Programme announced for the Cambridge Festival 2023
The Intellectual Forum runs a number of events in College throughout the year, and will be offering tickets to five events in this year’s Cambridge Festival.
Information about individual events can be found below. Tickets for all Cambridge Festival events will be available from 11am on Monday 13 February.
Beyond online safety: AI, web3, and the Metaverse
Monday 20 March 5:30pm, West Court, Jesus College
This panel discussion will consider emerging forms of online harm, and what can be done to mitigate them. It will ask: with advances in Artificial Intelligence, increasing adoption of web3 technologies like blockchain, and big tech investing billions in building the all-encompassing virtual world known as the metaverse, how should policymakers respond? Cohosted with the Bennett Institute for Public Policy.
Tickets are available on our Eventbrite page.
The power of storytelling: care survivors and reparative justice
Monday 20 March 7:30pm, West Court, Jesus College
Dr Véronique Mottier will examine how the powerless can make their voices heard. Drawing on research interviews with care survivor activists in several countries, this talk will explore the ways official apologies were experienced by the victims to whom they were addressed. It will also ask what the personal cost is of storytelling, and whether reparative justice can ever be fully achieved.
Tickets are available on our Eventbrite page.
Romanticism and the Black Atlantic
Tuesday 21 March 7:30pm, West Court, Jesus College
Dr Mathelinda Nabugodi will draw on her current work-in-progress, The Trembling Hand: Reflections of a Black Woman in the Romantic Archive, which examines objects found in the archives of the major Romantic poets: unexpected treasures such as Wordsworth’s teacup, Shelley’s baby rattle, or Byron’s carnival mask. In the wake of calls to decolonise the curriculum, Mathelinda will explain how poets' relics can prompt wide-ranging reflection on the Romantic period’s legacy in our own time – its poetic ideals as well as its painful realities.
Tickets are available on our Eventbrite page.
Would I Sci to You?
Thursday 23 March 7:30pm, West Court, Jesus College
Relevant but irreverent: in this Cambridge Festival science comedy show, science, technology, engineering, and maths meet Would I Lie to You, Have I Got News for You, and QI! Join our two teams of science communicators, university researchers, and local STEM professionals as they deal with current affairs, crazy tales, and bizarre research and applications. Cohosted with the Cambridge Science Centre.
Tickets are available on Eventbrite.
The universe in an atom: atoms as quantum sensors for fundamental physics
Monday 27 March 7:30pm, West Court, Jesus College
While practical quantum computers, with their fascinating future possibilities, remain quite a distance away in the future, quantum sensors are a reality today. Yet quantum sensors are probably the least discussed part of quantum technologies. In particular, the humble atom is nature's most powerful quantum sensor and its unparalleled precision has been harnessed for decades in atomic clocks to literally define our time. However, in order to achieve this timing precision, physicists have to shield the atoms from all unwanted external influences such as magnetic fields. But what about influences we cannot shield against - for instance, gravity or dark matter? In this talk for the Cambridge Festival of Ideas, Professor of Many-Body Physics Ulrich Schneider will explain how we can turn this apparent limitation into a new tool to explore the universe and fundamental physics.
