Please note - you have to be a member to attend U3A Cambridge lectures (unless you are a member of the Friends of the Museum, then you can attend those three lectures under the Museum membership). Our membership is currently full - but you can go on the waitlist.
As our venue capacity is full we cannot currently welcome visitors.
Meetings are held at the Te Awa Lifecare Woolshed, 1866 Cambridge Road, Cambridge, from 10am for 10.30 until 12.00 noon on the second Tuesday of each month.
Tuesday September 8th, 2026 - Linda Roil - Kids in Need Waikato- It Takes a Community: Supporting children in care and their caregivers
Linda founded Kids in Need Waikato in 2018 to support children in foster care and kinship care, and the caregivers who raise them.
As caregivers themselves, Linda and her husband Graeme know firsthand the joys and challenges of the role, having raised Blossom, an amazing 7 year old, since she was 2 hours old. Before Blossom, they cared for dozens of babies and children. A registered charity, Kids in Need Waikato provides essential care packs so children feel seen and valued, alongside connection and encouragement for the caregivers who show up for them every day.
None of this happens alone - it's made possible by a community that shows up too, through volunteering, donations, and simply caring about tamariki who need it most.
Tuesday October 13th, 2026 - Dr Vincent O'Malley - Defining Conflict - The New Zealand Wars - NOTE CHANGE OF VENUE to Raleigh Street Christian Center 24-26 Raleigh Street
Dr Vincent O’Malley FRHistS FRSNZ is a Wellington writer and historian who has authored many bestselling and acclaimed works on New Zealand history, including The Great War for New Zealand: Waikato 1800-2000 (2016) and The New Zealand Wars/Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa (2019).
In 2022 his book Voices from the New Zealand Wars/He Reo nō ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa (BWB) won the general non-fiction prize at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
In the same year he received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Non-Fiction. In 2023 he received the Humanities Aronui Medal for research or innovative work of outstanding merit in the humanities.
He was the J.D. Stout Research Fellow at Victoria University of Wellington in 2014 and was awarded the Mary Boyd prize from the New Zealand Historical Association for the best article on any aspect of New Zealand history published over the previous two years in 2017.
In 2023 he was a semi-finalist for Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year. In 2025 he was named as a recipient of Victoria University of Wellington’s Distinguished Alumni Award.
Tuesday October 27th, 2026 - - JOINT PARTNERSHIP HISTORY LECTURE -Rod Smith - From Galway to the Waikato Land War - A peerage family's connections
Rod Smith, family history researcher and writer, presents “Galway to the Waikato Land Wars - A Peerage Family’s Connections”.
Rod is a retired public servant, and former newspaper journalist and probation officer. His career included time crewing a cargo freighter, work in an English youth conference centre, and service in the Justice Department, Parliament, the Ministry of Defence, the Forest Service, and the Accident Compensation Corporation.
An avid family historian for over 35 years he has researched in depth his wife’s connections to landed Irish families, publishing his findings in two books – Guinness Down Under: the famous brew and the family come to Australia and New Zealand (2017) and Clancarty: the high times and humble of a noble Irish Family (2024). While researching Clancarty he discovered reports of the family’s involvement in the Waikato Land War of 1863-64 and a revealing speech given by the 3rd Earl of Clancarty in the House of Lords in 1864 on the subject of New Zealand race relations. Rod’s presentation will explore the events of 1863-64 and the several connections between the Earls of Clancarty and New Zealand.
Tuesday November 10th, 2026 - Dame Fiona Kidman - Telling Stories NOTE CHANGE OF VENUE to Raleigh Street Christian Center 24-26 Raleigh Street
About me: Fiona Kidman is a novelist, short story writer, poet and memoirist. Her original occupation was as a librarian. In the early 1960s she began to write journalism , radio drama and, later, television drama, Her first novel ‘A Breed of Women’, published in 1979 caused controversy but she continued to write in the face of some opposition. Her 2018 novel This Mortal Boy won the Jann Medlicott Ockham New Zealand Book Award for Fiction. Her work is translated into several languages. She has been awarded a damehood for services to literature and is a Chevalier des Artes et Lettres by the French government, and has also been awarded the French Legion of Honour. Currently, she is a Patron of the Randell Cottage Writers Trust, also The Long Hall, The New Zealand Poetry Society, and of the Refugee and Migrants Trust.
My most recent book is The Midnight Plane: Selected and New Poems (pub. Otago University Press 2025)
Tuesday December 8th, 2026 - Vladimir Pacheco - My journey
Vladimir spoke to U3A Cambridge in 2025 and by popular demand, he is returning to share more information about his journey and his life (a topic that he doesn't really talk about in public, but does in 1:1 conversations).
Vladimir Pacheco is currently Associate Professor at the School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Denmark. His current research interests include socio-economic impacts and governance of non-renewable resource extraction in the Arctic, Latin America and the South Pacific. Previous to this position Vladimir held senior roles in Australia with the Foundation for Development Cooperation, the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining and consulting firm WorleyParsons.
His latest publication is a chapter in a book titled “Ideology, Post-ideology and Anti-Ideology in Latin America” published by Bloomsbury Academic.