Uncomfortable Cambridge History Blog

To complement our Uncomfortable Cambridge walking tours, we provide a number of free educational resources about the history of Cambridge – check them out!

Passing Reality Checkpoint: Welcome to Uncomfortable Cambridge

Reality Checkpoint marks the boundary between the University of Cambridge “bubble” and the “real world” beyond. For many, it is a powerful symbol of the tensions between “town and gown” that have defined Cambridge’s history for 800 years. Such histories of inequality and elitism are at the heart of the approach taken by the Uncomfortable Cambridge tours.

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Oliver Cromwell: The Coronation That Wasn’t

The 8th of May is a day with a fair deal of deal baggage: while this is the date when Charles III was officially crowned, it was also the date when Oliver Crowell, three centuries earlier, refused to become King. What connects these two individuals is that they were both former students of the University of Cambridge.

Issam Kourbaj’s “Urgent Archive”: Exhibition Review

The latest Kettle’s Yard exhibition is a real-time battle to preserve Syrian history from oblivion, but does it stick in the viewer’s memory?
Read this exhibition review by an Uncomfortable Cambridge guide.

An Eighty-Year Wait to Graduate: Women at Cambridge

Women's presence in higher education is fairly recent history, and even more so in the case of the University of Cambridge, where they had to wait decades before being allowed to graduate. Learn more about this story of discrimination, and go beyond what you learned on our walking tours.

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A Portrait Attacked: Sectarianism on Cambridge Campus

A portrait of Arthur Balfour was attacked at Trinity College, Cambridge – But why?

At a time when the geopolitcal situation in the Middle East is taking a critical tearn, learn about the history of partition in Palestine and its connection to Cambridge University.

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The Pleasures and Perils of Smoking in Calverley’s “Ode to Tobacco”

Politicians now promise a “smoke-free” UK, but one Cambridge plaque suggests an alternative plan: doctors be damned, “take a fresh cigar!”
Learn about the history of tobacco and connections between Cambridge and colonialism!

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Want to learn more? Join an Uncomfortable Cambridge walking tour!

All tours are academically researched and designed by expert historians who are passionate about story-telling, public engagement, and diversifying history. We run tours on various themes, check them out below!

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The Original Uncomfortable Cambridge™ Tour

Cambridge & Colonialism Tour

Hidden
Histories Tour

Uncomfortable Science
Tour

Uncomfortable Oxford

Visit our sister organisation's research blog!

It highlights both curious local histories and relevant narratives related to the topics covered on Uncomfortable Tours, including histories of class, race, empire, gender, and historical memory.

Visit Oxford

Uncomfortable Cambridge History Blog

To complement our Uncomfortable Cambridge walking tours, we provide a number of free educational resources about the history of Cambridge – check them out!

Want to learn more? Join an Uncomfortable Cambridge walking tour!

Uncomfortable Oxford

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