CRASSH

The DH23things programme will begin in September, 2012 with this launch event featuring a session from Meg Westbury of the Judge Business School Library on 30 Things in 30 Mins – a fast-paced tour of 30 of the most useful digital tools available on the web to help the researcher.

23Things for Digital Humanities (DH23) is a self-directed, peer mentored reflective programme to help researchers in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Cambridge University to explore digital technologies and the ways in which they impact on various aspects of their working lives, and thereby to develop their own strategic approach to engagement with digital technologies. It is a way to discover and explore digital tools which might be useful to you but also a framework for evaluation, reflection and wider integration of digital technologies to enhance your work, to the level which is appropriate for you.

POIESIS: Interdisciplinary Interventions on Urban Transformation

Urban Democracy by Design?

Introduction: Poiesis and Cross-Sectoral Work

Markus Hipp (Executive Director, BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt)

Panelists:

Michael Arad (Partner, Handel Architects)

Ricky Burdett (Professor of Urban Studies and Director of the Cities and the Urban Age Programme, London School of Economics)

Saskia Sasen (Robert S Lynd Professor of Sociology, Columbia University)

Richard Sennett (University Professor, New York University and Centennial Visiting Professor, London School of Economics)

Chair: Ash Amin (1931 Chair in Geography, University of Cambridge)

The Poiesis symposium is the culmination of a three year research project on the making and remaking of cities led by Richard Sennett and Craig Calhoun in partnership with the Herbert Quandt and Gerda Henkel Foundations. Over three days, the international, interdisciplinary, group of scholars and practitioners involved in the project – from architects and filmmakers to physicists, sociologists and lawyers – will be convened by Cambridge geographer Ash Amin to discuss the future city. Combining plenaries, workshops and roundtable discussions, the symposium will debate the salience of reading the city from its physical and cultural infrastructures, the potential of urban democracy 'by design', and the implications of comprehensive urbanism for social thought and political practice.

Workshop on Beauty, Towards Political Anthropology - 2012

Convened by International Political Anthropology [IPA] at the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) Cambridge with IPA book launch.

Professor Arpad Szakolczai (University College Cork)

Dr Agnes Horvath (Cambridge University)

Dr Harald Wydra (Cambridge University)

James Cuffe (University College Cork)

Professor Sixto Castro (University of Valladolid)

Anna-Riikka Kauppinnen (LSE, London)

Arvydas Grisinas (Kent,University of Canterbury)

James Fairhead (UCC)

Eugene McNamee (University of Ulster, Belfast)

Daniel Gati (IPA, Florence)

Peter Gati (IPA, Florence)

Diletta Tonatto (IPA, Florence)

Peter Kearney (UCC)

Acomo Oloya (University of Bristol)

Tony O'Connor (UCC)

Alexandra Hyde (Gender Institute, LSE)

This paper is based on an ethnographic study of a British Army camp overseas, from the perspective of civilian women married to servicemen. By focusing on the experiences and attitudes of ‘military wives’ within the Army’s social and institutional structure, the aim of this research is to investigate the ways in which the depth and scope of militarisation might be argued to be contingent upon or indeed, mediated by other factors such as gender, race, class, sexuality and national identity. My initial analysis suggests that the terms of the Regiment’s cohesion as a community overseas are negotiated through a range of formal and informal, material and cultural ‘bargains’ with the military.

In the additional context of the Regiment’s recent deployment to Afghanistan, this ethnography also offers some observations on the multiple modes of mobility, absence, mobilization and separation that characterise both the camp’s community as a whole, and the flux of everyday life for military families. In my tentative conceptualisation, I aim to account for a more fluid, productive tension between what I call ‘military mobilities’ and the Regiment’s rigid hierarchies, fixed structure, prescribed traditions and sovereign status. Using ethnographic examples, I will elaborate upon the places where the borderlines of the military merge into the civilian, extend beyond the public life of the institution into the domestic sphere and, in the particular circumstances of the Regiment’s multiple locations, occupy what might be argued as ‘transnational’ social space.

Professor Herbert Huppert (FRS, Chairman of EASAC Working Group on Carbon Capture and Storage)

This is Climate Histories' final meeting of the academic year. Professor Herbert Huppert FRS will speak on past volcanic eruptions and the future of carbon sequestration. He is from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics and is interested in modeling complex systems.

Conference Conveners

Ashley Moffett (Professor of Reproductive Immunology)

Megan Vaughan (Professor of Commonwealth History)

Conference Summary

Millennium Development Goal 5 (MDG5) aims to improve maternal health. Unlike other MDGs, few countries are on track to achieve even the first goal of MDG 5, namely, to reduce maternal mortality by 75%. Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from the highest regional maternal mortality rate (MMR) at 640 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births and the annual decline has only been 0.1%. In stark contrast, average MMR in developed countries is 14.

The focus for discussion and action to reduce maternal mortality rates is of necessity largely restricted to the fields of medicine and public health. At the same time, however, there is a spectrum of challenging biological, social and cultural issues that constitute the context within which maternal mortality occurs. In our workshop we plan to break new ground by bringing together those with expertise in current initiatives to reduce MMR with leading researchers in genetics, immunology, obstetric epidemiology, and social and biological anthropology.

The aim of the conference is to provide a forum within which people with very different expertise and experience can explore the latest research findings and see how these could influence understanding and ideas for action to reduce maternal mortality in Africa.

The following two areas, taken together, will form the focus of the conference:

Biological mechanisms determining birth outcomes

The social and historical context for maternal mortality in Africa

We see this as a unique opportunity to bring together those with experience of implementing initiatives aimed at reducing MMR with researchers from different but highly relevant academic disciplines. Our focus on this important issue will enable us to bring together the latest research in fields that all too often do not ‘talk’ to each other. An additional question to be posed in the course of this conversation concerns the very nature of interdisciplinary enquiry. Do we have a language with which to talk meaningfully of the interactions between biology and history? To what extent can basic scientific research inform policy-making?

Conference Conveners

Ashley Moffett (Professor of Reproductive Immunology)

Megan Vaughan (Professor of Commonwealth History)

Conference Summary

Millennium Development Goal 5 (MDG5) aims to improve maternal health. Unlike other MDGs, few countries are on track to achieve even the first goal of MDG 5, namely, to reduce maternal mortality by 75%. Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from the highest regional maternal mortality rate (MMR) at 640 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births and the annual decline has only been 0.1%. In stark contrast, average MMR in developed countries is 14.

The focus for discussion and action to reduce maternal mortality rates is of necessity largely restricted to the fields of medicine and public health. At the same time, however, there is a spectrum of challenging biological, social and cultural issues that constitute the context within which maternal mortality occurs. In our workshop we plan to break new ground by bringing together those with expertise in current initiatives to reduce MMR with leading researchers in genetics, immunology, obstetric epidemiology, and social and biological anthropology.

The aim of the conference is to provide a forum within which people with very different expertise and experience can explore the latest research findings and see how these could influence understanding and ideas for action to reduce maternal mortality in Africa.

The following two areas, taken together, will form the focus of the conference:

Biological mechanisms determining birth outcomes

The social and historical context for maternal mortality in Africa

We see this as a unique opportunity to bring together those with experience of implementing initiatives aimed at reducing MMR with researchers from different but highly relevant academic disciplines. Our focus on this important issue will enable us to bring together the latest research in fields that all too often do not ‘talk’ to each other. An additional question to be posed in the course of this conversation concerns the very nature of interdisciplinary enquiry. Do we have a language with which to talk meaningfully of the interactions between biology and history? To what extent can basic scientific research inform policy-making?

Conveners

Dr Ying Jin (Architecture, University of Cambridge)

Dr Tony Hargreaves (Architecture, University of Cambridge)

Co-ordinated by Marion Houston

Scientific Committee

Professor Marcial Echenique (Architecture, University of Cambridge)

Professor Mike Batty (Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL)

Professor Michael Wegener (Spiekermann & Wegener Urban and Regional Research, Dortmund)

Conference Summary

AUM2012 is the second of a planned series of annual symposia for discussing applied urban simulation models that offer insight into complex dynamics of urban change and inform practical initiatives. AUM2012 aims to bring together scholars and practitioners from diverse disciplines, professional institutions and government agencies in many countries. The cross-fertilisation of ideas is expected to serve as a springboard for innovation in urban modelling at different levels – from conceptual experiments to policy appraisal.

AUM2012 will continue to focus on models of large city regions, especially their applications in addressing grand challenges such as energy and climate change. It is open to all model types and styles, with papers welcomed that assess different pathways towards energy efficient and climate wise cities, where system-level thinking is still hampered by a lack of common understanding of the theories and tools. We have also welcomed papers that report innovations in methods and techniques.

The preceding 2011 symposium showed that the format was effective in facilitating an in-depth understanding of the state of the art across model types and styles, and of possibilities to link and interface the models for tackling policy questions. We hope the discussions will lead to meta-analyses that systematically compare model specifications, mechanisms, scenario inputs and policy assessment outputs. An example of such meta-analyses is Wegener (2010) [click here]. The meta-analyses will run concurrently with the symposium series and we look forward to hearing from urban modellers who wish to contribute to it.

In Praise of Shadows: Installations and Archives:

A talk by Edmund de Waal at Kettle's Yard