• 09:00 - 17:00
• Cambridge University Engineering Department

Insights from the Centre for Landscape Regeneration

This conference shares insights from the multi-year study by the Centre for Landscape Regeneration (CLR) on how the intersections between nature, climate, local economies, and communities will shape the future of UK landscapes. Focusing on the Fens, the Cairngorms, and the Lake District, this conference presents cutting-edge interdisciplinary research that responds to some of the most pressing challenges that UK landscapes face, from food security to climate adaptation to biodiversity recovery, and the interplay of trade-offs between these.

Funded by UKRI NERC, the project aims to discuss how the evidence and insights gathered so far can be used to inform policy and action.

The day features a wide range of perspectives, from the researchers and partner organisations who have shaped this work, to the policymakers.

• Talks & Panel Discussions: Presentations on the latest findings followed by Q&A sessions to discuss their implications.
• Research Posters: An opportunity to engage directly with the researchers and explore their work.
• Collaborative Conversations: Time to discuss how this ongoing research can best serve the needs of those managing and living in the British countryside.

The CLR and CPS invite you to join the discussion around this important update as work continues toward a more sustainable and resilient future for our shared environment.

Morning session: Research insights and emerging evidence
A research-focused session introducing highlights from the research programme on evidence, methods and interdisciplinary questions at the heart of landscape regeneration.

Afternoon session: Landscapes, policy and practice
A place-based session examining what CLR research reveals about the future of UK landscapes in the Fens, the Cairngorms and the Lake District. The afternoon will consider how evidence on food security, climate adaptation, biodiversity recovery and land-use trade-offs can inform policy, land management and practical action.

• 17:30 - 18:30
• A V Hill Lecture Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre, Cambridge

Our behaviour is characteristically organized in a hierarchical structure of goals and subgoals, with many fragments of behaviour contributing to an everyday activity such as making breakfast or attending a lecture.  Such goal-directed structures are often impaired following major damage to the frontal lobes of the brain.  I shall describe a core discovery of human brain imaging – a nine-patch network recruited for addressing a very broad range of cognitive challenges, based in frontal cortex but with additional components elsewhere.  This network is strongly activated by a standard test of “fluid intelligence”, known to predict success in all kinds of activities and presumably requiring mental operations of very widespread importance.  From human brain imaging, I shall move on to electrophysiology in the behaving monkey.  In a network of frontal lobe regions, putatively homologous to regions of the human network, I shall show encoding of core components of a goal-directed plan – current state, goal, component moves and hierarchy.  Damage to this network, I suggest, underlies the broad behavioural impairment that can follow frontal lobe damage.

• 17:30 - 18:30
• Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre, Cambridge

Laplace is sometimes described as the “French Newton". He is best known as a physicist, but he was a polymath and he also played a key part in the development of probability theory. I shall talk about how he came to the result now known as the central limit theorem and why we consider it so important.