Darwin College Cambridge

We’re thrilled that a Darwin team is appearing on University Challenge for the third year running! Good luck to Rachel Gu, Macsen Brown, David Lumsden, and Ella Mason as they take on the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in their first round match tonight. Tune in to BBC 2 at 8:30pm this evening.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002zwgs

As the cliche has it: if you want something done, ask a busy person.

While completing her MPhil in Development Studies at Darwin - in which she has researched sustainable development from the perspective of Indigenous communities in Latin America - Melina Tsilira has also juggled an internship with UNESCO, and continued the sideline as a self-published novelist she began while still in her teens.

Thank you to Melina for finding the time to sit down with us to chat about her time at Darwin, and congratulations to her and all the other extraordinary Darwinians graduating tomorrow. We're so proud of each and every one of you.

https://www.darwin.cam.ac.uk/news/graduation-story-melina-tsilira/

Darwin alumnus Simon Kieser (MPhil Environmental Policy, 2017) has published the first peer-reviewed critical reflection on the 2025 Gunma Declaration on Heritage Ecosystems, a new international World Heritage framework that seeks to bring together nature conservation, cultural rights, Indigenous knowledge systems, and heritage governance.

Written during Simon's time as a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Land Economy, the paper has been published by Cambridge University Press in a special issue of the International Journal of Cultural Property dedicated to Decolonising Cultural Property: Indigenous Perspectives and Challenges, and has twice been selected by CUP as .

Critical reflections on the development of the Gunma Declaration on Heritage Ecosystems: Challenges, contradictions, and opportunities for Indigenous Peoples | International Journal of Cultural Property | Cambridge Core Critical reflections on the development of the Gunma Declaration on Heritage Ecosystems: Challenges, contradictions, and opportunities for Indigenous Peoples - Volume 33

Thank you to Living History Diary for this fabulous view of the Study Centre from the other side of the river. (Looking a little under-populated, but it is July!)

Laundress Green.
Alf Curtis
11-07-2026

Darwin is delighted to be part of the Cambridge Zero Community Day this coming weekend.

As well as exhibitions, activities, workshops and panel discussions exploring how to be part of a more sustainable future, Darwin Master and former Director of Birdlife International Dr Mike Rands will lead a birdwatching tour of the College.

At Mike's most recent dawn chorus walk, 28 species were heard or seen within the Darwin gardens. Join us to witness the extraordinary biodiversity of central Cambridge.

Find out more: https://www.zero.cam.ac.uk/node/683

Book your birdwatching place here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/cambridgezero/2269162

Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to talk to our student callers over the past couple of weeks, and particularly those who generously made a gift to the College.

The team spoke to over 300 alumni in 44 different countries, in a fantastic celebration of global Darwinian connection and support.

Lovely to see this interview from the Wellcome Sanger Institute with Darwin PhD student Cecilia Kyany'a on her research into the role of microbes in cystic fibrosis, the joy of a good pub walk, and why nothing compares to Kenyan mangoes.

(Photo credit: Carmen Denman Hume)

https://sangerinstitute.blog/2026/06/24/breathing-new-life-into-cystic-fibrosis-research/

Huge congratulations to Darwin alumna and former DCSA President Dr Alice Bunn OBE on her appointment as co-Director of the UK Space Agency!

Alice talked to us for the January issue of the Darwinian magazine about her out of this world career, the practicalities of our growing dependence on space, and the importance of work/life balance.

https://www.darwin.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Darwinian-JAN26-ONLINE.pdf

Thank you to Shubeur Rahman (PhD Physics 2001) for bringing together local Darwinians and their guests for an evening of connection and reminiscence at the Hobgoblin pub in Tokyo!

It's a long way from the Granta, but it looks like they made themselves at home...

Bringing together multiple strands of his life, as Master of Darwin, founding Director of the Cambridge Conservation Initiative and former Chief Executive of Birdlife International, Dr Mike Rands is celebrating the arrival of swifts at Darwin.

Numbers of the migratory birds are believed to have fallen by 70% in the past 30 years. Swift boxes at Darwin, as well as on the David Attenborough Building and elsewhere across the University, aim to replicate their natural nesting sites and encourage the birds to breed.

Quoted by the BBC, Mike said:

"It is fantastic to see them back here now, above Darwin College.

I'm particularly pleased this year, because three years ago we put some nest boxes up and we are playing tapes of the calls, which we know attracts the birds in, but it usually takes a year or two for them to establish a colony."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgqnkjyjlxo