You may have heard talk of plants flowering earlier as a result of our warming climate. Phenology, the study of seasonal cycles, can help us to understand the effects of climate change on plants. We would like to know how seasonal weather changes are affecting the trees at CUBG, and if they can adapt, survive and even thrive.
A small number of plants attract pollinators not by providing a food reward, but by mimicking females of the pollinating animal species. Male animals are attracted to these mimics and may attempt to mate with them. In the process, pollen is transferred to and from the animal’s body and can be carried to other flowers. The plant gets pollinated and has not had to provide any nectar in exchange! We will discuss how these sexually deceptive flowers work and how plants are able to construct these brilliant models of female insects.
The humanities and the sciences supposedly belong to separate cultures, but some of the world’s most celebrated images stem from scientific roots. Just as every picture tells a story, so too there are many different stories to tell about a picture. Who created it? And why? What places, objects and people does the picture show? Has its meaning changed over time?
Dr Victoria Avery, curator of our Rise Up exhibition, shares her fascinating new research alongside violin performances by Nicole Cherry, the Assistant Professor of Violin from University of Texas at San Antonio and founder of the ForgewithGeorge project which commissions new violin compositions inspired by Bridgetower.
Curated by historian of abolitionist ideas, Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman, this unique programme of short films showcases highlights from the University of Birmingham’s groundbreaking conference, last year, Undoing 2007; Preparing for 2038.
Challenging familiar, but misleading, narratives of 'abolition’, the rigorous presentations and surprising conversations archived in these fifteen short films consider how communities can commemorate freedom-fighting, resistance, and abolition by harnessing reparative histories
Bishop’s sculptural work celebrates the countless unrecorded Jamaican market women of West African heritage whose skills, knowledge and empowerment ‘exemplify resilience and agency’ and helped ‘shape the legacy of Caribbean and African heritage’.
Today, natural history museums are starting to research the full histories of how their collections were built, and this can bring to light some surprising and troubling stories. Thylacines, or Tasmanian tigers, are icons of extinction, and some of the world’s best-preserved specimens are in Cambridge’s University Museum of Zoology. New research there has uncovered an uncomfortable truth about how the history of the extinction of the thylacine had strong parallels with the violent events that took place in Tasmania in the nineteenth century.
It is a perhaps surprising fact that one of the most numerous types of document to have survived from Greek and Roman antiquity are accounts: account inscriptions from classical Athens and other cities, temple accounts from, among others, Delos, and accounts on papyrus from various places in Egypt. Accounts are also discussed by ancient authors in the context not of the economy, but of politics, indicating that there may have been a link between accounts and accountability.
In the next century it is predicted that more than half of the world's 7,000 languages, and up to 90% of its distinctive writing traditions, will be lost. To try to protect the cultural heritage of today's minoritised communities, we need to understand how and why languages lose or maintain their vitality.
“Carpe diem”, often translated as “seize the day”, is one of the most recognisable Latin phrases: in our day it is a popular slogan on T-shirts, and millions know the words through the movie Dead Poets Society. But how did the ancients seize the day? What pleasures made life worth living for them?
