International Cambridge

United States of America

The University of Cambridge has a long and distinguished tradition of engagement with America stretching back nearly four centuries. Ever since Cambridge alumnus John Harvard emigrated to Massachusetts and in 1638 re-founded a college (in another town called Cambridge) that still bears his name, a strong trans-Atlantic relationship has been one of the defining characteristics of the University of Cambridge. Three Cambridge graduates were signatories of the American Declaration of Independence, while in more recent times the largest single donation to a UK university was made by the US-based William and Melinda Gates Foundation to provide international Gates Cambridge Scholarships in perpetuity.

At any one time there are over 600 students from the USA studying at Cambridge; many are supported by scholarships and bursaries administered by the Cambridge Overseas Trust and the Gates Cambridge Trust. There are many long-standing and flourishing student exchange programmes between Cambridge Colleges and American universities (including Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Brown), as well as more recent links such as the Cambridge-MIT Exchange and the Junior Year Abroad programme linking the Faculty of English with a group of liberal arts colleges. Through Cambridge in America, the University and Colleges keep in touch with the 12,000 Cambridge alumni who live in the USA.

Cambridge is a renowned centre for the study of American History; Cambridge has produced more PhDs in American History in the last ten years than other British universities combined. The Visiting Pitt Professorship of American History and Institutions brings distinguished scholars from the US to Cambridge; previous holders include Richard Hofstadter and John Hope Franklin. The Mellon Professorial Fund supports not only the Paul Mellon Chair in American History but also a visiting scholars programme and a graduate exchange with Boston University. The American Studies Programme in the Department of Politics and International Studies focuses on the evolution of the Anglo-American relationship, its principal themes and personalities.

In the USA, Cambridge academics are involved in world-leading collaborations with American colleagues in every area of research. For example, academics in the Department of Engineering have research collaborations with NASA and the US Drug Administration, while the Computer Laboratory has deep and long-standing connections with the US computer and IT industries. In the field of economics, the Cambridge Centre for Financial Analysis and Policy hosts annual seminars with The Bendheim Center for Finance at Princeton University and the Wharton School of Business (University of Pennsylvania). Other partnerships range from research in diabetes with the Harvard Medical School to the University Library's collaboration with the American Council of Learned Societies on the Darwin Correspondence Project. At an institutional level, the University of Cambridge is involved in a tri-partite research collaboration with MIT and Tsinghua University in China, the Low Carbon Energy University Alliance. Cambridge, Yale and the University of California Berkeley enjoy further ties through membership of the International Alliance of Research Universities.

Cambridge University Press opened an independent sales office in New York in 1949. In the six decades since, the North American Branch of CUP has grown to become one of the largest academic publishers in the USA. Editors in the New York office acquire and publish books in many areas of the humanities, the social sciences, and science with particular strengths in history, political science, economics, applied mathematics, engineering, and earth sciences. The Press's growing list in American ELT is also published from New York.

Image credit: A.M. Walzer Co. United States Inlay Puzzle. Credit: Marxchivist from flickr
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The title of this document is: University of Cambridge: International Research: United States of America
URL: http://www.cam.ac.uk/international/research/usa.html

Last updated: 29/03/2012

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International Alliance of Research Universities

Research and Teaching

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American Studies Programme

Centre for Financial Analysis and Policy

Darwin Correspondence Project

Students

Gates Cambridge Trust

Cambridge Overseas Trust

Cambridge-MIT Exchange

Cambridge in the USA

Cambridge in America

Cambridge University Press