University of Cambridge, Pembroke College

“Cancer” is among the most encountered terms in our daily lives, but few beyond the biomedical profession truly understand what cancer is. This course helps students understand this complex disease. The course starts from the era of the ancient Greeks, through the world wars and their role in advancing cancer treatment, to the most cutting-edge research ongoing today and what the future holds. Students also learn about important techniques involved in modern day research, including gene editing, cancer modelling, and computational biology. They also discuss key scientific publications in the field of cancer biology.  

A research project that assigns students to expert professors in their proposed research topic. The course takes the students' research capabilities to a more professional level. This can be most closely compared to what is called a supervised research project in the USA.

This course examines how economies can be supported to grow and develop. Growth and development are not synonymous. Economic growth aims to increase a country’s national income. Development aims to generate positive qualitative changes. However, both indicators are continuous processes affecting a country’s welfare and social progress.

This course explores the application of ethical theories to perennially contentious and troubling real-world questions that everyone faces. By introducing students to the theories and concepts of moral analysis, in an approachable way, they better understand the dilemmas that confront them. Students examine what Thomas Aquinas and David Hume wrote about life and death, framing our modern understanding of subjects such as just war and suicide, and how that influenced 20th century thinkers like Judith Jarvis Thomson on abortion and James Rachels on euthanasia. Many moral philosophers today consider population ethics to be the world’s most pressing set of problems, asking, what obligations do I have now towards future generations? Students explore how philosophers such as Derek Parfit and William MacAskill have some surprising answers, which may transform your thinking about issues such as environmental conservation, artificial intelligence, biosecurity, and existential risk.

A research project that assigns students to expert professors in their proposed research topic. The course takes the student's research capabilities to a more professional level. This can be most closely compared to what is called a supervised research project in American universities.

This course takes both a short and a long-term view of the economy and helps students to understand how modern macroeconomics have attempted to explain economic growth as well as fluctuations. The course also looks at the design and effectiveness of macro policies to boost growth and stabilize fluctuations. Topics include measurement of the macroeconomy; long-run macroeconomic model and determinants of long-run growth; short-run macroeconomic model and its building blocks; and monetary and fiscal policies and their effectiveness.

A research project that assigns students to expert professors in their proposed research topic. The course takes the students' research capabilities to a more professional level. This can be most closely compared to what is called a supervised research project in the USA.

Every war story, according to Leo Tolstoy, begins with the disclaimer that war cannot be understood by those who have not witnessed it for themselves – yet the story is always told anyway. Since the earliest works of art and literature, war has been a persistent topic and a prevailing theme, but it has also presented a challenge for artists and writers: while culture cannot resist representing war, war often seems to resist being represented. This course asks why war has seemed to hold such a challenge for representation in art and writing, and how artists and writers have attempted to overcome this resistance to image-making and storytelling. Our primary focus is on literary works that offer rich and evocative writings of modern warfare, but students begin by paying brief attention to earlier works of literature, as well as some visual pieces, that set the scene for our cultural understanding of warfare today.