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This is your chance to hear from the brightest and best PhD students, engaging outreach lecturers, recently-published authors and decision-makers in the city of Cambridge.

11am – 12.30pm: A young lady-in-waiting at the court in Turin: Annibale Guasco’s Ragionamento
Join Dr Helena Sanson, ̽»¨Ö±²¥ Senior Lecturer in the Department of Italian as she takes the audience on a journey through time in this tale of fatherly love and great expectations. ̽»¨Ö±²¥tale will recount the story of Annibale Guasco who in 1585 wrote a treatise of conduct for his daughter Lavinia who was about to leave her paternal home to become a lady-in-waiting in Turin.

11.30am – 12.30pm: Capitalism: the myths and prejudices
Ha-Joon Chang, Reader in the Political Economy of Development at the ̽»¨Ö±²¥ of Cambridge and author of '23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism', seeks through this engaging talk to dispel 'the myths and prejudices that have come to dominate our understanding of how the world works'.

1pm – 2pm: Why do we all love gold?
Calling all gold diggers: Spike Bucklow, a conservation scientist also researching art history and alchemy, asks why does the global economy still value gold at a time when electronic trading dominates? He promises not to offer investment advice but turns instead to artists’ and alchemists’ methods of purifying gold as well as classical mythology to reveal an affordable answer. His exploration looks in detail at the deeply irrational basis for our apparently rational gold-backed economic system.

2.30pm – 3.30pm: Cambridge: managing growth and change
With its ever-constant growth, what will become of our majestic and historic city? Join speakers from the City Council and Department of Architecture including Glen Richardson, John Preston, Professor Marcial Echenique and Dr Tony Hargreaves to discuss Cambridge's future development.

2.30pm – 4.30pm: From hieroglyphs to txt: scripts, language and the brain
Ever wonder how language originated, how it has evolved through five stages of development and how the mind manages to wrap its head around it? Join Dr Bert Vaux and Dr Clackson to discover the ways in which writing originated in the ancient Middle East, in Egypt, in China and in Central America, and how writing evolved through different script systems over time to give us the modern Latin alphabet which we use everyday. ̽»¨Ö±²¥speakers will also tackle why writing errors and writing disorders exist.

Other engaging lectures on the Festival’s main day at the Pitt Building on Trumpington Street include:

10am – 11.30am: Future research talks

Join Gates scholars, PhD students and recent graduates for an insight into the latest research, chaired by John Naughton, journalist and Fellow of Wolfson College.

Joe Bonneau will be speaking about the challenges of online protest: how do groups gain scarce attention resources from citizens already overloaded with available information? Andrew Gruen will be discussing the development of citizen journalism. Julia Fan Li is pursuing innovation studies to discover how to increase both health equality and entrepreneurship. Robyn Scott will talk about OneLeap, a social enterprise start-up which gives students worldwide the ability to feed their ideas to those who can do something about them.

For more information about the Festival, please visit: or contact: 01223 766766 to request a programme.
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