a collaboration between the University, AstraZeneca and...

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Unexpected experiences: Sam Lucy takes us behind the scenes of the recent admissions process

25 Sep 2020

Assessing undergraduate admissions was likely to be a very different process in a pandemic, let alone with a changing landscape of cancelled exams...

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Unexpected experiences: Toni Fola-Alade talks about studying for finals during a pandemic

17 Sep 2020

Final-year student Toni Fola-Alade had a plan: secure investment for his startup, focus on his exams and enjoy his final term as a student. Then...

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Unexpected experiences: Mike Weekes describes setting up a full-scale COVID-19 testing facility

27 Aug 2020

When infectious diseases expert Mike Weekes realised he and colleagues had know-how that could help protect staff, patients and students in a...

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Unexpected experiences: George Doji reflects on putting museum storytelling into the digital world

20 Aug 2020

George Doji, host of Museum Remix at the University of Cambridge Museums, describes the digital experiment in museum storytelling that began when the...

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Unexpected experiences: Katy Pitts describes preparing the department for her colleagues to return to the workplace

07 Aug 2020

Katy Pitts, Principal Assistant and Safety Officer at the Department of Biochemistry, could probably now write the How-To manual on re-opening a...

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Unexpected experiences: Lucy Spokes talks about the excitement of a newly digital Festival

29 Jul 2020

Head of Public Engagement, Dr Lucinda Spokes, describes the difficult decision to pull the plug on the 26th Cambridge Science Festival in March this...

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Unexpected experiences: Glen Rangwala reflects on Cambridge's first virtual Open Days

23 Jul 2020

Glen Rangwala, admissions tutor for Trinity College and director of the undergraduate programme in Politics & International Relations, was...

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Unexpected experiences: Richard Gilbertson discusses how lockdown has enabled him to kick-start a new initiative

21 Jul 2020

Faced with closed laboratories and cancelled conferences, paediatric oncologist Richard Gilbertson kick-started a “21st-century method” for meeting...

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Unexpected experiences: Simone Eringfeld explains how the pandemic has shifted the focus of her research

15 Jul 2020

Unable to set off on her MPhil fieldwork, Simone Eringfeld shifted her research to explore how students and academics at Cambridge could reimagine...

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