Non award bearing

Course Programme

The course begins at 1.00pm with lunch on Monday 17th August and check-in for accommodation is available from 2.00pm, before the first session at 2.30pm. Closing dinner is at 7.00pm on Friday 21 August.

The tuition fee includes served buffet lunches, college-style dinners and tea/coffee. Tea and coffee making facilities are also available in the study bedrooms.

Invited speakers will address a wide range of topics relating to the challenges we face today, expanding on, and adding to, the subjects addressed in the seminars.  Subject areas are likely to include, but are not limited to:

The Silk Road and before: Afro-Eurasian interactions

The discovery of the Kingdoms of the Eastern Silk Road

Roll out the Carpet - Silk Road carpets in late Medieval and early Renaissance art

The truth about Marco Polo

The architecture of the Umayyads and Seljuks

Precious stones and precious metal for Tang China

Castles of the Crusades

Food and the foreign in ancient China

Ottoman architecture, the end of the road

Dietary requirements

If you have any specific dietary requirements or allergies please inform our Admissions Team on ice.admissions@ice.cam.ac.uk or +44 (0)1223 746262 if you have not already advised us of your requirements.

Additional requirements

ICE is committed to providing equality of opportunity and to a proactive and inclusive approach to equality. We aim to support and encourage under-represented groups, promote an inclusive culture, and value diversity.

Further information about student support.

Course materials

A booklist, course syllabus and detailed timetable are circulated as far as possible in advance of a course. You will receive these documents by email if you have provided us with your email address; please check your spam folder if you have not received these documents. You can also download material from the Documents section at the bottom of this page.

Entry requirements

No academic qualification is required of applicants, and most courses are suitable for students who are new to the subject.

All teaching is in English (unless a foreign-language course). If your first language is not English, you need to satisfy yourself that you have the required near-native command of the language to get the maximum benefit from studying with ICE.

Fees

Fees for weekend courses cover tuition, meals (except breakfast) and refreshments, including morning coffee and afternoon tea during teaching hours, and travel on excursions (but not entrance fees to properties visited). Accommodation can be booked for an additional fee and includes breakfast.

VAT does not apply to course fees and there is no service charge (gratuities to domestic staff are left to your discretion).

Payment

Payment is by credit/debit card unless otherwise arranged. You can either pay in full at the time of booking, or pay a 15% registration fee as a deposit; the balance will automatically be taken two weeks before the start of the course. 

Cancellations

You may cancel a course booking at any time. After the 14 day cancellation period has expired, the standard ICE course cancellation policy will apply. Please view our refund and cancellation policy for further details.

Bursaries

The Cambridge University Press (CUP) Bursary Fund offers a bursary of 50% of the course fee to applicants who teach in a UK state school or state-funded further education institution, applying to study a day school, weekend course or online course.

This course takes place at Madingley Hall, home to the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education.

As a student at Madingley Hall, you will enjoy award-winning cuisine in our elegant Dining Hall and first-rate facilities in an atmospheric and inspiring setting. You can choose to stay at the Hall in comfortable en-suite accommodation for the duration of your course, or attend as a non-resident.

Residential fees cover tuition, accommodation and full board, including morning coffee and afternoon tea during teaching hours, and travel on excursions. The non-residential fee includes all meals on the course except breakfast.

About Madingley Hall

Built in the 16th century, Madingley Hall is a Grade 1 listed building, and is set in eight acres of landscaped gardens designed in the 18th century by ‘Capability’ Brown. It is just four miles from the centre of Cambridge, and only 60 minutes from London, with excellent links to London airports.

Getting here

For more information on getting to Madingley Hall, see How to find us.

We now have a free ICE Shuttle bus service which runs between the Railway Station and Madingley Hall at various times throughout the week. Please follow the link above for the current timetable, or contact the reception desk at ICE by calling +44 (01)1223 746 222.

Accommodation

Accommodation for residential students is provided in single, twin or double study bedrooms in the Hall, with attractive views over the woods, gardens and courtyard.

Each room has internet access, digital television and a direct-dial telephone, as well as tea- and coffee-making facilities and a safe for your valuables. Rooms are centrally heated and all have en-suite facilities.

A special lift gives access to two rooms adapted for wheelchair users, and all areas on the ground floor can be reached once inside the building. If you would like us to make any special provision for your stay, please contact us beforehand and we will be happy to discuss your requirements.

We are usually able to offer accommodation before and after your course should you wish to extend your stay. Please indicate if you would like to stay an extra night when booking your place.

What should humanity aim to be? We rarely stop to take a long-term, birds-eye perspective on our own species and ask ourselves where we would like to end up. This seminar will allow us to do so. We will ask whether the future of humanity is predictable, what forces act upon our development and whether we can and should influence the trajectory that we are on.

Existing proof of our ability to influence the long-term future of humanity is the possibility of reducing extinction risk: the risk that homo sapiens will die out, like most other species before us. We will examine the technologies and natural risks that pose a threat to humanity and evaluate how the study of technological development is intertwined with the study of future humans.

In our exploration we place a particular focus on the study of artificial intelligence, forecasting techniques, ethics and value alignment. These fields attempt to rigorously ask and mathematise key questions of relevance to the future of humanity. We will also explore systemic risk factors inherent in complex civilizations, drawing from biology, economics and climate science. Finally, we will ask how the study of the long-term future affects our daily lives and what implications it has on the here and now.

Learning outcomes

1. Understand key arguments about why to consider the long-term future;
2. Understand methodologies used to study the long-term future and extinction risk;
3. Consider key implications of long-termism and extinction risk on our lives.

Locomotion – the act of moving from A to B – is something we often take for granted, but it is undoubtedly one of the most important skills that the biosphere ever ‘learned’ to do: one that has played an absolutely central role in the four-billion-year evolutionary history of life. In this short course we will explore this long figurative and literal journey, looking at several major transitions in how living things move that have proved especially significant to the nature of life on Earth. These include the origin of locomotion itself in ancient bacteria and similar microscopic creatures; the origin of muscle-powered, nerve- (and later, brain-) guided movement in the early animal kingdom; the origin of a worm-like body and the huge variety of locomotory techniques ultimately available to such a creature; the invasion of land and the subsequent refinements to terrestrial locomotion that led to such iconic animals as dinosaurs and antelope; the curiously rare origin of flight; and the one-of-a-kind set of locomotory transitions that enabled the origin of humans.

Throughout the course we will see how locomotion physically works in the various different environments, learn about the anatomical and functional adaptations that make movement as effective (and, usually, as energetically cheap) as possible, and will find out why the evolutionary pathways to the various movement options often seem to be available to only a select few groups of organisms. Above all, we will discover why locomotion has proved so important for life on Earth, and will come to appreciate how a bit of locomotory know-how is a surprisingly powerful tool for understanding why life is the way it is, and illuminating our own place in the living world.

Learning outcomes

1. To gain a working knowledge of the major locomotory transitions in the history of life, including those that enabled the origin of humans;
2. To understand the basic mechanics of natural locomotion in different environments;
3. To understand how and why locomotion has played a central role in the evolution of life;
4. To appreciate the importance of historical constraint and opportunity in evolution;
5. To gain a deeper understanding of why the living world is the way it is.

Understanding the French Revolution is important if we are to make sense of the 19th century, so we must begin with it in order to make sense of a period marked by extraordinary social and economic progress, but also by dramatic, and sometimes revolutionary, political change.

Emerging from the revolutionary 1790s came Napoleon, perhaps the most influential individual of the 19th century. He is often remembered as a military leader, but he also had a huge impact on the development of Europe, as well as significantly influencing forms of government for decades to come.

Despite the efforts made to prevent any repetition of the French revolution, the year 1848 saw revolutionary upheavals across Europe. Why did these revolutions take place, and why were they mostly unsuccessful? What did they have in common, and in what ways were they different?

In the mid-1850s, Russia was humiliated in the Crimean War. Within a few years the new emperor, Alexander II, had begun a process of radical reform which was intended to transform the country. How successful was he, and how and why were these reforms largely undone by his successor?

Two of the most significant political changes of the period were achieved, not by revolutionaries but by other – and more powerful – forces. Italy and Germany, became nation states as a result of the expansion of dynamic monarchies. How did this happen?

For much of the 19th century, the Austrian empire – a multi-national state held together by its ruling Habsburg dynasty – struggled to survive. How did Austria attempt to meet the challenges of nationalism and revolution?

Learning outcomes

1. To demonstrate an awareness of some of the principal events in Europe between
   1789 and 1871;
2. To reflect on the key themes in this period, as introduced in the sessions, and identify some of the main features within each theme;
3. To discuss the impact of war, revolution and social change, making use of the preparatory reading from the course.

This seminar will focus on the flourishing of arts and science from the 1880s to 1930s, exploring different aspects of fin-de-siècle culture in Western Europe (including Britain) and North America.

We will take an interdisciplinary approach to a particular historical moment, looking at some of the key developments that shaped the modern world.

We will trace the history of science and art in parallel, paying particular attention to the relationship or connections between them – and how they changed experiences or understandings of modernity. Seminar topics will include: (1) the rise of new technologies like the microscope, telegraph, photography, and cinema; (2) new scientific discoveries like X-rays and evolution; (3) fears of degeneration and eugenics; (4) dreaming of better futures in utopian fiction; (5) modern art movements like futurism and surrealism; (6) spiritualism and secularisation; and (7) literary modernism and modern theatre.

Over the course of seven sessions, we will come to a deeper understanding of developments in arts and science during this period, and will consider how these influenced views of society, politics, the universe, and the self around the turn of the 20th century.

Key questions we will ask are: What does the culture of late-19th- and early-20th-century Western Europe and North America tell us about the birth of the modern world? How can we relate developments in technology, science, and art during this period with experiences of modern life? What different tools or methods can historians use to understand the past? And finally, what does a study of the arts and sciences together reveal about the particular zeitgeist or spirit of modernity?

Learning outcomes

1. To understand developments and/or inventions in Western art and science c.1880 to 1930;
2. To examine the key themes of this period, and identify some of the main features within each theme;
3. To assess how the relationship between arts and sciences shaped the modern world.

The first half of the course examines the lessons we can take from deep history for existential risk.

We will review the closest past analogues: societal collapses, mass extinction events, and the loss of ancestral relatives in the Homo Genus, such as Homo Neanderthalensis. There have been five mass extinction events through the Earth’s Phanerozoic history: the Ordovician–Silurian, the Late Devonian, the Permian-Triassic, the Triassic-Jurassic, and the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction events. Collapse incorporates the most (in)famous case studies such as the Western Roman Empire and the Maya Terminal Classical Period, as well as the more obscure such as fall of the Puebloan culture of Chaco Canyon.

The second half focuses on the future, and unprecedented risks. This includes emerging well-established risks such as oanthropogenic climate change and nuclear warfare, as well as more speculative technological risks like bioengineered pandemics.

Throughout the seminar we will cultivate a critical understanding of the current tools used for forecasting future global catastrophes and understanding risk.

Learning outcomes

1. A critical understanding of different approaches to understanding human extinction and societal collapse;
2. An appreciation of how history can (and can’t) inform our understanding of future catastrophes;
3. A basic comprehension of the different tools used to forecast future global catastrophes, including their benefits and limitations;
4. A developed capacity for understanding how political structures and institutions contribute to catastrophe and their prevention.

How do people make decisions? According to economic theory, by maximizing their own payoffs, and by doing so rationally and strategically. In this seminar, we will learn when this is, and when this is not the case.

We will begin by showing how, indeed, humans and many other species are equipped with psychological and neural processes that allow them to behave rationally (e.g., to approach rewards, avoid punishments, and weigh their trade-offs). We will then show how limited cognitive abilities and emotions, such as fear, regret, envy and schadenfreude (e.g., being happy for the losses of others) can frequently make us stray away from perfect rationality.

We will then move on to social decisions. We will play some experimental games and introduce basic concepts of game theory. This tells us how “rational” players should play, which we will compare to how people actually do play. In particular, we will learn about how interacting brains face social choices and how people can “read the mind” of others.

We will then take part in experiments on cooperation and see if we are as “selfish” as economic theory makes us out to be. We will cover a number of experiments showing that people cooperate with others even if they would earn more by exploiting them. We will thus face the question of why people cooperate and we will learn about social norms, guilt, power (e.g., showing off) and altruism. We will finally focus on the neuroscience of empathy, and explain how this can lead to compassion and prosocial behavior.

Learning outcomes

1. to develop an understanding of fundamental notions of decision theory (widely used in economics/business, psychology and neuroscience); 
2. to demonstrate an awareness of the psychological and biological impact of emotions on decision making and prosocial behaviour;
3. to critically evaluate data-based approaches to human behavior and decision making. 

The atmosphere is an incredibly complex part of the Earth. It protects our skins from the harmful radiation of the sun, and provides the planet with the vital components for life. However, right now the atmosphere faces some huge challenges. The Climate Crisis and air pollution affect every single person on the planet. But what causes them and how can we prevent harm from them?

In this seminar, we will review the fundamentals of these important topics. We will start by putting the subject of the atmosphere into a physical and mathematical basis and show (aided by some experiments) how fairly simple equations can be used to describe the complexity of the atmosphere. We will look back at the natural evolution of climate on our planet and discover how ice cores give us a unique glimpse into the past. We will then move on to review what the main causes of air pollution and the Climate Crisis are and how they are linked. We will look at observational data available through the internet to help raise understanding of how we can quite quickly write simple computer code (less than 10 lines!) to analyse complex datasets.

We will finish by thinking about what we can do, as individuals and societally, about these pressing issues and explore some of the potential solutions to repair our atmosphere.

Learning outcomes

1. Identification and understanding of the key causes of air pollution and climate change;
2. Develop a physical understanding of their interactions between trace gases in the atmosphere;
3. Present techniques used by scientists to monitor the composition of the air around us.