Hay Festival lectures Cambridge University

Dr Tim Minshall (Christ's 1993), University Senior Lecturer in Technology Management
Engineers are fantastic – they are the people who change the world. Engineers put a man on the moon, develop the internet, build skyscrapers, rebuild bodies…and so much more. Yet not many people know what engineers actually do. This talk will reveal – in just ten words – the secrets of what engineers really get up to as they work hard to build a better future for us all.

Dame Fiona Reynolds (Newnham 1976), Master of Emmanuel College and former Director-General of the National Trust.
In a world of rapid change and global, multicultural influences we explore the place that landscape, history and nature play in people’s sense of Britishness today.

Dr Abigail Brundin (Magdalene 1991), University Senior Lecturer in the Department of Italian, Pilkington Prize winner 2013
In C17th Italy, the number of girls and young women entering convents rose rapidly as dowries became increasingly expensive. Not all the girls went willingly and some left powerful written accounts of their experiences.

Tony Badger, Paul Mellon Professor of American history and Master of Clare College
In 2009, as in 1933, a charismatic president succeeded a discredited president at a time of economic crisis and with resounding majorities in Congress. Obama and his advisers explicitly looked to Roosevelt's New Deal for policy models. Despite his re-election in 2012, Obama has lost control of the House where Republicans stymie attempts to avoid the fiscal cliff. Economic recovery is partial and largely jobless. The prospects for his second term look unpromising in highly polarised politics. Did Obama learn the right lessons from the New Deal?

Sir Mark Welland, Professor of Nanotechnology
There's been a lot of hype about nanotechnology, but what is it and what is a realistic expectation of what it can do? Professor Welland will look at how nanotechnology developed, how it is one step in the progress of technology, and at the kind of areas it can be applied to, such as the understanding and treatment of human diseases as well as the more obvious miniaturisation of electronics that provides ever smaller but more complex mobile phones.

Jonathan Haslam, Professor of the History of International Relations
The history of Russia’s Secret Services from the Revolution to the Fall of the Wall: the Military Intelligence, the codes and ciphers and the KGB.