We Are The University

Final-year chemist Shadab Ahmed reflects on his sabbatical year as Cambridge University Student Union Access and Funding Officer, the importance of role models, and how increasing diversity within universities could be the start of seeing real change in society as a whole.

The neuroscientist working to understand and prevent suicide in teenagers.

We talk to Dr Anne-Laura van Harmelen, a neuroscientist, who became fascinated by the brain as a teenager, after her dad gave her a copy of Oliver Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Today she’s investigating adversity and resilience and is part of an international collaboration working to understand, and ultimately prevent, suicidal thoughts and behaviours in teenagers.

https://www.riskandresiliencegroup.uk/

https://twitter.com/ProjectHOPES

https://twitter.com/DrAnneLaura

In this episode we chat to Duncan Astle, a developmental neuroscientist, who’s based at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. Duncan and I talk about his recent study that uses machine learning to identify learning difficulties and why children may struggle at school. We also talk about his work with Pride in STEM and how the current scientific research publishing model needs to change.

In this episode, Charis and I speak to Cambridge alumna, Pat Marsh. When we recorded the interview, we didn’t have any of the studio equipment with us, just a phone, but we thought it would be a crime not to share Pat’s incredible story.

Pat was the first woman in the UK to hold a gaming licence and in 1979 she brought Space Invaders, the arcade game sensation, to the UK shores.

Pat has had a distinguished business career, most recently serving as Executive Chairman of Philip-Treacy. Philip Treacy’s hats have adorned the heads of royals and celebrities alike, including Grace Jones, Lady Gaga, Madonna, Sarah Jessica Parker, Beyonce and Victoria Beckham.

Daphne Martschenko, president of Cambridge University Women’s Boat Club, is determined to make the sport of rowing more accessible. Her mission to pave the way for greater diversity in rowing chimes with her study of the charged concepts of race, socio-economic status, intelligence and genetics.

Having survived the civil war in Afghanistan, Waheed Arian arrived alone in the UK aged 15. He went on to study medicine at Trinity Hall, Cambridge University. Today he’s using smartphones and volunteer specialists to provide life-saving medical advice to doctors working in areas of conflict.

https://www.cam.ac.uk/thiscambridgelife/waheedarian

Welcome to We are the University. A podcast about the people who make Cambridge University unique.

In this episode we meet James Biddulph, the headmaster of the University of Cambridge Primary School.

We talk about the school’s character and vision, how a trip to Nepal helped him realise that he wanted to teach as a career and we find out how he inspires the team of teachers that work with him.

https://www.cam.ac.uk/primaryschool

www.educ.cam.ac.uk/people/staff/biddulph/

More than just an outstanding Ofsted rating sets the University of Cambridge Primary School apart: it places research at its heart, informing education practice and furthering research at Cambridge’s Faculty of Education and elsewhere.

Visitors walking through one of the ‘learning streets’ that run through the core of the University of Cambridge Primary School (UCPS) soon notice something unusual. It’s not the fact that they end up back where they started – the school’s Polo-mint-shaped structure is just one of its radical features – but the startling lack of doors: classrooms open up invitingly on each side of the street, with snatches of lessons, storytelling or music audible within.

The open-plan design both facilitates and symbolises the school’s role as the first, and still only, University Training School at primary level in the UK (the only secondary UTS is in Birmingham). Sponsored by the University of Cambridge, its role is to provide brilliant and inclusive primary education for its local community, and also to work alongside the University’s Faculty of Education and others to be research informed and research generating.

Building from the work of the Faculty of Education, the school identified three ‘golden threads’that bind together its curriculum: habits of mind (the resilience and problem-solving skills that help children learn); dialogue (exemplified in the new DIALLS project); and playful inquiry. The aim, looking forward again, is to “empower children to make sense of the complex world in which they live” and nurture “compassionate citizens who want to make a positive contribution to their local and global worlds.”