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Scientific imaging techniques are uncovering secrets locked in medieval illuminated manuscripts – including those of a thrifty duke.

Research into England’s oldest medieval altarpiece – which for centuries provided the backdrop to Westminster Abbey coronations – has revealed that it cost no more than the rather unprincely equivalent of eight cows.

From visualising microscopic cells to massive galaxies, imaging is a core tool for many disciplines, and it’s also the basis of a surge in recent technical developments – some of which are being pioneered in Cambridge. Today, we begin a month-long focus on research that is exploring far beyond what the eye can see, introduced here by Stella Panayotova, Stefanie Reichelt and Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb.

In his book, Gothic Wonder, Professor Paul Binski explores a period in which English art and architecture pushed the boundaries to produce some of Europe’s most spectacular buildings and illuminated manuscripts. Binski’s research sets into context the whole gamut of human endeavour: from awesome cathedrals to playfully irreverent grotesques.

Dr Michael Hrebeniak describes himself as inveterately curious about people and places. His fascination for a messy patch of Cambridge, best known for its traffic jams and retail park, has led him to create with words and film ‘a deep map’ of the layers of human experience on the fringes of the city. 

Remembering and celebrating the rich thousand-year Jewish dimension of Poland’s history will be the theme of the first major event hosted by the recently-launched Cambridge Polish Studies, an initiative of the Department of Slavonic Studies.

New research has uncovered the earliest known practical piece of polyphonic music, an example of the principles that laid the foundations of European musical tradition.

A global fleet of composite planes could reduce carbon emissions by up to 15 per cent, but the lighter planes alone will not enable the aviation industry to meet its emissions targets, according to new research.

A new research project is compiling the largest database of plague imagery ever amassed, focusing on a pandemic that peaked in the early 20th century and continues to this day.

In her new book Representations of the Gypsy in the Romantic Period, Sarah Houghton-Walker provides a fascinating insight into writers’ and artists’ portrayals of wanderers. Her study focuses on a period when gypsies’ fragile place in the landscape, and on the margins of society, came increasingly under threat.