Almost four centuries ago, ancestors of the Kalmyk people trekked across central Asia to form a Buddhist nation on the edge of Europe. Today Kalmyk communities are scattered across Eurasia, with the largest group in the Republic of Kalmykia. A new project will document Kalmyk heritage to produce an open-access online resource to help Kalmyk communities revive their culture.
A symposium taking place on Tuesday (23 September 2014) at Cambridge University Botanic Garden will unite artists, writers, scientists and literary scholars to look at the poet John Clare’s close engagement with the natural environment as a botanist as well as poet.
With the autumn 2014 fashion shows in full swing, all eyes are on the top designers. In 16th-century Italy, the latest looks didn't always go down well with the authorities. Historian Giulia Galastro is researching the sumptuary laws regulating the level of opulence that could be paraded in public – and how the dandies of the day neatly side-stepped the rules.
Anthropology looks at human differences in its study of the ‘other’ and at human commonalities in its more recent focus on the ‘suffering’. In identifying ways that anthropology can contribute to solutions for world problems, Professor Joel Robbins proposes an approach he calls the ‘anthropology of the good’.
Born 500 years ago, Andreas Vesalius has iconic status in the history of science. Cambridge University Library holds several copies of the remarkable books that he published to revive the lost art of anatomy and promote his own career as a physician. Historian Dr Sachiko Kusukawa has curated an online exhibition to celebrate Vesalius's achievements.
The wide-ranging objects on display at Buddha’s Word, an exhibition at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, show how Tibetan book makers used the resources around them to produce manuscripts conveying the messages of a faith in which texts themselves are sacred objects.
This alien glob is a piece of gum arabic from the hardened sap of the Acacia tree, most likely collected from a tree in Sudan. Rox Middleton explains how the electron microscope has changed the way we are able to interact with objects at the nanoscale, allowing us to enjoy a glimpse of the exquisite abstract forms around us.
Our choice of books says a lot about us – and our relationships with books as objects can be complex. At a conference taking place today (28 June 2014), Dr Victoria Mills (Faculty of English) will discuss how book collecting may have afforded an expression for marginalised male identities in the late Victorian period.
Deep sea sediment cores – they’re cold, they’re muddy, and they’re revealing 30,000 years of climate history – as PhD student Julia Gottschalk reports from her voyage aboard the James Cook research ship last summer.
Perovskite materials are the newest contender for breaking the silicon ceiling in solar cell technology. But they don’t just absorb light. Cambridge researchers have found they emit it like a laser, opening up an entirely new field of applications.
© 2014 University of Cambridge
