Researchers from our Department of Biosciences have launched a new project to help track the variety and distribution of garden songbirds this spring. The project, called Nature's Audio , is aiming to produce the first nationwide sample of birdsong across the UK, to provide an insight into where and when birds, including those shortly to return from warmer climes, are singing this spring.

A Durham University professor, who is an expert in Spanish cinema and culture, has been appointed to the prestigious post of Honorary Vice-Consul. Professor Santiago Fouz Hernández's appointment is part of the re-opening of the Spanish Vice-Consulate in Newcastle and a wider effort to enhance Spain's presence in the UK, especially in the North East.

We're really proud of the entrepreneurial spirit that shines so brightly across our student community. So much so that we will be opening our first dedicated space to nurture and harness this. First of its kind space The Hazan Venture Lab will provide a specialised home for our student enterprise work, to help foster and develop a community of student and graduate entrepreneurs.

What was your favourite childhood toy? A car? A teddy bear? A doll? Many of us have fond memories of playing with dolls: dressing them up, combing their hair or doing some kind of role play with other toys.

For 100 years mathematicians have been trying to solve the question of whether it is possible to fit all four points of a rectangle into any given closed curve shape. Or, more bluntly, can you fit a square peg into a round hole? Research so far had found that it was only possible to fit the proverbial square peg into a round hole if the peg in question was of certain proportions, until now...

PhD Candidate Aarron Toal on the psychology behind our cravings. In 2020, the UK Government announced a ban on junk food advertising before 9pm. This followed the ban on in-store deals like ‘buy one get one free' on unhealthy foods.

To answer some of life's questions, we often rely on numbers. How we hear about these numbers though, is often through the media. The problem with this is that the way the media uses numbers isn't particularly reliable.

We're part of an international team that has seen the first evidence of wild bonobo apes adopting infants who were born outside of their social group.

We are proud to have awarded former student Mary Thoits with the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters, celebrating her as the very embodiment of our ethos ‘inspiring the extraordinary'. Adventurous spirit Mary came to Durham in 1946, boldly travelling alone from the USA, after insisting on taking the highly unusual step of a year abroad during her degree studies at De Pauw University in Indiana.

We're proud to host a new £3.8m supercomputer that is being used to better understand Covid-19 and how to recover from the pandemic. The computer, called Bede, is also playing a key role in areas like Artificial Intelligence (AI), energy storage and therapeutic drug design.

Worldwide, thousands of patients require a kidney transplant. Some patients may have a friend or relative willing to donate a kidney but bloodand tissue-type problems may make that donation impossible.

Since January, our students and staff have taken over 5,000 lateral Flow Tests, and our pioneering testing programme is continuing to help stop the spread of Covid-19, protecting our University and local community.