̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Murray Edwards College

Powerful new MRI scans enable life-changing surgery in first for adults with epilepsy

cjb250 — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 00:01:25 +0000

Scientists have developed a new technique that has enabled ultra-powerful MRI scanners to identify tiny differences in patients’ brains that cause treatment-resistant epilepsy. It has allowed doctors at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, to offer the patients surgery to cure their condition.

Cambridge Festival Speaker Spotlight: Professor Hiranya Peiris

zs332 — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 16:49:17 +0000

Hiranya Peiris holds the Professorship of Astronomy (1909) at Cambridge, the first woman to do so in the 115-year history of this prestigious chair. As a cosmologist, she delves into cosmic mysteries at the edge of our understanding, reaching back to the very first moments of the Universe after the Big Bang, often treading the path of high risk and high reward.

Researchers celebrated at the Cambridge Awards for Research Impact and Engagement

zs332 — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 08:09:41 +0000

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Awards for Research Impact and Engagement, formerly the Vice-Chancellor's Award, are held annually to recognise exceptional achievement, innovation, and creativity in developing research engagement and impact plans with significant economic, social, and cultural potential. Awarded in 3 categories, the winners for 2024 are:

Established Academic

Winner: Professor Sander van der Linden (Department of Psychology, School of Biological Sciences and Churchill College) and his team at the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab (Team application)

Project: A psychological vaccine against misinformation

Professor Sander van der Linden and team have developed a novel approach to countering the spread of harmful misinformation. This ‘psychological vaccine’ resulted in award-winning public impact tools that have shown millions of people how to spot fake news online. These games have been adopted by the World Health Organization, United Nations, UK Government and Google, and led to key policy changes in the EU Digital Services Act.

Early Career Researcher

Winner: Dr Gabriel Okello (Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, School of Technology)

Project: Applying multidisciplinary, collaborative approaches to tackle air pollution in rapidly urbanising African cities

̽��ֱ��project catalysed Uganda’s first-ever air quality standards, advancing policy and public health. It drove transformative growth in the e-mobility sector and battery-swapping stations. ̽��ֱ��Clean Air Network was established as a multi-regional community of practice for air quality management across Africa. ̽��ֱ��platform now provides real-time air quality data enabling evidence-based decision-making in Uganda and 8 other African countries.

Collaboration Award

Winner:

Lead: Professor Paul Fletcher (Department of Psychiatry, School of Clinical Medicine, Clare College), Dr Dervila Glynn (Cambridge Neuroscience IRC), Dominic Matthews (Ninja Theory Ltd), Sharon Gilfoyle (Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust)

Project: Representing psychosis in video games: communicating clinical science and tackling stigma

This work draws together expertise in video game design and clinical neuroscience, with lived experience of mental illness to co-produce two award-winning video games vividly conveying the nature of altered experience of reality in a character with psychosis. Within conversations around mental health, psychosis is neglected and highly stigmatised.

In creating a powerful character and telling her story through gameplay, the project has enabled sensitive and thoughtful conversations about psychosis, and mental illness in general. It has had a measurably positive impact on stigma.

More about the Cambridge Awards for Research Impact and Engagement

Find out more about the winning projects and meet our runners-up.

From helping to inoculate the public against misinformation to tackling air pollution in rapidly urbanising African cities, researchers from across the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge were honoured at the Cambridge Awards on 3 February.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� 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.

Yes

Early Career Researcher 2024

zs332 — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 10:58:58 +0000

̽��ֱ��Early Career Researcher winner for 2024 is Dr Gabriel Okello, Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, School of Technology, Murray Edwards College.

̽��ֱ��curator reframing our experiences of art

cg605 — Fri, 17 May 2024 16:09:13 +0000

“Art doesn’t need to be in an elaborate frame on the wall of a gallery,” says Harriet Loffler, curator of ̽��ֱ��Women’s Art Collection at Murray Edwards College. “In fact,” she says, “art in ordinary spaces can change the way we see the world.”

Investing in women

jek67 — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 12:30:19 +0000

For International Women's Day, we meet two women from Murray Edwards, one of Cambridge's two Colleges for women.

Innovative aquaculture system turns waste wood into nutritious seafood

jg533 — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 10:00:05 +0000

These long, white saltwater clams are the world’s fastest-growing bivalve and can reach 30cm long in just six months. They do this by burrowing into waste wood and converting it into highly-nutritious protein.

̽��ֱ��researchers found that the levels of Vitamin B12 in the Naked Clams were higher than in most other bivalves – and almost twice the amount found in blue mussels.

And with the addition of an algae-based feed to the system, the Naked Clams can be fortified with omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids - nutrients essential for human health.

Shipworms have traditionally been viewed as a pest because they bore through any wood immersed in seawater, including ships, piers and docks.

̽��ֱ��researchers developed a fully-enclosed aquaculture system that can be completely controlled, eliminating the water quality and food safety concerns often associated with mussel and oyster farming.

And the modular design means it can be used in urban settings, far from the sea.

“Naked Clams taste like oysters, they’re highly nutritious and they can be produced with a really low impact on the environment,” said Dr David Willer, Henslow Research Fellow at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology and first author of the report.

He added: “Naked Clam aquaculture has never been attempted before. We’re growing them using wood that would otherwise go to landfill or be recycled, to produce food that’s high in protein and essential nutrients like Vitamin B12.”

Scientifically named Teredinids, these creatures have no shell, but are classed as bivalve shellfish and related to oysters and mussels.

Because the Naked Clams don’t put energy into growing shells, they grow much faster than mussels and oysters which can take two years to reach a harvestable size.

̽��ֱ��report is published today in the journal Sustainable Agriculture.

Wild shipworms are eaten in the Philippines - either raw, or battered and fried like calamari. But for British consumers, the researchers think Naked Clams will be more popular as a ‘white meat’ substitute in processed foods like fish fingers and fishcakes.

“We urgently need alternative food sources that provide the micronutrient-rich profile of meat and fish but without the environmental cost, and our system offers a sustainable solution,” said Dr Reuben Shipway at the ̽��ֱ�� of Plymouth’s School of Biological & Marine Sciences, senior author of the report.

He added: “Switching from eating beef burgers to Naked Clam nuggets may well become a fantastic way to reduce your carbon footprint.”

̽��ֱ��research is a collaboration between the Universities of Cambridge and Plymouth, and has attracted funding from sources including ̽��ֱ��Fishmongers’ Company, British Ecological Society, Cambridge Philosophical Society, Seale-Hayne Trust, and BBSRC

̽��ֱ��team is now trialling different types of waste wood and algal feed in their system to optimise the growth, taste and nutritional profile of the Naked Clams – and is working with Cambridge Enterprise to scale-up and commercialise the system.

Reference

Willer, D F et al: ‘Naked Clams to open a new sector in sustainable nutritious food production.’ Sustainable Agriculture, Nov 23. DOI: 10.1038/s44264-023-00004-y

Researchers hoping to rebrand a marine pest as a nutritious food have developed the world’s first system of farming shipworms, which they have renamed ‘Naked Clams’.

Naked Clams taste like oysters, they’re highly nutritious and they can be produced with a really low impact on the environment.

Dr David Willer

̽��ֱ�� of Plymouth

Naked Clams in wooden growth panel

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, 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.

Yes

Give more people with learning disabilities the chance to work, historian argues

ta385 — Fri, 21 Jul 2023 06:00:00 +0000

A new study by historian Professor Lucy Delap (Murray Edwards College) argues that loud voices in the 20th-century eugenics movement have hidden a much bigger picture of inclusion in British workplaces that puts today’s low rates to shame.

Professor Delap found that in some parts of Britain, up to 70% of people variously labelled ‘defective’, ‘slow’ and ‘odd’ at the time had paid jobs when demand for labour was high, including during and after the First World War. This proportion fell during recessions, but even then, 30% remained in work. By contrast, in the UK today less than 5% of adults with intellectual disabilities are employed.

“A recession now couldn’t make levels of employment of people with learning disabilities much worse, they are on the floor already,” Professor Delap says. Her study, published in the journal Social History of Medicine follows a decade of painstakingly piecing together evidence of people with learning disabilities in the British workforce in the first half of the 20th century.

Delap found no trace in employers’ records or in state archives which focused on segregation and detaining people. But she struck gold in ̽��ֱ��National Archives in Kew with a survey of ‘employment exchanges’ undertaken in 1955 to investigate how people then termed ‘subnormal’ or ‘mentally handicapped’ were being employed. She found further evidence in the inspection records of Trade Boards now held at Warwick ̽��ֱ��’s Modern Records Centre. In 1909, a complex system of rates and inspection emerged as part of an effort to set minimum wages. This led to the development of ‘exemption permits’ for a range of employees not considered to be worth ‘full’ payment.

Delap says: “Once I found these workers, they appeared everywhere and not just in stereotypical trades like shoe repair and basket-weaving. They were working in domestic service, all kinds of manufacturing, shops, coal mining, agriculture, and local authority jobs.”

Delap’s research goes against most previous writing about people with intellectual disabilities which has focused on eugenics and the idea that preindustrial community inclusion gave way to segregation and asylums in the nineteenth century. “We've been too ready to accept that narrative and haven’t gone looking for people in the archive,” Delap says. “Many weren’t swept up into institutions, they lived relatively independent lives, precarious lives, but often with the support of families, friends and co-workers.”

‘Wage age’ versus IQ

Previous studies have focused on the rise of IQ testing in this period, but the employment records that Delap studied showed something very different: a more positive sense of ability couched in terms of the wages someone was worth. This involved imagining a person’s ‘wage age’, meaning that an adult worker could begin with a starting age of 14 and advance in wage age through their working life. Not everyone did advance though.

Delap says “ ̽��ֱ��idea of ‘wage age’ was harsh in many ways but it was far less stigmatising than IQ which emphasised divisions between ‘normal’ and ‘defective’ and suggested people couldn’t advance beyond a certain point. By contrast, ideas of fairness, productivity and ‘the going rate’ were deployed to evaluate workers. When labour was in demand, workers had leverage to negotiate their wage age up. IQ didn't give people that power.”

Appeal to employers

Under the exemption system, employers saw the business case for employing – usually at a significantly lower rate of pay – loyal workers who could be trusted to carry out routine tasks.

Tailoring Trade Board application for permit of exemption relating to a 19-year-old 'unintelligent' woman employed to do various errands in Peterborough (1915). Courtesy of Modern Records Centre, Warwick ̽��ֱ��.

Delap says: “If anything, governments gave signals that these people shouldn't be employed, that they were better off under the care and control of the mental deficiency boards. But employers understood that they could be good workers.”

In 1918, an ‘odd job’ worker employed for 20 years at a London tin works was described as suffering from ‘mental deficiency’ and didn’t know the time of the year or who Britain was fighting. Nevertheless, in the inspector’s opinion, he was ‘little if at all inferior to an ordinary worker of full capacity’ on the hand press and ‘His speed at cutting out on an unguarded fly machine was noticeable.’ His employer agreed to a raise from 18 to 24 shillings a week, just below what a carter could earn.

Employer calculations, Delap emphasises, fluctuated with the state of the labour market. When workers were in short supply, those with learning disabilities became more attractive. When demand for labour fell these workers might be the first to lose their jobs.

Were employers just exploiting vulnerable workers?

Delap found clear evidence of some workers being exploited, being stuck on the same very low wage and the same monotonous task for years.

“We shouldn’t feel nostalgic, this wasn’t a ‘golden age’ of disability-friendly employment,” Delap says. And yet, the archive reveals a strong reciprocal sense of real work being done and wages being paid in exchange. “Many of these people would have considered themselves valued workers and not charity cases. Some were able to negotiate better conditions and many resisted being told to do boring, repetitive work.”

Delap repeatedly encountered families policing the treatment of their relative. In 1922, the owner of a laundry in Lincolnshire considered sacking a 25-year-old ‘mentally deficient’ woman who starched collars because ‘trade is so bad’ but kept her on ‘at request of her parents’. “Workers who had families looking out for them were more able to ask for wage rises, refuse to do certain jobs and limit exploitation,” Delap says. “I found lots of evidence of love and you don't often see that in archives of intellectual disability.”

Parents or siblings sometimes worked on the same premises which, Delap argues, strengthened the bonds of moral obligation that existed between employers and families. In 1918, for instance, a 16-year-old who attached the bottoms of tin cans in Glamorgan was hired ‘for the sake of her sisters who are employed by the firm and are satisfactory workers’.

Lessons for today

Delap sees concerning similarities between the 1920s and the 2020s in terms of how British institutions manage, care for and educate people with learning disabilities.

Historically, Delap argues, institutions were just stop-gaps, places where people could be kept without onward pathways. People were often not trained at all or trained to do work that didn't really exist like basket-weaving. “This remains a problem today,” Delap says. “We have a fast-changing labour market and our special schools and other institutions aren’t equipping people well enough for viable paid opportunities.”

Delap argues that evidence of people with learning disabilities successfully working in many different roles and environments in the past undermines today’s focus on a very narrow range of job types and sectors. She highlights the fact that many workers with learning disabilities used to be involved in the service sector, including public facing roles, and not just working in factories. “They were doing roles which brought them into contact with the general public and being a service sector economy today, we have lots of those jobs.”

Delap also believes that structural factors continue to prevent people from accessing jobs. “Credentialism has made it very difficult for people don’t have qualifications to get jobs which they might actually be very good at,” she says. “We need to think much harder about how we make the system work for people with a range of abilities. I also think the rise of IT is a factor, we haven’t been training people with learning disabilities well enough in computer skills so it has become an obstacle.”

Delap believes that Britain’s ageing population and struggle to fill unskilled jobs means there is a growing economic as well as a moral case for employing more people with learning disabilities.

She points out that many people with intellectual disabilities used to work in agriculture, a sector now facing chronic labour shortages. Delap acknowledges that exploitation remains a problem in agriculture, so safeguarding would be paramount, as it would be in every sector.

“I think employers are recognising that they need active inclusion strategies to fill vacancies and that they need to cultivate loyalty,” Delap says. “Work remains a place where we find meaning in our lives and where we make social connections and that's why so many people with disabilities really want to work and why it deprives them of so much when they are excluded. We need to have more bold ambition and stop being content with really marginal forms of inclusion.”

Reference

L Delap, ‘Slow Workers: Labelling and Labouring in Britain, c. 1909–1955’, Social History of Medicine (2023). DOI: 10.1093/shm/hkad043

Employment levels for people with learning disabilities in the UK are 5 to 10 times lower than they were a hundred years ago. And the experiences of workers from the 1910s–50s offer inspiration as well as lessons about safeguarding.

We need to have more bold ambition and stop being content with really marginal forms of inclusion

Lucy Delap

Andrew Tanglao via Unsplash

A barista pouring milk into a coffee

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, 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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