A celebration of ideas and debate

  • September 27, 2017
A celebration of ideas and debate

Two Gates Cambridge Scholars will take part in events at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas.

Two Gates Cambridge Scholars are taking part in this year's Cambridge Festival of Ideas.

Asiya Islam and Surabhi Ranganathan are speaking at the Festival, which celebrates the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. It runs from 16th to 29th October and has a programme of over 200 events, including talks, debates, exhibitions, film and theatre performances.

Asiya [2015], who is doing a PhD in Sociology, has co-curated an exhibition called The New Woman: 150 years of British and Indian women's magazines which takes places on 21st October. The exhibition shows the shared history of Britain and India through the way women's magazines in the two countries have portrayed changing ideals of femininity. 

Surabhi [2008] is speaking in a discussion entitled Technology and Nationalism in India. It asks what role technology has played in India's recent economic development and how this links to equality issues and the rise of nationalism. Surabhi, who did her PhD in Law with the support of a Gates Cambridge Scholarship and is now a lecturer in International Law at Cambridge, will talk about technology in terms of India's posture in international negotiations on nuclear technology and oceans exploitation and about how that illuminates the issues of nationalism, equality and pride. 

Surabhi is the author of Strategically Created Treaty Conflicts and the Politics of International Law, a study of international legal thought and practice, exploring treaty conflicts in nuclear governance, the law of the sea and international criminal justice. She is also assistant editor of The Cambridge Companion to International Law.

*Picture credit of Mumbai at night: Wikimedia Commons.

Surabhi Ranganathan

Surabhi Ranganathan

  • Alumni
  • India
  • 2008 PhD Law
  • St John's College

Latest News

From digital accessibility to space flight

Pradipta Biswas was very short-sighted as a young child and that meant his ability to travel around or play outdoors was heavily restricted. That early experience, he says, “created a force in me to overcome barriers for myself and others so that physical impairments shouldn’t stop people from achieving their dreams”. It has driven his […]

21st century curator

Even while he was doing his PhD in art history, Julien Domercq was not only getting involved in the British art scene, he was curating one of the biggest art exhibitions of the day. Julien [2013] had taken up a two-year entry-level contract at the National Gallery a couple of years into his PhD on […]

Understanding migrant stories

Two Gates Cambridge Scholars are collaborating on a new research, story-telling and advocacy enterprise which aims to record journeys of migration, amplify the voices of migrants and build empathy for the growing number of people who are displaced or have to leave their country. Noor Shahzad, founder at Migration Collective, became interested in the stories […]

Gates Cambridge Class of 2024 announced

The Gates Cambridge Class of 2024 made up of 75 outstanding new scholars has been officially announced. The Gates Cambridge scholarship programme is the University of Cambridge’s flagship international postgraduate scholarship programme. It was established through a US$210 million donation to the University of Cambridge from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000. Since […]