̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Athene Donald

Churchill Archives Centre shares digitised treasures to celebrate 50 years

ta385 — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 11:10:39 +0000

̽��ֱ��Churchill Archives Centre is a world-leading collection of 20th century history, holding a wide-range of documents generated by more than 570 political, military & scientific luminary figures from the Churchill era and beyond. To mark its 50th anniversary, the Centre has launched a free Access Portal which allows researchers to explore archival material which is being shared online for the first time.

This material includes Clementine Churchill's photo albums, plus a selection of her letters to Winston Churchill, such as one hurriedly written in crayon in 1914, where Clementine begged Winston not to fly (Image 8 of 48). Like many of her letters, she signed it off with a doodle of a cat.

̽��ֱ��Access Portal is open to all, and a useful resource for researchers, teachers and anyone looking to examine British history from mid-twentieth century onward. It provides a window into the collections of the Archives Centre, which includes digital images of documents, photo albums, correspondence, alongside oral history interviews and video footage.

̽��ֱ��Access Portal also shares a lifetime of letters from Sarah Churchill to her mother, Clementine, from childhood and schooldays to her career as a dancer and actress, including a wartime interlude in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force when she accompanied her father, Winston, to the Yalta Conference.

Visitors can also find a selection of private diaries penned by diplomat Alexander Cadogan, dating from the 1930s and 40s, where he wrote about colleagues and foreign policy making in characteristically brisk and candid style.

Recordings of the biennial Roskill Lecture, a lecture series, have also been added to the Portal. Covering topics such as international security, foreign policy, war, public policy, and the history of science, the series was initially set up to honour the Senior Research Fellow and historian, Captain Stephen Roskill, who played a vital role in setting up the Archives Centre.

They are joined by over 100 podcast interviews with female MPs, which were originally broadcast on Women’s Parliamentary Radio, covering subjects such as the centenary of women’s suffrage to debates over Brexit.

Over the coming months, the team will be adding more material to the Access Portal, which supplements a range of other freely access historical documents, including documents relating to Margaret Thatcher via the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, as well as classroom-ready resources centered on the Churchill era via the Churchill Archives for Schools website.

Professor Dame Athene Donald, Master of Churchill College, said: “Since joining the College, I have found the Archives Centre to be a special place, offering so much to individuals at every stage of their career. I am grateful to all here at Churchill College who have contributed to its inception, growth and continuing success. It is a truly unique resource for the study of so many aspects of our recent past.”

Allen Packwood, Director of the Churchill Archives Centre said: “ ̽��ֱ��main challenge of our first half century was to create something sustainable: to gather the collections, to build the Archives Centre and to put in place the funding to secure the operation for the longer term. Going forward, we will need to be imaginative in growing access, widening participation, embracing new technologies and providing more remote services. In that sense, the Access Portal is a very real link between the past and the future, a vital first step in helping to take the raw material of history to a wider audience.”

̽��ֱ��Access Portal launch is part of a year of celebrations to mark the 50th Anniversary of the Churchill Archives Centre. ̽��ֱ��team have also launched its ‘50 stories for 50 years’ series which spotlights stories told by researchers, staff, and volunteers about their experiences at the Archives Centre.

̽��ֱ��highlight of the Anniversary celebrations will be a free 2-day conference on the 25th and 26th September 2023, open to the public and featuring a range of high-profile speakers and researchers. It will be held in-person and streamed online and will explore the history of the Archives Centre, its impact, and what the future of Archives might look like. More information and booking a place.

Letters sent to Winston Churchill by his wife are among an array of fascinating historic papers and recordings which can now be explored via the Archive Centre's new Access Portal.

̽��ֱ��Access Portal is a very real link between the past and the future, a vital first step in helping to take the raw material of history to a wider audience

Allen Packwood

Jane Liechty photography

Entrance to the Churchill Archives Centre

̽��ֱ��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

Licence type:

Attribution

Cambridge researchers at the Hay Festival

Anonymous — Wed, 17 May 2023 08:43:07 +0000

Four Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� academics will speak at the Hay Festival 2023 as part of the Cambridge Series.

Celebrating the Cambridge Women Changing the World

jek67 — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 08:14:04 +0000

To mark International Women's Day and Women's History Month, the ̽��ֱ�� is delighted to shine a light on some of the incredible women living and working here at Cambridge. Here they share the advice they've learned along the way, and the songs that lift them up when the going gets tough.

Here come the girls: getting more women into STEM

zs332 — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 14:50:07 +0000

Ahead of International Day of Women and Girls in Science, Professor Dame Athene Donald sat down to speak about her trial blazing career.

Cambridge academics urge European leaders to take action on Horizon Europe

cjb250 — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 16:50:07 +0000

̽��ֱ��campaign, Stick to Science, calls for an open and collaborative research and innovation landscape in Europe that is free from political barriers.

It comes as the UK’s participation in the EU’s research and innovation programme has stalled. Negotiations over the UK’s final association to Horizon Europe, the EU’s €95.5 billion (£79.4 bn) research and innovation programme, are part of post-Brexit trade arrangements. Campaign organisers are urging the EU to put science collaboration ahead of political disagreements and finalise association as soon as possible.

Switzerland and the UK are two long-standing and academically important partners in the European research and innovation landscape. ̽��ֱ��current situation means that the work of some of the best minds in Europe's science and excellent research infrastructures could miss out on the additional scientific knowledge and resources of UK and Swiss institutions. These circumstances could prevent Europe’s top scientists from working together to tackle global challenges such as climate change, pandemics, and food security and already the delay in securing association is having an impact on collaborations.

It is estimated that the UK and Switzerland would add another €18 billion (£15 bn) to the Horizon Europe budget of €95.5 billion (£79.4 bn) representing a top-up of 18%, and allow greater collaborative resources for Europe to be put into world-leading research projects.

Among the first supporters of the campaign from across the European research and innovation community are Cambridge’s Professor Toope, Professor Dame Athene Donald, Master of Churchill College, and Nobel Prize winner Professor Didier Queloz.

Professor Toope said: "I am pleased to join academic and business leaders from across Europe’s research community in supporting the ‘Stick to Science’ Campaign. Collaboration across borders remains crucial for tackling the most pressing challenges of our time, so today we are calling for European leaders to prioritise science and research by urgently securing the UK’s association to Horizon Europe."

Members of the European scientific community can add their signatures to the initiative.

Adapted from a press release from Stick to Science

Vice-Chancellor Professor Stephen J Toope has joined other Cambridge researchers in supporting a new campaign to ask EU leaders to place science collaboration before politics. This comes as the UK’s and Switzerland's participation in the EU's world-leading research and innovation programme Horizon Europe is yet to be finalised.

xresch

Abstract technology image

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 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

Licence type:

Public Domain

Women much less likely to ask questions in academic seminars than men

ta385 — Thu, 27 Sep 2018 18:01:00 +0000

Women are two and a half times less likely to ask a question in departmental seminars than men, an observational study of 250 events at 35 academic institutions in 10 countries has found.

This disparity exists despite the gender ratio at these seminars being, on average, equal. It also reflects significant differences in self-reported feelings towards speaking up.

̽��ֱ��research, led by a then Junior Research Fellow at Churchill College, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, adds to a growing body of evidence showing that women are less visible than men in various scientific domains and helps to explain the “leaky pipeline” of female representation in academic careers. Women account for 59 per cent of undergraduate degrees but only 47 per cent of PhD graduates and just 21 per cent of senior faculty positions in Europe.

̽��ֱ��bias, identified in a paper published today in PLOS One, is thought to be particularly significant because departmental seminars are so frequent and because junior academics are more likely to experience them before other kinds of scholarly events. They also feature at an early stage in the career pipeline when people are making major decisions about their futures.

“Our finding that women ask disproportionately fewer questions than men means that junior scholars are encountering fewer visible female role models in their field,” warns lead author, Alecia Carter.

Self-reported behaviour and perceptions

In addition to observational data, Carter and her co-authors drew on survey responses from over 600 academics ranging from postgraduates to faculty members (303 female and 206 male) from 28 different fields of study in 20 countries.

These individuals reported their attendance and question-asking activity in seminars, their perceptions of others’ question-asking behaviour, and their beliefs about why they and others do and do not ask questions.

̽��ֱ��survey revealed a general awareness, especially among women, that men ask more questions than women. A high proportion of both male and female respondents reported sometimes not asking a question when they had one. But men and women differed in their ratings of the importance of different reasons for this.

Crucially, women rated ‘internal’ factors such as ‘not feeling clever enough’, ‘couldn’t work up the nerve’, ‘worried that I had misunderstood the content’ and ‘the speaker was too eminent/intimidating’, as being more important than men did.

“But our seminar observation data show that women are not inherently less likely to ask questions when the conditions are favourable,” says Dieter Lukas, who was a postdoctoral researcher at Cambridge during the data collection.

Question-asking behaviour

̽��ֱ��researchers found that women were more likely to speak up when more questions were asked. When 15 questions were asked in total, as opposed to the median of six, there was a 7.6 per cent increase in the proportion of questions asked by women.

But when the first question in a seminar was asked by a man, the proportion of subsequent questions asked by women fell six per cent, compared to when the first question was asked by a woman. ̽��ֱ��researchers suggest that this may be an example of ‘gender stereotype activation’, in which a male-first question sets the tone for the rest of the session, which then dissuades women from participating.

“While calling on people in the order that they raise their hands may seem fair, it may inadvertently result in fewer women asking questions because they might need more time to formulate questions and work up the nerve,” said co-author Alyssa Croft, a psychologist at the ̽��ֱ�� of Arizona.

̽��ֱ��researchers were initially surprised to discover that women ask proportionally more questions of male speakers and that men ask proportionally more of female speakers.

“This may be because men are less intimidated by female speakers than women are. It could also be the case that women avoid challenging a female speaker, but may be less concerned for a male speaker,” said co-author Gillian Sandstrom, a psychologist at the ̽��ֱ�� of Essex.

Linked to this, the study’s survey data revealed that twice as many men (33 per cent) as women (16 per cent) reported being motivated to ask a question because they felt that they had spotted a mistake.

Women were also more likely to ask questions when the speaker was from their own department, suggesting that familiarity with the speaker may make asking a question less intimidating. ̽��ֱ��study interprets this as a demonstration of the lower confidence reported by female audience members.

Welcoming the research, Professor Dame Athene Donald, Professor of Experimental Physics at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Master of Churchill College, Cambridge, said:

“Asking questions at the end of talks is one of the activities that (still) makes me most nervous ... Whatever anyone may think when they meet me about how assertive my behaviour is, it would seem that I too have internalised this gender stereotype."

Recommendations

“This problem can only be addressed by lasting changes in the academic culture which break gender stereotypes and provide an inclusive environment,” Alecia Carter says.

̽��ֱ��researchers accept that this will take time but make four key recommendations to improve the situation in departmental seminars:

Where possible, seminar organisers should avoid placing limits on the time available for questions. Alternatively, moderators should endeavour to keep each question and answer short to allow more questions to be asked.
Moderators should prioritise a female-first question, be trained to ‘see the whole room’ and maintain as much balance as possible with respect to gender and seniority of question-askers.
Seminar organisers are encouraged not to neglect inviting internal speakers.
Organisers should consider providing a small break between the talk and the question period to give attendees more time to formulate a question and try it out on a colleague.

“Although we developed these recommendations with the aim of increasing women’s visibility, they are likely to benefit everyone, including other underrepresented groups in academia,” said Carter.

“This is about removing the barriers that restrain anyone from speaking up and being visible.”

Reference:

Alecia J. Carter , Alyssa Croft, Dieter Lukas, Gillian M. Sandstrom, ‘Women’s visibility in academic seminars: Women ask fewer questions than men.’

PLOS ONE (2018). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0202743

A new study reveals a stark disparity between male and female participation in a key area of academic life and offers recommendations to ensure all voices are heard.

Junior scholars are encountering fewer visible female role models

Alecia Carter

Christopher Rose

A seminar audience in Austin, Texas, United States

̽��ֱ��researchers and further info

̽��ֱ��researchers have compiled a list of articles about diversity in academia and encourage readers to contribute to these resources.

Alecia Carter is a Researcher at the Institut des Sciences de l’Évolution, Université de Montpellier.

Dieter Lukas is a Senior Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.

Alyssa Croft is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the ̽��ֱ�� of Arizona, Tucson, USA.

Gillian Sandstrom is a Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the ̽��ֱ�� of Essex, UK.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-Noncommerical

Opinion: UK research in troubled political times

ag236 — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 11:39:07 +0000

̽��ֱ��clock is ticking for the UK in terms of research funding from the EU.

Horizon 2020, the current framework programme, has provided an increasingly important source of funds for universities in the UK. Until recently, despite the uncertainties surrounding the UK’s preparations to withdraw from the EU, UK-based researchers were still being encouraged to apply for H2020 funding. But earlier this month an explicit warning shot was fired across the researchers’ bows. Now, although UK-based researchers are still able to apply, there is the qualification that “the eligibility criteria must be complied with for the entire duration of the grant.” As things stand, the key eligibility criterion that is likely to fail to be met after the 29th March 2019 concerns researchers’ mobility.

No one should be in any doubt that the EU is prepared to enforce this ruling. It did it before when Switzerland’s own referendum meant that workers from Croatia were not freely able to enter the country, and it took quite a lot of fudging to resolve that. Switzerland, like the UK, is one of the most successful of countries when it comes to EU science funding. ̽��ֱ��country was really keen to find a work-around to enable them to be fully eligible for Horizon 2020 funding, and the issue was resolved relatively swiftly. It would be nice to think that a similar degree of pragmatism might apply to save the UK’s scientific research bacon, but it isn’t clear that this will happen.

Whether the UK can retain access to the Horizon2020 programme –and if so, on what terms— is just one tiny part of the intricate Brexit negotiations. ̽��ֱ��importance of EU funding for research does appear to have impinged on some ministers’ minds. It does get talked about. But mobility of researchers is a tricky problem, because worker mobility was such a central plank in the referendum campaigns.

Immigration is an emotive subject, and it is hard to envisage a scheme that enabled scientists to travel across EU borders freely while preventing other workers from sharing that luxury. It isn’t at all clear that mobility restricted to researchers would be sufficient to satisfy the EU, and thus ensure that the UK was still eligible.

As a member of the European Research Council’s Scientific Council I am very aware of the importance of ERC funding (a key part of the Horizon 2020 programme). ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge hosts more ERC grants than any other university in Europe. It currently manages 209 grants, representing a substantial slice of the total research funding the ̽��ֱ�� receives.

It isn’t only the pure financial worth that matters, but also the prestige associated with winning such funding. Those who believe that all will be resolved if the UK government can find some funding to plug the gap in science research budgets if/when the UK is excluded from the programme, ignore this crucial point. (‘Science’ in this case should be recognized as encompassing not just the natural sciences and engineering, but also the social sciences and arts and humanities). No existing national scheme within the UK confers equivalent prestige – at promotions and appointments committees for instance – as an ERC grant. It is hard to see a purely national scheme ever doing so.

Of course, the consequences of Brexit do not simply relate to money. There are huge implications for the people whose futures will be immediately and directly affected through their specific status as citizens. ̽��ֱ��uncertainty, and accompanying anxiety, is huge. Individuals and families from other EU states do not know what their rights will be. Some are walking away already, not applying from the mainland continent as jobs open up in the UK, or choosing not to stay at the end of one contract even if opportunities are open to them.

As the deadline of March 2019 approaches, we do not know how individuals will weigh up the pros and cons of staying in the UK in what may feel like an increasingly hostile environment. Nor do we know how they will feel about not knowing what steps they might have to take to enable them to continue to live here— regardless of how long they have already been resident. Individual decisions will no doubt be decided by individual circumstances; some may feel it preferable to stay (or to come) as it is the best short-term way of meeting their career aspirations.

But science thrives on easy mobility, the exchange of ideas facilitated by the exchange of people, specific technical skills transmitted by the hands that practise them. It has to be expected that the UK’s leading role in science, where we punch far above our weight, is likely to be significantly and negatively impacted by the loss of easy researcher mobility.

Finally, there is the question of what happens to student numbers. Calculations suggest some universities, including Cambridge, are not likely to see a dip in income from student fees even though it is expected that the numbers of EU students will drop substantially.

One of the ironies in this process is that, had the Home Office been willing to remove international students from the immigration figures before the referendum, the result may well have gone the other way: with students excluded, official “immigration” numbers would have appeared lower. Even now, there remains an official determination to retain students in the immigration figures –despite it being so hard to find anyone (from any party) exhibiting much enthusiasm for doing so.

All in all, universities are facing uncertain times. As a member of a sector that has brought much wealth and prestige to the UK, and attracted students and researchers from around the world to enjoy our first class labs, libraries and lectures, it is deeply depressing to watch our strengths being challenged in ways it is not easy to address.

Cambridge has for decades been a truly international university and we will no doubt continue to thrive as such, however much the composition of its membership may change. But to see our funding, our staff and students being so immediately affected by political decisions taken elsewhere is a major concern.

*Professor Dame Athene Donald is Master of Churchill College.This text is based on her Sir Hermann Bondi Lecture, delivered on 23 October as part of the Cambridge Festival of Ideas.

As Brexit negotiations appear to stall, Professor Dame Athene Donald considers the effect of the UK’s withdrawal from EU research schemes.

It would be nice to think that, as with Switzerland, pragmatism might save the UK’s research bacon, but it isn’t clear this will happen.

Professor Athene Donald

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Revealing the personal side of the atomic scientist who changed the world

sjr81 — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 08:56:28 +0000

Sir John Cockcroft was one of the most important and influential scientists of the modern era. He was the joint winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics (1951) for his pioneering work at the Cavendish Laboratory on the disintegration of atoms (splitting the atom).

His research facilitated the development of atomic power, nuclear medicine and accelerator science. He was the first Director of the British Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, and the first Master of Churchill College, Cambridge.

This evening, several generations of the Cockcroft family, including Sir John’s surviving children, will gather at Churchill College to celebrate the 120th anniversary of Sir John’s birth and the 50th of his death.

They will mark the occasion by handing over to the Churchill Archives Centre a family treasure trove of scrapbooks, photograph albums and hitherto unseen diaries and letters from the Western Front of World War One, illustrating the personal life of this most public scientist.

Here, it will join his Nobel Prize medal and complement his scientific papers, including his notebooks for his ground-breaking experiments which are already housed at the Archive Centre. ̽��ֱ��new material includes 400 letters to his fiancée from 1915-1919, along with a mass of later correspondence, including letters to his mother during his high powered scientific roles in the Second World War.

Other highlights include:

Scrapbooks containing material on the Tizard mission (1940) which gave the Americans, on Churchill's orders, our scientific secrets regarding the possibility of making an atomic bomb and the newly invented cavity magnetron. Sir Henry Tizard led the mission with John Cockcroft as his deputy.
Gamov's letter to Cockcroft of 7th September 1932, congratulating him on his discovery (first artificial disintegration of atomic nuclei).
Sir John’s WW1 diaries from the Western Front.

After completing his first year at Manchester ̽��ֱ��, John Cockcroft left home in the summer of 1915 during World War One. Too young to enlist, he first worked as a YMCA volunteer in an Army Camp at Abergele. In 1916 he joined the Royal Field Artillery (RFA) as a Private. He became a signaller in the RFA and was sent to France to join the latter stages of the Battle of the Somme.

Subsequently he moved in July 1917 for the 3rd Battle of Ypres, known as Passchendaele. He survived unscathed throughout, even though many fellow soldiers in his Battery were killed or wounded. Early in 1918 he went back to England to train as an officer, which is where he was when the war ended in November 1918.

A complete set of nearly 400 letters home exist covering the whole of this period. Together they amount to a wonderfully descriptive and insightful account of unstinting service to his country. In addition there are some pocket diaries which he kept, despite regulations forbidding them.

Dame Athene Donald, Master of Churchill College, said: “Both as Master and as professor of Experimental Physics at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, I am conscious that I owe a great personal debt to Sir John. But it is fair to say that his work has had a lasting legacy which continues to influence us all. This new material will sit alongside his existing scientific papers in the Archives Centre and will enable future generations to know the man behind the scientist.”

Christopher Cockcroft, Sir John’s son, said, “ ̽��ֱ��time was right for the family to share this material and for it to be conserved for future generations to learn the full story of this remarkable man: a secondary school boy from Todmorden, who survived the First World War, and worked his way to the top of his profession; a man who firmly believed in the fellowship of man and did much to foster understanding between people and nations.”

Michael Smyth, author of a forthcoming biography of Sir John, highlighted the set of scrapbooks kept by Sir John’s mother and the many letters to his wife which together provide a unique insight into his life.

̽��ֱ��reception and handover will take place in the Jock Colville Hall, Churchill College at from 6pm on Friday evening (September 22). All are welcome. ̽��ֱ��event will mark the beginning of the Churchill College Alumni Association Weekend, and will be the first of several events during the weekend celebrating Sir John’s life and legacy.

See https://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/events/churchill-college-association-weekend-2... for further details.

War diaries, scrapbooks, letters and photographs belonging to Sir John Cockcroft, Nobel Prize winner and one of the most influential scientists of the modern era, will today be placed in the care of the Churchill Archives Centre.

Cockroft's work has had a lasting legacy which continues to influence us all. This new material will sit alongside his existing scientific papers in the Archives Centre and will enable future generations to know the man behind the scientist.

Athene Donald

Sir John and Lady Cockcroft at home circa 1946. From left to right: Elisabeth, Catherine, Lady Cockcroft, Jocelyn, Sir John Cockcroft, Dorothea and Christopher.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike