http://talks.cam.ac.uk/show/rss/5408

Abstract not available

• Speaker: Avey Nelson and Kate O'Riordan (University of Sussex)
• Tuesday 14 October 2025, 17:00-18:30
• Venue: Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science.
• Series: History of Modern Medicine and Biology; organiser: Dr. Rosanna Dent.

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Abstract not available

• Speaker: Mark Jenner (University of York)
• Tuesday 02 December 2025, 17:00-18:30
• Venue: Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science.
• Series: Early Science and Medicine; organiser: Philippa Carter.

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Abstract not available

• Speaker: Eva Johanna Holmberg (University of Helsinki)
• Tuesday 04 November 2025, 17:00-18:30
• Venue: Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science.
• Series: Early Science and Medicine; organiser: Philippa Carter.

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Abstract not available

• Speaker: Martha McGill (Faculty of English)
• Tuesday 21 October 2025, 17:00-18:30
• Venue: Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science.
• Series: Early Science and Medicine; organiser: Philippa Carter.

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Abstract

Nature is full of music, from tiny birds with melodious songs and elaborate repertoires to majestic whales with inaudibly low voices propagating around the globe. As far as we can tell, however, the music is not often just for pleasure and has evolved serving a purpose. Animals are almost continuously busy with their sonic flirts and fights, whether we hear them or not, in air and water, day and night. The acoustic ecology of species-specific habitats has shaped this music over evolutionary time. The circumstances, however, for the function and evolution of animal communication have changed in air and in water, with the global spread of noisy human activities. In the Anthropocene, we can even speak of ‘acoustic climate change’ and attention and action is required for moderating the acoustic future of the earth for the sake of animal song persistence and our own physical and mental health.

Biography

Hans Slabbekoorn is professor in Acoustic Ecology & Behaviour. He did his BSc and MSc in Biology at Utrecht University (1988-1994), and received his PhD at Leiden University (1994-1998). After post-doctoral positions at San Francisco State University (1998-2001) and back at Leiden University (2001-2004), he stayed in Leiden at the Institute of Biology and became Assistant Professor in 2004, Associate Professor in 2012, and Full Professor in 2022. He has been away for brief periods as visiting professor, at Paris Nanterre, France (2011), NFU , Harbin, China (2015), FUB , Salvador, Brazil (2017), and Anton de Kom University of Suriname, Paramaribo (2025). Over the years, he has worked on plants, primates, birds, fishes, marine mammals, and invertebrates. In recent and ongoing projects, he is investigating the effects of noise and light pollution in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and he is particularly interested in applying the one health concept to urban ecology and providing fundamental knowledge to ecological impact assessments of the offshore wind energy transition. Besides research, he is dedicated to teaching and has been responsible for courses on: Behaviour & Conservation, Trends in Behaviour & Ecology, Animal Behaviour and Experimental Design, Advanced Academic Skills, Urban Ecology & Evolution, and seminar series on Human Evolution and Animal Personality.

• Speaker: Professor Hans Slabberkoorn, Leiden University
• Friday 23 January 2026, 17:30-18:30
• Venue: Lady Mitchell Hall, Sidgwick Avenue.
• Series: Darwin College Lecture Series; organiser: Janet Gibson.

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The colony of ‘France équinoxiale’ existed for only around four years (1612–15) in what is now the Brazilian state of Maranhão. Amongst the building of fortifications and looming war with the Portuguese, a group of French Capuchin friars arrived to preach to the native Tupinamba peoples, and conduct natural historical enquiries into the region’s plants, animals and insects. The results were two comprehensive travel accounts by Fr. Claude d’Abbeville and Fr. Yves d’Évreux, detailing their extensive contact with the locals, which were suppressed for political reasons by the French government in 1615. Nevertheless, the works show the influence of a tradition of Franciscan education in both natural philosophy and the teaching of religion, which, I argue, creates a direct connection between the medieval bestiary tradition and the teaching of catechism by analogy. Drawing on the work of Charlotte de Castelnau-L’Estoile and Hélène Clastres, I explore how these projects of collecting local nature and converting local peoples worked in concert to foster a localised form of theological teaching, which used native flora and fauna to explain complex theological matters.

• Speaker: Thomas Banbury (Department of History and Philosophy of Science)
• Monday 01 December 2025, 13:00-14:00
• Venue: Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science.
• Series: Cabinet of Natural History; organiser: ma2019.

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The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries bore witness to a delicate symbiosis between books and plants. New printing technology meant that information could be disseminated to a generation for whom botany was emerging as a discipline of its own, not merely as a subcategory of medicine. Herbals by the likes of Brunfels, Fuchs, Dodoens, Mattioli and Gerard were popular compendia for all manner of domestic uses, and their woodcut images, powerful surrogates for the plants which were difficult to transport from country to country. During this period of experimentation and discovery, gardening became an ‘art’ which could bring one closer to God, the very first gardener. Botanical imagery and horticultural metaphor suffused all areas of public and domestic life, including literature, stagecraft, needlework, religion and politics. Gardens both as ideas and as physical spaces formed vital centres of socio-economic life in Renaissance England, functioning as sites of storytelling and scandal, politics and poetry, profits and pleasures.

• Speaker: Liz White (Department of History and Philosophy of Science)
• Monday 24 November 2025, 13:00-14:00
• Venue: Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science.
• Series: Cabinet of Natural History; organiser: ma2019.

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Kate Hooper has just published her first book, Who Was Henslow?, a biography of John Stevens Henslow. This year marks the bicentenary of Henslow being appointed Professor of Botany in Cambridge, in 1825.

Kate enjoyed a 37-year career as an NHS doctor. However, her love of plants begun with her own small patch of garden aged five in Hertfordshire, developing her own garden to studying Garden Design and horticulture part-time at Writtle and West Anglia Colleges respectively. Having founded Perfect Circle Designs in 2002, she designed and landscaped gardens in the UK and France with her business partner. She enjoys gardening with her husband in the mild dry climate of South Cambridgeshire.

Following the birth of her first grandson, Kate hung up her stethoscope in 2022. She was delighted to be accepted both as a Volunteer Garden Guide and Herbarium Volunteer at Cambridge University Botanic Garden. It was then she began to ask questions about Henslow. Why did he take on the Chair of Botany when he was already Professor of Mineralogy? How did he manage to persuade the University to buy 40 acres of land in central Cambridge for the study of botany? Why did he move his family to a small parish in Suffolk, before the new Botanic Garden opened? Despite a lifelong desire to travel why did he forego the chance to join the Beagle voyage of 1831? (He let his most famous student, Charles Darwin, travel instead.) As a devout Christian, how did he react to Darwin’s famous book, On the Origin of the Species?

• Speaker: Kate Hooper (Independent Researcher)
• Monday 17 November 2025, 13:00-14:00
• Venue: Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science.
• Series: Cabinet of Natural History; organiser: ma2019.

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Natural history collections are a valuable but largely untapped resource for studying emerging infectious diseases across space, time, and host species. However, the detection of viruses, bacteria, parasites, and fungi in museum specimens is highly contingent on collection, preservation, and storage practices. In this seminar, I will discuss two case studies of retrospective viral discovery from my own research, including the detection of SARS -related coronaviruses and zoonotic poxviruses in archival bat and rodent tissues, respectively. In doing so, I will also explore the downstream implications of political and historical collecting context for data retrieval from museum specimens.

• Speaker: Maya Juman (Department of Veterinary Medicine)
• Monday 10 November 2025, 13:00-14:00
• Venue: Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science.
• Series: Cabinet of Natural History; organiser: ma2019.

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In 1800, Kew Gardens received a full catalogue of the plants at Portugal’s only university botanical garden through Joseph Banks’ network in order to facilitate the exchange of plants. This catalogue represents a rare opportunity to visualise and analyse the garden not only through the structure of taxonomic arrangement but also as an environmental node in a colonial network of plant exchange. Network analysis used as a speculative and creative tool enables different ways of seeing the garden that highlight the physical connections of plants moved within the network of botanical study. Building on this methodology looks towards ways of precisely and creatively understanding the environmental history of imperial science at a larger scale than following the stories of individual plants.

• Speaker: Nathan Cornish (University of Southampton)
• Monday 03 November 2025, 13:00-14:00
• Venue: Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science.
• Series: Cabinet of Natural History; organiser: ma2019.

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Abstract not available

• Speaker: Bronte Evans Rayward (Department of Geography)
• Monday 27 October 2025, 13:00-14:00
• Venue: Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science.
• Series: Cabinet of Natural History; organiser: ma2019.

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In the 1960s, Percy G. Adams asked why, in the so-called Age of Reason, belief in giants remained so widespread. Scholarship has often situated giants within curiosity culture, treating them as natural anomalies, ‘jokes of nature’, or relics of legendary ancestors. Yet in the long eighteenth century, giants stood apart from other monstrous figures. This talk argues that, amid fears of degeneration and new interests in heredity, selective breeding, and human improvement, exceptional height came to be valorised as a desirable trait rather than merely displayed as a fairground spectacle. Giants were reimagined as embodiments of Enlightenment ambitions to transcend physical limits in pursuit of an ideal ‘tall’ form. I will trace ideas of a ‘race’ of giants, the framing of human gigantism as attainable potential, and scientific efforts to explain abnormal height, before examining its valorisation in Frederick William I’s Potsdam Giants, where exceptional stature became a symbol of military strength, civic virtue, and national identity.

• Speaker: Sandra Liwanowska (Department of History and Philosophy of Science)
• Monday 20 October 2025, 13:00-14:00
• Venue: Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science.
• Series: Cabinet of Natural History; organiser: ma2019.

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Abstract not available

• Speaker: Mika Hyman (Department of History and Philosophy of Science)
• Monday 13 October 2025, 13:00-14:00
• Venue: Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science.
• Series: Cabinet of Natural History; organiser: ma2019.

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We are urged to trust science because it is objective. Efforts to support the objectivity of scientific inquiry, however, often make assumptions that ultimately fuel skepticism about the very possibility of such objectivity. One is a commitment to scientific monism: the idea that scientific inquiry, properly pursued, should result in a single, comprehensive, account of a given domain or even of the natural world, tout court. A second is commitment to any of a variety of Individualist epistemologies, all informed by the principle that scientific knowledge is the outcome of cognitive processes realized by single individuals. Abandoning monism and individualism may complicate our conception of objectivity. Nevertheless, embracing pluralism and the sociality of knowledge in their stead enables a more robust account of the trustworthiness of science.

Second Annual Mary Hesse Lecture

• Speaker: Helen Longino (Stanford University)
• Thursday 23 October 2025, 15:30-17:00
• Venue: Babbage Lecture Theatre, New Museums Site.
• Series: Mary Hesse Lecture; organiser: Ahmad Elabbar.

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There has been increasing interest in the ‘values and science’ literature on the ways that organizations and institutions mediate and promote the influences of values in scientific research. The present paper builds on this recent focus by exploring the value-laden nature of the standards (e.g., rules, norms, guidelines) used to guide research. The paper examines previous scholarship on the epistemic and ethical benefits and disadvantages associated with standardization, thereby highlighting the importance of analyzing the conditions under which specific kinds of standardization are most likely to be justifiable. It argues that the benefits of standardization are particularly salient during ‘troubled times’ like the present, when there are significant political and economic forces promoting the manipulation of science for desired ends. Finally, drawing on examples from the field of toxicology, the paper suggests a set of principles for pursuing standardization in ways that take advantage of its epistemic and ethical benefits while lessening its weaknesses.

• Speaker: Kevin C. Elliott (Michigan State University)
• Thursday 20 November 2025, 15:30-17:00
• Venue: Hopkinson Lecture Theatre, New Museums Site.
• Series: Departmental Seminars in History and Philosophy of Science; organiser: Ahmad Elabbar.

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For many Ugandans, Idi Amin’s rule is an unfinished chapter that continues to shape political discourse about the way the state relates to its citizens. Despite being one of the most documented figures in history, sensationalized media portrayals and limited archival sources have obscured many facets of his rule. Scholarship has often focused on high-profile events like the expulsion of Asians but like many authoritarian leaders, Amin was deeply invested in imposing moral order, enacting a series of decrees between 1971 and 1977 which aimed to reform the behavior of Ugandans. This ‘anti-immorality’ campaign led to the arrest, imprisonment, and forced treatment of many Ugandans, predominantly women. The campaign garnered support from unexpected places, including medical professionals, religious leaders, and ordinary citizens. In this talk, I examine the anti-venereal disease decree, which Amin enacted in 1977 to address what he and medics believed was a venereal disease epidemic caused by immorality. I examine the campaign against venereal diseases as a political, medico-moral, and epidemiological project, socially constructed, but with real consequences for women. This campaign found support among medical and public health officials whose agendas intersected with moral reform efforts, framing venereal diseases through a gendered moral lens, echoing colonial precedents.

• Speaker: Doreen Kembabazi (Adyeeri) (University of Warwick)
• Thursday 13 November 2025, 15:30-17:00
• Venue: Hopkinson Lecture Theatre, New Museums Site.
• Series: Departmental Seminars in History and Philosophy of Science; organiser: Ahmad Elabbar.

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The quality of a measurement procedure may be evaluated, among other criteria, by (i) the quality of knowledge it produces about the measurand, (ii) the relevance of its results for guiding human decision making and action, and (iii) the desirability of its impacts on individuals, society, and nature. These criteria are compatible in principle, but their application involves conflicting commitments regarding the aims and methods of measurement. I call these distinct sets of commitments ‘modes of measurement quality evaluation’, and show that value trade-offs are insufficient to reconcile them. I illustrate these claims using examples from the contemporary measurement of time and mental health.

• Speaker: Eran Tal (McGill University)
• Thursday 06 November 2025, 15:30-17:00
• Venue: Hopkinson Lecture Theatre, New Museums Site.
• Series: Departmental Seminars in History and Philosophy of Science; organiser: Ahmad Elabbar.

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Simon Schaffer (University of Cambridge), Richard Dunn (Science Museum, London), Alexi Baker (Yale Peabody Museum), Rebekah Higgitt (National Museums Scotland), Sophie Waring (Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret, London)

The Board of Longitude was one of Georgian Britain’s most important scientific institutions. The Board developed in the eighteenth century after legislation that offered major rewards for methods to determine longitude at sea: the enterprise came to support the work of navigators, instrument-makers, clockmakers and surveyors, as well as a host of other artisans and schemers. Its activities also included computation and publication of the Nautical Almanac and establishment of the astronomical observatory at the Cape of Good Hope. This new book, published by Cambridge University Press, uses the rich archives of the Board, now available online, to shed new light on colonial and exploratory projects in the Pacific and the Arctic, as well as tracing the projects of practitioners often lost to history. A round-table discussion involves the authors of the book and offers the opportunity for discussion of the significance of these histories during a period of major industrial, imperial and technological development.

• Speaker: Various speakers
• Thursday 30 October 2025, 15:30-17:00
• Venue: Hopkinson Lecture Theatre, New Museums Site.
• Series: Departmental Seminars in History and Philosophy of Science; organiser: Ahmad Elabbar.

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This Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar will take place on Thursday 16 October 2025, starting at 4:30pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)

Speaker: Dr Fränze Progatzky, Principal Investigator in Tissue Biology, Kennedy Institute, Oxford

Title: Outside the brain: how glial cells orchestrate tissue immunity

Host: Dr Noe Rodriguez, Cambridge

Refreshments will be available following the seminar.

Note unusual time

• Speaker: Dr Fränze Progatzky, Principal Investigator in Tissue Biology, Kennedy Institute, Oxford
• Thursday 16 October 2025, 16:30-17:30
• Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
• Series: Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar Series; organiser: Liat Churley.

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In this talk, I will review some of the recent results on the Stochastic Heat Equation (SHE) with multiplicative white noise in dimension d=2. The SHE is a stochastic PDE which is ill-defined in its critical dimension d=2 : in that case, very recent results show that a subtle normalisation procedure is needed to make sense of it. I will present the probabilistic approach to this normalisation procedure, followed by Caravenna, Sun, Zygouras : it is based on the study of the directed polymer model, a statistical mechanics model which can be seen as a discretised version of the SHE . In a very specific critical window for the parameters, the model possess a non-trivial scaling limit, that Caravenna, Sun, Zygouras called Critical 2D Stochastic Heat Flow, and can be interpreted as a (notion of a) solution to the 2D SHE . I will then review some of the properties of this Stochastic Heat Flow and present some of the results based on a joint work with F. Caravenna and N. Turchi.

• Speaker: Quentin Berger (Paris 13)
• Tuesday 02 December 2025, 14:00-15:00
• Venue: MR12.
• Series: Probability; organiser: Perla Sousi.

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