The team at KCESP approached Uncomfortable Tours in the spring of 2025, with the idea of collaborating on a new walking tour on ‘Un(ethical) Science’.
Uncomfortable Cambridge is a research-led social enterprise founded in 2022 by doctoral history students and academic researchers who believe the city’s story is richer—and more challenging—than its postcard image suggests. Building on the success of Uncomfortable Oxford (est. 2018), they design and lead walking tours that uncover Cambridge’s overlooked histories of inequality, imperialism, class, race, gender, disability, and power.
Led by expert researchers trained in inclusive pedagogy, their tours are conversations, not lectures. They ask difficult questions, invite debate, and create space for thoughtful reflection—connecting the past to the inequalities and injustices that still shape our world today.
Our ‘(Un)Ethical Science’ tour will take in iconic moments of cutting-edge discovery at Cambridge from splitting the atom to finding the structure of DNA. But it will also encourage participants to think hard about the issues behind those breakthroughs – about the unintended consequences of scientific advance, the financial and social structures supporting them, the ethical grey areas, and the patterns and echoes of those discoveries in the science conducted today. The tour invites participants to reflect on how economic, political, and social forces shape scientific knowledge and its global impact.
Defining and refining the tour together has been a wonderful experience. The result tells you the stories of ambition, frustration, and acclaim. Of ethics, and ignorance, and shifting ideas on where ‘the line’ might be. For science and for society.
And it reminds us that we continue to imagine a future we can’t quite see.
So, isn’t it time we talked (and walked) about it?
We could end up somewhere really interesting …
Development of the tour is due to wrap up in January 2026, and more information can be found on Uncomfortable’s webpage here.
You may also find yourself interested in more of their tours! As a certified Social Enterprise, Uncomfortable Cambridge reinvests all profits back into the community and projects that support their social mission. They are more than a walking tour company. Working with universities, museums, and cultural organisations, Uncomfortable Cambridge transforms academic research into powerful public engagement—challenging perspectives, amplifying marginalised voices,and showing how uncomfortable histories can inspire meaningful change.
