University of Cambridge - School of Arts and Humanities

Cambridge to Careers: skills and support that take you further

lw355 — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 10:22:40 +0000

Cambridge University is ranked best in the UK 2026 for "producing the most employable graduates", as judged by recruiters at top companies around the world. We spoke to Graham Philpott, Cambridge’s Head of Careers, about the key factors that shape employability for Cambridge students.

Almost a minute to midnight: Cambridge helps launch open course on nuclear weapons as global tensions rise

fpjl2 — Tue, 05 May 2026 08:46:52 +0000

An open-source online textbook and course on the current state of nuclear weapons, along with possible futures and global annihilation potential, has been launched by the University’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER), at a time when nuclear sabre-rattling is firmly back in the headlines.

At the heart of the new course is an examination of how these weapons shape today’s security environment, from geopolitical alliances to the potential for cyber-attacks on warhead facilities, and the dire need for democratic participation in nuclear debates.

“With the end of the Cold War, so many were relieved of the anxiety that nuclear war could be imminent,” said Prof S.M Amadae, an expert on nuclear security, who joined CSER last year as its director.

“Unfortunately, in the 21st century, the threat of proliferation and the escalation to nuclear war are growing once more, but a generation of researchers and arms control experts have passed on. It now falls on the shoulders of our generation to provide accessible knowledge of the existential risks of nuclear war.”

Amadae developed the new resources with colleagues at CSER and the University of Helsinki in Finland, which is just one example of a nation where nuclear weapons are back on the political agenda in a major way.

Historically, the Finns took a firm anti–nuclear weapons stance. However, Russia’s war on Ukraine has seen a “shift in public sentiment” according to Amadae, with Finnish President Alexander Stubb even running his campaign on openness to nuclear sharing.

In a video interview for the University’s YouTube channel, Amadae argues that we are seeing the start of a new nuclear arms race, as post-war global orders teeter on the brink, and a new breed of ‘strongmen’ leaders lean into escalatory nuclear rhetoric.

“Just in the last decade we have seen the US, Russia and China all undergoing a nuclear revolution, with major revamping and upgrading of their weapon systems as well as their nuclear command and control systems,” said Amadae.

From Russian aggression and Ukrainian retaliation, which has already seen strikes on nuclear infrastructure, to the US and Israel’s war on Iran over nuclear arms ambitions, the risks of nuclear conflict keep rising.

Amadae points out that this year’s Doomsday clock announcement from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists placed humanity at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest we have been to existential destruction in 79 years of warnings.

China is reportedly increasing its missile stockpiles, while North Korea, a rogue nuclear state, seeks to expand its capabilities. Countries like South Korea, Saudi Arabia and even Japan – site of the worst nuclear atrocities in history – have started to debate whether to remain non-nuclear.

Trump’s instability and threats to NATO have led European nations to look at bolstering nuclear “deterrents”, with Macron announcing an expansion of France's arsenal earlier this year, and German and Polish politicians discussing the possibility of hosting nuclear warheads.

“The announcement by Macron suggests France might be trying to step into that role of supplying some of the nuclear deterrence for Europe if the United States is falling behind as an ally,” said Amadae.

However, for Amadae, it is the UK in the “driver’s seat” of European nuclear proliferation, with the recent reacquisition of B61-12 nuclear gravity bombs, after having dispensed with them in the 1990s. “These are thermonuclear bombs that have a yield of up to 50 kilotons, where the Hiroshima attack was ten kilotons, so that’s a huge destructive capability.”

Amadae argues that this action by the UK may even violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. “The UK leadership is tacitly saying yes, everyone should have nuclear sharing or nuclear weapons, without even really looking at what scenarios would they be used under, or how it works with NATO.”

In the video, Amadae also addresses questions of how our digital world and the era of artificial intelligence could affect the risks posed by nuclear weapons. “In nuclear decision-making, where leaders may only have about 15 minutes, they might default to AI systems, and we know that some systems tend to favour rapid escalation.”

“In democratic societies, it’s fundamental that citizens understand nuclear weapons and their implications, from the financial, political, and strategic, as well as the technological, and demand greater transparency,” said Amadae.

“Open access educational resources offer key tools to empower citizens to face existential risks and demand action from the representatives.”

Ultimately, Amadae says that shifting more towards existential risk has – perhaps counterintuitively – made her increasingly optimistic. “Many people would be willing to contribute to a better future, they just don’t know how, and it is up to us to help inform them.”

“The biggest challenge is overcoming cynicism and the sense that current trajectories are inevitable. I believe we can create very different futures.”

The open-access textbook Nuclear Weapons, Planetary Risks, and Human Consequences: What Every Citizen Needs to Know, a collaboration between the universities of Cambridge and Helsinki, is available to download from the University’s online repository. It also forms the basis of an open university course on the topic on the Helsinki website.

The new Director of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk warns that a new nuclear arms race may be underway, as more countries consider or seek to expand their arsenals.

“The biggest challenge is overcoming cynicism and the sense that current trajectories are inevitable

Prof S.M Amadae

Nuclear weapons are back in the headlines, here’s what you need to know

Video of Nuclear weapons are back in the headlines, here’s what you need to know

Jonny Settle

Prof S.M. Amadae, Director of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk

The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Unseen Peter Shaffer play revealed at Trinity

ta385 — Fri, 01 May 2026 12:41:14 +0000

Trinity College is celebrating the centenary of the birth of twin brothers Peter Shaffer (1926-2016) and Anthony Shaffer (1926-2001) who both studied at Trinity and went on to become award-winning playwrights. Peter bequeathed his substantial archive of playscripts, correspondence and photographs to Trinity College.

PhD student James Critchley came across the unstaged play Our Lady of the Volcano in the archive, while studying Shaffer’s first play, Five Finger Exercise. The play had been catalogued by archivists, but has remained completely unknown. Our Lady of the Volcano reflects the importance of Italy in Shaffer’s creative life. Set on the sultry Amalfi Coast, the plot swirls around two British travellers staying in a villa and their interactions – for better or worse – with other residents.

James Critchley says: "It's about competing kinds of romance narratives, primarily relating to the Brando-esque Jim Suckling, and his various encounters in relation to a religious festival near Sorrento. And in this kind of steamy, tempestuous sensuality, you can see the growing influence of writers such as Tennessee Williams, who Shaffer admired."

For Critchley, the play is intriguing for its cinematic influences, at a time when Hollywood films set in Italy – among them Roman Holiday, Three Coins in the Fountain, Boy on a Dolphin – proved highly popular.

"It emerges from a real immersion in the cinematic world of the early 1960s - these films made in Italian studios fed into Shaffer’s thinking. It was quite unusual at the time to see a play set outdoors, in an Italian villa, so the play is an example of him thinking across different media."

Our Lady of the Volcano marks a transition in the playwright’s early work, Critchley argues.

"Shaffer longed to leave behind the world of slammed doors and actual breakfasts being consumed in an atmosphere of domestic tension. He wanted to reinvent theatre. Of course, in later plays like Royal Hunt or Amadeus, he can be seen confidently working towards what he called ‘Total Theatre’: a mode of performance in which music, mime, movement might all play a role as important as scripted text.

"Even though the play never made it to stage, it is fascinating to see a writer developing his craft: to peek, as it were, behind the curtain. We can see in Our Lady ideas and scenarios that he would go on to flesh out more fully in the mature works of his later career."

James, who began exploring the Shaffer Archive as an undergraduate, said his PhD offered an amazing opportunity to understand Shaffer’s evolution, as well as the ups and downs charted in his correspondence.

"It's really exciting to be up close and personal so to speak with the projects that didn't necessarily make it to publication, but which still have all of the kind of thrilling imprints of a writer whose legacy continues to flourish today."

Shaffer at Cambridge

Peter and Anthony Shaffer were conscripted to the coal mines in Kent as ‘Bevin Boys’ during the Second World War. After that, in 1947, aged 21, they arrived at Trinity, Anthony to study Law and Peter, history.

Peter Shaffer described student life as ‘heaven’ and Cambridge ‘an astonishing place for many reasons.’ He attended lectures of all kinds, including by the philosopher Bertrand Russell, and he met EM Forster at King’s College, where the novelist was an Honorary Fellow.

Peter entered a short story competition set by Forster and although he did not win, he did receive an invitation to tea. He recalled: "I said I would love to have tea with him and I went round in some awe of the great man. And he served me tea and he was very shy. … it was tremendously encouraging … the fact that he liked the story and it had merits and he had a way of conveying its demerits … that was very, very graceful."

Enduring legacy

Peter Shaffer’s breakthrough came in 1958 with Five Finger Exercise. He would go on write acclaimed plays that continue to be staged today: a production of Equus opens in London this month and a major new production of Amadeus has been announced for 2027 in UK. Only last December Trinity alumnus Will Sharpe directed Amadeus for television, playing the title role himself.

Anthony Shaffer trained as a barrister but devoted his life to stage and film following the success of Sleuth in 1970. His film credits include Hitchcock’s Frenzy and the cult classic The Wicker Man.

In the centenary year, Trinity will announce the fifth Shaffer Playwright-in-Residence, a studentship established with funding from the Sir Peter Shaffer Charitable Foundation for early-career playwrights.

More information

A catalogue of the Sir Peter Shaffer Archive at Trinity College is available online. Researchers are welcome to consult items in the archive by appointment with the Wren Library.

James Critchley has written an essay, 'An unpublished play by Peter Shaffer', for The Times Literary Supplement.

His research is funded by the Alice and James Penney Studentship in English Literature.

This story was originally published by Trinity College.

A PhD student at Trinity College has unearthed a complete, unpublished play 65 years after Peter Shaffer wrote it - and before he reignited the world of theatre with the acclaimed plays The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Equus, and Amadeus.

He wanted to reinvent theatre

James Critchley

Trinity College Cambridge

Title page of Peter Shaffer's Our Lady.

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The researcher analysing far-right rhetoric on Facebook

fpjl2 — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 13:14:42 +0000

Raphael Hernandes, a PhD student at Cambridge Digital Humanities and Selwyn College, is a researcher and data journalist specialising in AI, journalism, and society.

Hungarian election 2026: Cambridge researchers give their reactions

ta385 — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 14:20:00 +0000

Viktor Orbán has been swept from power after 16 years as Hungarian Prime Minister in a landslide victory for Péter Magyar's Tisza party. Four Cambridge researchers specialising in Hungarian history and politics give their reaction.

UK must improve energy efficiency to end 50 years of policy failure and prevent future energy crises, study argues

ta385 — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 11:00:00 +0000

A Cambridge-led study, published in Environmental Policy and Governance, traces the evolution of British energy policy support since World War II up to reforms announced in 2025. It highlights a clear shift away from broad-based and preventive approaches, such as large-scale energy efficiency programmes, towards narrowly targeted measures that compensate households only after energy costs increase.

“The key question is not just who receives support, but why policy so often reacts rather than prevents,” says Tijn Croon, a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge’s Department of Architecture from TU Delft. “We find that this is not accidental: it reflects deeper political and institutional dynamics that consistently favour short-term, visible interventions over long-term investment.”

Recent decades reveal a recurring pattern, the researchers argue. During crises, governments introduce broad, often universal support and promise large-scale green investment, but this is typically short-lived. As pressures ease, policy shifts back towards narrowly targeted schemes, largely delivered through energy supplier obligations, leaving many households outside support despite ongoing energy affordability challenges.

The study suggests that this pattern is driven by political economy factors. Preventive policies such as home insulation require upfront investment and deliver benefits over longer time horizons, making them less attractive within short electoral cycles. In contrast, compensatory measures like energy bill support provide immediate, visible relief.

“What we see is a system that increasingly responds to crises rather than reducing vulnerability in advance,” says Minna Sunikka-Blank, Professor of Architecture and Environmental Policy at Cambridge and a Fellow of Churchill College. “This means support often arrives too late and mostly functions as a stopgap.”

The study points out that in the 1970s and 1980s, the UK was a global leader in energy efficiency, launching the world's first dedicated Energy Efficiency Office, nationwide awareness campaigns, and coordinated government support for households and industry. In stark contrast, it argues, the UK today “is one of the few high-income European countries without a comprehensive, universally accessible scheme for retrofitting grants or loans that goes beyond heating system replacement.

“Instead, it relies on a fragmented patchwork of policies, mostly financed through consumer levies and limited to low-income households, despite an ageing and relatively inefficient housing stock and the pressing challenges of climate change and the cost-of-living crisis.”

Dr Ray Galvin, from the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) says: “Without stronger investment in preventive measures like energy efficiency, on-site renewables, and low-carbon heating systems, governments risk repeatedly facing the same affordability crises. Short-term relief may be necessary, but it cannot substitute for structural solutions.”

The findings are particularly relevant in the current context of rising energy prices, where governments once again face pressure to intervene quickly. The authors warn that relying primarily on compensation risks entrenching a recurring cycle of crisis response.

While recent government commitments, such as the expansion of the Warm Homes Programme, signal a renewed focus on energy efficiency, the study argues that current plans remain insufficient in scale and ambition to fundamentally shift this trajectory.

To break this pattern, the authors call for a rethinking of how energy policy is evaluated and funded. They also suggest that framing energy affordability as a social right, such as a right to a warm and comfortable home, could help anchor more long-term policy approaches.

Reference

T M Croon, M G Elsinga, J S C M Hoekstra, M Sunikka-Blank, R Galvin, ‘For the Few, Not the Many: Tracing the Residualist and Compensatory Nature of British Energy Support’, Environmental Policy and Governance (2026). DOI: 10.1002/eet.70067

As prices rise and the UK Government considers energy bill help once again, a new study warns that the country’s approach to energy support is structurally geared towards short-term crisis response rather than long-term solutions.

Support often arrives too late and mostly functions as a stopgap

Minna Sunikka-Blank

Image by ri from Pixabay

Radiator with thermostatic valve

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Why Cambridge? And why it's right for you

lw355 — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 08:00:01 +0000

Students from every background belong at Cambridge. Discover how the skills you gain here open doors to exciting careers. Learn about the financial support available. Hear what makes Cambridge unique. Find out how to apply.

Exhibition explores Tudor legacies in contemporary art

ta385 — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 06:00:00 +0000

The exhibition, curated by Cambridge art historian Dr Christina J Faraday features works by eleven contemporary artists working across painting, digital media, video and photography, animatronics, ceramics, jewellery and silversmithing, set alongside rarely seen objects from historical collections in Cambridge.

“The Tudor period brought the advent of many ‘modern’ ideas in the realms of politics, religion, and society,” Dr Faraday says. “It also witnessed the first two English Queens Regnant, and the rise of England’s imperial and colonial ambitions abroad.

“Above all, it produced some of the most exciting and iconic images and objects in British art of any period. Many artists today are interrogating similar themes, making the era fertile ground for exploring issues of power, identity and artifice.”

The free-to-enter exhibition explores themes such as the representation of power; bodily presentation and bodily regulation; artistic responses to gender, race and ‘otherness’ within British and imperial histories; magic, technology and hidden forces, and the question of artistic artifice and art’s (in)ability to give access to ‘real’ historical subjects.

Dr Faraday says: “Artists of every age have been drawn to the Tudor period – each one finding something relevant to their own time. For the Victorians it was the first glimmerings of England’s Protestant Empire and the first strong English queen. For artists now, gender and empire are still to the fore, but complicated by more recent reassessments of themes such as identity, power and politics.”

“In this exhibition, artists revel in the look of the Tudor period – the sumptuous materials, the jewels and costumes, but also the inventive and charismatic everyday objects. At the same time, they engage with the period's reputation for cruelty and violence - Machiavellian politics and executions at home, and the origins of colonial and imperial atrocities abroad.

“Several of the artists are fascinated by what Tudor portraits can tell us about representations of power, and how that interacts with ideas about gender for a monarch like Elizabeth I, who was the most powerful person in the country, yet viewed as physically 'inferior' to the men of her court due to her sex.”

The centrepiece of the exhibition is Mat Collishaw’s Mask of Youth, an animatronic re-imagining of Elizabeth I’s ‘real’ features, seen here for only the third time in the UK since it was commissioned for an exhibition at the Queen’s House, Greenwich in 2018.

Stephen Farthing RA’s Elizabeth I: In a Field of Stars, a work made specially for this exhibition, is shown alongside works by The Singh Twins, Linder Sterling, Chan-Hyo Bae, Peter Brathwaite, Eleanor Breeze, Natasja Kensmil, Serena Korda, and Jane Partner, all of which deploy Tudor art and imagery in ways that speak urgently to contemporary audiences.

The exhibition will present the contemporary artworks alongside loans of historical works, creating conversations across time and media. Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology is lending some charismatic Bellarmine jugs – bottles with grimacing bearded faces at the necks which were later recycled as witch bottles to ward off evil. The artist Serena Korda makes her own contemporary versions of these objects that explore themes of violence and ritual.

The Old Schools is lending their portrait of Elizabeth I, painted at a fraught moment in her reign when the question of whether she should marry had its last, acute airing. It speaks to contemporary works in the show which use Elizabeth’s own image to explore ideas about gender, power, race and empire.

Dr Christina Faraday is a historian of art and ideas specialising in the Tudor period. She is an Affiliated Lecturer in the History of Art Department at Cambridge. Her first book, Tudor Liveliness: Vivid Art in Post-Reformation England, was published in 2023. Her latest, The Story of Tudor Art, was published in 2025.

She says: “I have been struck by the similarities between artists’ practices today and the experiences of Tudor artists. Artists now are often multidisciplinary, working across lots of different media and incorporating performance as well as physical objects into their works. This was also true for someone like Hans Holbein the Younger - famous now for his portraits of Henry VIII and his courtiers, but who spent most of his time designing ephemeral scenery and banners for one-off court entertainments.

“Many of the artists here reject the idea of the 'lone genius' artist who creates an entirely original composition; many of the artists work in collaboration with others, or incorporate elements of collage and bricolage using pre-existing materials to create new compositions - much closer to Tudor ideas about creativity, which favoured the imaginative reuse of pre-existing forms, quotations and ideas.”

The Heong Gallery, Downing College, Cambridge, CB2 1DQ

Open (free): Wednesday to Sunday, 12PM to 5PM

A programme of exhibition-related events runs alongside the Cambridge Festival.

‘Tudor Contemporary’, the first multidisciplinary exhibition to focus on the legacies of Tudor history and art in contemporary artistic practice is on display at The Heong Gallery at Downing College, Cambridge, from 20th February – 19th April 2026.

Artists of every age have been drawn to the Tudor period

Christina Faraday

Left: © Mat Collishaw, Mask of Youth, 2018; Right: © The Singh Twins: www.singhtwins.co.uk,Trade Wars: Elizabeth I (Slaves of Fashion series), 2018.

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