Gresham College Lectures
Episodes
3023 episodes
Cello - In Search of a Voice - Kate Kennedy
How do we tell stories of past voices through a cello, the voice of its player? This lecture explores what it means to be separated from your voice, and to find it again.Dr Kate Kennedy traces a journey she took across Europe ...
Why Do We Need Empathy? - Jane Shaw
This lecture was recorded by Jane Shaw on Monday, 07 Sep 2026.Professor Jane Shaw is Provost of Gresham College and Professor of the History of Religion at the University of Oxford.Professor Shaw was formerly Principal of Harris...
On the Nature of Time According to Modern Physics - Jim Al-Khalili
This is the Annual Sir Thomas Gresham Lecture. What does modern physics have to say about the meaning of time? Is it a fundamental feature of reality or merely an emergent property from something deeper? Does time flow, and is the present momen...
Music of Sleep and Dreams - Milton Mermikides
This lecture was recorded by Professor Milton Mermikides on the 19th of June 2026Milton Mermikides is a composer, guitarist, technologist, academic and educator in a wide range of musical styles and has collaborated with artists and sci...
The Morrigan: The Nightmare Queen - Ronald Hutton
This lecture was recorded by Ronald Hutton on the 17th of June 2026 at Barnard's Inn Hall, LondonProfessor Hutton is Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He took degrees at Cambridge and then Oxford Universities, and was a ...
There Must be a Better Way: Thoughts on the Future of Family Law - Sir Andrew McFarlane
This is the Annual Gray's Inn Reading 2026.The lecture was delivered within three months of Sir Andrew McFarlane’s retirement after 21 years on the Family Bench. Whilst the phrase ‘un-plugged’ may not be appropriate, it is anticipated th...
Education - And Its Limits - Daniel Susskind
This lecture was recorded by Professor Daniel Susskind on the 26th of May 2026Dr Daniel Susskind is a writer and economist. He explores the impact of technology, and particularly AI, on work and society. He is the Mercers’ School Memori...
The White Knight: Ice - Helen Czerski
The polar regions are still some of the most inaccessible and least touched by humans, but they are deeply linked to the rest of Earth. We will cover the history of exploring them, the challenges of measuring this environment, and the current s...
Cicero In and On Political Crises - Melissa Lane
This lecture was recorded by Melissa Lane on the 11th of June 2026Melissa Lane is the Class of 1943 Professor of Politics, Princeton University and is also Associated Faculty in the Department of Classics and Department of Philosophy. P...
Forging Better Futures for You and AI - Matt Jones
In this last lecture, I will work to wake us from the AI as Overlord spell. We will explore other possible futures, looking first look at the potential of AI fitting in with us: things we can chat to; humanoid robots; or even devices that draw ...
Current Challenges to the US Constitution - Clive Stafford Smith
The Americans are very proud of their written constitution. During the first 3/8 of President Trump’s second term of office, the constitution has been severely tested. Where has the Constitution succeeded in providing legal safeguards, clarity ...
Shock of the Nude: Pioneering Women Artists and the Cultural Politics of Modern China - Di Wang
This lecture was recorded by Dr Di Wang on the 8th of June 2026 at Barnard's Inn Hall, LondonDr Di Wang is an art historian and curator. Her work focuses on art and culture of East Asia from the late-nineteenth century to the present.
Pluto Isn’t a Planet - Chris Lintott
This lecture was recorded by Chris Lintott on the 3rd of June 2026Professor Chris Lintott is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford, and a Research Fellow at New College.Having been educated at Magdalene College...
Plato to Polybius on Constitutional Change - Melissa Lane
This lecture was recorded by Melissa Lane on the 28th of May 2026 at Barnard's Inn Hall, LondonMelissa Lane is the Class of 1943 Professor of Politics, Princeton University and is also Associated Faculty in the Department of Classics an...
Going Global: Chinese Independent Documentary - Luke Robinson
This lecture will focus on independently produced Chinese documentary cinema as it has entered the Anglophone industry market. Using “Plastic China” by the award-winning director Wang Jiuliang as a case study, I will explore what the implicatio...
Should We Manipulate People’s Emotions? - Robin May
This lecture was recorded by Robin May on the 20th of May 2026 at Barnard's Inn Hall, LondonProfessor of Infectious Disease at the University of Birmingham, and (interim) Chief Scientist at the UK Health Security Agency, Robin May was a...
Society and Survival During the Holocaust - Mary Fulbrook
This lecture focuses on experiences of hiding and help during the Holocaust across Europe, including the German Reich itself, to highlight the significance of surrounding societies for the survival of Jews. In a broad comparative analysis, goin...
Music of the Body - Milton Mermikides
Music and biology are profoundly entwined. The heart beats, footsteps fall into familiar tempi, and even the movement of our limbs follows a natural rhythmic hierarchy—as if we shape music in our image. The rise and fall of breath, the cadence ...
The Pill and the Planet - Ian Mudway
Modern medicine's success in extending lifespans comes at an environmental cost. This lecture explores the pollution from single-use plastics, pharmaceuticals and medical waste, questioning whether we can sustain this model. It examines the imp...
How Hard is too Hard? An Introduction to Complexity - Colva Roney-Dougal
This lecture was recorded by Colva Roney-Dougal on the 11th of May 2026 at Barnard's Inn Hall, LondonColva Mary Roney-Dougal OBE is a British mathematician specializing in group theory and computational algebra. She is Professor of Pure ...
Making Memory Visible Through Photograph - Julia Winckler
With an academic background in social, cultural anthropology and photography, I have spent the last twenty-five years working on projects that have bridged photographic and archival research. I have witnessed the power of photography as a means...
Dionysus: Lord of Misrule - Ronald Hutton
This lecture was recorded by Ronald Hutton on the 6th May 2026 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, LondonProfessor Hutton is Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He took degrees at Cambridge and then Oxford Universities, and was a fell...
A Living Planet - Helen Czerski
Earth is a living planet. But how much life is there, and what is it doing? We will discuss the distribution of biomass on Earth, and compare the effects of microbes, wild animals, domesticated animals. The aim of this lecture is to provide con...
Music, Death and Afterlife - Mieko Kanno
This lecture was recorded by Mieko Kanno on the 5th May 2026 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, LondonMieko Kanno is a violinist and an academic, active in both capacities as Professor of Artistic Research in Music Performance at the Sibelius Acade...
Give Peace a Chance: Legal Implications of the Israel-Palestine Conflict - Clive Stafford Smith
This lecture was recorded by Clive Stafford Smith on the 30th of April 2026 at Barnard's Inn Hall, LondonClive Stafford Smith JD OBE is a dual UK-US national, the founder and director of the Justice League a non-profit human right...
The Shape of Tiles: Regular and Irregular, Hard and Soft - Alain Goriely
Tiling involves filling a plane or space with repeated elements, known as tiles. This simple concept is deeply embedded in the natural world and human design, appearing in structures as varied as the hexagonal wax cells of a beehive and decorat...
The Ground We Stand On - Helen Czerski
This lecture was recorded by Helen Czerski on the 19th of February 2026 at Barnard's Inn Hall, LondonHelen Czerski is a physicist and oceanographer with a passion for science, sport, books, creativity, hot chocolate and investigating th...
Tales from Television: Bringing the Natural World into Your Home - George McGavin
New camera technology can help make stunning footage for natural history programmes but the key to success is down to a lot of hard work, planning and a bit of luck. In this lecture we take a ‘behind the scenes’ look at some of the highs and lo...
Science behind Love and Grief - Podcast with Robin May
This episode of the Gresham College Podcast features an interview with Robin May, hosted by Jeoffrey Sarpong. Professor Robin May is a Professor of Infectious Disease at the University of Birmingham, and (interim) Chief Scientist at the UK Heal...
Why Do We Love? - Robin May
This lecture was recorded by Robin May on the 22nd of April 2026 at Barnard's Inn Hall, LondonProfessor of Infectious Disease at the University of Birmingham, and (interim) Chief Scientist at the UK Health Security Agency, Robin May was...
Taming AI - Matt Jones
Watch the Q&A session: https://youtu.be/gj4d75_ClggIn this lecture, we look at proposals to limit AI powers and impacts, so bad outcomes are outweighed by social benefits from the technolog...
A World Without Work - Daniel Susskind
In the future, we may face ‘structural’ technological unemployment in the labour market – where there is no longer enough work to occupy the human workforce. This lecture explains how such a phenomenon is possible at all, particularly given tha...
The Dictionary City: Londoners and the Oxford English Dictionary - Sarah Ogilvie
Londoners who helped create the world's largest English dictionary. She has unearthed a fascinating group of people across all social classes who represent some of the most interesting contributors to the Dictionary from all parts of this great...
Music of the Mind - Milton Mermikides
This lecture was recorded by Milton Mermikides on the 15th of April 2026 at LSO, LondonMilton Mermikides is a composer, guitarist, technologist, academic and educator in a wide range of musical styles and has collaborated with artist...
"Unsquaring” the Square Mile: Connecting People with Opportunity - Susan Langley
Moving the conversation on social mobility out of the boardroom and into the mainstream, the Lady Mayor Dame Susan Langley will set out her ambition to connect people with opportunity and “unsquare” the Square Mile: ensuring nobody has to fit i...
The Shape of Gravity: Why On Earth Are Planets Spherical? - Alain Goriely
This lecture was recorded by Alain Goriely on the 3rd of March 2026 at Barnard’s Inna Hall, LondonAlain Goriely is a mathematician with broad interests in mathematical methods, mechanics, sciences, and engineering. He is well known for ...
The Death of Athenian Democracy? - Melissa Lane
This lecture was recorded by Melissa Lane on the 12th of March 2026 at Barnard’s Inna Hall, LondonMelissa Lane is the Class of 1943 Professor of Politics, Princeton University and is also Associated Faculty in the Department of Classics...
Guantánamo on the Euphrates? Syria in a Time of Opportunity - Clive Stafford Smith
This lecture was recorded by Stafford Smith on the 19th of March 2026 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, LondonClive Stafford Smith JD OBE is a dual UK-US national, the founder and director of the Justice League, a non-profit human rights tra...
The Universe’s 100th Birthday: Galactic Fireworks and Little Red Dots - Chris Lintott
100 years ago this year, Edwin Hubble published the first conclusive evidence that there were galaxies beyond the Milky Way. This lecture, using new results from our latest space telescopes and ground-based instruments, surveys the diversity of...
Bridget: Goddess and Saint - Professor Ronald Hutton
This lecture was recorded by Ronald Hutton on the 10th of March 2026 at Barnard’s Inna Hall, LondonProfessor Hutton is Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He took degrees at Cambridge and then Oxford Universities, and was ...
Oligarchs and Their Discontents - Melissa Lane
This lecture was recorded by Professor Melissa Lane on 5th March 2026 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, London.Melissa Lane is the Class of 1943 Professor of Politics, Princeton University and is also Associated Faculty in the Department of Classi...
Why Do We Hate? - Robin May
Hatred is one of the most destructive human emotions, responsible for some of the greatest atrocities that humans have committed against each other. But why did it evolve in the first place? What is the evolutionary advantage of hating someone?...
Born Supremacy – AI as a Pale Shadow of Real Humanity - Professor Matt Jones
In this lecture, we glimpse our best selves and compare that to a world where we lose everything of ourselves to AI. We are glorious creations that revel in agency, freedom and creativity. What do innovations such as cars that don’t need us to ...
That's Not Funny: The Ethics of Satire - Judith Hawley
It used to be taken for granted that satire uses nasty means to good ends: it ridicules its targets in order to bring about reform. However, in recent years, the role of satire has been challenged and satirists themselves have quite liter...
Work, Out of Reach - Daniel Susskind
Right now, the technological challenge we are most likely to face in the labour market is ‘frictional’ technological unemployment – where there is plenty of work available, but not enough people are able to do it. This lecture explores the phen...
Gresham College Podcast with Antony Penrose
This episode of the Gresham College Podcast features an interview with Antony Penrose, hosted by Jeoffrey Sarpong. Antony Penrose is a film maker, photographer, author, artist, photo-curator, and co-founder of the Lee Miller Archives and The Pe...
Lee Miller: Why Her Photography Still Matters Today - Antony Penrose
What is it that makes an image stick in our memory against our will? People find many of Lee Miller’s combat photographs have this indelible quality, and of these the most powerful are from her witness of the Holocaust. Her stark and harrowing ...
Music of Earth and Space - Professor Milton Mermikides
Since Pythagoras, we have imagined the universe as a vast, resonant instrument—a cosmic harmony waiting to be heard. From Holst’s orchestral visions of the planets to Tuvan throat singing echoing the murmur of rivers, composers have long sought...
How Women Made the Global Economy - Dr Victoria Bateman
Economic history has been written by men, for men and about men, giving the impression that – until recently – the economy was “just for men”. This lecture rescues from obscurity the many female producers, bankers, and economic revolutionaries ...
Climate Risk and Insurance - Raghavendra Rau
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/Hwl0YRRaHgEWhy did coastal homeowners lose insurance while UK energy bills spiked after Russia’s invasion? Because risks started moving together...
The Price of Pixels: Unmasking the Environmental Impact of Our Digital Lives - Ian Mudway
Our digital world's convenience masks a heavy environmental cost. This lecture explores the destructive rare earth mineral mining powering our devices, the vast energy consumption of data centres fuelling climate change, and the toxic e-waste c...
Peacebuilding through the visual Arts - Jolyon Mitchell
How can the visual arts be used to promote peace? Professor Mitchell investigates how the visual arts can not only incite violence, but also bear witness, reveal dangerous memories, transform violence, contribute to healing trauma and imagine m...
The Shape of Shells: She Sells Self-Similar Spiral Seashells on the Seashore - Professor Alain Goriely
This lecture was recorded by Alain Goriely on 13th February 2026 at Bernard’s Inn Hall, LondonAlain Goriely is a mathematician with broad interests in mathematical methods, mechanics, sciences, and engineering. He is well know...
Pictures from Afghanistan: Are we making the same mistakes? - Clive Stafford Smith
This lecture was recorded by Clive Stafford Smith on the 9th of February 2026 at Bernard’s Inn Hall, LondonClive Stafford Smith JD OBE is a dual UK-US national, the founder and director of the Justice League a non-profit human...
Death Investigation: What Do Coroners Do? - Peter Thornton
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/9ozYDQFkfaYWhen death occurs, the state has a duty to investigate. Every death must be registered locally with a cause of death. And now, more than any other country, all deaths are doubl...
Alien Earths: What Makes Us Special? - Professor Chris Lintott
Sometime in 2026, we will discover our 10000th exoplanet, a world around a distant star. This population of worlds has proved remarkably diverse, but hasn’t produced any world like our own. We ask whether this is a coincidence, or whether it co...
Will You Be AI’s Pet? - Matt Jones
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/fuk6LYeOCDQI have two pet dogs; they are happy, wagging their tails and reacting well when I come home from work. They are well fed; have good healthcare; get daily exercise; and have tim...
An Ocean of Air - Helen Czerski
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/_HJt1zjecCoThe major environmental challenge of our time is framed in terms of what happens in our atmosphere, and specifically what are called ...
Mithras: Master of Mystery - Ronald Hutton
The cult of Mithras was by far the most famous of the mystery religions of the Roman Empire: private societies of worshippers devoted to a particular deity. It was supposed to have come from Persia, but was actually developed by the Romans them...
Why Do We Grieve? - Robin May
Grieving is a uniquely human emotion – or is it? Is the apparent attachment of elephants or orcas to the bodies of dead relatives a sign of grief, or simply an instinctive behaviour without emotional implications? Why do some people seem able t...
Constable's "The Cornfield": A Bicentenary Harvesting - Professor Malcolm Andrews
Constable’s painting The Cornfield celebrates its bicentenary in 2026. How has it aged? This is a landscape that has acquired iconic status – a marker of national identity -- as a representation of typically English countryside. How has that En...
Music of Light and Colour - Milton Mermikides
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/3B58-fA2b-4"Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings." — KandinskyHow do we ‘see’...
Economics and Artificial Intelligence - Daniel Susskind
ChatGPT, the AI chatbot developed by OpenAI, was the fastest growing app in history. But this achievement, as sudden and remarkable as it might seem, was simply the most recent chapter in a fascinating story that has been unfolding for almost s...
Donald Trump and the Death Penalty - Clive Stafford Smith
One of the first executive orders issued by President Trump in January was EO 14164 designed to “restore the death penalty”, though actually aimed at far more (including making the prison conditions of those commuted by Biden reflect the “monst...
From Mars with Love: Postcards from 50 Years of Exploring The Red Planet - Chris Lintott
During the fifty years since the launch of the Viking spacecraft to Mars, our view of the red planet has changed from hostile desert to a world which was once covered in water, and which may just possibly sustain life. Lavishly illustrated with...
Life, Death and Judgement in the Art and Times of Hieronymus Bosch (d. 1516) - Sophie Oosterwijk
This lecture looks at the 'surreal' art of the Early Netherlandish painter Jheronimus Bosch within its historical and cultural context. Although Bosch’s terrifying visions of sin, death, and the hereafter may appear surreal today, especially hi...
Hecate: Mistress of Magic - Ronald Hutton
Hecate started as the ruling goddess of the Asian region of Caria, and got taken over by the Greeks as the only one able to operate in every realm of the cosmos. This then gave her special responsibility for travellers, doorways and restless gh...
Where Is China Heading under Xi Jinping? - Steve Tsang
In this lecture, Tsang examines the strategic goals and direction of travel China’s supreme leader, Xi Jinping, has set for the country and its people. He highlights what China’s new de facto state ideology Xi Jinping Thought is in order to exp...
The Later Years: Organisation, Independence and Peace of Mind - Sir Peter Thornton KC
How should we get organised for our later years? With just a little preparation while we are fit and healthy, we can express our wishes for more difficult times. There are simple and positive options to be followed. Not just a will and lasting ...
Why Do We Laugh? - Robin May
Laughter is an incredibly powerful and yet mysterious emotion. We laugh with delight, but also surprise. We laugh at jokes, but also at embarrassment. Why? What subconscious signal is laughter intended to display? Why do we laugh when someone t...
The Shape of Plants: Why Plants Love Mathematics and Mathematicians Love Plants - Alain Goriely
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/Lv5h-Pp1r6sLooking at the plant world, one discovers beautiful and fascinating structures in the shape and arrangement of leaves, stems and roo...
Becoming AI – Your Journey to Assimilation? - Matt Jones
Wittgenstein wrote: “If a lion could talk, we would not understand it”. That is, as lions and humans are not of the same material, they could not say anything meaningful to each other. AI is not like us; the only way we can have a relationship ...
Limitarianism and Capitalism - Ingrid Robeyns
Limitarianism holds that it is immoral to have personal wealth above a certain level. Is this idea compatible with capitalism? Defenders of capitalism have argued that it is not, whereas those who want to move beyond capitalism have urged defen...
Do Not Resuscitate Forms - Who’d Have One? - Mark Taubert
In this lecture, Mark Taubert, who chairs the national DNACPR policy for Wales, and is a palliative care clinician, reviews current practices. He will encourage you to consider your own end of life care advance care plan, and attempt to write d...
The Great God Pan: Lord of the Wild - Ronald Hutton
Pan started as a shepherds’ god in a wild and backward area of Greece, but became one of the best-known in the Greek and Roman world. This was partly because the leading city of Athens imported him as a saviour, and partly because he came to re...
Minor Criminal: The Trial of the Man Who Murdered My Grandmother - Lord Daniel Finkelstein
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/oQeUePfTrEQThe Royal Historical Society Colin Matthew Memorial Lecture.In April 1945, British forces liberated the Bergen-Belsen concent...
China’s Economic Prospects on the Cusp - George Magnus
China has important islands of technological excellence, even dominance, but these islands exist in a sea of macroeconomic imbalances and headwinds. Xi Jinping is adamant that by focusing on technology, and other aspects of national security, C...
Ocean: The Liquid Engine That Dominates Our Planet
We often talk about living on a blue planet, but when we think we’re talking about the ocean we’re generally only discussing what’s in it: fish, whales, pollution and ships. But that is to miss the biggest story on Earth, because it’s the water...
Music of Animals - Milton Mermikides
Do animals make music? Are the languages of whales and birds truly songs? To answer this, we must first understand what we mean by music as human animals—and how it might emerge across the animal kingdom. From Messiaen’s transcriptions of bird ...
The Economics of Work and Technology - Daniel Susskind
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/v0RoRG2YA-0Why has automation anxiety – the fear that new technologies cause mass unemployment – proven wrong over the centuries? This lecture e...
Whither War; Whither the Law of War - Professor Sir Geoffrey Nice KC
How might we change the way we – and all our leaders think – so that we never go to war? The war between Russia and Ukraine, as well as the conflict in Gaza, have galvanised thinking about, and action by, the bodies administering, t...
From Tyranny to Athenian Democracy - Melissa Lane
When – and how – did Athenian democracy begin? There is no unambiguous answer to this question. This lecture explores one plausible origin: the popular uprising in 508 BCE overthrowing foreign invaders (who had previously expelled an Athenian-b...
China and Chineseness: Lessons from the Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan - Steve Tsang
This lecture is about the meaning of China and being Chinese. It examines critically how the Chinese state, under the control of the Communist Party defines them. It highlights the historical reality that the Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong and Tai...
War's Toxic Legacy - Ian Mudway
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/3LrIEG26m78War's environmental legacies disproportionately burden the civilian populations left behind. While research focuses on combatant exposures, civilians face chronic contamination...
How Does Mathematics Last? Heritage and Heritage-making in Mathematics - Caroline Ehrhardt
How is mathematical knowledge recorded and preserved across generations? Contrary to the idea that mathematics itself is somehow ‘permanent’, in this talk we will explore heritage-making in mathematics, that is the people, institutions, and mat...
Evoking Empathy through Animal Portraiture
The natural world faces unprecedented threats, challenging historical perceptions of nature as inexhaustible. Photographer Tim Flach draws on his acclaimed works, including Endangered, More Than Human, and Birds, to reveal how photography trans...
Why Do We Fear? - Robin May
Fear is one of the earliest emotions to have evolved. Most vertebrates – and possibly some invertebrates – show fear when they are threatened. At its most core, fear keeps us alive, helping us flee from predators or avoid dangerous environments...
Hitler, Jesus & How to Win a Culture War - Alec Ryrie
Since 1945 Hitler and the Nazis have been the Western world’s one fixed moral reference point: the way we know what evil is. But that consensus has always been more fragile than it felt, and now it is unravelling. This lecture will trace how we...
How It Ends: What We Know about the Fate of the Universe - Chris Lintott
How will it all end? Predicting the far future of our Universe depends on understanding its present. This lecture starts with what seems to be a paradox in modern cosmology: that we have a model that does a fantastic job of explaining what we s...
AI Will Be Your Overlord: Faster, Brighter, Better Than You?
“Scary”, “Worried”, “Dangerous” were some of the most frequent words to describe AI in a recent UK Government public survey. Do you fear, as many do, that AI will lead to us becoming second-class entities? In this first lecture, we will explore...
Shakespeare’s Musical Fairies - Dominic Broomfield-McHugh
Written in the era of the founding of Gresham College, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream portrays the hypnotic dreaminess of a fairy world in which the real and the fantastic are blurred. This lecture explores how the innate musicality of...
Lessons from Guantánamo Bay - Clive Stafford Smith
This lecture looks at the evolution of Guantánamo Bay, first as a focal point of Haitian immigration in 1991 (Gitmo 1.0), to the more famous detention of terror suspects in 2002 (Gitmo 2.0), and back to immigration in 2025. We will explore how ...
The Shape of Hands: Symmetry, Chirality and Handedness - Alain Goriely
The reflection of my right hand in a mirror is a left hand that looks similar yet is very different from the right. Many natural structures such as proteins, climbing vines, and seashells exhibit the same property known as chirality. Some of th...
Earth – Our Planetary Life Support System - Professor Helen Czerski
Planet Earth is an intricate and interconnected system, with some fundamental rules that we usually ignore. But we are part of our planet, not separate to it or just perched on top of it. This lecture will consider the two primary rules of Eart...
Automation Anxiety - Daniel Susskind
Ever since modern economic growth began three centuries ago, people have suffered from periodic bursts of anxiety about the technologies of the time taking on the work that they do. This opening lecture explores the history of ‘automation anxie...
Galileo’s Journey to the Underworld: The Case for Interdisciplinary Thinking - Sarah Hart
ttps://x.com/GreshamCollege Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/tv554JY9TPUIn 1588, the young Galileo delivered some lectures that we...
A World Remade by Decolonization? - Martin Thomas
The lecture shares perspectives from global history, comparative politics, and international relations to revaluate whether the twentieth-century collapse of European colonialism was as definitive as often portrayed. It suggests that, while in ...
Oil, Decolonisation, and the Future of the Climate Emergency - Adam Hanieh
Decolonisation movements sought to win sovereignty and control over national resources, especially oil. This lecture explores oil’s influence on national independence struggles, from the 1955 Bandung Conference to the rise of OPEC and the natio...
Shanawdithit: A Woman at the End of the World - Julia Laite
Shanawdithit was a woman who bore witness to the death of her world in the early nineteenth century, creating the only first-hand account we have of the Beothuk people from the Island of Newfoundland. This lecture seeks to narrate the his...
Outsmart the System: How Psychology Hacks Your Money Decisions - Raghavendra Rau
Ever feel like the financial world works against you? This lecture discusses "behavioral finance" – how our brains get tricked by money matters. We will explore how to use these insights to your advantage, navigate conflicts of interest with fi...
Democracy and International Criminal Justice in the Fragile World of the Rule of Law - Howard Morrison
The lecture will examine the pros and cons of democracy in today's world, focusing on the importance of domestic and international rule of law to maintain democratic ideals, which are fragile in times of conflict. There will be examples given, ...
The Future of Health - Chris Whitty
Health over the last 150 years in the UK and internationally has been transformed and this rapid rate of change will continue. Improvements in public health and the shifting demographic structure are altering the trajectory and frequency of dis...
Sum Stories: Equations and their Origins - Robin Wilson
How long is the coastline of Britain? What is a rhombicuboctahedron? Which US president proved Pythagoras’s theorem? These and many other intriguing questions will be addressed in this lecture on renowned mathematical equations and their histor...
The Deceived Brain: Coding and Illusion - Alain Goriely
We perceive the world through the processing of information given by our senses. Sometimes, this processing is faulty leading to illusions: shapes or sounds that we perceive differently from their physical reality. These illusions have delighte...
The Future of Immunity - Robin May
Our understanding of the human immune system today is vastly different from that of 50 years ago. This knowledge has led to immune-based therapies that would have seemed like science fiction to our grandparents: monoclonal antibodies, T-cell th...
Remixing the Music of the Spheres - Milton Mermikides and Chris Lintott
This is the fifth and final lecture from the Gresham Festival of Musical Ideas.https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/series/musical-ideas-2025Professors Linto...
The Virtues of Music - Milton Mermikides and Melissa Lane
This is the third lecture from the Gresham Festival of Musical Ideas.https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/series/musical-ideas-2025This dialogue presents the...
Climbing Mount Groove: Music and Dance in the Brain - Milton Mermikides and Morten Kringelbach
This is the second lecture from the Gresham Festival of Musical Ideas.https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/series/musical-ideas-2025Why does a rhythm make us...
The Evolution of Music - Milton Mermikides and Robin May
This is the first lecture from the Gresham Festival of Musical Ideas.https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/series/musical-ideas-2025Musical instruments have b...
The Maths of Music (and the Music of Maths) - Milton Mermikides and Sarah Hart
This is the fourth lecture from the Gresham Festival of Musical Ideas.https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/series/musical-ideas-2025Professors Sarah Hart and...
Architecture of Enslavement, Colonialism and Independence: The Story of James Fort in Accra - Elsie Owusu
Accra’s James Fort is an iconic monument for Ghana and modern Africa. This lecture explores the fort's evolution -from its role as a trading post in the early European-African encounters, through its significance during the trans-Atlantic trade...
The Operatic Showstopper: ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ - Dominic Broomfield-McHugh
This lecture considers ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ from Carousel (1945). Perhaps Rodgers and Hammerstein’s most operatic song, it was originally written for Metropolitan Opera star Christine Johnson but has gone on to be recorded by artists as di...
Carbon Takeback: How We Will Stop Fossil Fuels from Causing Global Warming - Myles Allen
We have to stop fossil fuels from causing global warming – before the world stops using fossil fuels. There’s only one solution: safe and permanent disposal of one tonne of carbon dioxide for every tonne still generated by burning fossil fuels....
Do Computers Get Sick? How Humans and Computers Fight Viruses - Robin May & Victoria Baines
Whether you are human or computer, viruses can ruin your day, so taking steps to avoid them is important. This lecture will ask whether there are similarities between human immunity and computer immunity? Can we use discoveries in one system to...
Illuminating the Dark Side of the Moon - Milton Mermikides
Now over 50 years old, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon remains the perfect example of a concept album. Blending cyclical forms, jazz and modal harmony, experimental electronics, multi-layered guitars, studio techniques and haunting lyrics, t...
Lawgivers in Modern Revolutions - Melissa Lane
How have lawgivers featured in modern revolutions? This lecture considers key moments in revolutions, including seventeenth-century Britain, eighteenth-century France and (what would become) the United States, and twentieth-century Iran. The ap...
Taking the Constitution into the Classroom - Clive Stafford Smith
The U.S. Constitution had to be formed through debate before it could be ratified. Mirroring this, a British constitution must emerge through debates held by the next generation. This lecture indicates schools are a good environment to foster t...
A New Sky - Chris Lintott
The JWST is the most expensive and powerful telescope astronomers have ever constructed. Its launch in 2021 started a new phase in our exploration of the cosmos, with the observatory's golden mirrors producing instantly iconic images of the Sol...
Blind Spots & Bad Decisions: Why We Fall for Financial Traps - Raghavendra Rau
Why do smart people make dumb financial choices? This lecture explores the surprising link between our psychology and money mistakes. We will see how fear, overconfidence, and even our desire to be liked can cloud our judgment, especially when ...
The Moral Case for Stealing Data - Victoria Baines
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/hLBfAVyeMBsThroughout history, authorities have struggled to manage individuals’ urges to speak out against injustice and malpractice. IT has gi...
From Thin Air: Minimalist and process music from Africa to Arvo Pärt - Milton Mermikides
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/3ntebbsM4HwThis lecture delves into musical forms which rely on the most economical of materials and concepts. From Steve Reich’s adoption of rh...
Modern Pagan Witchcraft - Ronald Hutton
This lecture was recorded by Ronald Hutton on 14th May 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London.Ronald is the Gresham Professor of Divinity.He is also Professor of History at the University of Bristol and a Fellow of the British Acade...
From Machiavelli to Nietzsche: How Modern Thinkers Saw Ancient Lawgivers - Melissa Lane
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/VOGzTymAYnoFor many modern thinkers, the lawgiver has been important as a founder or re-founder of civic identity and cultural values. From Mach...
The Troubled Brain: Ageing and Dementia - Alain Goriely
Diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s are devastating neurological conditions that typically occur at old age and lead to systematic dementia and debilitating symptoms. The underlying mechanisms of these diseases are poorly understood. Ye...
Divine Law, Human Prophet: Moses in Hebrew and Greek - Melissa Lane
This lecture was recorded by Melissa Lane on 6th March 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London.Melissa Lane is Gresham Professor of Rhetoric.Melissa is also the Class of 1943 Professor of Politics, Princeton University and is also As...
Does Net Zero Mean the End of Livestock Agriculture? - Myles Allen
This lecture was recorded by Myles Allen on 29th April 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London.Myles is the Frank Jackson Foundation Professor of the Environment.Myles is also is currently Director of the Oxford Net Zero ...
What Rights and Duties are Missing from the U.S. Constitution? - Clive Stafford Smith
This lecture was recorded by Clive Stafford Smith on 10th April 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London.Clive is the Gresham Professor of LawHe is the founder and director of the Justice League a non-profit human rights trainin...
The 2025 Annual Lord Mayor's Event - Alastair King
This lecture was recorded by Alderman Alastair King on 14th April 2025 at Guildhall, London.Alastair King is the 696th Lord Mayor of the City of LondonHis civic responsibilities began when he was first elected as Common Councill...
How Does Surveillance Work? - Victoria Baines
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/Y9JR7El863kOur alert systems for identifying safety and security threats have evolved over time. As the threat from wild animals diminished, the...
Why Are Cities Going Bankrupt? - Martin Daunton
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/G_SpC_BV4jAIn the late nineteenth century, Joseph Chamberlain transformed Birmingham with municipal enterprise and urban improvement, but in the...
Modern Druids - Ronald Hutton
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/qz9a4zXIFz0The ancient Druids have long represented some of the most striking and controversial figures in ancient and medieval literature. In t...
How Do Vaccines Work? - Robin May
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/PcNoOjT30VYVaccination has changed the world, saving millions of lives and enabling us to eradicate a lethal disease for the first time in human...
Asteroid Adventures - Chris Lintott
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/H8nG29pO_y4Asteroids were for years considered 'celestial vermin' - objects which got in the way of more interesting fodder for astronomers. Now...
The LGBT+ Showstopper: ‘I Am What I Am’ - Dominic Broomfield-McHugh
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/-TsWDdeQK34Composed by Jerry Herman of Hello, Dolly! fame, ‘I Am What I Am’ first appeared in the Broadway musical La Cage aux Folles (1983). As...
Documentary Photography in Apartheid South Africa - Tamar Garb
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/9tcRtGh7hkMThis lecture looks at debates and dialogues that characterise realist photography in Apartheid South Africa (1948-1994) examining the...
Just Ask The Axis: Jimi Hendrix unpicked - Milton Mermikides
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/rKoYL4yrNsgDespite being cited as one of the most creative and influential guitarists of all time, and his tragically short life, Jimi Hendrix’s...
The Case for Basic Income - Guy Standing
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/cjJSWgvHZKwThis lecture puts forth the ethical and economic case for a basic income, enabling financial security and therefore a better qu...
The Turbulent Brain: Rhythms and Waves - Alain Goriely
Despite its quiet appearance, the brain is the seat of complicated wave dynamics. Indeed, cognitive processes are carried out through communications between neurons, leading to synchronisation and oscillations at different frequencies that can ...
Banned Books and Freedom of Expression - Rachel Potter
The right to free expression is severely threatened in many places in the world, yet it has also never been so passionately defended. This lecture focuses on the recent history of banned literature. It considers the changing nature of literary ...
Trust Issues: When Financial "Experts" Have Other Plans - Raghavendra Rau
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/0jSUfa0LQAoThis lecture examines agency problems in various relationships, including between investors and fund managers, and within financial i...
Carbon Offsetting: Does It Really Work? - Myles Allen
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/MB73qh4pIYMOffsets, politely called carbon credit markets, are essential to many net-zero strategies, yet remain highly controversial. The...
Is the First Amendment the greatest right of all? - Clive Stafford Smith
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/W5EKhMWdjP4In this lecture we will discuss a hierarchy of rights. Is the American First Amendment the most important of all, given its five foun...
The Biggest Cosmic Map - Chris Lintott
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/TRCkgDWKTdYMapping the stars is, perhaps, the oldest of astronomical pursuits, but it has been perfected by the European Space Agency's Gaia mis...
Data: A Love Story for the Ages - Victoria Baines
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/7mW52bW23goIt has become something of a cliché to say that data is the new oil. That isn’t the full story. For centuries it has proved itself to...
The Return of the Horned God - Ronald Hutton
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/IAilwM_WdbIUntil the nineteenth century, the favourite ancient pagan gods in Western culture were those related to human qualities and activitie...
Green Immunity – How Do Plants Fight Infection? - Robin May
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/Et8_myknHq8Most of us rarely think about plant immunity. But, like us, plants can distinguish between different pathogens, trigger a ‘bespoke’ i...
Unwritten Laws? Legacies from Antigone and Lycurgus - Melissa Lane
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/gQdabAQT3JwSophocles’ Antigone refers to “unwritten laws,” as does Thucydides’ Pericles. From the late fifth century BCE, the idea that laws are...
The Value of Public Space - Liza Fior
As we navigate towns and cities, public spaces are all around us. These offer a respite from our often-busy routines. Public spaces are more than just the leftover areas between buildings; they depend on how interests are designed and negotiate...
The UK’s Generational Wealth Gap - Mike Brewer
The UK's income inequality has remained stable since the 1990s, but household wealth has nearly doubled, mainly driven by soaring house prices. This has widened the wealth gap between generations, with younger people less likely to own homes. F...
Why Does Britain Have a Water and Sewage Crisis? - Martin Daunton
The discharge of raw sewage into rivers, and the financial problems of major water companies, have become serious political and social concerns for the public. British cities have faced similar challenges in the past, most notoriously with the ...
The Hidden Risks of "I Know Something You Don't" - Raghavendra Rau
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/7pvF4FdbYWUThis lecture explores how information asymmetry leads to adverse selection and moral hazard, with a focus on their presence in financ...
Is Your Money Safe? Unveiling Hidden Conflicts in Finance - Raghavendra Rau
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/gWJmpSO4WZIFinance involves a group of people attempting to make rational decisions on valuation, but people are complicated. People can be self...
The Connected Brain: Network and Communication - Alain Goriely
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/bKMV8i9Mq40The brain is mostly organised in small modular regions connected to each other. Typically, each region performs different cognitive t...
Breaking the Fourth Wall of Sound: The Paradox of Screen Music - Milton Mermikides
Sound and music hold a strange and powerful role in film, TV and video games, aiding narrative and emotional impact. They can even exist in the world of ‘the film’ – heard by the characters – or in the world of the audience. Music can even brea...
‘Is it in Pevsner?’: A Short History of the ‘Buildings of …' Series - Charles O'Brien
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/LUyFLOUi-D4This lecture traces the history of this famous series by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, starting from its conception in 1947. It describes the...
Writing Laws: Hammurabi to Solon - Melissa Lane
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/t6kkq6dI6hcWhen and why do written laws emerge in ancient societies? This lecture will consider these questions in light of evidence including t...
Touching the Sun - Chris Lintott
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/pXoU-nZmhn8Despite its familiarity, the Sun is a very different presence from the friendly yellow circle in children's paintings. Our star is a ...
Science-based Targets, Greenwashing and Brownscraping: Net Zero in the Private Sector - Myles Allen
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/lQBdqGrfWKUOver half the world’s largest companies have a net zero strategy. But what stops “Science-based Targets” from becoming box-ticking ex...
Writing a British Constitution - Clive Stafford Smith
Recently, the UK has got into a muddle over how to approach Scottish independence and Brexit. What can we learn from the U.S. which took much of its system from the theory behind the U.K. structure: the King as the Executive; a Legislature made...
The Modern Goddess - Ronald Hutton
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/0ZK1Y1QnFDgThis looks at how and why a particular form of the non-Christian divine feminine came to take over the Western European imagination f...
Who’s Afraid of Robots? - Victoria Baines
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/d6Ao4KmGXBcArtificial Intelligence is a very recent invention…or is it? Humans have been fascinated by intelligent machines for thousands of years. Some exist only in our collective imagi...
Women at the Piano: A History Through Images - Marina Frolova-Walker
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/f6Z9L2dnxSAThis lecture explores the emergence of the "femme au piano" genre in 19th-century French painting, depicted by artists like Ren...
The US Constitution: A Catalogue of Complaints about Britain - Clive Stafford Smith
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/wpF0oB9Mz-0The US Constitution, both in its structural element and the Bill of Rights, reflect a catalogue of colonial complaints about the Brit...
How Does Our Immune System Protect Us? - Robin May
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/JCTgxcPu78IThe human immune system rivals the brain in its complexity. Billions of cells coordinate their activity with amazing precision to pro...
Who's Minding the Store? Corporate Rules to Align Interests - Raghavendra Rau
This lecture will explore corporate governance mechanisms designed to address agency problems, including executive compensation, boards of directors, and shareholder activism. Additionally, it will examine how solutions addressing one agency pr...
Unwrapping Irving Berlin’s "White Christmas" - Dominic Broomfield-McHugh
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/LW0DLhTxfCEThis festive lecture explores the unusual roots of the song ‘White Christmas’ and its role in establishing the concept of the commerc...
Magical Mystery Tour: The Invention of The Beatles - Milton Mermikides
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/VeJxEXZfT2YThis lecture analyses the ‘psychedelic era’ of the Beatles, from Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band to Let it Be, a period of stagg...
Much Ado About Numbers: Shakespeare’s Mathematical Life and Times - Rob Eastaway
Shakespeare lived in a period of exciting mathematical innovations, from arithmetic to astronomy, and from probability to music. Remarkably, many of those innovations are mentioned, or at least hinted at, in his plays. Rob Eastaway will explore...
Messaging and Signals - Victoria Baines
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/pP3FzqYcMOAWe communicate when we have information to share. The development of signals from signs visible over short distances to wireless tran...
Houston, we have a problem: how the fossil fuel industry is risking our future - Myles Allen
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/6hEOINeTYTUAs the leaders of the oil and gas industry flew into Houston for CERAWeek, 2024, oil was over $80 per barrel and demand higher ...
Black Holes and Bangs - Chris Lintott
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/dvvOi_nUCRMSpace itself is wobbly. We exist on a choppy sea, its surface roiled by disturbances caused by the movements of black holes hundreds ...
How Inequality Affects Mental Health - Lade Smith
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/UzxyNc8vuNsTraditional risk factors for mental illness include genetics, perinatal factors, substance use, negative life events, trauma and orga...
Saints & Liars: The Stories of Americans Who Saved Endangered People from the Nazis - Debórah Dwork
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/Tt_xU005mikThis Lecture unveils the hidden history of Americans who risked their lives to save others during WWII. These intrepid people travell...
Why believe in Conspiracy Theories? - Peter Knight
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/EyU7TCE1QJQWith Brexit, the US presidential election and the Covid pandemic, conspiracy theories now seem to be everywhere. It’s commonly argued...
The Ancient History of Computers and Code - Victoria Baines
What links an ancient shipwreck to the textile mills of Northern England? Both contained forerunners of the computing we use today. Computer language and software also have a long history, featuring military research and the repurposing of earl...
The Convoluted Brain: Wrinkles and Folds - Alain Goriely
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/_Q_30OIPzXwThe human brain has a very distinct and complex appearance with valleys and ridges folding over themselves. The same convolutions are found in large mammals, but not in smaller...
The Health Gap: Achieving Social Justice in Public Health - Michael Marmot
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/leCxdECjyDMReducing health inequalities is a matter of social justice. Strategies must address the social gradient in health, and efforts should extend beyond healthcare to address ...
Why Writing Women Back into History Matters - Janina Ramirez
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/IJT3B9WZntcRediscovering remarkable historical figures such as the Birka Warrior Woman, Hildegard of Bingen, and King Jadwiga offers a fresh perspective to understand an era often dismiss...
The Origins of Modern Paganism - Ronald Hutton
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/sYqJomnunFgThe deeper exploration of Paganism begins with its roots in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, and the question of how ancient paganism was regarded then. It considers the mains...
Does the UK have a Water Crisis? - Carolyn Roberts
The management of water supplies, flooding and water pollution in the UK is currently the subject of great controversy, and public interest has never been higher. Following a short introduction by Professor Carolyn Roberts, this focused day wil...
Is Trump the same Nixon in 1968? - Luke A. Nichter
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/D3Lz-M1P9VkThe 1968 Presidential Election remains the most divisive in modern U.S. history, with Democrat Hubert Humphrey, Republican Richard Nixon, and independent George Wallace at the ...
What is a Puzzle Canon? The Divine Trickery of J.S. Bach - Milton Mermikides
Behind the sublime precision and expressive power of Bach’s music lies a mischievous spirit. From puzzle canons (where the performer must solve a riddle to reach the score), melodies that run upside-down and backwards against themselves, hidden...
Why Does Britain Have a Housing Crisis? - Martin Daunton
This lecture was recorded by Martin Daunton on 22nd October 2024 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London.Martin is Visiting Professor of Economic History.Martin was also Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, between 2004 and 2014, and ...
The Sondheim Showstopper: ‘Send in the Clowns - Dominic Broomfield McHugh
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/gtCsGQ14nU0This lecture examines ‘Send in the Clowns’, probably the most commercially successful song written by the revered Stephen Sondheim. Yet it confounds the expectations of a shows...
How do we secure Europe? - Catherine Ashton
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/YltPv0VUFgQWith the ongoing war in Ukraine, long-term planning for security in Europe is essential. What will be the role of NATO, EU enlargement, and the support of the UK to ensur...
Is the Public Lecture Dead? - Martin Elliott
Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/wiAFxEnq8t4Gresham College has been delivering public lectures since 1597 through times of great social, political and technological change. Its commitment to deliver lectures for f...
Do Microbes have Immune Systems? - Robin May
Watch the Q&A session here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDRNuI4VwmkWe often think of immunity as being a human, or at least mammalian, phenomenon. But in fact almost all living organisms have some form of immune system. In this ...
How to raise the Net Zero conversation - Myles Allen
Watch the Q&A session here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKaTcobzidkIn a year of elections, climate change is emerging as a divisive political issue, and in many countries for the first time. This may be partly a consequence of p...
Were Laws created by Greek Legends? - Melissa Lane
While Lycurgus of Sparta and Solon of Athens are now the best-known lawgivers of Greek antiquity, there were many others, from king Minos in Crete to Zaleucus and Charondas in southern Italy. This lecture explores the specific roles attributed ...
Human Rights Law: Bringing Power to the Powerless - Clive Stafford Smith
This first lecture looks at the power that is given to advocates in a country that has a constitutional structure like the US. I have brought The American Constitution powers an American lawyer in ways unavailable to the British. I will i...
What is Modern Paganism? - Ronald Hutton
What is modern Paganism, and how does it relate to witchcraft, Druidry and other phenomena? This lecture is designed to answer that question, and in doing so to provide an overview of the different traditions that make up Paganism today. It wil...
Does having a big brain make your smarter? - Alain Goriely
Watch the Q&A session here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFCDvsq6N5gFor centuries scientists have tried to identify what is special about the human brain. How do we approach this problem from a mathematical standpoint? The first ...
A Mirror in the Sky - Chris Lintott
The first lecture in the series considers the most famous telescope of all, the Hubble space telescope. A project more than forty years in the making, Hubble overcame an initial disaster with a misshapen mirror to drive a revolution in every pa...
The Stories We Make Up & The Stories That Make Us - Bernardine Evaristo OBE
Many decades ago, as a young graduate from drama school, I was presented with a stark choice – either to shape my story myself, through writing, or to feel aggrieved at the detrimental narratives circulating about people like me in Britain at t...
Does the UK Constitution need reform? - Charles Falconer PC, KC
The Gray's Inn Reading 2024Does the UK’s constitution provide too much freedom for those that wish to abuse it? Specific examples of this might include Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s lawbreaking during COVID, the selection o...
Plato's Cave: Thinking about Climate Change - Melissa Lane
In The Republic, Plato explores the predicament of the Cave: a passive citizen body, a conniving and self-interested set of sophistic opinion-formers and demagogic political leaders, a systematically misleading and damaging order of political s...
The Bloomsbury Group: A Queer History - Nino Strachey
This lecture will explore the world of the second Bloomsbury generation, delving into the intricacies of being young and queer in the 1920s, and how their open way of living and loving is still relevant to our present day. Lesser known than the...
Are Financial Markets Efficient? - Raghavendra Rau
One of the crucial ideas in finance is that markets are efficient – that they fully reflect all available information. If so, what about market bubbles?Over the last year, people have been willing to pay exorbitant amounts for extremely ...
Witch-Hunting in European and World History - Ronald Hutton
This lecture confronts the worldwide phenomenon of the persecution of suspected witches, now a serious, contemporary problem condemned by the UN in 2021.It will show what has been unusual about Europe in this global pattern, and why the ...
A Mathematician's View of Proof - Sarah Hart
The idea of proof is fundamental to mathematics. We could argue that science consists of testable theories, and therefore that it is about what can be disproved, not what can be proved. In law, the test is “beyond reasonable doubt”.Famou...
Experts in politics: Lessons from Socrates and Aristotle - Melissa Lane
Socrates sought to test the expertise of everyone around him: the bombastic know-it-alls, the bashful youths, the confident generals, those (including the enslaved) with unsuspected mathematical competence, the workaday artisans. Aristotle late...
First light: Revealing the Early Universe - Chris Lintott
The final lecture in the series returns to the theme of how insight is derived from observations, considering the cosmic microwave background.This oldest light in the Universe, emitted just 400,000 years after the Big Bang, contains the ...
Race, Disability & Education: Law's Uphill Battle - Leslie Thomas KC
This lecture traces the history of race and disability law in the English education system. It examines the impact of discriminatory policies on Black children, children of colour, and disabled children, and how narratives around race and disab...
Logarithms: Mobile Phones, Modelling & Statistics?
Logarithms were perhaps once thought of as just an old-fashioned way to do sums on slide rules. But they underpin much of modern life, from modelling the COVID pandemic to Claude Shannon’s mathematical theory of information (which makes mobile ...
A Just and Inclusive Net Zero: Who should get there first? - Myles Allen
Eventually, net zero needs to include everyone: for emissions to continue in half the world while the other half mops them up is both unsustainable and unfair. But this does not mean every country should reach net zero at the same time.H...
Asymmetric Information in Finance Explained - Raghavendra Rau
In every financial transaction, one side has more information than the other. For example, when someone buys a used car, the seller will know better than the buyer whether the car is a plum or a lemon. Does more information leave you better off...
Is Music Infinite? - Milton Mermikides
This lecture explores the very limits of music: investigating historical efforts to catalogue musical materials including the melacarta of Carnatic music, the wazn of Arabic maqam, Slonimsky’s Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns, Schilling...
Twentieth-Century Divas: Julie Andrews - Dominic Broomfield-McHugh
Starring in My Fair Lady (1956), The Sound of Music (1965) and Cinderella (1957) gave Dame Julie Andrews unparalleled profile.These were among the most successful Broadway, Hollywood and TV musicals of their time. Yet following this gold...
Health after Extreme Cold, Heat, Storms and Floods - Professor Sir Chris Whitty
Weather and climate-related events can cause significant mortality and disability.Sudden cold, heat, storms and floods all present risks to health, especially to the most vulnerable. Even in countries with temperate climates like the UK,...
How to Prove 1=0, And Other Maths Illusions - Sarah Hart
In this lecture I will show you some mathematical illusions: “proofs” that 1=0, that fractions don’t exist, and more. There are curious and important implications behind what’s going on.These “proofs” reveal some very common logical slip...
Evolution Tomorrow and Beyond - Robin May
Evolution has led from amoebae to blue whales and from algae to giant redwoods. So what might it do in the future? What species might evolve in the next ten million years? How will evolutionary processes change as a result of human ...
The Next Fifty Years of Tech - Dr Victoria Baines
Come take a ride in the Tech Time Machine and explore how IT may change our lives in the next fifty years. By employing techniques used by science fiction writers, we can imagine how Artificial Intelligence, extended reality, mobile connectivit...
Musical Consonance and Dissonance: The Good, Bad and Beautifully Ugly - Milton Mermikides
What makes a piece of music challenging, bland, intriguing, beautiful or ugly?This lecture explores the concept of ‘musical flavour’ formed by intervallic, rhythmic and timbral components and how they contribute to a sense of consonance ...
Is it Aliens? The Most Unusual Star In The Galaxy - Chris Lintott
Boyajian's star, a faint and unprepossessing presence in the constellation of Cygnus, attracted astronomers' attention when it began to flicker alarmingly.We will discuss explanations for its behaviour, from disintegrating comets to alie...
The Western Magical Tradition - Ronald Hutton
This lecture makes a survey of learned ceremonial magic in Europe throughout history and demonstrates that both of the customary claims made for it by practitioners since the Middle Ages are actually correct: that there is a continuous traditio...
Locating Queer History - Matt Cook
Queer urban life has changed dramatically in England over the last seventy years. Shifts in the economy, culture, attitudes, and technology have all played their part in this. London has often been used as the barometer for these shifts, sugges...
Refugees: English Law's Protection or Persecution? - Leslie Thomas KC
How are refugees protected in English law?This lecture traces the history of refugee protection, the limits of the Refugee Convention, and changes to the law in recent decades that have made refugees’ lives increasingly difficult. The Go...
The Geopolitical Risks of Climate Change - Myles Allen
Climate Change is predicted to spark increasing threats to food security and demands for climate reparations, fuelling geopolitical instability.Probably the greatest risk of all, is tension over solar geo-engineering: the idea of reflect...
Sustainable Energy in Refugee Camps - Dr Sarah Rosenberg-Jansen
Most of the world’s 102 million forcibly displaced people – refugees – lack access to reliable, affordable, sustainable energy. Attempts to provide such energy in refugee camps have been marred by governance challenges, and a lack of technical ...
What went wrong in Latin America? - Martin Daunton
In the Great Depression, producers of food and raw materials complained that they received low prices and paid high prices for industrial imports. Latin America adopted ‘import substituting industrialisation’ to encourage production behind tari...
Lead: A Toxic Legacy - Dr Ian Mudway
Evidence that childhood lead exposure caused stunted intelligence and behavioural problems motivated efforts to ban lead in petrol, with the world finally eradicating leaded fuel in 2021.This is a public health success story, but it took...
Twentieth-Century Divas: Shirley Bassey - Dominic Broomfield-McHugh
The Black Welsh singer started out recording cover versions of American songbook classics but rose to international fame after her performance of the title song of Goldfinger. Movie songs, successful albums and popular television specials follo...
Artificial Selection: How Humans have Shaped Evolution - Robin May
We often think of evolution as ‘something that happened’ in the past. But of course, evolution is a constant, powerful process and one that is often unleashed by human behaviours.Often this is deliberate, we’ll look at how artificial sel...
Data Protection for Thrillseekers - Dr Victoria Baines
We increasingly share with online services intimate details of our lives, such as mental health and reproductive data. Far from being a ‘tick box’ legal exercise, data protection is about fair and responsible use of our personal information.
The Human Cost of Immigration Detention - Dr Greg Constantine
Governments increasingly use detention as a central component of immigration and asylum policy. The lecture addresses several important questions.What does immigration detention look like? How is it a reflection of those societies that t...
Democracy: Ancient Models, Modern Challenges - Melissa Lane
Demokratia is the power (kratos) of the people (demos). But what kind of power, and who constitutes the people? Although ancient democracy is often stylized as “direct democracy” and so positioned as very different from modern “representative d...
New Hope in Cancer: A Panel Discussion - Dr Richard Sidebottom, Sanjay Popat and James Larkin
In partnership with Novartis Treatments and research in cancer are moving very fast, giving new hope to many.This event will bring together speakers in the series to delve further into new treatments and research in cancer, ...
Modern Concepts of ADHD - Peter Hill
Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a combination of hyperactivity, impulsiveness and inattention which significantly impacts those living with the condition. The medical approach to the ADHD pattern of behaviour has been very su...
Ancient Greek Ideas of Equality under the Law - Melissa Lane
The Nobel Laureate economist Amartya Sen has posed the question, ‘equality of what?’ The value of equality depends on what standard is chosen. As ancient Greek thinkers recognized, equality can be deployed to exclude as well as to liberate, and...
Ritual Nudity in History and Religion - Ronald Hutton
This lecture looks at the role played by nudity in European religion and magic from ancient times to the present, with some reference to a global context.It reveals the unexpected pattern and explains why it has been marginal to religion...
Climate Tipping Points in Oceans, Ice, Forests - Myles Allen
The impacts of climate change that probably worry people the most are irreversible changes that affect the entire world, such as a collapse of the west Antarctic ice sheet, shutdown of the global thermohaline circulation, loss of the Amazon bio...
The Mathematics of Coincidence - Sarah Hart
We regularly hear of amazing coincidences – people winning the lottery twice, or getting a phone call from a long-lost friend just when you were thinking about them. Is this telepathy? Is there a greater power at work when someone survives seve...
Wealth Inequality: English Law's Unintended Legacy? - Leslie Thomas KC
Today, the UK is a deeply unequal society.This lecture critically evaluates the relationship between English law and capitalism and explores how legal changes over the past 30 years, such as deregulating the housing market and weakening ...
Changes in the Concept of Autism - Francesca Happé CBE
Our understanding of autism has changed over the last forty years. Historically, autism was diagnosed based on narrow criteria. Today, while still defined by social and communication difficulties, rigid interests and repetitive beh...
Option Pricing Theory Explained - Raghavendra Rau
We often change our minds after we decide to do something. In finance and business though, if you think you might like to change your mind you will have to pay your counterparty so that your right to change your mind is agreed in a...
The Colour Spectrum of Scales and Modes - Milton Mermikides
A musical scale – a hierarchical collection of pitches spread over multiple octaves – is a fundamental building block in the creation of melodies and harmonies in a wide range of musical practices. But where do these scales come from? Are they ...
Health after Earthquakes, Volcanoes, Tsunamis - Sir Chris Whitty
Major geophysical events such as earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes can occur with little or no warning and have catastrophic effects.This lecture will consider the health impacts of these natural disasters and how best to minimise them...
Immunotherapy: Cure for Metastatic Cancers? - James Larkin
Immunotherapy has brought new hope for curing common cancers that have spread (metastatic) – once regarded as impossible.Over the last 10 years, immune checkpoint inhibitors – drugs that allow the immune system to identify and destroy pr...
Dragons: A History - Ronald Hutton
Why have people believed in dragons, and what were they actually? Is there a difference between Western and Eastern dragons, in a global perspective, and if so, why?Has the Western attitude to dragons changed in the modern era? Did Chris...
Pulsars, Microwave Ovens and the Radio Sky - Chris Lintott
There have been two major revolutions in how we look at the sky - the shift beyond the optical to other wavelengths, particularly the radio, and the increasing attention paid to how objects change over time.We start with the discovery of...
Sex and the Internet - Dr Victoria Baines
The relationship between intimacy and technology is dynamic and transformative. Adult entertainment providers were early adopters of the Internet and directly influenced its development. Meanwhile, digital communication has changed our consumpt...
Dyslexia and Language - Disorder or Difference? - Maggie Snowling CBE
Difficulties with reading and writing have wide-ranging effects beyond academic achievement, including on career opportunities and personal well-being. However, the concept of dyslexia continues to be debated: is the term useful? How does it re...
A 300,000-Year History of Human Evolution - Robin May
The species we recognise as our own - anatomically modern humans - has existed for only 300,000 years, a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. And yet during that time our species has been shaped by strong evolutionary forces, often unwittingl...
Export-Led Growth in the Asian Tiger Economies - Martin Daunton
Why have economies in east Asia been more successful in escaping from under-development and achieving high levels of growth?Japan’s experience of avoiding colonisation and creating a modern economy offered a model to other countries, som...
The Visual Politics of Refugeehood - Nishat Awan
Humanitarian agencies are increasingly relying on satellite imagery and testimonies from social media to understand and communicate why people feel compelled to seek refuge.This lecture will explore digital humanitarianism and the visual...
LGBT Rights: Overcoming a Colonial Legacy - Leslie Thomas KC
Historically lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people have been persecuted under English law.Homophobic and transphobic laws were exported from England to the Commonwealth Caribbean, and these colonial laws have had a long-te...
Mathematical Puzzles and Paradoxes - Sarah Hart
Many puzzles have a long history, such as water pouring puzzles, where you need to measure (for example) one pint of water equipped only with an eight-pint and a five-pint jug. The mathematics behind the solution has many useful applications.
Satirical Cartoons: A History - Martin Rowson
How do cartoons and visual satire operate?This lecture will look at when humans first created art and at the dawn of satire.Examining the work of Swift, Hogarth, Gillray, David Low and Ronald Searle, this lecture by celebrated car...
Capital Structure Theory Explained - Raghavendra Rau
Knowing what the investors demand enables the firm to plan its financing. What type of instrument should it use? Should it issue debt or equity?This lecture will introduce the concept of Capital Structure Theory which tells the manager h...
'Oumuamua: Our first interstellar visitor - Chris Lintott
In 2017, the Solar System was visited by an object named 'Oumuamua, which came from another star. The unusual properties of this first interstellar visitor led some to suggest it may be an alien spacecraft - but the truth is that its odd...
How Cancer Genomics is Transforming Cancer Care - Sanjay Popat
Using lung cancer as a case study, this lecture will explore the transformative impact of genomics on personalised cancer treatment.What are the challenges of implementing tumour sequencing in routine care, its effect on drug development...
The Art and Science of Tuning - Milton Mermikides
This lecture presents the rich history of musicians’ engagement with pitch.From the tuning systems of Babylon, Pythagoras and Hindustani ragas, through the temperaments of the Baroque and Classical eras and arriving at contemporary elect...
Ancient Greek Ideas of Justice - Melissa Lane
In the poetry of the Athenian lawgiver Solon, justice (dikē) was a boundary stone marking out terms that rich and poor alike could respect. Yet ancient Greek authors also recognised the danger that the powerful will simply exploit those less po...
How is Climate Change Affecting The Weather Now? - Myles Allen
Climate change is already affecting us all, regardless of where we live, through changing risks of extreme weather events. This lecture will take a break from global climate policy to talk about the links between climate and weather, chaos theo...
Why Is There Only One Species of Human? - Robin May
We are the only human species on the planet today. But for most of our history we have not been alone.Fossil and genetic evidence has revealed a diverse and fascinating set of human-like species, from Neanderthals to Denisovans, to Homo ...
The AI Revolution in Cancer Imaging - Dr Richard Sidebottom
AI will be one of the most disruptive technologies, enabling safer, faster and more accurate healthcare. It will unlock smarter cancer imaging and new insights from medical scans that were indiscernible to the human eye.This lecture will...
The Massive Internet of Things
Today, objects in smart cities, outer space, and medical implants in our bodies are connected to the internet.When streetlamps can ‘talk’, when autonomous vehicles safely navigate, and energy and public services can be automatically rou...
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas: Anatomy of a Christmas Classic
This lecture investigates how and why the song ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ has become so popular, transcending its roots in the MGM musical Meet Me in St Louis to become a presence in the canon of secular popular Christmas songs.
Living With the Forever Chemicals
The forever chemicals, or PFAS (Per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances) represent a large family of highly persistent synthetic chemicals widely used in everything from carpets to non-stick cookware, to firefighting foams and furniture texti...
Reducing harms after Nuclear, Radiological and Chemical Incidents
Nuclear, radiological and chemical incidents have the potential to cause major harm.The risk of nuclear and radiological events causing health effects can usually be significantly reduced by relatively simple measures, which are based on...
Abortion: Law's Ethical Dilemma
This lecture delves into the history of abortion in English law, from common law to the Abortion Act 1967.Professor Thomas KC critically examines the current state of abortion law in England, the Commonwealth Caribbean, and recent develo...
Can AI Protect Children online?
Could artificial intelligence be used to tackle online harms to children? What are the specific “solutions” AI could offer – for example, age verification, preventing the sending of intimate images, and stopping the promotion of harmful content...
Iran’s ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ Movement
The death of the Kurdish woman, Jina Mahsa Amini, in September 2022 sparked the largest protests in Iran since the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The protests threaten the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic as a political system...
Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories: Past, Present and Future?
Antisemitism has existed and continues to exist on many levels, from unthinking prejudice to highly developed theories. Common to all levels is an explicit, or more often, implicit belief that all Jews, usually defined in racial terms, are cons...
Why 1.5°C Matters
On the eve of COP28 in Dubai, is the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C still alive? What does this mean and is it even possible?Given warming has reached 1.25°C, increasing at around ¼°C per decade, what happens if we miss our tar...
Human-led AI
Is Artificial Intelligence fundamentally different from previous technological advancements?This lecture will examine the opportunities and threats of the impending AI revolution, asking if AI differs from past technology waves and explo...
The Maths of Sudoku and Latin Squares
Millions of us regularly solve Sudoku puzzles.In this lecture, we discuss the mathematics behind them, and the links to other kinds of number grids, like magic squares and so-called Latin squares, which have been studied for centuries. L...
Connect To Prosper – The Power Of Networks
An annual talk delivered by the President of Gresham College, The Rt Hon the Lord Mayor of the City of London.Cities are networked networks of connectivity and information sharing. They create, often indirectly, communication, transporta...
Random Chance in Evolution
Natural selection acts to ensure the ‘survival of the fittest’. But random chance has also played a huge role in the history of life on Earth, from meteorite strikes to massive earthquakes. Randomness also lies at the core of evolutionary proce...
Reading and Misreading the Iranian Revolution
Why did the Iranian Revolution catch so many in US and UK Governments by surprise in 1978-79? Why were so many enthusiastic about the fall of the Shah? Why did so many Western observers - including Michel Foucault, Fred Halliday, and Edward Sai...
Portfolio Theory and the Capital Asset Pricing Model
Firms hope to get money for their investment decisions from investors. The latest haveto decide how to maximize the returns they get while simultaneously minimizing their risk. This lecture will introduce two key concepts of financial manag...
The Poetry of Prediction: Musical Time, Rhythm and Groove
Music is a temporal art, unfolding like a ribbon and transforming our experience of time itself. This lecture demonstrates how music harnesses our unique and intricate listening faculties creating a complex interplay between sounding events and...
Victorian Era Astronomy: On Land And In the Skies
In the late 19th-century, astronomical research could be practical, using telescopes and spectroscopes, or be based on mathematical reasoning. Astronomers could be professionals or amateurs, and explored the heavens in observatories, on field t...
Shaping Mathematical Practices Of The Science of the Stars
Extant manuscripts, early library catalogues, lists of loans and wills are key witnesses for better understanding the mathematical practices and innovations in different milieux at the end of the Middle Ages. A systematic exploration of those s...
19th-Century Eclipse Expeditions
During the late 19th century, individuals and organizations planned for years in advance to observe a total solar eclipse. These high-stakes astronomical expeditions involved many scientific practitioners whose collective eclipse experience hel...
Pilgrimages, Pandemics and the Past
Between us and the medieval men and women who went on pilgrimage there stand many impediments to understanding: the Reformation, the Enlightenment, secularisation.This lecture will explore how tracing ancient routes on foot, and experie...
Were There Pagan Goddesses in Christian Europe?
This considers a set of superhuman female figures found in medieval and early modern European cultures- Mother Nature, the roving nocturnal lady often called Herodias, the British fairy queen, and the Gaelic Cailleach. None seem to be surviving...
Markets and Marxism: USA, USSR and China
Different models of economic modernity competed during the Cold War.Washington feared that the transition from colonial peasant societies would provide an opening for Marxists, as in Vietnam. But by 1989, the Soviet economic model was i...
Twentieth-Century Divas: Barbra Streisand
Uncompromising control of her career and pursuit of a bold vision have made Barbra Streisand a sometimes controversial figure since her debut in Funny Girl, despite her popularity and many awards. She has been stigmatised for being a powerful w...
The Marvels of the Solar System
Our exploration of the Solar System has revealed a remarkable diversity of landscapes, from the frozen deserts of Mars, which billions of years ago ran with water, to the hellish surface of Venus and the strange hydrocarbon seas of Saturn's lar...
Brain Computer Interfaces
Our brains are computers. What if we could enhance their processing power? Medical technology now allows for brain signals to be read and translated to reverse paralysis. Deep brain stimulation is also used to treat diseases such as Parkinson’s...
Plato and the Idea of Political Office
Is politics merely a gaslighting of the oppressed, a cloak for the rulers to exploit the ruled?Plato’s Republic confronted the challenges of political office (archē). By working through the ideas of this dialogue and comparing them to th...
Iran’s Constitutional Revolution of 1906
Iran’s first revolution in 1906 provided the country with a constitution and parliament, laying the foundations for its political development over the next century. Although overshadowed by the later Islamic Revolution of 1979, it was the Const...
A Small History of Big Evolutionary Ideas
The theory of evolution is often described as the biggest idea in the history of humanity. But evolutionary theory itself has evolved over time, often via landmark contributions from some very unusual characters.This lecture investigates...
Literary Activism in Contemporary Africa
Literature has always played a key role in social and political life in Africa, even when it is not deliberately or obviously activist in its aims or form.African writers like Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Chinua Achebe, Obi Wali and poets Christop...
How AI Disrupts The Law
Artificial Intelligence and Generative AI are changing our lives and society as a whole from how we shop to how we access news and make decisions.Are current and traditional legal frameworks and new governance strategies able to guard ag...
The Maths of Board Games
Why are there chess Grandmasters, but not Grandmasters of noughts and crosses (otherwise known as tic-tac-toe)? It is because chess is “harder” – but what do we really mean by that? Answering that question leads us to develop the i...
Women of the Harlem Renaissance
In the early twentieth century Black creatives were America’s artistic vanguard.In the cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance, African Americans created new platforms to promote their work and learned to navigate white gatekee...
Writing After Windrush
They came, they saw, they felt conquered. Turning to the later works of Samuel Selvon and George Lamming, and the writing of Andrew Salkey, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, and Linton Kwesi Johnson, this lecture will reflect on the aesthet...
Understanding Net Present Value
In finance, everything comes down to promises. When you invest money, questions arise: how profitable will it be down the line, and is it worth investing today? Determining the exact amount of those returns and whether investing is worthwhile c...
The Death Penalty: A Colonial Relic?
This lecture explores the death penalty's roots, its abolition in England and Wales, and its continuation in the Commonwealth Caribbean. Analysing the Privy Council's role in perpetuating this practice, this punishment is examined closely. ...
When Net Zero? The Climate Braking Distance
The accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere determines what global temperature is reached. So, just like a braking distance, future warming is determined by global emissions today, the year we start emission reductions, and the year we...
Microplastics, Public Health Myth or Menace
Microplastics - tiny plastic particles less than 5mm long - were first identified in the ocean but are now known to be ubiquitous throughout the environment, within soil, air food and water. Recently, microplastics have been detected in human b...
Ancient Goddesses of Sex and War
This lecture looks at a series of divine female figures in the ancient world from the Middle East to Western Europe: Inanna, Ishtar, Astarte, Aphrodite and Venus. What they have in common, is that to varying degrees they all combin...
Meet the Cybercriminals
Portrayals of hackers in the movies lead us to believe that cybercriminals are young white males who wear hoodies. The cybercriminal population is actually much more diverse in terms of gender, ethnicity, age, neurodiversity and other aspects. ...
Why Music Moves Us
How is music able to convey and trigger such range and depth of emotion? Why does it elicit joy, sorrow, consolation and the chills? Employing research and theoretical models from neuroscience, psychology and musicology, we examine...
Island Universes: Discovering Galaxies Beyond the Milky Way
The discovery that we live in an ordinary galaxy, one of several hundred billion in the observable Universe, instigated a profound change in thinking about our place in the Universe. This first lecture covers the Great Debate of th...
Where are we with freedom of expression?
In the Annual Gray's Inn Reading, Dame Siobhan Keegan will present a lecture on the legal topic of freedom of expression. A lecture by The Right Hon Dame Siobhan Keegan recorded on 15 June 2023 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London<...
Sir Christopher Wren: Architect & Courtier
Sir Christopher Wren’s success was underpinned by his consummate skill as a courtier, retaining the confidence of four monarchs through social and economic disasters and political revolution. Wren's life at court can be minutely reconstructed a...
Connecting the Dots: Milestones in Graph Theory
Graph theory is the study of connections, as may be seen in the London Underground map with stations linked by rails, or a transportation network with cities linked by roads. Dating back to the 18th century, the subject increasingly took hold i...
How Pagan Was Medieval Britain?
Did paganism survive all through the Middle Ages, as scholars once thought, remaining the religion of the common people, while the elite had embraced Christianity? Or did it die out earlier?This lecture will consider a broad range of evi...
Alan Turing: Pioneer of Mathematical Biology
Alan Turing is well-known for his work on the Enigma code in World War II, and his theoretical work underpinning computer science. But he is less well-known for his pioneering work on one of the great challenges of biology – how do complex livi...
The Risks of Technology in Business
What are the risks of using technological innovations in business?There are risks associated with the crypto world, including custodial risk and economic exploits. There are also regulatory risks with competition from central banks issui...
Sickle Cell Disease: A Cultural History
Sickle Cell Disease can only be understood in the context of racial politics. Predominantly seen in populations of African heritage, the diagnosis and treatment of this disease from the 1920s onwards draws attention to the importan...
The End of the Universe
The Universe is expanding, increasingly so. Will this persist or will it collapse back on itself? If it does expand forever, what happens to the galaxies? What is the long-term trajectory for the ultimate in collapsed matter, black holes?
Populism, Aristotle and Hope
The Annual Sir Thomas Gresham Lecture 2023The period from 1988 to 2003, was one of extraordinary optimism. Every year the number of democracies increased, human rights improved, violent conflict reduced, there were fewer refugees ...
AIDS: A Cultural History
AIDS is an example of a highly stigmatising ailment.This lecture explores Susan Sontag’s aphorism that “metaphors kill”. Focussing on the period before the invention of antiretroviral drugs, the lecture also addresses questions of civil ...
Do We Need the Police?
Since the death of George Floyd in May 2020, some have asked whether we need a police force.This lecture will examine the role and purpose of the police in our society. What do the police do? What is their historical and social context? ...
The Mathematical Vision of Maryam Mirzakhani
In partnership with the London Mathematical Society.The first female Fields Medalist Maryam Mirzakhani, left an astonishing mathematical legacy at her untimely death in 2017. This talk will explain the lasting contributions of her work t...
How the World Agreed on Net Zero
The climate had a bad year in 2009. Talks collapsed. Emails were hacked. And several papers found even 50-80% reductions weren’t enough: we had to get to net zero. Yet six years later, negotiators from 190 countries acknowledged the need for ne...
AI in Business
AI is another major technological innovation. AI needs data, or more precisely, big organized data. Most data processing is about making it useful for automatic systems such as machine learning, deep learning, and other AI systems. But one big ...
Life Without Chords? – Atonal Music
In the early 20th century, the system of tonal harmony started to break down. The vertical accumulations of notes became too complex for our powers of memory and recognition, and some have suggested that this led to a loss of meaning and even h...
Christopher Wren’s Medical Discoveries: the ‘Architect of Human Anatomy’
** Please note that this lecture will contain several mentions of early animal testing which some audience members may find upsetting**Christopher Wren was part of probably the first ‘research team’ assembled in Oxford in the 17th centur...
The Mathematical Life of Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale is the founder of modern nursing and a pioneer of data science and medical statistics. Her innovative use of statistical diagrams helped people see just how many deaths were being caused by poor hygiene in military hospital...
A Microbial Future
Microbes have existed on Earth for almost 4 billion years; 3x as long as multicellular organisms and 1000x longer than humans. So what does the future hold? Will recent advances in genetic engineering enable us to create bacterial ‘drug-deliver...
Diseases of the Heart Structure, Muscle and Valves
The normal heart is very robust. Some people are born with abnormalities of the heart structure. Others acquire damage to the heart valves which become too narrow or unable to close properly. The muscle and linings of the heart may be affected ...
Cybersecurity for Humans
Faceless hackers in hoodies, intergalactic warriors, and technology out of human control: are these representations of cyber threats accurate? And what might be their impact on levels of personal safety and security for organisations?Thi...
Dementia: A Cultural History
Dementia is often designated the “plague” of the twenty-first century. What does a cultural history of dementia reveal about commonly circulating ideas relating to the brain, personhood, embodiment, and normal/abnormal? What difference do “labe...
Women, Islam and Prophecy
The study of ‘Women and Islam’ has expanded exponentially in recent decades.This lecture maps out emerging agendas, for example, the growing interest in women’s role in the transmission of Islamic knowledge and practice. It examines new ...
A History of Barts, Britain's Oldest Hospital
St Bartholomew’s is the oldest hospital in England still operating on its original site and will celebrate its 900th anniversary in 2023.This lecture tells its history, from 1123 to today, via its people, buildings and the events that de...
The Future of Tall Buildings
This lecture will explore the technologies that make tall buildings possible. With the current climate crisis in mind, what is the carbon footprint of a building, and how can it be reduced?Finally, the lecturer will present some recent p...
Finding Lost Gods in Wales
Since the late 19th century, scholars have thought the poetry and stories of medieval Wales, gathered in manuscripts such as the Red Book of Hergest and the Book of Taliesin, represent stories about pagan gods and goddesses – but recently this ...
Architects and Engineers: Making Infrastructure Beautiful
Design excellence should be at the heart of all development. But what makes design good or bad? How can you build in beauty and longevity?Professor Sadie Morgan’s lecture will showcase practical examples where early testing and thinking ...
British Coronations: A History
Why do we crown Kings and Queens? And why has this ancient ritual survived in Britain, uniquely among European countries? What purpose can pomp and pageantry serve in a modern constitutional monarchy? This talk introduces the history of the Bri...
Reclaiming Women in the Hebrew Bible
Since the 1970s feminist bible scholars have been reclaiming the stories of biblical women.From Eve to Esther this lecture will draw on both biblical accounts and cultural representations to bring their stories to life. Whether wives, mo...
Do We Need Criminal law?
What is the role of criminal law in society, and do we need it? How did English criminal law develop? The traditional justifications for criminalisation are retribution, deterrence, containment and control: do they stand up to scrutiny? What ar...
The Trillionth Tonne of Carbon and Why It Matters For Climate Change
When we connect our model of the global carbon cycle to the model of atmosphere-ocean temperatures we find every tonne of CO2 we dump into the atmosphere ratchets up global temperatures, permanently, by around half a trillionth of a degree Cels...
What Is the Role of Nuclear Power in a Net Zero System?
The UK’s nuclear power reactors have provided a significant proportion of the UK’s low carbon electricity over their lifetimes. Most will retire in this decade. Advances in technology mean that modern systems can compete with other forms of low...
Gene Editing: A New Legal Frontier
Gene editing technology gives us the ability to change our DNA – removing, adding and replacing parts of our genetic code. These technologies have been emerging and improving for some decades, but since the development of CRISPR-based editing t...
Endings in the Novel, from Austen and Dickens to Edward St Aubyn and Rachel Cusk
More than anything else, the end matters to the novel reader. Novelists, including Austen and Dickens, sometimes changed their minds about their endings, using these changes of mind to explore how an ending satisfies, or fails to satisfy, our e...
Women Leaders in Early Christianity
Saint Paul’s letters show women playing leading roles in the earliest Christian communities. Yet, by the fourth century, women’s ministry was very limited. Why?In the Roman Empire, women’s roles were limited by the expectation that their...
Famous Chords
In this lecture, we shall explore a colourful collection of chords that have all acquired their own special, non-technical names. We will consider the Neapolitan Chord, that mainstay of Spanish (!) music, the Tristan Chord, The Petrushka Chord,...
Picturesque Engineering: Telford's Highland Roads and Bridges
In partnership with the Fulbright Commission.In 1819, Thomas Telford and Robert Southey went on a six-week tour of the Scottish Highlands to inspect the region’s newly built roads, bridges and canals. What compelled this unlikely duo, th...
Who Benefited from the British Empire?
Who benefited from the British Empire? In the metropole, did it benefit wealthy landed aristocrats and financiers of the City of London, or did the Empire create employment and cheap goods for British workers? What was the impact on different p...
The End of Life on Earth
Astronomically speaking, there are a number of ways in which life on Earth could be wiped out. For example, a giant asteroid could hit Earth with such energy that the oceans are boiled off.This lecture will assess which astronomical even...
Portraits of Native Americans from Pocahontas to Sitting Bull
From 1600 – 1850, artists in England and, later, in North America depicted distinguished Native American tribal leaders, diplomats and warriors to commemorate their significance. Examples include Pocahontas (1617), and nineteenth century Lakota...
Lungs, Gut, and Skin: Biological Interfaces with the Outside World
We interface with our environment via the air we breathe, the food and water we eat and drink, and through physical contact via our skin.This lecture explores how these biological barriers act to protect us against toxins and toxicants, ...
How Microbes Manipulate Life
Every animal on the planet carries with it an astonishingly diverse microbial zoo – millions of invisible organisms that thrive on the skin and in the gut. They play an important role in health and disease and may also shape human emotions and ...
Defeating Digital Viruses: Lessons From the Pandemic
This talk will explore the potential for harnessing the public health framework for addressing online safety and security.Throughout the COVID pandemic, citizens have washed their hands, covered their faces, and maintained a physical dis...
Sleep and Mental Health
In recent years, the links between sleep and mental health have been slowly unravelled. We are beginning to understand that not only does mental health impact sleep, but also that poor sleep has important consequences on our psychology.T...
The Medieval Agricultural Revolution: New Evidence
During the medieval ‘agricultural revolution’, new forms of cereal farming fuelled the exceptionally rapid growth of towns, markets and populations across much of Europe. The use of the mouldboard plough and systematic crop rotation were key de...
Landscapes of Roman Britain
We used to think Roman Britain was a largely untamed natural landscape of woodland with occasional opulent villas representing the houses of an alien elite, set side by side with scattered peasant settlements. Archaeological work since the 1940...
Does the Adversarial System Serve Us Well?
What is the adversarial tradition in English criminal and civil procedure, and how does it compare with the inquisitorial systems found in some civil law jurisdictions? What are the strengths and weaknesses of adversarial and inquisitorial juri...
The Carbon Cycle Behind Net Zero
What happens to carbon dioxide after we emit it? Half is absorbed within a year or two by plants and the oceans, the rest, in effect, stays in the atmosphere. So, does that mean we have to halve emissions to stop concentrations rising? Unfortun...
Viking Pagan Gods in Britain
The Norse and Danish invaders - commonly called Vikings - who occupied Britain in the ninth and tenth centuries, brought with them their own pagan gods. Odin, Thor, Tyr, Loki and Freya left their trace on the British landscape, in the form of s...
The Mathematical Life of Sir Christopher Wren
Christopher Wren, who died 300 years ago this year, is famed as the architect of St Paul’s Cathedral. But he was also Gresham Professor of Astronomy, and one of the founders of a society “for the promotion of Physico-Mathematicall Experimental ...
Portraits of Queen Elizabeth II: The Artists’ Challenges
Scores of painters and photographers over the last seventy years have grappled with the formal portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II from life. These range from the celluloid fantasies of Cecil Beaton to the directness of Lucian Freud; the Renaissanc...
Historical Fiction from Sir Walter Scott to Georgette Heyer and Hilary Mantel
Until the 1970s, historical fiction was a scorned genre that belonged to Georgette Heyer and Jean Plaidy. Over recent decades, literary fiction has turned back to History, from Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy to Helen Dunmore, Francis S...
Big Data in Business
Big data has really taken off over the past decade because of the presence of ubiquitous sensor technology everywhere. For example, we are all constantly monitored by our phones, smart doorbells, heating systems, televisions, watches and jewell...
Rhythm Disturbances of the Heart
Our bodies depend on our hearts maintaining a steady beat, and increasing it appropriately in response to exercise. If the heart goes too fast, or too slowly, we have effects ranging from tiredness to unexpectedly passing out to death.Th...
Stonehenge: A History
Our contemporary ideas about Stonehenge and British antiquity were shaped in times of empire and war. They dominate popular histories and inform national identity.Focusing on how Stonehenge was built, and drawing on a wealth of evidence ...
Christopher Wren’s Cosmos
Sir Christopher Wren was one of the most remarkable Gresham Professors of Astronomy. Though best known today as the architectural mastermind behind the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire, Wren’s appointment to the Gresham chair in 1657 s...
Queen Victoria: Images of Power and Empire
This lecture will examine the images of power and empire projected by Queen Victoria over the course of her reign.Beginning with her coronation, it surveys her depictions as a young queen. It looks at the transformation of her image afte...
Diminished and Augmented Chords
In this lecture, we will delve into the history of opera because that is where the diminished seventh-chord gradually accumulated its expressive power as a chord for dramatic climaxes, demonic intrusions and generally for shock and horror of an...
Encryption: What's the Problem?
End-to-end encryption secures messages before they leave a device, preventing them from being read in transit. Increasingly the default protocol for messaging apps, neither governments nor the platforms on which it operates can access unscrambl...
The Role for Financial Services in Boosting Financial Literacy and Inclusion
Numeracy skills, good financial education and financial inclusion are essential ingredients for a thriving, fair economy. The cost-of-living crisis exposes how we need to go further and faster to ensure people have the skills they need to manag...
Microbial Record-Breakers
Microbes hold astonishing speed records: the remarkable Thiovulum majus races along at 60 body lengths per second – the equivalent of Usain Bolt completing the 100m sprint in just over 0.8 seconds. Viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 replicate so rapidl...
Slavery and the British Economy
During debates over the abolition of slavery, supporters of the system claimed that it was vital to the British economy and that abolition would be disastrous. The abolitionists argued that slavery was immoral and that the economy would prosper...
Living with Mental Health
There is a rising number of people of all ages with mental health illnesses globally, that has been accompanied by a greater willingness to talk about it in many places. What are the most common disorders and the best treatment options, includi...
Do We Need Barristers?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the distinction between solicitors and barristers? What is the purpose of the independent Bar in our legal system today? How does England and Wales compare with common law jurisdictions which have abando...
Anglo-Saxon Pagan Gods
When the Western Roman Empire crumbled, the Anglo-Saxon peoples who occupied Britain brought their own paganism with them. This was Germanic, with a pantheon of deities that included Woden, Thunor, Tiw and Frig. Its temples were wooden structur...
Musical Cadences
Composers of tonal music, from the 17th century through to the latest jazz tune or film score, think mainly in terms of how their chords succeed each other, rather than taking chords in isolation.We will investigate the most important su...
The Ocean Physics Behind Net Zero
Why is the deep ocean cold? And why does this matter for global warming?Doing the maths with pipes and plumbing, not computers, we explore how processes that keep the deep oceans at frigid Arctic temperatures also determine how fast the ...
Lottery-Winning Maths
The field of probability started when a French nobleman asked the mathematician Blaise Pascal to solve a dispute for him about a game consisting of throwing a pair of dice 24 times. Pascal discussed this and other problems with fellow mathemati...
Louis XIV: Versailles, Europe and the Arts
Louis XIV saw himself as a patron of the arts, as well as an absolute monarch and warlord. He talked to his favourite artists and writers, including Bernini, Racine, Andre Lenotre the gardener and Charles Lebrun the painter, almost as equals, a...
DeFi, Crypto, and NFTs in Business
How is the decentralised finance world organised?This lecture discusses how cryptographic technology is applied in business. It discusses blockchains and their uses. It explains how smart contracts, open code that automatically executes ...
Medical Experts in the Family Court: Where Two Worlds Collide
How does everyday medical practice get interpreted in the courtroom?In cases of child protection, do everyday decisions made in a resource-limited NHS stand up to cross-examination? Does the duty of care in hospital also extend to colle...
The End of Massive Stars
The evolution of our Sun from ordinary star into red giant is radically different from the evolution of much more massive stars towards their end-points: supernova explosions followed by black holes.This lecture will contrast the relevan...
Would it be Right to Make Vaccination Mandatory?
Vaccination against disease has saved countless lives, yet it remains a controversial topic because of concerns some hold about safety and potential harms. Should we be legally required to vaccinate ourselves and our children? How important is ...
Breast Cancer: A Cultural History
Breast cancer is one of the most dreaded diseases for women, not only because it can be a serious medical condition resulting in painful therapies, but because it is regarded as an assault on a sufferer’s self-image and sexuality. Historically,...
Microbial Master-Chemists
Microbial chemistry makes bread rise and cheese mature, and turns grapes into wine. Microbes help make engine fuel, life-saving antibiotics and nano-particle sunscreens. Without fungi and bacteria, the world would sink under its own waste withi...
Coronary Heart Disease
Coronary heart disease caused by narrowing and blockage of the heart arteries causes angina, heart attacks and heart failure. It remains one of the commonest causes of mortality in the UK and globally. Public health interventions and improvemen...
Paganism in Roman Britain
What was religion like in Roman Britain? What pre-Roman deities persisted? Which new gods came with Romans?This lecture looks at the evidence: inscriptions, statues and figurines, carvings and all the impediments of ritual, as well as th...
How To Fight Fake News
Fake news, influence operations, disinformation, misinformation and conspiracy theories are different flavours of falsehoods that have one thing in common: they put citizens in the front line of countering threats to democracies, national secur...
The Israel-Palestine Conflict: Religion, Violence and Peacebuilding
Drawing on examples from the Israel-Palestine conflict, this lecture explores contrasting approaches, theories and practices for interpreting the relationship between religion and violence. It argues that understanding that religion can both in...
London’s Air: The 70th Anniversary of the Great London Smog
On the 5th of December 1952 London experienced a major pollution episode, the Great Smog, resulting in thousands of deaths throughout the city.On the 70th anniversary of this event, the lecturer will review how air pollution has changed ...
Do We Need Judges?
What is the role of the judiciary in England and Wales, how did it develop, and how does it compare with other countries?This lecture will examine how judges are appointed, whose interests they serve, and who they are accountable to. It ...
The Dominant Seventh Chord
The name might sound forbiddingly technical, but the chord is immediately recognisable and it has played a hugely important role in tonal music. This is a chord of action and motion: it sounds unstable and incomplete, leading the listener to ex...
Microbial Megastructures
Invisible microbes have created some of the largest structures on the planet. Mycorrhizal fungi form extraordinary subterranean networks that associate symbiotically with plant roots. Most land plants, including many human crops, need mycorrhiz...
Lives in Limbo: Jewish Refugees in Portugal, 1940–1945
The Alfred Wiener Holocaust Memorial LectureThis lecture highlights the experiences of Jewish refugees fleeing from antisemitic persecution and from World War II to Portugal. It describes how they were treated, how they attempted to esca...
The Atmospheric Physics Behind Net Zero
Before net zero, climate policy was all about contraction and convergence of emissions between rich and poor to achieve, in the words of the Rio Convention, “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere” at a safe level. But...
The Maths of Game Theory
When we buy, sell, bargain, barter, bid at auctions, and compete for resources, we want to be sure that we are using the best strategies. Game theory can help us understand precisely these kinds of situations. That’s why in 1994, the Nobel Priz...
The Irish Question and the Ulster Question Then and Now
Britain before 1914 was convulsed by the Irish Question. Since the Act of Union of 1800, Ireland had been governed without the consent of the vast majority of Irish Catholics, who comprised around 3/4 of the population. Home Rule was the sugges...
Love, Trust & Crypto
The crypto movement began as a reaction to the concentration of economic power in the traditional financial system (and associated financial crises). It involved the creation of a new type of financial recording system, that did not depend on a...
Why Did Europe’s Economies Diverge from Asia?
The levels of income in parts of China and India were similar to those in Europe in the middle ages, until the Mediterranean pulled ahead – followed by northern Europe, initially Holland and then Britain. This ‘great divergence’ was one of the ...
Opposition in Russia: The Trials of Alexei Navalny
Alexei Navalny is the leading opposition leader in Russia. He is also currently serving a lengthy prison sentence in a Russian correctional colony.This lecture will look at the use of the processes of the law by the Russian state to sile...
Machine Learning and the 4th Industrial Revolution
AI technology is already changing the face of the world as we know it.This lecture looks at the reasons why AI is hailed as an unprecedented revolution using practical examples from healthcare and business.Humans and machines will...
The End of our Sun
Our nearest star, that is the engine sustaining life on Earth, will one day run out of fuel. When this happens, the Sun will start expanding dramatically, forming a red giant and engulfing much of the solar system including the inner planets, v...
Polio: A Cultural History
Polio has a major role in the cultural history of the West. The early symptoms – which were often mild flu-like symptoms – would end in paralysis. Vaccinations against the disease proved controversial, given their trials on incarcerated prisone...
What Is the Exposome and Why Does It Matter to Your Health?
Our health and susceptibility to disease are not wholly written in our genes. They are influenced throughout our lives by the environments in which we live, through our exposures to chemical agents, the infections we experience, to the psychoso...
Adultery in the Novel, from Flaubert to Sally Rooney
Adultery became the subject of some of the greatest European novels of the nineteenth century, including Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina. English novels of the period needed adultery for their plots, yet flinched from treating the subject openl...
Partition of British India: 75 Years On
The 2022 Royal Historical Society Colin Matthew Memorial LectureThe partition of British India in 1947 was the world’s largest migration outside war and famine. It may feel like a distant historical event, but 75 years on its impact cont...
What is the Metaverse?
What exactly is the Metaverse? And is it really that new?This talk will explore our emotional connections to cyberspace, our feelings of presence and immediacy in online environments, and what this means for the intensity of our experien...
Should We Permit Voluntary Assisted Dying?
The English courts have wrestled with challenges to the restrictions on euthanasia and assisted suicide for years, while the government has resisted calls to liberalise the law. Meanwhile, terminally ill people continue to travel overseas to cl...
The Politics of Fabric and Fashion in Africa 1960-Today
1960 was the year of Africa. Over seventeen countries rid themselves of colonial rule and a new sense of pride in being Black and African was expressed through myriad artforms, notably via the fashioning of the body.Using objects in the ...
Let’s Decolonise the History of Mathematical Proofs!
What is a “valid mathematical proof”? To inquire into such a hotly debated question we might want to look at how past mathematicians tackled this question. This lecture will provide examples outside of what has been called a “colonial l...
How Mathematical Proofs Are Like Recipes
This talk considers mathematical proofs through an analogy to cooking recipes: that proofs give recipes for mathematical actions to be carried out by the reader. We will see linguistic evidence that written proofs often include explicit instruc...
The Invention of Mathematical Proof in the Renaissance
In practice, mathematicians have been 'proving' their results in many ways, in many places, for thousands of years. In principle, however, what is a proof? Usually, we look to geometry, specifically the geometry of Euclid. But what are the fund...
Britain's Foreign Policy in a Fast-Changing World
The 2022 Peter Nailor Memorial LectureFor 40 years Britain's national strategy rested on two main pillars: close partnership with the United States, and a leading role in Europe. Both remain important, but the dramatic shifts in global g...
Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution
Toussaint Louverture (the “Black Spartacus”), was one of the main leaders of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), which overthrew slavery and led to the proclamation of the world’s first independent post-colonial state.The lecture discuss...
Triads, Major and Minor
The major triad is considered the foundation of tonal music, its privileged position owed to its presence in the harmonic series of acoustics. The minor triad lacks this acoustic foundation, which led to it being treated as less stable, and eve...
Why Net Zero?
What will it take to stop global warming and how long have we got?These are huge questions for humanity, nature, society and geopolitics. Understanding our changing weather and its impacts is one of the greatest scientific challenges of ...
The Lost Cities and Amazing Heritage of Kenya
The coast of Kenya has a series of impressive medieval ruins. Amongst the monuments are tombs, grand houses, mosques, and palaces. East African archaeologists date the high point of this heritage to the 13th century. The Kenyan museums contain ...
The Maths of Coins and Currencies
People have used money – and made counterfeits - for thousands of years. Archimedes came up with a clever way of finding out if you’ve been cheated by a goldsmith. Making coins with the right proportions of the right metals presented a huge mat...
Tuberculosis: A Cultural History
Tuberculosis (and especially drug resistant strains) is a major global health problem, with over nine million people developing the disease annually and 1.5 million dying from it. The history of TB reveals the complex and often contradictory me...
The Microbial Basis of Life
Single-celled microbes underpin all life on Earth, and even complex organisms like humans retain a surprising amount of their microbial heritage. Life began when free molecules became encapsulated in a lipid membrane and transformed into a self...
Are We Too Reliant on Medical Imaging?
Imaging is used every day in medical healthcare, and the likelihood is that if you go to hospital that you will receive an X-ray, ultrasound or CT scan. With increasing reliance on complex imaging and the NHS now at breaking point, this lecture...
Bypassing Banks Using Tech
Financial intermediaries, like banks, mutual funds and brokers, who connect investors to firms (who need finance), have existed for thousands of years. Because they control a scarce resource, information, these intermediaries are expensive. Pla...
Do We Need Juries?
This lecture looks at the development of juries in the common law world, addressing key questions about the role of juries in England and Wales today. Juries in modern English law are mainly used in criminal trials, civil trials, a...
The End of Planetary Atmospheres
Planet Venus is a hellish place and seemingly hostile to life, although recent measurements claimed the detection of biogenic signatures. Less than a billion years ago, Venus’s atmosphere underwent a dramatic runaway greenhouse effect rendering...
War and Peace in Europe from Hitler to Putin
How can we understand the war in Ukraine in the light of European history over the past century? Is Putin a '20th-century Hitler' as some have called him? What are his aims, and how do they compare with those of the Nazis during the Second Worl...
Gods of Prehistoric Britain
Britain has one of the richest of all pagan heritages in Europe, defined as the textual and material evidence for its pre-Christian religions. The island is possessed of monuments, burial sites and a range of other remains not only from several...
Who owns the Internet?
The emergence of the global Internet challenged the notion that states have sovereignty over what their citizens see and hear, and what they can say. Governments around the world shut or slow down internet access for political and security reas...
The Hidden Legacy of COVID-19
No one has been left untouched by COVID-19. Many individuals have been left with the physical and mental health consequences of the virus- now known as long Covid.This lecture looks at the medical issues, and the new therapies and treat...
Progresses: Royal Courts on the Move in Tudor and Stuart England
Most summers Tudor and Stuart monarchs took their court on an extended progress round the home counties staying at their own palaces and the houses of their courtiers. The cost and impact of hundreds of people, their horses and servants, was co...
What Makes a Good Judge?
Everyone agrees that good judges are essential for the maintenance of the Rule of Law in a democratic society. But what makes a judge a good judge and how should we recruit them? The talk will consider how the role of the judiciary has been reg...
Inigo Jones and the Architecture of Necessity
Inigo Jones is the architect best-known for the Banqueting House on Whitehall, one of the icons of British state architecture. He is less well known for the domestic buildings, the ‘architecture of necessity’ commissioned by the early Stuart mo...
The Journey from Black-Hole Singularities to a Cyclic Cosmology
The “singularity theorems” of the 1960s demonstrated that large enough celestial bodies, or collections of such bodies, would, collapse gravitationally, to “singularities”, where the equations and assumptions of Einstein’s general relativity ca...
How to Finance a Company
How should companies raise money? This lecture will look at both debt (bank loans and bonds) and equity (shares given to other founders, or sold on the stock market). It will analyse how a company should choose between debt and equi...
Protestant Missions and European Empires: Allies or Adversaries?
By the later eighteenth century, Protestant countries’ empires were spreading across the globe but Protestant churches were wriggling free of state control. What were the lessons from the early history of the missionary movement, and how did th...
Life in the Universe
How can life form in the Universe, and what are the necessary ingredients for habitability so that planets can sustain life? Can we expect life elsewhere in the solar system, or on exo-planets? This lecture offers a broader perspec...
Where Is Globalisation Headed? A Supply Chain View
The conflict in Ukraine – and earlier events like Brexit - led prominent asset managers such as BlackRock to declare the “end of globalisation.” Where is globalisation headed?This talk will take a supply chain perspective on globalisatio...
The Maths of Gyroscopes and Boomerangs
Spinning things are strange. Why does a spinning top stand up? Why doesn't a rolling wheel fall over? How does a falling cat always manage to land on its feet? How can the Hubble Space Telescope turn around in space? How do ice-skaters spin so ...
Investigative Journalism: A New Global Power?
The Internet and enhanced tools of digitalisation and communication have given opportunities to investigative journalists undreamed of even 10 years ago, and globalisation has connected the newshounds and whistleblowers of every continent. ...
How Genetic Adaptation Helped Humans Colonise the Globe
Modern humans evolved in Africa and successfully colonised the globe only in the last 100,000 years or so, a feat made possible by cultural and genetic adaptation. Human habitats differ dramatically in climate, available foods or pathogens, and...
Natural Prosperity and the Wellbeing Economy
What does Natural Prosperity look like? In this lecture we envision a new, more equitable future where wellbeing and nature-based solutions take the place of growth at any cost. Growth has almost vanished in industrialised countrie...
Operating Systems
Early computers were either designed to do one thing or, if they were programmable, they would be loaded-up with the program, it would run, and then a new program would be run. But a modern computer gives the appearance of doing multiple things...
Should the Commonwealth Caribbean Abolish Appeals to the Privy Council?
In the Commonwealth Caribbean, final appeals were traditionally heard by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, or ‘Her Majesty in Council’. Some islands have now replaced the Privy Council with the Caribbean Court of Justice as their hig...
The Incredible Sine Wave and its Uses
The beautiful sine wave turns out to have a huge number of practical applications, from the motion of springs, to waves in the sea, to sound waves, light waves and more. It is curious that the function which defines the sine wave, sin(x), comes...
The Year 1948 in Soviet Music
In the aftermath of the Soviet war victory, ideological control was tightened again, contrary to expectations. The six leading Soviet composers (including Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Myaskovsky and Khachaturian) were censured and humiliated by a P...
How to Value a Stock
How do you value stocks? Finance textbooks argue that you should look at their dividends. But many stocks don’t pay dividends, and even if they do, it’s hard to forecast what they’ll be in the future. And newspapers talk about a stock’s 'price-...
The Future of Health Globally
This lecture looks at the very optimistic picture of trends in health around the world. Childhood deaths and the diseases of young adults are falling rapidly. Scientific advances are transforming the major chronic diseases and cancer. In low, m...
Abstinence
Abstinence from sex is a requirement for many people seeking a spiritual life. In the U.S., abstinence-only education has been officially endorsed since 1981, despite the fact that America has the highest level of teen-pregnancies in the indust...
Bernini and the Remaking of Rome
Pope Alexander VII did more for Rome than any other Pope when in 1655 he employed the sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini to reshape the city. Already celebrated as the greatest artist of his age, with Alexander, Bernini became part of one of the gre...
The Future of Life on Earth
Although life is probably widespread in the universe, our pale blue dot, Earth, is the only known place harbouring intelligent life. Even if we manage to stave off extinction by climate change, avoid a nuclear apocalypse and the dangers of runa...
Breaking Democracy: Lies, Deception and Disinformation
With conspiracy theories and disinformation on the rise in both media and politics, is our democracy at risk? We may lose trust in society, in the institutions that inform us, and, ultimately, in the democratic process. Our sense of responsibil...
Averting the Insect Apocalypse
Recent studies from around the world show insects are disappearing fast. If this continues, this will have profound consequences for mankind and for our planet, for insects provide a myriad of vital ‘ecosystem services’, such as pollination, pe...
The Beginnings of Protestantism in Asia
Early Protestant empires in Asia – in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Taiwan and elsewhere – brought missionaries with them. Like their Catholic predecessors, they learned that winning converts was formidably difficult, especially in empires that ...
Oxford’s Savilian Professors of Geometry: 400 Years On
England’s earliest chair of mathematics was that of Gresham College, founded in 1597, but who came next? The earliest University-based mathematics professorship was Oxford’s Savilian Chair of Geometry, founded in 1619. T...
What Can We Learn From Fakes?
It seems that fakes are everywhere – very few domains of social life are exempt from concerns about fakes and a general ‘crisis of authenticity’. While fakes are often considered worthless, this talk argues that fakes can signal blind spots in ...
Supply Chains in the Wellbeing Economy
In this lecture we are going to look at how the supply chains in a wellbeing economy bring together local production of food and stewardship of nature. This approach, already followed by many indigenous peoples, has the potential to radically r...
People and Purpose: Putting Positive Impact at The Heart of Economic Growth
As we build on the economic recovery from COVID-19, we need to put our people and our purpose at the heart of financial and professional services to rebuild a more sustainable and inclusive economy - investing in better.Capitalising on c...
Soviet Music in World War II
The tribulations of WWII (the “Great Patriotic War”) prompted a temporary liberalisation within Soviet culture. Images of horror and grief, formerly unacceptable, found their way into the wartime music of Soviet composers. The debate over Shost...
The Surprising Uses of Conic Sections
Conic sections – the curves made by slicing through cones at various angles – were studied by the ancient Greeks, but because of their useful properties, have many real-world uses. Planets have elliptical orbits, projectiles move in parabolas, ...
The Global Financial Crisis and COVID... What Next?
‘Hyper-globalisation’ and the power of finance culminated in the global financial crisis of 2008 that was potentially as severe as the Great Depression. The outcome was not public spending but austerity that hit the poor and Quantitative Easing...
Integral Transforms
Integral transforms are the most rarefied of analyses – only used by a subset of engineers and computer scientists; laboured over by many an undergraduate, usually with the accompanying moans; yet every computer, every electronic circuit is an ...
Social Media, COVID & Ukraine: Fighting Disinformation
Organised disinformation about the Covid-19 crisis has degraded public understanding of the crisis and threatened the reputation of credible vaccines and health policy. This talk looks at the broad structures and recent history of c...
Humour and Music
The scherzo (‘joke’) emerged in the vocal music of Monteverdi and became integrated into the string quartets and symphonies of Beethoven. Haydn and Mozart loved to fool around with their audiences and Scott Bradley’s scores for Tom & Je...
Freezing Eggs and Delaying Fertility: Law, Ethics and Society
With the development of new vitrification techniques, egg freezing has become a viable option for women to protect and extend their fertility. Being able to control when to have children can help achieve life-goals. But there are downsides.&nbs...
Taking on a Corporate Giant: David v Goliath Legal Cases
Many people are inspired by stories of individual litigants, often with few financial resources and little assistance, taking on large corporations in court and fighting for their rights. This lecture will explore some of those stor...
Villains in the Novel: from Dickens, Hardy and Wilkie Collins to Hilary Mantel
Are villains cardboard characters? If so, why do we enjoy them so much? Drawing examples from film and TV drama, as well as from popular fiction, this lecture will try to explain the satisfaction of villainy for the audience. Using ...
Is Dementia Inevitable?
What is dementia? Is it inevitable as we live longer that more of us will suffer dementia, or could we live longer lives without getting it? There are hundreds of different causes of dementia, and this lecture will look at how they ...
Planetary Universe
How can new worlds be discovered, and how many exo-planets might be out there? What does today’s technology in astronomical observatories now enable, and what is it that holds us back from finding what is actually out there? What hinders us fro...
Going Viral: An Environmental Activist's Story
Dr Nathan Robinson’s video of him removing a plastic drinking straw from a sea turtle’s nose went viral in 2015. He has since been developing new ways of using technology to gain insights into the secret lives of marine creatures, including cap...
Aliens in Science Fiction
Science fiction’s most frequent alternative to human is 'alien', another rich imaginative resource with which to think about what makes us human. This lecture will include reflections on various aliens, from H.G. Wells Selenites, to...
Segregation and the Rule of Law
The law has been used to entrench and uphold racial prejudice, most infamously in South Africa during the apartheid years, but also in the United States in the period up to the mid-twentieth century. In South Africa and the southern states of A...
Monogamy
Monogamy is a hotly contested practice. In many cis-gender marriages, engaging in sexual intercourse with a non-spouse is regarded as a serious betrayal. But during some periods in history, it was not only accepted but expected. 'Philanderers' ...
Infections That Use Touch to Transmit
Some diseases are spread almost exclusively by touch or through the skin or mucus membranes. These include Ebola, several parasitic diseases such as hookworm, strongyloides and scabies and some bacterial and fungal infections. Other diseases li...
The Neuroscience of Sleep and its Disorders
A good night's sleep is anything but quiet: a myriad of processes occupy our brains, crucial for every aspect of our waking lives. Our increased understanding of the neuroscience of sleep – that sleep may not affect the brain in its entirety – ...
Does Philanthropy do the Public Good?
Philanthropy has long played a key role in our communities on local, national, and global scales. Yet if we have often assumed that giving is good, we must also step back and ask, “good for whom?” In recent years, more voices are raising questi...
Psychosis: Our Default Mental State?
Psychosis is a mental state where people experience a 'different' world. If, as clinical psychiatry and neuroscience suggests, it is our 'default mental state' why isn't everyone psychotic? Psychosis does not arise de novo; external sensory inp...
The Beauty of Geometrical Curves
The path traced out by a given point on the rim of a circle as you roll it along a straight line is a beautiful curve called a cycloid, whose appeal to mathematicians has had it dubbed “the Helen of Geometry”. This curve is known in geometry as...
Human Rights in the UK and the Commonwealth Caribbean
The Human Rights Act 1998, which incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law, was a landmark moment in British legal history, with quasi-constitutional protection for fundamental rights. Meanwhile, the national consti...
How Protestant Missionaries Encountered Slavery
The entire Atlantic economy in the 17th and 18th centuries was based on the enslavement of (mostly) non-Christian Africans. As this lecture will show, slavery was at first a practice which many missionaries hoped to mitigate; then a vast realit...
Cellular Phones
The most commonly used computer in the world is surely the one in your hand. Mobile or cellular telephony is nowadays hardly about telephony at all, but about communication in its broadest sense. Companies and governments have fallen and risen ...
Coincidences in the Novel: Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot to Evelyn Waugh and David Nicholls
If, as displeased reviewers and readers sometimes complain, coincidences mar good plots, why do so many novels turn on them? From Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot, to Sebastian Barry and David Nicholls, novelists have relied on coincidences.&n...
Innovators and Entrepreneurs in a Wellbeing Economy
What will the characteristics of successful innovators and entrepreneurs be in a wellbeing economy? In this lecture, we look at how the Wellbeing Economy is shaped by the co-creation of value through co-design and co-production proc...
Life in a Revolutionary Decade in Britain (1649-1660)
What was life like in 1649-1660, Britain's only decade as a republic? This lecture explores the immense changes of the period through the personal experiences of prominent figures. It argues that, despite the failure of the republic...
Coral Reefs in a Warming World
Coral reefs are transforming under climate change. What is the nature of this change and the major influences upon it? The role of common management approaches is also changing. Seabird nutrient inputs through guano can benefit coral and fish g...
How to Measure and Manage Risk
Risk is one of the most powerful and dangerous concepts in finance – powerful because it allows individuals and companies to earn huge returns, but dangerous because it can cause their bankruptcy. How do you measure financial risk, what is the ...
Magnetic Universe
Magnetic fields have mysterious effects that can be dramatically counterintuitive, and they are ubiquitous throughout the Universe and can have influence on large scales. This lecture will explore how some of the exotic and energeti...
Robots in Science Fiction
In the late nineteenth century, highly contentious debates about prostitution were central to broader questions about women’s status within society, including their rights to property, entitlement to suffrage, and claims over their own bodies. ...
Sex Work
In the late nineteenth century, highly contentious debates about prostitution were central to broader questions about women’s status within society, including their rights to property, entitlement to suffrage, and claims over their own bodies. ...
The Evolution of Cancer Therapy
Professor Eleanor Stride will discuss the history and development of cancer therapy from its origins in Ancient Egypt - when surgery was the only option to remove a tumour, to the more recent developments of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. She w...
Exploring the Deep Sea
The Deep Sea is Earth’s last great frontier. After almost 150 years of exploration and research we understand it is deep, dark and definitely different; but there remain large gaps in our knowledge that hinder progress in sustainable management...
Prokofiev The Soviet Artist
This lecture will follow the tortuous path of Prokofiev’s transformation into a Soviet artist. Prokofiev had pursued his career abroad and returned to (Soviet) Russia as a major international celebrity. Even though he was willing, in principle,...
The Oil Shock and Neoliberalism
The oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 led to international disruption and a crisis in the post-war order. Domestically, weaker productivity growth, the squeeze on profits, and de-industrialisation led to conflict between capital and labour. Public fi...
Love and Music
Tristan & Isolde, Romeo & Juliet, Pelléas & Mélisande are three pairs of lovers who have fired composers’ imaginations. Films like Love Story, Love Actually, and Shakespeare in Love are made all the more poignant by their musical sc...
The Maths of Proportion in Art, Design and Nature
From the Ancient Greeks onwards, proportion and mathematics has been central to our ideas of form and beauty. This lecture looks at the famous golden ratio, from Greek temples to spiral seashells, discussing where it appears in natu...
The Brixton Riots: Policing the Community in the last 40 years
Since the 1981 Brixton riots, many things have changed in British policing. However, Black people are still nine times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people, and three times more likely to be arrested; Black people are far mo...
Infections which use the Respiratory Route
COVID-19, pandemic influenza and tuberculosis are examples of the remarkable ability of infections to use the respiratory route of transmission. Infections which use this route can often spread very quickly, especially in crowded indoor environ...
Early Protestant Missions to the Americas
Protestant settlers in the Americas believed it was their duty to convert indigenous peoples to the true Gospel. Yet the task proved unexpectedly difficult. The effort revealed and challenged deep European assumptions about culture and the natu...
Error Control Coding
When was the last time you opened a file and noticed a computer glitch? “Never” is the usual answer. Yet the underlying hardware makes continual errors: disks make errors, the internet loses packets of data, wifi signals get corrupted and so on...
The Broken Cosmic Distance Ladder
Measuring distances to astronomical objects outside our Galaxy is a surprisingly hard challenge: it wasn't until 1923 that Edwin Hubble obtained proof that Andromeda is indeed a galaxy in its own right. Today, astronomers extend distance measur...
Brexit: What Have We Learned So Far?
What has Brexit come to mean? This lecture will explain how the Brexit deal the UK and the EU ended up with came to be. It will then investigate the new relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union, put in place by the...
Terror and the Rule of Law
The Revolutionary tribunals in 1790s Paris; the Moscow show trials of the late 1930s; and the prosecution of conspirators in the assassination attempt on Hitler by the so-called “People’s Court”, are well-known examples of the way the law and i...
What is Happening to Christianity? Insights from Africa
Christianity’s centre of gravity has shifted to the Global South. Prosperity churches, 'born again' politicians, prophets, healers and exorcists are now typical expressions of Christianity worldwide. What do these changes mean for our understan...
Structures in the Universe
How did the cosmos transition into space characterised by galaxies in a plethora of different shapes of great beauty? This lecture will consider what happens when groups of galaxies interact with one another and what happens when these ...
How To Make Financial Decisions
Individuals and businesses make financial decisions all the time – whether to go to university, buy a house, build a factory, or train one’s workforce. All these decisions involve spending certain money now for uncertain benefits in the future....
Shostakovich on Trial: from Lady Macbeth to the Fifth Symphony
This lecture focuses on one of the watershed moments of Soviet music history: the censure of Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, and the composer’s path through reform to rehabilitation. The Shostakovich story was only th...
Your Body Parts and the Law
Do we own our own body parts? What can we do with them? Can we sell them and control what others do with them? People often say, "it’s my body", but the law is much more complex. This lecture explains the law on body part ow...
The Universal Value of Nature
Does nature have a universal value? Can we consider natural capital as equivalent to financial capital? This lecture gives a brief history of value, exploring the similarities between historical arguments as to why the value of housewor...
Sexually Transmitted and Intravenous Infections
Some diseases are specialised in using sexual behaviour for transmission. Major pandemics including HIV and syphilis have been transmitted via this route, along with the cancer-causing infections Hepatitis B and HPV. Along with these are highly...
Pornography
Pornography reflects as well as creates sexual norms and practices. The period from the 1960s to the mid-1980s has been called the 'Golden Age of Porn'. An unexpurgated Lady Chatterley’s Lover was openly published in the UK and Linda L...
Christmas Carols and Nostalgia
This lecture takes a trip down Christmas's unique and emotionally complex memory lane via the Christmas Carol. Carols paint a colourful picture of the Christmas story itself, frequently by adapting pre-existing material. The crowded stable...
Judicial Racism and the Lammy Review
Judges, who are typically drawn from privileged backgrounds, wield vast power over the lives of the most marginalised people in society. This lecture will explore the role of judicial racism in perpetuating injustice and inequality in the legal sy...
Attacks on Knowledge from Ashurbanipal to Trump
This lecture explores the destruction of libraries, archives and other knowledge, from Babylonian times until now, and its implications for society today. What are the motivations for destroying knowledge, and how have libraries and archives respo...
Early Protestant Missions to Jews, Muslims and Pagans: A Dangerous Model
European Protestant and evangelical Christians did not have to look far to find 'infidels' in the 16th and 17th centuries: as well as the 'pagans' of northern Scandinavia, Jews were scattered across the continent and Muslim powers were all too clo...
Women in Science Fiction
For thousands of years, some men assumed that the original or ideal human type was male, with women being pictured as weaker or imperfect men. This ancient prejudice inspired fictions from E.T.A. Hoffman's The Sandman (1816) to Ira Levin's novel T...
Food- and Drink-Borne Diseases
Many major diseases are transmitted by food or drink. Cholera (water), brucellosis (milk), BSE/nvCJD, typhoid and many parasites are ingested as part of a normal diet. The more exotic the diet, the greater the range of possible infections. Water t...
Compression
When you tune into Netflix you might not be aware that the box in your living room starts a complex set of negotiations with servers on moving 563 Gbytes of information into your residence. That is equivalent to having 15,000 copies of the Encyclo...
Free Thinking and the Rule of Law
The law has been used to impose religious and moral conformity and uniformity of thought at many times in history, perhaps most (in)famously in the trial of Socrates and the heresy trials of Giordano Bruno and Galileo. More recently the obscenity ...
The Maths of Beauty and Symmetry
People have always found symmetry aesthetically pleasing and examples of it are seen in the earliest art. The Platonic solids have been known to humanity for millennia, some possibly even to Neolithic man, as can be seen in the carved stone balls ...
How can music be "Socialist Realist"?
This lecture will investigate the genesis of the Socialist Realism doctrine, which was imposed in 1934. The 'proletarian music' trend of the 1920s had offered some solutions to the task of creating 'music for the people', but because it ha...
Holocaust History Under Siege in Poland
For the second Annual Alfred Wiener Holocaust Memorial Lecture, Professor Jan Grabowski will discuss how scholars of the Holocaust find themselves confronted with the hostile reactions of various states pursuing the policies of Holocaust distor...
Nature's Numbers: Natural Capital Accounting
How can nature be accounted for? How can we track how we are using nature and ensure we are not destroying the environment? Natural Capital is becoming a central theme in national accounting systems. This lecture follows a series of entert...
Einstein's Blunder
When Albert Einstein tweaked his newly invented equations of General Relativity in 1917, he had one goal in mind: to find a solution that described a closed, static, eternal universe. He therefore minted a new universal constant to make it work. A...
Perversion
What is a perversion? This talk starts by exploring psychiatric and sexological debates about perverted sexual desires from the late nineteenth century textbooks to diagnostic manuals in the twenty-first century. It looks at the role of law, moral...
Ancient Greek and Roman Libraries
Although Mesopotamian civilisations had assembled texts, the ancient Greeks brought the idea of the universal book collection to its near-legendary consummation in the Library of Alexandria, which edited and housed thousands of papyrus rolls on ev...
What is a Religion? : Rethinking Religion and Secularism
Most of us would consider Islam to be a religion, while we would generally view secularism as requiring the limiting of religion to the private sphere. But many scholars (and ideologues) beg to differ. Social scientists are divided over the defini...
The Great Depression and 'Embedded Liberalism'
The Great Depression posed a serious threat to democratic capitalism as economic nationalism flourished and Communism and Fascism offered alternative models. In response, democratic capitalism was remade. Domestically, inequalities of wealth were ...
Atomic Universe
Subsequent to the Hot Big Bang, as the Universe expanded and cooled, atoms formed and, later still, decoupled from radiation. This lecture will cover the intellectual revolutions in relatively recent history that paved the way to our moder...
Portraits, Biographies and Public History
Immense curiosity exists about the lives of people who lived in the past. Portraits and biographies play a major role in bringing the dead to life, but they may mislead and distort as much as they illuminate. Using writings about nineteenth-centur...
Europe's Search for Security After World War One
After the ravages of the First World War there was a widespread desire for 'sustainable security'. Contemporaries were preoccupied with hungry children and their impoverished environment, and worked on a wave of institution building intended to...
The Manuscripts and Intellectual Legacy of Timbuktu
The Malian city of Timbuktu is one of the world's oldest seats of learning and has an intellectual legacy of hundreds of thousands of manuscripts, coming from three great West African desert empires: Ancient Ghana, medieval Mali, and the Songhai E...
Plot
Elaborate plotting is the novelistic skill least often valued by critics, even if relished by readers. This lecture will look at novelists who raise plot to a literary art. We begin with Henry Fielding, the first great novelist to delight ...
How the Financial System Works
This lecture will explore our financial system. Why do banks exist, and what do they do with the money that savers lend to them? We'll explore what risks they face and how they can go bust - even if they make completely safe investments. H...
Children and Consent to Medical Treatment
How does the law consider children in cases involving medical consent? This lecture will look at how doctors (and parents) should talk their children about illness. It will also consider what should happen when parents and doctors disagree...
The Death of Richard III: CSI Meets History
The skeleton of King Richard III was discovered beneath a Leicester car park in 2012. Modern forensic techniques were used to analyse the injuries to the skull, rib and pelvis. The talk will discuss what computed and micro-computed tomogra...
Histories of Numbers
This event will focus upon mathematics as expressed in different languages and cultures.A lecture by Karine ChemlaThe transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
Knot Just Numbers: Andean Khipu Strings
This event will focus upon mathematics as expressed in different languages and cultures.A lecture by Manuel MedranoThe transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
Histories of Numbers
This event will focus upon mathematics as expressed in different languages and cultures. A lecture by Karine ChelmaThe transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://...
Sanskrit Mathematics in the Language of Poetry
Dr Anuj Misra will discuss Sanskrit Mathematics in the Language of Poetry (4pm).A lecture by Dr Anuj MisraThe transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
Shakespeare, Race and Performance
How do Shakespeare's familiar plays Othello and Romeo and Juliet reflect the early modern preoccupation with race and emerging concepts of colour-based racism? How do these ideas play out in early modern as well as in contemporary performance?...
The Maths of Perspective in Art
The Italian architect Filippo Brunelleschi, designer of the dome of Florence cathedral, is also known for developing the rules of linear perspective. In a famous experiment, viewers looked alternately from a vantage point at his perspective painti...
What does it mean for Israel to be a Jewish state?
What do we mean when we refer to the State of Israel as 'the Jewish State'? What does it mean for the politics of the state to be identified as 'Jewish'? And what does it mean for an academic and intellectual field to study Israel as a Jewish stat...
Insect Vector-Borne Diseases
Many of the major diseases of humans are transmitted by insect vectors. Malaria, sleeping sickness, typhus, dengue, Zika and plague are examples where mosquitoes, flies, fleas or ticks transmit. The advantage to the infection is that you can be in...
GPS
In 1977 or thereabouts a collection of scientists huddled around a secret radio receiver in the US desert. This was the start of GPS, Glonass, Gallileo and the whole navigation industry. A GPS chipset now costs, in bulk, a few dollars so your watc...
Pleasure
Sex manuals can incite revolution. In the early 1970s a feminist collective released Our Bodies, Ourselves (1970) while 'free love' proponent Dr. Alex Comfort published The Joy of Sex (1972). Both manuals have been read and updated and republished...
Blacks Britannica: Diversity in Medieval and Early Modern England
Africans have been present in England for more than two thousand years, but we rarely see them or hear about them. And often their existence is dismissed as a figment of 'political correctness' or 'wokism.' This lecture will critically ass...
Redesigning the World in Which We Live to Put the Planet First
How can we help human society flourish without destroying nature? The Wellbeing Economy and Natural Capital are linked strategies that can help achieve this. The Wellbeing Economy provides design principles to ensure that our planet serves...
The Immigration Act 1971: Celebrated or Flawed?
Commonwealth citizens once enjoyed the right to live, work and settle in the UK without any restrictions. But a racist backlash against Black and Asian immigration led to legislators introducing immigration controls in the Commonwealth Immigrants ...
Early Universe
This lecture will examine the evidence for and the significance of events that unfolded in the early Universe. "Early" here refers to within the first few seconds after the Hot Big Bang. These very early developments give rise to fundamental chara...
Apes in Science Fiction
Because apes seem most like humans, science fiction has used them as a mirror in which to view ourselves. The philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau saw in orangutans the original, natural man, uncorrupted by society. Meanwhile most of his contemporari...
Modernism Rampant: Shostakovich and Mosolov
The most outrageous Russian modernist composers of the 1920s were Dmitry Shostakovich in Leningrad, and Alexander Mosolov in Moscow. They were not merely following European avant-garde trends, and their work was genuinely pioneering. Russian cultu...
The Failure of the First Protestant Missionaries
It's usually said that Protestant and evangelical Christians made very little missionary effort in the 16th-18th centuries. In fact, there was much more than we remember. But they used strategies that look very alien to modern eyes: whether trying...
How to Save and Invest
This lecture will explore the essentials of financial planning. What are the different ways to save and invest, such as bank accounts, bonds, shares, and mutual funds, and how do they differ in returns and risk? What does owning bonds and ...
Mars Missions 2021: Early Discoveries
Three new missions arrived at Mars in February 2021, to look at weather, water and life. This lecture looks at new results from the UAE's Hope mission, China's Tianwen-1 and NASA's Perseverance. It will also look at the prospects for the E...
Nostalgia and Music
The music we listened to when we were young makes us feel emotional and often nostalgic, transporting us to a particular time and place. Composers over the past 300 years have frequently offered musical tributes to bygone styles - Mozart to Bach, ...
The Spanish Culture of Charles I's Court
In 1623, Charles I (as heir to the throne) made a secret and hazardous trip to Madrid to win the hand of a Spanish princess. For eight months he was the guest of the Spanish king, Philip IV, living in the Alcazar of Madrid. The opportunities to st...
Complexity and the Law
The Common Law was conceived as a thing comprising beautiful and simple principles. Has English law and procedure lost its way? Where are we to go in the 21st Century?A lecture by The Rt Hon Lord Justice Haddon-CaveThe tran...
Private Palaces: The Mansions of the Marlboroughs
Due to the Duke of Marlborough's military genius and the crush that Queen Anne had on his wife, the duchess, the Marlboroughs were presented with two of the greatest houses of the age. Blenheim and Marlborough House encapsulate the archite...
The Barbican Centre at 40 - Past, Present and Future
Nicholas Kenyon looks back at the development of one of the most distinctive buildings of our time, shedding new light on its origins, looking at the changes across the years, and considers the thinking that will guide its renewal for the next 40 ...
England's Radical Reformation
England's Reformation was supposed to bind the nation into a single 'Church of England'. In fact the country was shattered into a kaleidoscope of religious variety. Amid the confusion, a few English people embraced radical possibilities: mystics t...
Nudging Society to Better Decisions
We often think that psychological biases worsen decision making - but they can also be harnessed for good. This talk will discuss how "nudging" can help citizens make better decisions. For example, due to "status quo bias" (inertia), auto-...
The History of Synagogue Music in London
The Jewish communities of London have a rich musical-liturgical history, stretching back to the mid-17th century. This lecture will consider some of the main musical developments since then, beginning with the Sephardi and Ashkenazi synagogues whi...
Cyborg Piano: Magnetic Resonator Piano
The Magnetic Resonator Piano invented by Andrew McPherson sees electromagnets suspended above the strings of a regular grand piano, allowing for control of minute details of shimmering resonance, crescendo from silence, and sustained "bowed" sound...
Witness Anonymity: "I Want to Look Into The Eyes Of My Son's Killer And Know His Name"
The screening of witnesses for anonymity in the context of inquests and public inquiries is hugely contentious. Why does putting witnesses behind a screen cause such concern for human rights and civil liberties advocates? What are protective measu...
Theatres of War: Crusade, Colonialism and Chivalry in the Middle Ages
Were the Crusades an early example of European colonialism? What value did the crusading frontier hold for the knights who fought to defend it? What was the relationship between the Crusades and the knightly culture of chivalry? To answer these qu...
Caroline Herschel: Discoverer of Comets
Caroline Lucretia Herschel (1750-1848) was the first woman professional astronomer, and by the time of her death she had been awarded the Royal Astronomical Society Gold Medal and had discovered 8 comets. In this talk Dr Sheila Kanani combines the...
The Astronomer and the Witch: Kepler's Mother
In 1615 Katharina Kepler, illiterate mother of the astronomer Johannes Kepler, was accused of being a witch. At that time in Germany, there was a witch 'craze'. Over half of the c.50,000 executions in Europe for witchcraft between 1500 and...
Maths vs. Covid-19
Mathematics has been used as a tool to understand and control infectious disease for over a century, but Covid-19 brought along a whole epidemic of new challenges. In this joint lecture with the London Mathematical Society we will see some...
Cynics, Stoics, Epicureans
Several different schools of philosophy emerged at the same time and shortly after the famous traditions of Platonism and Aristotelianism in ancient Greece. The most significant, which have had a lasting impact on philosophy since antiquity, were ...
Performing with Toy Pianos
Toy pianos were first made in the 19th century. This lecture/recital tells the story of an instrument originally marketed at children, that subsequently made a surprising transition into the professional sphere and is currently enjoying un...
The Future of Computer Security
It is now easier to breach the security of people's personal and business lives than perhaps at any time in recent human history. Technology has brought unimaginable speed, scale and reach to hackers. This lecture looks at the consequences...
Russian Piano Masterpieces: Shostakovich
At one point in his life, Shostakovich considered the career of a concert pianist. He was talented enough to become a Soviet competitor at the international Chopin Competition of 1927, but he was struck down with acute appendicitis, and he had to ...
Trends in Health in the UK: The Implications for the NHS
What the NHS has provided and had to treat over its existence has changed much more radically than most people realise. Some of this change is rightly the domain of politics, but much is driven in response to changing health needs, improvements in...
Cosmic Vision: Space-Quakes
When black holes merge, the world shakes. Such quakes in space-time are now detectable and indeed the detection of such gravitational waves from cosmic coalescences comprises an entirely new type of astronomy that is completely independent...
Investing in Nature
The nature of investment is changing to better reflect the ecosystem of the planet we live on. The days of fossil fuel are numbered by the move to renewable energy. Resources and a healthy environment are finally being seen as core to our future. ...
Seeing God in Art: The Christian Faith in 30 Images
Lord Richard Harries has selected 30 images to convey the essential truths of the Christian faith, some ancient and some modern. Drawn from both the West and the East, a few are well-known masterpieces and others will be unfamiliar. He wil...
Myra Hindley: Rape-Murderers
Serial murderer Myra Hindley is often portrayed as an "evil icon". Her crimes of sadistic murder against children continue to shock. There are few artistic sights so terrifying as the giant portrait of Hindley composed of the handprints of childre...
Tackling Knife Violence Through Simulation
Knife violence is one of the biggest challenges facing our society. Simulation offers a way to involve young people in exploring the consequences of carrying a knife and responding when incidents occur. Realistic physical simulation invites partic...
How Companies Profit From Our Mistakes
CEOs make mistakes due to their own psychological biases - but they also profit from the biases of others. Some exploit investors by catering to sentiment - adding ".com" to their name during the Internet bubble or entering "hot" industries to inf...
Artificial Intelligence and Humour
Could AI replace stand-up comedians and scriptwriters? This may not be an impossible dream if you accept that nothing we do is forever beyond the scope of computer modelling. This lecture explores attempts to create jokes from rules, and p...
The Politics of Judicial Appointment
Has the time come for some form of political appointment of Supreme Court judges? Should there be parliamentary scrutiny of judicial appointments? This lecture contrasts the position of British and American Supreme Court judges. It looks a...
Should The State Be More Candid About Sudden Death?
Should there be a legal duty on the state to be more transparent in sudden and unexpected death cases? The lecture discusses the duty of candour, namely the principle that public authorities must assist the court with full and accurate exp...
Napoleon: Shadows & Gardens
This lecture will explore Napoleon's life through his interactions with the natural world and a series of gardens that were important to him during the rise and fall of his power. The point of doing this is to approach his life from obliqu...
The Maths of Life and Death
Every time you look at the world you are building a model. With every new experience these representations of your environment are refined and reconfigured. Each piece of sensory information you perceive makes the model of reality in your head mor...
A Just and Rights-Based Framework for Nature
International negotiations concerning our environment such as on climate and biodiversity, often put the scientific case behind economic and political interests, with potentially disastrous consequences. What does that mean for human prosp...
Where do Mathematical Symbols Come From?
Where do we get our mathematical symbols from? Why is the set of integers called ℤ ? When was the equals sign first used? How about zero? Good notation tends to catch on quickly, whereas bad notation can obscure beautiful theory. The lectu...
Space Sounds: The Music of the Cosmos
"In space, no one can hear you scream". The chillingly accurate tagline of Ridley Scott's 1979 space horror classic, Alien, is often belied in science fiction movies, forgetting that in space there is no air, and hence no sound. Space today is ter...
Is Incitement to Religious Hatred The New Blasphemy?
The criminalisation of religious speech before the ordinary courts in England began in 1676. Although the law on blasphemy was finally abolished in 2008, many of the troubling aspects of the old law remain in the form of the offence of incitement ...
Dickens's Public Readings: A Tale of Two Desks
This illustrated lecture marks 150 years since Dickens's death by reflecting on the nature of his creative genius and his legacy. It examines the theatrical performance of Dickens's public readings in relation to his writing practices, and...
England's Anglican Reformation
The English Reformation gave rise to the global Christian communion called Anglicanism: but neither immediately nor directly. This highly distinctive form of Christianity - ritualistic but nondogmatic, self-consciously moderate but staunchly natio...
Networks: The Internet and Beyond
Networks were seen as a rather arcane and dull area in computer science. Then along came the internet, and everything changed for ever. The internet is actually an amalgam of a number of disparate technologies that evolved at just the right time, ...
Lymphoma, Leukaemia and Myeloma
Lymphoma, leukaemia and myeloma arise from different parts of the white blood cell system. Unlike the solid tumours they can be widely distributed in the body, and this means they need a different approach. The outlook for people with these very d...
BBC Radio in the Digital Era (1982-)
On 17 August 1982, the first commercial CD was released. Digital recording and editing have changed the face of music by making recordings easy to originate and share. But has this affected musical quality, and what are the financial and artistic ...
Fiction and the Supernatural
From Horace Walpole to Ann Radcliffe, renegade novelists of the eighteenth century wanted to claim back the supernatural for fiction and so invented the Gothic Novel. This lecture pursues the gift of Gothic to later novelists, seeing how g...
Dickens: The Last Decade
In the last ten years of his life Charles Dickens related to his adoring public in a number of different ways; as novelist, as journalist, as public speaker, and in public readings of his own work. This lecture explores the contrast betwee...
Intergenerational Justice and Climate Change
Climate change and the over-exploitation of resources now may mean that unless the current generation modifies its behaviour, generations ahead may either not be born or will inherit a world with severe problems. A village or even a nation state c...
How I Became A Barrister
Emeritus Law Professor Jo Delahunty QC and guests will explore what the future holds for the next generation of barristers: will they better reflect the society they serve in terms of background, ethnicity and gender? Is privilege and income as mu...
Food Oppression
Food-related conditions - cancer, heart disease, and strokes - are the leading causes of preventable deaths in the UK. Common wisdom is that health reflects personal choices and will power. The reality is that law and policy determine individual a...
Cyber War Crimes
Cyberwar is not waged on physical battlefields following rules of engagement. Aggressors worry less about collateral damage, in part because they aren't forced to confront the sight of an enemy bleeding to death before their eyes. Instead, their v...
The South Sea Bubble of 1720
The London stock market boomed and crashed in 1720. The financial bubble is known to posterity as the South Sea Bubble. In the three hundred years since, the bubble has been much misunderstood - this lecture separates fact from myth and ai...
The Politics of Judging
In the wake of the decision in the parliamentary prorogation case Miller (No.2), the question of the politics of the judiciary has been thrust into the public eye. Was it "a constitutional coup" as some have claimed? The Government has pro...
Russian Piano Masterpieces: Prokofiev
Prokofiev followed in the footsteps of Rachmaninov and Scriabin as a joint graduate in piano and composition, but his final graduation performance made an even greater splash, since he dared to present his own new modernist Piano Concerto (No.1) b...
What Can We Do About Rising Obesity?
The rising prevalence of obesity is a major threat to current and future health of individuals, the public, and the NHS. It is sometimes seen as too difficult to tackle but there is now progress in this multi-system health problem.In this ...
Spying for Queen and Country
Spying for Queen Elizabeth I was very different from modern-day intelligence services - or was it? This lecture brings together historian Stephen Alford and Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6, and will discuss Tudor spies and the modern-day ...
Darwin's Troubled Legacy
Darwin's Descent of Man was dominated by the theory of sexual selection, which Darwin used to explain peacock's tails, but also to argue that white people were as superior to black ones as men were to women. For Darwin and his contemporaries, ineq...
Nurse Ratched: Evil Nurses
Nurse Ratched is the evil nurse in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962). She is the Evil Woman as autocratic, the absolute power in a psychiatric ward, which is the ultimate "total institution". "Big Nurse" is determined to e...
Royal Restoration: Estates of the Duke of Monmouth
Charles II's illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, became one of the most influential and powerful men at the Restoration court. He married a Scottish heiress, Anne Scott, and together they became leaders of fashion and taste. Recent res...
The Mistakes CEOs Make
We often think that leaders are particularly strong in decision making - that's why they've made it to the top. But evidence shows that even senior executives are prone to psychological biases, such as overconfidence, groupthink, and applying one-...
Could Streaming Change the 'Classic Film' Canon?
Cinema's original canons were based on a small number of works most highly esteemed by archivists and historians. But access to the history of film has been dramatically expanded by digital media, as have debates between those arguing from differe...
England's Protestant Reformation
When England's Reformation began, only a small band of idealists - or fanatics - truly wanted a Protestant England. Nevertheless, within a single lifetime, they achieved it. The lecture considers how the upheavals of the Tudor era led to t...
Computers: A History
Even the most humdrum of electrical devices nowadays contains at least one computer; yet surprisingly few people are aware of their history, their form or function. In this talk we will see that not only is the history of computers rich an...
Mathematical Structure in Fiction
Mathematical concepts have often been used to create new structural forms in fiction, as in the works of Raymond Queneau and Jorge Luis Borges. The members of Queneau's Oulipo group (including Georges Perec and Italo Calvino) sought to cre...
Restraining Police Restraint
We hear too often about sudden death in adults following prolonged and often unnecessary police restraint. What do people know about the dangers of restraint and how widespread is our understanding of such deaths? This talk by Professor Le...
Aristotle
Plato's most brilliant student and perhaps the most significant intellectual in world history, Aristotle of Stageira built on the doctrines he had studied at the Academy but also radically disagreed with them. The founder of Athens' second...
Cosmic Vision: Fast & Furious
Highly energetic particles from outer space travelling at the speed of light, known as cosmic rays, originate from the sites of extreme particle acceleration in the Universe. This lecture considers just how energetic these rapid particles ...
Putting Wellbeing and Prosperity First
There is a seismic shift underway in economics, hastened by the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. Communities and countries around the world are beginning to adopt/consider adopting well-being and prosperity as major guiding principles. ...
Russian Piano Masterpieces: Stravinsky
Stravinsky's solo piano output may be modest in size, but it contains one of the absolute pinnacles of piano virtuosity, the Three Pieces from Petrushka. To call these pieces "arrangements" from the ballet score would be true, but misleading: they...
Crime in Fiction
Why did stories of criminals become irresistible for novelists? Starting with works like Moll Flanders in the eighteenth century, this lecture goes on to examine the role of criminals in Dickens, keen to let his readers and characters experience w...
What Clinicians Can Learn From Forensic Scientists
Clinical practice depends on the acquisition and analysis of evidence - detailed information from each patient's clinical history, laboratory tests, imaging scans and biopsies. Yet data on its own is not enough, and must always be interpreted in t...
Should We Inherit?
Transfer of resources between currently existing generations. There is a clear link with the previous time scale, for a collective solution will mean that the cost of those currently drawing benefits is paid by those currently in employment. But t...
Giotto and the Early Italian Renaissance
Italo-Byzantine art will be considered as background to the early or 'proto' Renaissance at a time when Italy was a focus of stylistic cross-currents from different parts of Europe. The heritage of Rome and the influence of earlier traditi...
Far From Hollywood: New Kinds of Classic Film
Canons of taste and value in other media, such as literature, art and music, have been challenged in recent decades by proponents of sexual and ethnic equality. Film's 'ten bests' are open to similar charges, and their dominance may actively hinde...
Mata Hari: Femme Fatales
Mata Hari was an erotic dancer who, in 1917, was executed by the French army for treason. She has been portrayed as the ultimate femme fatale, extracting information from hapless men through exploiting her sensual charms. She was white, be...
Vaccination
All of the UK adult population is to be offered a COVID-19 Vaccination by September 2021. Many other countries are aiming for similar roll-outs in one of the largest and fastest vaccination drives in history. In this lecture Professor Chris Whitty...
Mathematical Journeys into Fictional Worlds
Literary satire has long used mathematical concepts to reinforce its points. Gulliver's Travels (1724) played with ideas of dimension, size, and shape, and a century later, Edwin Abbot's novel Flatland (1884) explored the mathematics of higher dim...
The Secrets of Darwin's Greenhouse
Despite the controversy, evolution was widely accepted by many naturalists within a few years of the Origin's appearance. An important reason for this rapid triumph was Darwin's botanical works. Seen through evolutionary eyes, plants proved to be ...
Is There a Level Playing Field at Inquests? From Death on the Rock to the Birmingham Pub Bombings
Is there is a level playing field between participants at inquests? What does 'equality of arms' mean? Is such a concept appropriate when looking at inquests? Are inquiries better? How have they developed since the IRA Death on The Rock ca...
England's Tudor Reformation
The English Reformation - unlike many of the other Reformations convulsing sixteenth-century Europe - was at heart more about politics and law than about religion. It created the English state as we now know it, and established relationships betwe...
Cosmic Vision: Unravelling Rainbows
When light is dispersed into its constituent colours, it can become possible to discern rich dynamical information about an evolving system in space, for example cosmic explosions, collisions or accelerations. This lecture explores how suc...
An Introduction to Programs
Niklaus Wirth said Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs. But programs are more than that. They are ubiquitous in modern life, but only a tiny minority of the population know how to program. Programmers, coders or developers are therefore seen a...
Building Back Better - The City's Role in a Green-Led Economic Recovery
Solving climate change is not something that can be achieved overnight; it is a long journey, one that is complicated by the economic problems we face after Covid-19. Every industry has a role in not only helping the economy recover from t...
Neutrino: The Particle that Shouldn't Exist
In 1930, the great physicist Wolfgang Pauli did something that "no theorist should ever do": he invented a new particle that he thought nobody could ever detect in order to save the principle of energy conservation in certain radioactive decays he...
BBC Radio in the LP Era (1948-1982)
The long-playing record and the BBC's Third Programme changed the face of classical music in Britain. In popular music the 45 rpm record became the recorded medium of choice, and in 1970 the BBC's home networks grew to four in order to bro...
Russian Piano Masterpieces: Scriabin
Scriabin was Rachmaninov's classmate at the Moscow Conservatoire, and he likewise received a Gold Medal for his combined studies in piano and composition. His commitment was also as unswerving as Rachmaninov's, and yet public knowledge of his musi...
Will Computers Outsmart Mathematicians?
Humans use computers to do gigantic calculations which would be impossible to do by hand - for example, weather prediction. But could an AI go beyond that and come up with a proof of a theorem which has stumped humankind? Could computers s...
What Makes a Film Classic?
For nearly seventy years, what might be called 'the canon' of greatest films has been arbitrated by an international poll of critics delivering a 'ten best' list every decade, published in the BFI's Sight & Sound. Before the next such poll...
Amelia Dyer: Baby Killers
Amelia Dyer was one of the most prolific murderers in Victorian Britain. She made a living as a "baby farmer", or someone paid to care for unwanted or abandoned infants - except she killed around 400 of them. How could a mother and nurse m...
Screening: When is it Useful, When is it Not?
One of the most powerful tools in public health is screening - whether for cancers like cervical or breast cancer, genetic abnormalities, or infectious diseases. Screening can be transformational, detecting disease early and preventing it ...
Connected Knowledge
The interconnectivity of living organisms and the planet is brought to light through the development of digital intelligence of the planet. This lecture tells the story of how this started with early computing and chaos theory, and develop...
The Political Jury
Is the jury system the bulwark of individual liberty? This lecture will look at the role of the so-called "perverse jury" in acquitting defendants where the law, or the charge itself, is deemed unjust. Famous examples are Kempton Bunton (f...
What Surgeons Can Learn from Polar Explorers and Fighter Pilots
Trauma surgery, combat flying and polar exploration require professionals to work in risky conditions where error can lead to catastrophe. One key skill is recognising when a situation is getting out of control and finding a 'place of safety'; ano...
The Mathematics of Bell Ringing
This lecture will look at change ringing, which is ringing a series of tuned bells (as you might find in the bell tower of a church) in a particular sequence, and this has exciting mathematical properties. We will also ask: why are bells b...
Boris Ord's King's College Carols
Boris Ord composed one tiny Christmas carol - 'Adam lay ybounden'. But Ord's largest contribution to the carol genre was his work as choirmaster at King's College, Cambridge from 1929 to 1957. This lecture shows how Ord built on Arthur Man...
Christmas Lies and Legends
Is Santa really Dutch? Were Christmas Trees introduced by Prince Albert? Was Christmas once a time of faith, rather than riotous feasting? In this lecture, social historian Judith Flanders considers Christmas myths and Christmas memory, an...
The Mistakes Investors Make
Sound investment decisions are critical for our long-term financial future. But psychological biases can lead investors to make costly mistakes - overconfidence can cause them to trade too much, and the reluctance to take a loss can encourage them...
Bowel Cancer and Digestive Cancers
Bowel cancer is the third most common cancer in both men and women. A substantial proportion of bowel cancer is preventable. The outlook depends strongly on how advanced it is at diagnosis; caught early the outlook is good, so screening is a major...
Who Investigates Sudden Death?
How do we investigate violent and unexpected deaths at the inquest? Who investigates? When do deaths get referred to the Coroner? Are inquests non-adversarial and inquisitorial? When do you have a jury? What are findings, determinations an...
England's Unwanted Reformation
Most English people initially saw the Reformation as an unexpected catastrophe, wrenching their religious lives out of shape, and stripping their communities of resources they had naively believed belonged to them. This lecture looks at ho...
Seeing China Through Its Media
China's media provide a window into the Chinese mind, as the country asserts itself in the world as a great power. What do Chinese people think is the purpose of life? What matters most to them? In what do they believe? How do officials and journa...
Making a Monkey out of Darwin
When Darwin finally published the On the Origin of Species, he tried to avoid controversy by ignoring human origins. Yet evolution was soon being attacked as the godless 'monkey theory'. However, while some condemned Darwin's book, others ...
Russian Piano Masterpieces: Rachmaninov
There is no need to introduce Rachmaninov, considered by many to be the greatest composer-pianist in history and the creator of several famous items on the "classical hit parade". But his very popularity has always detracted from the value of his ...
Plato
Plato the Athenian was the philosopher who founded the Academy and whose brilliant writings are the foundation texts of the entire western philosophical tradition. A student of Socrates, his dialogues use the Socratic method of question-an...
The Changing Geography of Ill Health
Ill health has always been concentrated in particular places; tackling these pockets of ill health is an essential role for public health. These may be driven by environmental factors, demography, deprivation and healthcare provision. In t...
Data: The Past, the Present and the Future
Digital technology from the early 1990s onwards produced an exponential increase in astronomical data. Within our lifetime, the entirety of the visible universe will have been mapped out: we will have seen everything there is to see. The question ...
Understanding the Universe with AI
Digital technology from the early 1990s onwards produced an exponential increase in astronomical data. Within our lifetime, the entirety of the visible universe will have been mapped out: we will have seen everything there is to see. The question ...
Snow White: Evil Witches
The Brothers Grimm's tale of Snow White has been retold dozens of times in print and the cinema over the past two centuries. A central character is the Evil Queen, Snow White's malevolent stepmother, who tries to kill her with the help of the occu...
Fatal Months: Auschwitz and the End of the Second World War
The 2020 Alfred Wiener Holocaust Memorial Lecture Series2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the most lethal of all Nazi camps. This lecture looks back at its final months, from the time the camp reached ...
Cosmic Vision: Witnessing Fireworks
Accounts of occasional celestial spectacular events in past centuries have provided crucial information for modern-day astrophysicists. One such example is the so-called Great Eruption of Eta Carinae which was for a time in the mid 19th century th...
The Sound of Mathematics
It has been known since antiquity that there are simple "harmonic" relationships between notes that sound appealing together. This lecture introduces the mathematics of pitch, scales, and just temperament. The pitch of a sound is not its o...
How Are Drones Changing Warfare?
THE 2020 PETER NAILOR MEMORIAL LECTUREDrones, or unmanned air systems, are changing the face of war in the 21st century, for combatants and civilians. We are used to a history of the RAF based on a narrative of the 'bravery of the few' wit...
What Do We Owe Society?
How has Covid-19 re-shaped our ideas about what we owe society? The lockdown has had a terrible impact on the economic prospects of young people - and the elderly have suffered from high mortality in care homes. Choices have to be made between the...
Loving Animals: Historical Reflections on Bestiality, Zoophilia and Post-Human Love
What is meant by 'love' between human and nonhuman animals? Why is sex with animals such a taboo? It is only in very recent years that some people have begun to undermine the absolute prohibition on zoosexuality. Are their arguments danger...
Ruling Passions: The Architecture of the Cecils
Father and son, William and Robert Cecil, not only dominated politics for much of Elizabeth I and James I reign but dominated architectural fashion. Building a series of spectacular houses, they, and not the monarchy, were the great palace builder...
Connected Nature
The story of the deep, biogeophysical planetary connections and how these are intensifying the effects of climate change and economic development, is told through personal research and expeditions to remote locations across the world (including so...
Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites
Charles Edward Stuart ('Bonnie Prince Charlie') is one of the most recognisable and romanticised figures of British history. Born in Rome as a Catholic prince on 31 December 1720, he led the Jacobite Rising of 1745, which came closer than anyone e...
John Evelyn: Britain's First Environmentalist
Air pollution, the usefulness of trees, ideas for a green belt are not concerns we associate with the 1600s. But John Evelyn, writer, diarist and gardener, was unusual. His thinking in Fumifugium (1661) about air quality, and Sylva (1664) about tr...
Convincing Fiction
How does fiction make itself seem like fact? Professor John Mullan begins where novels begin: with Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, which showed every novel that followed how to make a 'strange surprising' story seem entirely 'probable' (the word ...
Cosmic Vision: Attentive Eyes
Well-trained eyes can be remarkably useful for capturing light curves of evolving objects in the cosmos, even contributing to modern research programmes. This lecture will consider how stargazing with imperfect, non-linear human eyes can a...
Hidden Investment Opportunities
Psychological studies show that humans overweight tangible factors and underweight intangible ones when making decisions. This talk shows how these biases affect the stock market - it focuses excessively on short-term profit, but ignores e...
The Windrush Thinkers and Artists
Caribbean migrants not only came to work in the buses and hospitals. Many - such as the novelists George Lamming and Sam Selvon - came to Britain in search of opportunities to be paid to think and write. Others such as Stuart Hall, Vidia Naipaul a...
The African Diaspora in Britain
This lecture examines the centuries long presence of the African diaspora as an integral part of Britain's history since Roman times. Unfortunately, this history is still too often ignored, its promotion limited only to October. Attempts t...
Reserve Currencies in the Era of Fiat Money
This event, jointly hosted with the British Society for the History of Mathematics, will focus upon the relationship between mathematics and money, from coinage through to cryptocurrencies. A lecture by D'Maris Coffman 21 OctoberTh...
Cryptocurrencies: Protocols for Consensus
This event, jointly hosted with the British Society for the History of Mathematics, will focus upon the relationship between mathematics and money, from coinage through to cryptocurrencies. A lecture by Andrew Lewis-Pye 21 OctoberT...
Thomas Harriot on the Coins of England
This event, jointly hosted with the British Society for the History of Mathematics, will focus upon the relationship between mathematics and money, from coinage through to cryptocurrencies. A lecture by Norman Biggs 21 OctoberThe t...
An Introduction to Algorithms
Algorithms, loosely translated, are systems for doing things. Algorithms are thus the link from pre-history to the modern world - without algorithms we would have an inanimate universe without all the mess and complexity of real life. It turns out...
The Political Lawyer
Traditionally a lawyer's own views and political affiliation are irrelevant to the pursuit of the legal process. This lecture will examine - and celebrate - the work of lawyers who have crossed the usual lines and worked for political chan...
The Role of the State in Public Health, and its Limits
The relative role of the State and the individual is a recurring theme of political theory. It is also a practical question in public health - what are the respective responsibilities of government, individuals and healthcare professionals to prot...
Silence, and the Dynamising of African Creative Resistance
In the face of enslavement, colonialism and cultural suppression, peoples of African descent have fought to maintain cherished cultural practices. Dr Gus Casely-Hayford, the new Director of V&A East, tells the story of how that resistance ...
Connected Humans
Was Covid-19 the ultimate wake-up call about how we live on planet earth? Looking at the effect on the environment of a near-stoppage of the world's economies, the first lecture explores emerging perspectives and some of the guiding princi...
The Mathematics of Musical Composition
Pattern and structure are essential to music, from the permutations in a Bach fugue, to the structure of a round. This lecture will explore the mathematics of musical symmetries, such as the "translational symmetry" of the transposition of...
Eve's Evil Legacies
Eve was the original Evil Woman. She was tempted by Satan, introducing sin into the world. In turn, she seduced Adam, bringing the wrath of the Creator upon humanity for all eternity. From the 2nd century, Eve has been blamed for evil. The...
What Medicine Can Learn from Savile Row
Clinical practice is often seen as the acquisition and application of scientific knowledge to diagnose and treat diseases. Yet every patient is different. This lecture draws on a ten-year collaboration with a Savile Row tailor to explore '...
Cosmic Vision: Watching the Radio
At longer wavelengths than the normal optical wavelengths to which human eyes are normally sensitive, is the radio part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Radio astronomy can tell us about the distribution of magnetic fields in the Universe,...
Engels and Marx: Revolutionaries in London
On the 200th anniversary of the birth of Friedrich Engels, his biographer Tristram Hunt looks at how both Engels and Karl Marx were deeply affected by their time in London in the second half of the 19th century. London, then the heart of t...
Darwin, Breeding and Barnacles
Following the Beagle voyage, Darwin settled down to a quiet married life, relying on correspondence to gather facts. He wrote thousands of letters as he gathered facts to support his still-secret theory. Long before anyone had hear...
Does The State Really Care When It Kills You?
This lecture will focus on human rights and the wrongs of unexpected and/or sudden deaths in which the state is implicated.It will cover the importance of a proper death investigation, the impact on the family and state, how Magna Carta in...
Expert: Understanding the Path to Mastery
We all need experts for things we can't do ourselves. And we are all on a path to becoming expert ourselves, whatever our areas of interest. But what does it mean to be expert? In his new book Expert: Understanding the Path to Mastery (Vik...
Srebrenica: the New Evidence
2020 marks the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre and the Dayton Accords resolution of the first two (Croatia and Bosnia) of the three Balkan wars of the 1990s. In examining the legacy of this conflict, Professor Nice will conside...
The World of Isaac Newton
This illustrated lecture will cover Newton's life and his mathematical and scientific labours in the context of 17th-century England, and feature his childhood in Lincolnshire, his university career in Cambridge and his later life in London as Mas...
Number Theory: Queen of Mathematics
In which years does February have five Sundays? How many right-angled triangles with whole-number sides have a side of length 29? How many shuffles are needed to restore the order of the cards in a pack with two Jokers? Are any of the numbers 11, ...
Russian Piano Masterpieces: Musorgsky
Musorgsky was a proficient, but not virtuosic pianist: in his youth, he entertained society ladies with popular marches and quadrilles, and in his last years, he toured as an accompanist in song recitals. On the basis of these modest exploits, no ...
England's Catholic Reformation
England's Catholic Reformation is the reformation that sixteenth-century England nearly had: a reformed and renewed English Catholic Church, its new schools and revived parishes matched with a firm smack of discipline. It almost happened; ...
Looking for Life On Mars
Mars has changed since it formed 4.6 billion years ago. When life started on Earth ~4 billion years ago, Mars was habitable too, with volcanism, a magnetic field, surface water and a thick atmosphere. Today, Mars is cold and dry, with a thin atmos...
The Psychology of the Stock Market
The Efficient Market Hypothesis argues that stock markets are rational - they take into account all relevant information, and incorporate it in an unbiased way. This talk will present evidence that stock prices are instead driven by human ...
Offensive Shakespeare
From The Merchant of Venice to The Taming of the Shrew, it's easy to see how Shakespeare's plays can cause offence to contemporary audiences. Is it harder to teach Shakespeare today than in the past? Have ideas about what is offensive in Shakespea...
BBC Radio in the 78 Era (1920-1948)
In 1920, Nellie Melba's singing was transmitted to Europe and Newfoundland via the wireless. In 1922 the BBC began broadcasting, and from the outset sponsored new music and relayed outside broadcasts to the nation (and from 1932, to the world).
Tudor Ambition: Houses of the Boleyn Family
A family best known for producing one of England's most famous queen consorts started out owning substantial estates in Norfolk before buying, and inheriting, a series of major houses close to London. These mansions became the stage for the traged...
The Mayflower: A London - Leiden Adventure
The story of the Mayflower is usually presented as a tale of persecuted Pilgrims crossing the Atlantic in circumstances of grave adversity to inhabit a desolate wilderness. There is another perspective. This lecture asks not where ...
The Family Court in Lockdown
How has lockdown affected the Family Court? Gresham Law Professor Jo Delahunty QC chairs a panel of senior lawyers and journalists discussing the issues faced by family courts and by families during lockdown.How has COVID-19 affected child...
Leadership Lessons From Lockdown
The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating. But one silver lining has been the tremendous responses from businesses and individual citizens, as we've realised how even small actions can have a substantial effect on society. A second is tha...
De-radicalisation - Illusion or Reality?
Lord Carlile will discuss the effect of Covid-19 on counter terrorism policy, including suggestions that terrorist organisations have taken advantage of the pandemic to increase their influence. He will discuss whether UK counter-extremism...
Is Populism a Threat to Democracy?
THE 2020 ANNUAL PROVOST'S LECTUREWhat is the history of populism? Has it ever been a force for good? In this lecture, Sir Richard Evans, Provost of Gresham College, discusses the different varieties of populism, asks why it has be...
William And Mary: The Court Divided
Like James I, King William III was fundamentally unhappy with the stuffy formality of England's vast crumbling royal estate. But unlike James, who virtually abandoned Edinburgh, William maintained a second court, and a parallel suite of royal hous...
Digital Healthcare: Will the Robot See You Now?
It is commonplace for governments to complain that the cost of healthcare is rising. Various reasons are put forward: some claim that modern medicine is inevitably more expensive; some claim that the ageing population is the cause of the problem; ...
The Growth Mindset and the Abundance Mentality
This talk will explore the "growth mindset", the evidence-based view that talents are developed rather than genetic. It provides practical tips on how to develop new skills with limited time, and highlights the importance of pushing yourself outsi...
Hippocrates and Ancient Greek Medicine
The birth of rational medicine contributed to the scientific revolution which occurred amongst eastern Greek communities in the 7th-to-5th centuries BCE. Medical professionals still take the oath of the ancient Greek doctor Hippocrates of ...
The Cashless Society
Money may well make world go round but cash is surely an encumbrance we can do without. What does a cashless society look like? What is the technology behind the digital economy and the new forms of currency and money? Your bank doubtless ...
Perceptions, Expectations, and Discoveries
The Greeks famously identified many patterns and rhythms in the sky, deducing detailed information about eclipses and orbits that still have relevance today. The Chinese, on the other hand, made landmark discoveries of supernovae and comets - even...
The Last Mile: Ensuring Access to Affordable Energy to Poor, Rural Communities
How can we deliver clean and affordable energy to even the poor, especially in rural settlements, as set out in UN Sustainable Development Goal 7? Environment Professor Jacqueline McGlade will examine how renewable energy systems, ranging ...
A History of the Foot
The science of feet and footprints has a long, yet often forgotten, history. In this lecture, I look at what people from the late eighteenth century to the present thought they knew about toes, arches, heels, and ankles. What makes a beaut...
What Medicine Can Learn from Restaurants about Care
Medical care often frames patients as the passive 'recipients' of expert professional knowledge and skill. This lecture explores what comes into view if we reframe clinical treatment as hospitality, and patients as guests. Drawing on colla...
Diaghilev and Prokofiev: Return to Emotion
Diaghilev would often look at past art and then do the opposite. He playfully abandoned plot, elaborate costumes, emotional expression, and even meaning, but reinstating them whenever he felt like it - this was his undogmatic approach to modernism...
Artificial Intelligence and Religion
This lecture addresses the potential links between AI and religious belief, which include the question of whether an artificial "superintelligence", were one to arise, would be well-disposed towards us. Religious traditions historically assume tha...
War Games at the Field of the Cloth of Gold
2020 marks the 500th anniversary of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, one of the most extraordinary diplomatic events of the late medieval period. Although commonly regarded as a 'peace festival', the meeting might more usefully be described as a tw...
Forgotten Victims from the Age of Atrocity
Some of the atrocities of the age of Europe's religious wars immediately became notorious. The execution of tens of thousands of women and men for witchcraft, by contrast, passed largely unremarked - until modern times, when this history was reviv...
Is Robocop Now A Reality?
Robocop (1987) embodied a particular vision of an electronic crime fighter but what is the reality of electronic crime fighting? How are the police and security services using technology to trap villains? In this lecture we will examine n...
COVID-19
At the time of writing, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has killed many thousands worldwide, infected many more - and changed lives around the world in ways that were unimaginable just weeks ago. What is COVID-19, how has it been managed and w...
The Future of Our Oceans
Recent evidence about the extent of plastics and litter in our oceans has led to grassroots rejection of single-use plastics. This lecture will draw on McGlade's own research (published in 2020) on plastics in our seas. She will show that ...
Equations That Have Changed The World
This final lecture will celebrate some of the great mathematical equations, and related algorithms, which have both changed the world as we know it and which are likely to change it in the future. The lecture will focus on a number of equa...
Mysteries of the Dark Cosmos
Dark matter and dark energy together make up 95% of our Universe. Yet, very little is known about them. This lecture will present the endeavours of cosmologists and particle physicists, as they attempt to explain the fundamental nature of ...
Critical Thinking
One of the most dangerous phrases is "evidence shows that …", because you can almost always find evidence to support any viewpoint. Experts are similarly distrusted, because they may have motives other than the truth. These problems are particular...
The Ballets Russes: Turning French
Modernity kept seeping into ballet, a genre that had traditionally looked to a distant, mythical or magical past. First, the tutu gave way to an everyday tennis costume in Jeux by Debussy/Nijinsky, then ragtime rang out in Parade by Satie/Picasso,...
Musical Endings
Should a composer leave the listener wanting more, or must a musical ending be definitive? Is a 'fade out' actually a cop-out, and is a decisive ending preferable to an abrupt one? In short, is the object of a musical ending to bring an audience t...
Choosing Religious Atrocities in Ireland
Nowhere in Europe have the wars of religion lasted longer than in Ireland. At the heart of this are two rival sets of memories of atrocities: above all, Protestants recall the massacres of the 1641 rebellion, and Catholics recall the massacres per...
How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit
BOOK LAUNCHBusiness has lost the public's trust. Concerns that capitalism only serves the elites has led to major unrest throughout the world and the election of populist leaders. Many people claim we need to overhaul capitalism - but that...
Good Gardeners of Planet Earth? The Vision of Silent Running (1972)
Are humans fit to be gardeners of this planet? Today's biotechnology companies promote themselves in distinctly utopian ways, but increasing numbers of people find their claims difficult to reconcile with the daily evidence of the damage that tech...
A History of the Stomach
Vertical banded gastroplasty surgery (or stomach stapling) has drawn attention in recent decades to the hidden, but unruly, stomach. This organ has been the focus of weight-control regimes for centuries, however.This lecture looks at ninet...
Charles II: The Court in Exile
For a decade after the execution of Charles I the Stuart courts were based in the Low Countries and France. Always short of money, but determined to maintain splendour and dignity, Charles II rented a series of mansions and used them as the headqu...
Corpse Roads: Digital Landscape Archaeology
This lecture explores how digital landscape modelling can help unlock the secrets of Britain's ancient pathways. Focusing on "corpse roads", pathways taken by coffin bearers over the countryside before the Enclosures, it discusses the significance...
The Japanese Martyrs
In the age of exploration, Catholic missionaries fanned out across the world, meeting with extraordinary success but also extraordinary opposition: nowhere more so than in Japan, where the fast-growing Catholic community was brutally suppressed in...
The Art of Maths
Mathematics and art are more similar than is commonly thought. Each is concerned with the process of being highly creative with abstract objects and of producing everlasting work of great aesthetic beauty. Early art inspired by geometry, s...
The Insider's Guide to Becoming a Barrister
This lecture provides an insider's brutally honest guide to what it's like to be a self-employed barrister - the highs and lows of the career, the work behind the scenes that makes a difference to outcomes in court, and the art of persuasion in it...
Engineering: Archimedes of Syracuse
In the 3rd century BCE, the Sicilian polymath Archimedes significantly advanced human understanding of mathematics, geometry and astronomy. By applying his discoveries to practical problems and physical phenomena, he became the founder of ...
Mental and Physical Wellness
Exercise, diet, rest, and sleep are sometimes seen as optional extras that are desirable if you have the time. They are also topics about which many myths and half-truths abound. This talk will provide rigorous evidence on the importance o...
Simple Laws, Spectacular Astrophysics
The laws of physics may be stated in simple and elegant ways that can be made easy to demonstrate and understand on their own. What is immensely hard to predict from first principles are the consequences of the combinations of these laws acting in...
Can Gender Equality Help Solve Climate Change?
Is gender equality a key factor in tackling climate change? Many think so, and in this lecture Environment Professor Jacqueline McGlade will explain why in relation to UN Sustainable Development Goal 5 is to 'achieve gender equality and empower al...
Arise, Sir Isaac! Newton's London career
During the last thirty years of his life, Isaac Newton lived in London, where as head of the Royal Mint he moved in wealthy aristocratic circles, exerted substantial political influence, and profited financially from imperial trade and exploitatio...
Thomas Becket and London
'St Thomas has adorned…London by his rising and Canterbury by his setting'. This lecture will explore how the influence of Thomas Becket permeated city life in medieval London until Henry VIII ordered the destruction of his shrine and the ...
The Cato Street Conspiracy, 1820: A Study in Terrorism
Two hundred years ago a group of conspirators assembled in a Cato Street stable in order to plan the massacre of the whole British cabinet at dinner and bring about revolution. Had they succeeded they would have achieved modern Britain's first ter...
The Ethics of Surgical Innovation
Scientific knowledge is advancing at dizzying speed and each day brings new breakthroughs in medical understanding. Unprecedented advances are opening possibilities that only a decade ago would have seemed like science fiction. Yet a deep anxiety ...
The Ballets Russes: Playing with the Past
Diaghilev seemed to be the nemesis of traditional ballet, but he was ready to draw on the rigorous classical schooling of his dancers whenever it suited him. Once ugliness had been established as a legitimate option, he was happy to bring back bea...
A History of the Penis and the Clitoris
Is the clitoris simply a female version of the male penis? Many scientists and biologists in the past thought so. It is only in recent decades that the physiology of the clitoris has become understood. What can debates about these two orga...
Lung Cancer and Mesothelioma
Lung cancer is the second most common cancer in both men and women, but kills the most people through a combination of being common and currently having much less effective treatment. Both treatment and prevention are currently improving, slowly. ...
The Digital University and Other Mythical Creatures
In 2013 Sir Michael Barber declared that "An Avalanche is Coming" and that universities would be swept away by new digital technologies. Six years later nothing seems to have happened, yet there has been change. In this lecture we will rev...
Great Mathematical Myths
Mathematics is often thought of as being a dry and logical subject, and its conclusions free from the vagaries of fashion and misconception. However this is far from the truth. Mathematical misunderstandings, or perhaps a misunderstanding of mathe...
Making New Plants: A History
This lecture examines the work of Hugo de Vries, a Dutch botanist who was one of the first to claim that science would allow plants and animals to be designed to order. It also looks at the early twentieth-century 'Station for Experimental...
Unfinished Music
Bach's Art of Fugue, Mozart's Requiem, Schubert's Symphony No. 8, Alban Berg's opera Lulu, and Elgar's 3rd Symphony are all pieces that are famously incomplete. This lecture examines the fascination surrounding works that are left unfinish...
How to Survive a Massacre in Europe's Wars of Religion
Europe's Wars of Religion were fought against entire populations, and were punctuated by events remembered as atrocities: such as the siege of Leiden in 1573-4 or, most notoriously, the St Bartholomew's Day Massacres in France in 1572. Thi...
Webb Vs. Hubble: Battle of the Space Giants
The Hubble Space Telescope is rapidly approaching its 30th birthday, and we will explore some of the amazing insights it has provided on the beauty of our universe and our place in it. But as it approaches retirement, its replacement, the James We...
Homes Fit for Heroes: 100 Years of Council Housing
More council houses were built in Britain than any other country in the 20th century. By the 1970s, one in three households were council tenants. Yet after 1980 £100bn worth of council housing was sold off. How did this expansion come about, what ...
What Has Einstein Ever Done For You?
Albert Einstein's mind-boggling ideas revolutionized our view of the universe. From relativity to curved spacetime, from the Big Bang to black holes and gravitational waves, nothing could be further from our everyday experience than such esoteric ...
Can the Law Keep Up With Changes In Society?
Advances in medicine allow us to sustain life for longer, but at what cost and at whose choice? Why might the court intervene when a devout Jehovah Witness parent refuses a life-saving blood transfer to their child? Where does religious de...
Shapes of Free Fall
The shapes of the orbits of many planets and comets orbiting their mother-ship stars are well known to be circles or ellipses (an idea that was explained by Isaac Newton). But we now understand that, depending on the history and the energy of the ...
Prohibition: A Battle in America's Last Culture War
The extraordinary effort to ban drink must be understood as part of an American culture war, one framed between the country and the city, between the native-born (white Protestants) and foreign-born (Catholics and Jews), between religion and scien...
Powell and Pressburger's Island Stories
Stories about islands punctuate the careers of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, from Powell's breakthrough with Edge of the World (1936) to the Hebridean journey of I Know Where I'm Going! (1945), and the final act of their Tales of Hoffmann...
Clara Schumann (1819-1896): The Unsung Heroine of Romanticism
This lecture-recital will explore the life of Clara Schumann (1819-1896) through her music and surroundings, her achievements and influencers. Deservedly revered by all who knew her, she was a pioneer of female composition, who overcame so...
Public Speaking Without Fear
Surveys about people's fears commonly feature public speaking at the very top of the list. Many people believe that public speaking is either something you are born with or without. This talk will provide practical tips that everyone can e...
The Rite of Spring: A Failure and A Triumph
The Rite of Spring was the startling result of a collaboration between Stravinsky, Nijinsky (choreography) and Roerich (sets and costumes). In the immediate aftermath, it seemed to be a fiasco because of its riotous reception, but it proved to be ...
Can Machines Be Conscious, and Would It Matter If They Were?
The question "Will AI artefacts ever be conscious?" was raised by Turing seventy years ago, and will not go away even though no one quite knows what it means, nor how we would know they were conscious if they were. This lecture explores wh...
George IV: Radical or Reactionary?
On the 200th anniversary of George IV's accession to the throne, this lecture considers whether or not he had any real impact on the fast-industrialising world around him, and the turbulent political times he lived through. When George was...
A History of the Breast
There has been a great deal of research on breast cancer, surgery, and implants. This lecture looks at changing ideas about the healthy breast. It explores notions of beauty, sexual pleasure, and age. Early maturation of girls, coupled with a grea...
Prostate and Testicular Cancer
The most common cancer in men in the UK is prostate cancer, around a quarter of all male cancer diagnoses. Testicular cancer, the other male-specific cancer, is rare, but occurs early in life. Neither are preventable. There has been a stea...
Ending Our Consumer Addiction
How can we end our intense consumer addiction and change our habits and values to be more sustainable? In this lecture Environment Professor Jacqueline McGlade will look at patterns of consumption and the concepts of sufficiency in communi...
The City of London - Culture, Creativity and the Culture Mile
The 2020 Annual Lord Mayor's Gresham event will explore the value of culture for The City of London.The City of London is not only a great place to do business but also has a rich and vibrant cultural offer making it a great place to live,...
Improvising Medicine
Few patients like to think of their physicians or surgeons as improvisers. Yet clinical care is a human art where there will always be uncertainty. Though doctors spend years learning facts and gaining skills, each patient is unique and every situ...
Can Maths Save The Whales and Cure Cancer?
Saving the whales and curing cancer are two of the great challenges of the present day, and mathematics has a part to play in addressing them. This talk will use these two examples to illustrate the process of mathematical modelling to gai...
1928 - Annus Mirabilis of the Christmas Carol
1928 witnessed the BBC's first broadcast of the Christmas Eve carol service from King's College, Cambridge. 1928 also saw the publication of The Oxford Book of Carols. By paying tribute to conductors Arthur Mann and Boris Ord, and composer...
The Business of Santa Claus in Lapland
The myth of Santa Claus has been translated into an extraordinary market on a global scale. We see Santa everywhere in adverts and products, and people also travel quite long distances to meet the 'real Santa' in his faraway home. The firs...
The Man Who Invented Christmas: Film Adaptations of Dickens' A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol (1843) is the most filmed and televised of Dickens' works. Many will warmly remember the 1951 Alastair Sim version, but how many are aware of A Carol for Another Christmas (1964), a propaganda film produced in support of the UN, ...
Finding Purpose in Your Career
Many influential leaders stress the importance of pursuing a purpose rather than choosing a career based on salary. While inspiring, such talks can sometimes seem impractical because many people find it difficult to know what their purpose is, and...
Gardens of Empire: The Role of Kew and Colonial Botanic Gardens
Sydney's botanic garden, founded in the early nineteenth century, was expected to ship new plants 'home' to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, from where they could be transplanted to other colonial gardens, to see if they could become valuable new c...
100 Years of Women in Law
A Gresham lecture that Delahunty gave in November 2017 was one of the first public identifications of the exodus of experienced women from the self-employed Bar - and gave a call for action. That loss affects the number of women who take Silk and ...
Physics: Its Birth in Greek Ionia
The study of the natural and physical world from a scientific viewpoint began in Greek cities on the western coast of Turkey around Miletus in about 600 BCE. The first scientists were known as physiologoi, or men who discoursed about nature (physi...
Breast, Uterine and Ovarian Cancers
This lecture will consider the treatment and prevention of common cancers in women. The outlook for those with breast cancer and uterine cancer have substantially improved in the last three decades, and the great majority with the diagnosis will b...
Taming the Trolls of Social Media
Barely a day goes by without some lunatic assertion on social media. Thinking-people shake their heads, but what can be done about this? It turns out that there are a variety of scientific and engineering approaches which might be adapted...
George Eliot and Relationships
Mary Ann Evans experienced difficult relationships with her family while growing up in Warwickshire, and with nineteenth-century London society more generally after she moved to the city and lived with a married man, George Henry Lewes. He...
A History of the Eye
From ancient times to popular self-help books today, eyes have been viewed as 'windows to the soul'. The interpretation of eye shape and colour have been used to distinguish between different degrees of 'civilization' (scientific racism), to ident...
How the English Learned to Hate Catholics
Medieval England was proudly Catholic and ostentatiously loyal to Rome. But from the late sixteenth century until recent times - and even now - anti-Catholic prejudice has been a cornerstone of English and British identity. This lecture wi...
The End of Matter?
Black holes give rise to some of the most spectacular phenomena we see in the cosmos. They significantly distort space-time and they grow by stealing material from other stars.This talk will separate science fiction from science fact and e...
Sir Thomas Gresham and the Tudor Court
This lecture will explore Gresham's service to the crown during the turbulent politics of mid-Tudor England. Gresham served three Tudor monarchs, and his career exemplifies the reliance of the Tudors on the intellectual gifts and financial...
Keyhole Surgery Pioneers
This lecture examines how minimal access ('keyhole') surgery has revolutionised medicine in just a few decades. By re-assembling teams of long-retired surgical pioneers from the 1980s and inviting them to re-enact early procedures using realistic ...
Unlocking the Health Benefits of Nature
Nature's benefits to human health are so well-attested, that the medical profession is now actively engaged in fighting for a clean, healthy environment as a human right and prescribing it as treatment across the world from Shetland to Japan. ...
Maths and Voting
We live in a democracy in which we all have a chance to vote. But does voting mean that the views of the majority are truly represented when it can be shown (mathematically) that all voting systems have flaws? In this talk we use mathemati...
Powell and Pressburger: The Matter of Britain
World War Two set British filmmakers a challenge: to be relevant and entertaining and to inspire without patronising. Powell and Pressburger brought wit and imagination to their task, questioning what Britain stood for, warts and all. Notoriously,...
The Origins of the Elements
In this talk, coinciding with the UNESCO International Year of the Periodic Table, Dr Wilkins will discuss the astrophysical origins of the chemical elements, almost all of which have an origin ranging from the big bang, to exploding white dwarfs,...
Charles I: The Court at War
During the Civil War Charles I's court, denied access to its usual country residences, was forced to set itself up in a series of makeshift locations. The most important of these was Oxford which Charles converted into a large and well-organised c...
Dams, Radiators and The Shard: The Legacy of English Gardening
BOOK LAUNCHThis lecture describes three ways in which technology developed for gardens changed the shape of England and its built environment. Gardening innovations in water engineering (17th and 18th century artificial lakes), central hea...
AI Weapons, War and Ethics
This lecture will explore fully autonomous weapons, the products of AI technology, and the arguments for and against their use. It will then look at the more complex issues of the ethical role of the state in the protection of its population, and ...
Weighing the Universe
The cosmic microwave background is the luminous echo of the primordial explosion, the Big Bang — literally the oldest light in the Universe. Exquisitely precise measurements of this light have allowed astronomers to achieve what might seem impossi...
A History of Hair
The 2014 scandal over Rachel Dolezal's lying about being of African-American heritage reignited debates about the politics of hair. It has been followed by numerous books with titles such as Don't Touch My Hair. This lecture explores how h...
Infection, Immunity and Cancer
Examples of cancers caused largely by infections include cervical cancer, some liver cancers, and gastric cancer. If the infection can be prevented, or treated, the cancer can also be prevented. When the immune system is damaged, including by infe...
The Ballets Russes: Courting the Exotic
Diaghilev found that the Oriental style that had been cultivated by Russian composers was a perfect match for the Parisians' love of exoticism, and he started to commission new ballets for this market niche. These were so successful that even Pari...
Slavery and the City of London
PART OF OUR BLACK HISTORY MONTH SERIESFreedom has been central to the identity of the City of London for centuries. But from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth centuries, the African Slave Trade and Plantation Slavery in the Americas were k...
Freedom Song: The Fisk Jubilee Singers' Story
PART OF OUR BLACK HISTORY MONTH SERIESA choir of ex-slaves, raising funds to build their University, toured America from 1871, suffering discrimination and hardship. They came to England, were treated with respect and sang to Queen Victori...
A Global History of the Eclipse of 29 May 1919
THE 2019 BRITISH SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS / GRESHAM COLLEGE ANNUAL LECTUREThe event will focus upon mathematical expeditions, outlining how the use of mathematics has been instrumental to the success of historical voyages of ...
Mathematical Practice and the 18th-Century British Voyages of Scientific Exploration
THE 2019 BRITISH SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS / GRESHAM COLLEGE ANNUAL LECTUREThe event will focus upon mathematical expeditions, outlining how the use of mathematics has been instrumental to the success of historical voyages of ...
Privateer and Mathematician: The Voyages of Edward Wright
THE 2019 BRITISH SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS / GRESHAM COLLEGE ANNUAL LECTUREThe event will focus upon mathematical expeditions, outlining how the use of mathematics has been instrumental to the success of historical voyages of ...
Frozen in Time?
Most information from outer space reaches us at the speed of light and this governs our understanding of time and evolution in the cosmos. When we observe the Universe, we are 'looking back in time': we see the Universe as it was, not how it is. T...
Biometrics: How Unique are You?
If people cannot identity themselves digitally then the digital society does not work. How do biometrics help reduce crime and is it possible to have a biometric system yet not broadcast even more personal information than we do now? There...
The Mathematical World of C. L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
BOOK LAUNCHCharles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) is best known for his Alice books. But his day job was as a mathematics lecturer at Christ Church in Oxford. What mathematics was he interested in? - and how good a mathematician was he? T...
Black Tudors: Three Untold Stories
PART OF OUR BLACK HISTORY MONTH SERIESDr Kaufmann tells the intriguing tales of three Africans living in Tudor England - Jacques Francis, a diver employed by Henry VIII to recover guns from the wreck of the Mary Rose; Mary Fillis, a Morocc...
Building Sustainable Communities: A New Era for Twinning
In contrast to their stark socio-economic and environmental differences, the communities of Harbury, UK and Sekenani, Kenya are building 'collaborative ecosystems' that are helping people and their environment to flourish. With similar ide...
Slavery, Memory and Reparations
PART OF OUR BLACK HISTORY MONTH SERIESUsing memory scholarship, this talk will examine how the history and memory of enslavement shaped questions of identity and citizenship in Europe. In Africa, debates about the origins of exclus...
Organ Transplants and Human Rights Abuses in China
This lecture reports on the findings of The Independent Tribunal into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China (June 2019), which examined reports of state-sponsored murder for the harvesting and sale of organs. The ve...
Sir Joseph Bazalgette (1819-1891) And the Cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis
2019 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Sir Joseph Bazalgette, and will see the building of the first major addition to the system he created to prevent sewage entering the Thames. The Thames Tideway Tunnel is now finally making its way 1...
1667 and The Royal Society: A Manifesto for the Future
When Thomas Sprat's The History of the Royal-Society of London appeared in 1667, it was less a history than a manifesto for the future, designed to convince Charles II that experimental research was a worthwhile investment. Focusing on exp...
The Maths of Future Computing
This lecture examines the mathematics behind computing, starting with the history of the explosive growth of computer technology, from code breaking through to all aspects of modern communication and security, as well as the simulation of physical...
Experimental Gardens from Francis Bacon to Today
Francis Bacon's New Atlantis (1627) imagined a utopian island including an experimental garden, where plants could be made "greater much than their nature". These new plants were central to Bacon's dream of a better world, where hunger - and even ...
Have Women Achieved Professional Equality? 100 years since the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act
2019 marks 100 years since the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 when a woman was recognised as a 'person' in law. This groundbreaking Act enabled women to be awarded university degrees and to enter professions such as law and medicine from ...
Time Management in the Digital Age
Classic time management frameworks advise us to focus on the important rather than the urgent. But these frameworks seem not to be applicable to the 21st century, where technology means that we are constantly bombarded with deadlines. This...
Faster than Light?
The speed of light has fundamental significance. This talk will explain how the speed of light was first measured, and how an obscure but brilliant patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland by the name of Albert Einstein deduced that the speed of ...
Human Traffic: Race and Post-War Migration Policy
THE 2019 ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLIN MATTHEW MEMORIAL LECTUREPART OF OUR BLACK HISTORY MONTH SERIESIn the years after 1945 successive British governments set out to weaponise the nation's immigration policy. To maintain historic...
How to Avert a Climate Catastrophe
After the UN Climate Action Summit in September, our Environment Professor will be talking to three experts about whether we still have a meaningful chance of averting a climate catastrophe, and how we can get there. The Extinction Rebellion prote...
Everyone Expects the Spanish Inquisition: The Making of Spain's 'Black Legend'
Spain became a byword for cruelty in much of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, whether it was the brutality of American colonisation, the tyranny of the Spanish Inquisition or the horrors of the Eighty Years' War in the Netherland...
Exporting Russia: Diaghilev's Beginnings
The great Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev didn't have the talents to become an artist or the money to become a patron. His gift was to inspire, facilitate and market artistic projects that were highly colourful and distinctive. In this lecture ...
Archers Assemble: Creating The Powell-Pressburger Partnership
When Alexander Korda teamed Michael Powell with Emeric Pressburger in 1939, a lasting partnership between this Englishman and refugee Hungarian must have seemed unlikely. Yet they soon discovered a remarkable bond, pushing each other far beyond wh...
Musical Openings
The hammerblow introduction to Beethoven's 'Eroica' Symphony and the iconic four-note opening motif of the 5th Symphony, the unresolved start of Wagner's Tristan & Isolde, the sensuously meandering melody that begins Debussy's Prelude to the After...
James I: The Court at Play
Before he became King of England in 1603 James I had never set foot in an English royal palace. What he found when he did was a mixed blessing: he may have liked the grandeur and riches, but he hated the stuffy formality. His answer was to create ...
Striking the Balance Between Common Sense and Legal Reasoning
THE 2019 GRAY'S INN READINGLord Kerr intends to address the recent decision in Stocker v Stocker and the challenges which confront judges when required to take on the role of a jury in applying a common-sense approach to the meaning of wor...
The Weimar Republic: Germany's First Democracy
THE 2019 PROVOST'S LECTUREA century has passed since the establishment of the ill-fated Weimar Republic, founded in August 1919 and superseded 14 years later by the Nazi dictatorship. Sir Richard Evans, one of the world's foremost ...
Sir Thomas Gresham 1519-2019
THE 2019 SIR THOMAS GRESHAM ANNUAL LECTUREA special illustrated lecture will be presented by Dr John Guy to commemorate the 500th Anniversary of the birth of the College's founder and benefactor Sir Thomas Gresham. Information will be prov...
Byron and the Age of Sensation
Jonathan Bate will explore the life and work of the original celebrity poet - Lord Byron. He will show how Byron was simultaneously a Romantic and an anti-Romantic, and how his influence spread to almost every corner of Europe, from the Ru...
Wellbeing at the Bar? Is a Legal Aid Lawyer's Work all Stress and Distress?
Over the course of her Professorship, Professor Delahunty has striven to talk openly about the way in which the Family Court deals with emotive and challenging issues such as sexual abuse, child death in infancy, child neglect and child exploitati...
Mergers and Acquisitions: Do They Create or Destroy Value?
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are perhaps the most important decisions that a company ever faces, yet very many deals destroy substantial value. This talk will discuss the correct and incorrect motives for M&A, using both examples and lar...
The Treaty of Versailles: A Hundred Years Later
A century has passed since the Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June 1919. After WWI the treaty imposed peace terms which have remained the subject of controversy ever since. It also attempted to set up a new international order to ensure tha...
Aristotle's Lyceum
In the 330s BCE, the great philosopher and scientist, Aristotle of Stagira in northern Greece, returned to Athens and founded his Lyceum. The first institution in world history to encompass teaching, research and the collection of a vast library, ...
Toothpaste, Custard and Chocolate: Mathematics Gets Messy
THE 2019 JOINT LONDON MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY ANNUAL LECTUREThis talk looks at mathematical modelling of real, complex fluids in flow situations - some with serious commercial applications, and some just for fun. Focusing on the choco...
Creativity: Can Computers Cut It?
Computers are often parodied as machines that kill creativity. Yet modern works of creativity usually have a digital aspect, and many are wholly digital. We will look at technology that enables creativity (not always of a good kind) and the prospe...
The Changing Impact of Infections as We Go Through Life and Age
The very young and very elderly are particularly susceptible to many infections and for many infections, age will predict how likely someone is to die once infected. The immediate and long-term effects of an infection changes throughout our life c...
The Limits of Our Knowledge
There is much in the universe we will never know, and it is equally certain that we will never know all that we do not know. This dilemma has not stopped cosmologists, philosophers and even theologians from exploring and going beyond the limits of...
Exploring Earth from Space
In recent years, multiple space missions have been launched. Many have set out across our galaxy to explore other systems and planets, capturing people's imaginations and helping us to understand more about the origins of the universe. But there a...
Prokofiev's War and Peace
Sergei Prokofiev's War and Peace (1953) was an adaptation of Tolstoy's novel begun during WWII. He saw it as a personal interpretation of the novel, but as soon as it went forward for production, the Soviet authorities realised that this was the p...
Energy and Matter at the Origin of Life
The origin of life is one of the biggest questions in science, but until recently it was, experimentally, a question in chemistry. Now, gene sequences and a better understanding of cell growth under extreme conditions are giving insights from biol...
Staying in Touch with Patients
Touch is central to the performance of medicine. Traditionally, doctors depended on touch to diagnose illness. Revolutions in imaging technology, machine learning and artificial intelligence seem to reduce the need for physical examination. Yet to...
The Cockney Romantics: John Keats and his Friends
The word Romanticism makes us think of mountain tops and stormy seas, but the younger generation of English Romantics (above all, John Keats) were Londoners through and through. They were even mocked as 'the Cockney School of Poetry'. Jona...
Is There Danger Ahead With AI: Superintelligence, Ethics, Work, Leisure and Automation
Professor Wilks will discuss the argument that 'superintelligent' AI may turn against us, as Hawking and Bostrom have warned. It will be argued that these worries misrepresent the achievements and potential of AI, and that the ethical dilemmas of ...
Digital Listening: The Future of Music in the Age of Digital Fragmentation
It's a tough time to be a listener. Our present-day cultures of listening are radically fragmented, as our time and attention are fractalised into bits of information. What's the future of listening? What will happen to the ways we give attention ...
Jesus, Hitler and the Abolition of God
This series has argued that the origins of modern secularism lie in the age of the Renaissance. This last lecture will track that legacy down to the present. From Tom Paine through Bakunin to modern humanism and anti-Nazism, religion has not colla...
Gresham's Exchange
'Go to the Exchange, crave gold as you intend.'' (William Haughton, Englishmen for My Money, 1598). Sir Thomas Gresham's first great contribution to the life of London was the Royal Exchange, the purpose-built merchants' bourse which opened in 156...
The Unacclaimed Accompanist
There is far more to piano accompaniment than meets the ear or eye. Vocal celebrities are reliant on an accompanist's skills in indisputably great music composed for an equal partnership of voice and piano, and yet the hard-working pianist's publi...
The Child and Medical Treatment: The Chance to Live, or to Die with Dignity?
What happens when doctors and parents cannot agree on whether a child should be given experimental medical treatment? Why is there any question mark over a parent's right to decide if medical treatment for their child continues? From the p...
Leonardo's Salvator Mundi: Scholarship, Science and Skulduggery
The newly discovered Salvator by Leonardo, the world's most costly picture, is one of his most notable creations, in which he used his 'science of art' to transform a stock subject into a profound expression of the ineffability of the divine. ...
The Intertwined Impacts of Pollution and Inequality on Health
Pollution is a much more complex problem than many realise and cannot be resolved solely through global and regional agreements. Pollution is closely connected with behavioural and technology choices, production and consumption practices, industri...
500 Years of Mathematics: Are We Living in a New Golden Age?
Much has happened in the 500 years since the birth of Thomas Gresham, and mathematics is no exception. Most mathematicians were then in awe of the Greeks and felt little had been done since. But the start of modern mathematics soon followed, marke...
The Meaning, Value and Sanctity of Human Life
Recent advances in medical science have brought complex ethical dilemmas, particularly around the beginning of human lives (abortion, embryo research, IVF, gene therapy, stem cells) and its ending (switching off ventilators, persistent vegetative ...
Does Finance Benefit Society?
Since the financial crisis, there has been a strong view that the financial sector has little benefit for society. The stock market is not a net supplier of capital - as much money is spent on share buybacks as is raised from new issuance. Moreove...
Mining Volcanoes: Diamonds, Copper and Hot Water
Volcanoes provide many natural resources from which society can benefit. Diamonds and most of the world's copper are mined from eroded extinct volcanoes while many active volcanoes offer the possibility of extracting huge amounts of geothermal ene...
Text Mining: How Do Computers Understand Language?
Text is everywhere. From tweets to the gigantic records of governments, machine processing of text is now subtle and pervasive. We can automatically identify authors of works, look for disease within tweets and even construct chatbots which can co...
The Natural Environment of Tudor London
Tudor London is variously reported as a squalid seething mass of humanity choking on its own filth and fumes, and as a delightful garden where babbling brooks and sweet flowers delighted the senses of people such as Elizabeth I, Shakespeare and Er...
AI and Education: The Reality and the Potential
This lecture will consider the current reality of AI in education and its transformative potential. Professor Luckin will introduce what we mean by the term AI and how the development of increasingly smart technologies in the workplace and...
Dying in Today's World
In the 50 years since the hospice movement started, lessons from research have revolutionised care of the dying in the UK and in many places around the world. Yet the cruel myth that opioids shorten the lives of those with severe pain from cancer ...
London Belongs to Us: Street-Life and New Wave British Cinema of the 1960s
Location shooting was a feature of 'new wave' film around the world in the 1960s. In Britain, it meant that British filmmakers broke out of the studio to find new subjects among the young, fashionable and disadvantaged, seen in their natural habit...
The Spiritual Quest Against Religion
The Protestant Reformation set out to purge Christianity of error. But once you have started, how do you know when to stop? Some radicals tore up layer upon layer of tradition in the tireless search for deeper truths, proving their faith by their ...
Crown, Country and the Struggle for Cultural Supremacy
The fourth lecture in this series considers Britain's unique cultural development and how the changing balance of power and wealth between the aristocracy and the monarchy from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century has fundamentally influenced t...
Political Spending on the Internet
FULBRIGHT LECTUREGovernment officials in the UK and the USA have struggled to find effective ways to regulate political spending on the internet. The question of appropriate regulation is challenging - both in practice and principle. <...
Infections of the Abdominal Organs
Our gut is permanently full of large numbers of bacteria and other organisms but serious infections relatively rarely occur due to its extraordinary immune system. Infections of these organs can, however, occur in specific situations. Specialised ...
Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (1932) was more a personal than a political drama. All was well for the first two years after the opera's première in 1934, but shortly after Stalin went to a performance, it was vigorously condemned in the state press. The...
Deep Listening: Quiet Music and Quieter Audiences
As music gets quiet, so too must listening. But what do the contexts and ideologies of quiet music and quieter listening mean? From different eras, and radically opposed musical traditions, Richard Wagner's innovations in his theatre at Bayreuth (...
Cruelty to Animals
Understanding changing relationships between human and non-human animals is central to our world today. This lecture starts by looking at early-modern understandings of the nature of 'animal' and 'human' life, before turning to the rise of...
Art and Power in the English Aristocratic House
The English Aristocracy is often seen as a rural elite concentrating its patronage of art and architecture in the countryside. This lecture questions this view and shows how, from the sixteenth century, aristocratic families deployed their...
Deep Learning: Miracle or Snake Oil?
Machine Learning has had several excitements over the years with machines that are modelled on the human brain. The invention of the perceptron and artificial neural networks were followed by intense scientific activity and excitement, then by dis...
How to be a Puritan Atheist
Early 'atheism' did not always mean angry rejection of religion. The most earnest believers were often ones who wrestled most seriously with doubts. This lecture will look at how and why Christians in the seventeenth century first began se...
Brexit and the Future of Britain
At the time of writing, it appears that Britain will leave the European Union on 29th March at 11 pm British time, 12 midnight Continental time. How will Britain fare outside the European Union? And how will Brexit affect British politics? Will th...
How Will We Learn Maths in the Future?
Mathematics education is changing rapidly and a big driver for this is the use of new technology. In particular the widespread use of computers has transformed the way that we do mathematics, with computers not only able to mark exam papers, but a...
Gresham's Bequest to Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn
The valuable bequest of Sir Thomas Gresham to the development of scientific interest in seventeenth-century England can be traced through the testimony of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn - not only great diarists but also 'particular friends'.
Politics and the Legal Profession
Cuts to legal aid, the concept of online justice, diversity within the legal profession and the judiciary, the independence of the Judiciary from the State, the impact the press can have on perceptions of fairness of justice: this lecture explores...
The Greatest Speech of all Time: Pericles' Funeral Oration
In 431 BCE the Athenian statesman Pericles delivered one of the most influential speeches of all time, his Epitaphios or Funeral Oration. The occasion was at the funeral of the first Athenian soldiers to lose their lives in the Peloponnesian War. ...
The Stewardship Role of Investors
Poor stewardship by investors has been argued to be a cause of poor corporate governance. Moreover, when investors do engage with companies, they do so to increase short-term profit at the expense of long-run value. This talk will critical...
How Astronomy Changed our View of the Cosmos: from Gresham to the 21st Century
Thomas Gresham lived from 1519 to 1579. The first telescope was designed in 1608 in the Netherlands, and first pointed at the heavens by Galileo a year later. The greatest discoveries since the pre-telescope era have been that of the existence of ...
Food Security: A Poisoned Chalice of Plant Adaptation
Worldwide, over 80 plant species are known to cause poisoning from nitrate accumulation. But droughts are exacerbating this for many staple crops. Even after a drought, the growth in water-stressed crops can result in the build-up of other toxins....
Gender, Marriage, Divorce and Human Sexuality
Is 'morality' principally about sex, or 'naughty vicars'? Despite Henry VIII, the Church has found divorce difficult, especially for clergy and bishops, let alone 'equal marriage' for same-sex couples, the role of women in ordained ministry or tra...
The Myth of the Lone Heroic Surgeon
People often think that surgery is about the skill of a single surgeon. In fact operations depend on teamwork, with nurses, surgeons, anaesthetists and technicians all playing vital roles as they work together. Experts outside medicine need simila...
Zombie Ants and Fearless Mice: Parasites and the Brain
Parasites can dramatically change the behaviour of their hosts. A parasitic worm turns a tropical ant berry-red and causes it to climb high, attractive prey for birds, the worm's next host. A mouse infected by toxoplasma gondii no longer fears cat...
Taking London to the World: Robert Paul Shows his Native City in Motion
Britain's pioneer filmmaker, born 150 years ago in North London, vividly portrayed the variety of life in 'the imperial metropolis' at the end of the 19th century, conscious of its historic appeal but also emphasising the modernity of which he was...
Volcanoes and Society
There are an estimated 800 million people living close enough to active volcanoes to be affected when they erupt. As well as casualties from volcanic eruptions there can be major economic losses and societal disruption, especially when communities...
Psychosis: Making and Inhabiting a Different Reality
One of the most mysterious experiences that we come across in psychiatry is 'Psychosis', which refers to a loss of contact with reality. It has many causes and manifestations and it poses major challenges to our understanding. Professor Fl...
Infections of the Lung and Heart
The lung has a large surface area, is open to the outside world and is the site for some of the most common serious infections, in particular pneumonia. Several bacteria, viruses and some less common lung infections including tuberculosis and fung...
Computer Vision: Machines that See
Human vision seems so effortless: from a young age we see the world in high- definition colour. We can tell the difference between a cat and a hat, and 'The man who mistook his wife for a hat' is an anomaly. But despite recent progress, machines s...
Maths in the City: Future Cities
The world's population is rapidly expanding and the majority of this population will live in large city conurbations. What will out future cities look like? How will transport system work, how will people move around, and how will we supply them w...
Music Made of Listening: John Cage and 4'33"
Musicians make sounds - that much, you'd have thought, is obvious! Yet more than the sounds they make, it's the choices that musicians are making about how and when to play that really matter - choices that are made through listening. John...
Bubbles, Manias and Market Failures: The Unintended Consequences of Regulatory Responses
Although financial bubbles are in some sense banal and a feature of financial capitalism, the seeds of the next bubble are often sown by regulatory responses to previous ones. This has been the case since the South Sea Bubble and Mississippi Schem...
The Varieties of Forgiveness
Forgiveness is often discussed as if it were a single, straightforward, phenomenon. The reality, however, is not so simple. For instance, we can identify three different types of forgiveness: inter-personal forgiveness, God's forgiveness, and self...
Gresham's World: Global Traffic, Trade, and the Metamorphosis of England
Global trade and traffic, many of Gresham's contemporaries would say, had altered sixteenth-century England beyond recognition, from its food, fashion, and language, to the look and feel of its cities and neighbourhoods. How did its subjects respo...
Ruskin at 200: The Art Critic as Word-Painter
Ruskin's Bicentenary on 8 February 2019 will be marked by an assessment of his achievement as an art critic. Then, with a close focus on four or five particular paintings, the lecture will explore Ruskin's distinctive genius in evocative word- pai...
The 30th Anniversary of The Children Act 1989: Is It Still Fit For Purpose?
The Children Act 1989 embodied a change in philosophy by making the child's welfare the courts 'paramount' concern, moving away from the concept of parental rights towards the right of the child. It embraced the idea of shared parental rights and ...
Architecture, Images and Image-Making Under The Stuarts
The Stuart age saw a much more systematic approach to the elite patronage of art and architecture. Collectors and connoisseurs were more aware of the effect of their activities and the audiences for them. An integral part of the tumultuous politic...
50 Years of Lunar Exploration
The Moon is undoubtedly the next frontier for humanity. The international space agencies are lining up to pursue lunar projects and even develop lunar bases. The potential of the Moon is attracting interest for industrial applications, including m...
Evolution since Sir Thomas Gresham: How Changes Over The Past Five Centuries Have Moulded Evolution
In celebrating 500 years since the birth of Sir Thomas Gresham, Professor Jones will examine how changes since the sixteenth century have affected the evolution of human beings and that of the animals and plants around us. Professor Jones ...
How to be a Shakespearean Atheist
Villainous atheists were, like witches, stock figures of the European imagination in the Renaissance. But when Shakespeare and his contemporaries put them on the stage, 'atheists' could be uncomfortably compelling. This lecture will explor...
Reforming Corporate Governance
The UK is considered a world leader in corporate governance, but governance failures are blamed for the loss of trust in business. This talk will discuss rigorous evidence on what optimal governance should look like - including issues such...
Musorgsky's Boris Godunov
Musorgsky's opera Boris Godunov (1872) is set in the 'Time of Troubles', using Pushkin's incisive verse tragedy on the chaotic period preceding the establishment of the Romanovs. Such a work was bound to draw the attention of the censors, and Muso...
Infections and the Nerves
Certain infections have a particular impact on the peripheral nerves as part of their normal disease process. Some infectious effects are predominately on the motor nerves such as polio (currently heading for eradication); these can cause weakness...
Exploring the Hidden Face of our Dark Deep Ocean Planet
We sometimes hear that 'we know more about Mars than the deep ocean', but is that true? Exploring the deep ocean is a recent enterprise, made possible by new technology in the past two centuries, but what we now know about the dark depths is as re...
The Search for Meaning on the Web: The Semantic Web and Managing a Lifetime's Information
Berners-Lee's World Wide Web (WWW) was not his original aim, which was closer to what we now call the Semantic or Data Web (SW): documents and images where the system itself 'understands' its content as the WWW certainly does not, any more than a ...
Sacred Listening: The Voices and Music of the Gods
What happens when we listen to music that incarnates a divine presence? From our early ancestors, whose listening in the caves of Europe 40 millennia ago opened up gateways to other worlds, sacred places have developed special acoustics for spirit...
Sir Thomas Gresham, London, and Europe
London was crucially dependent on continental Europe for its economic resilience in the mid-sixteenth century, and Sir Thomas Gresham's fortune piggy-backed off the special relationship with Antwerp. But the Reformation put the relationship under ...
'RUDQ?' Digital Skills: Crisis or Opportunity?
The 2019 Annual Lord Mayor's EventThe 2019 Annual Lord Mayor's Gresham Lecture will explore the so called 'digital skills crisis' and question whether this may present an opportunity? As the digital era unfolds and the future demands for t...
Can Maths Tell Us Where We Are?
One of the biggest advances in modern technology has been the development of GPS systems which allow us to find our position to very high precision. GPS is just the latest advance in the science of navigation, which has had a profound effect on hu...
Carols from King's: Centenary Celebration
At 3.00 pm on Christmas Eve, millions of listeners around the world will tune in to the live radio relay of A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from the Chapel of King's College, Cambridge. In this lecture, Jeremy Summerly reverently and...
Executive Pay: What's Right, What's Wrong, and What Could Be Fixed?
Executive pay is a controversial topic that is arguably the primary cause behind mistrust in business. Various remedies have been proposed but, just like in medicine, diagnosis precedes treatment. Many of the concerns are based on hand-picked exam...
The Romantic Lakes from Wordsworth to Beatrix Potter
When Daniel Defoe rode through the Lake District in the early 18th century, he described the area as 'the wildest, most barren and frightful of any that I have passed over in England.' But for Victorians such as Matthew Arnold and John Ruskin, the...
Understanding Violent People
Most of us have witnessed or had personal dealings with violent people. Why do they act as they do? How have British and American commentators during the past two centuries understood violent behaviour? The media incites anxieties about personal v...
Dissecting the Consultation
The consultation is the focal point of medicine. A clinician and a patient, held together in a relationship of care, collaborate in identifying that patient's needs and finding a solution. Scientific knowledge and clinical skill only make sense in...
Childhood Malnutrition: Exporting Violence or Happiness?
Half of all child deaths are associated with under-nutrition, with devastating impacts and far-reaching health consequences. Left unchecked, under-nutrition will potentially create an inter-generational, self-reinforcing pathogenic cycle of violen...
Mind - the Gap: What's Missing from Medical Training?
Over the past 150 years medical science has developed beyond all recognition yet there is a huge gap between these scientific developments on the one hand, and our understanding of the psychological demands of medical work on the other.Thi...
Sexual Harassment at the Bar
2018 saw a seismic change in the willingness of women to speak out about sexual abuse they had suffered at work and the willingness of others to hear and act on it. This year (2018) saw the creation of a #metoo movement called 'Behind the Gown' cr...
The Theatre of Dionysus
Medea, Antigone, Oedipus and Lysistrata - these are just some of the characters from ancient Greek drama who still walk our contemporary stages and haunt our imagination. One of the classical Athenians' most important inventions was the medium of ...
In the Beginning
Where did we come from? This question has always intrigued human thought. Professor Silk will describe the modern scientist's view of the origin of the cosmos. Here is the sequence: from an uncertain beginning, due to limitations in our kn...
Speech Processing: How to Wreck a Nice Peach
Alexa, Siri and Cortana are among a number of voice-enabled digital assistants that can not only speak to us but understand us. Sci-fi films had talking computers many years ago.Why has it taken so long to crack the speech processing puzzl...
Plastics from Potatoes, Rubber from Rice
With over 80% of organic carbon being present in the form of cellulose, lignin and starch, it is unsurprising many groups have attempted to use these as feedstock chemicals and materials. Extensive hydrogen bonding makes the plasticisation of star...
Infections and the Brain
The brain is well protected against most infections, but once they get into or around the brain they can cause fatal or serious long-term consequences. Some bacterial, viral and parasitic infections are particularly well adapted to the brain, rang...
The Romantic Child
The Romantics invented the modern idea of childhood. In the third of his lectures on the rhetoric of Romanticism, Jonathan Bate will explore how they did so, with particular emphasis on the role of children in the poetry of Blake and Words...
Glinka's A Life for the Tsar
The rousing finale of Mikhail Glinka's patriotic A Life for the Tsar (1836) guaranteed it a place as the traditional season opener in Russian opera houses. A Life was a powerful and attractive presentation of the Romanov dynasty's foundation myth,...
Classical Music, Noisy Listening
Shh! You're in a classical concert - quiet! What has become, in the 20th and 21st centuries, a musical tradition of as-quiet-as-possible, cough-free contemplation and passive disengagement in concert halls was not always that way. In fact, it wasn...
Has the Internet Changed News for Better or Worse? 250 Years of Technology
Many claims have been made, both positive and negative, for the transformative nature of internet news in the age of social media. An historical perspective is brought to that debate, by looking at the effects that earlier changes to news producti...
Enormous Volcanic Eruptions
Huge volcanic eruptions are the only natural hazard apart from the impact of an asteroid that can cause a global catastrophe. In the short history of civilisation, there have been few volcanic events with global effects. Much larger magnitude erup...
Nanomaterials: A Tale of Two Alices
With over 80% of organic carbon being present in the form of cellulose, lignin and starch, it is unsurprising many groups have attempted to use these as feedstock chemicals and materials. Extensive hydrogen bonding makes the plasticisation of star...
The Mathematics of Climate Change
Climate change is important, controversial, and the subject of huge debate. Much of our understanding of the future climate comes from the use of complex climate models based on mathematical and physical ideas.In this talk, Professor Budd ...
Money: The Root of All Evil, Or Our Salvation?
Jesus talked more about money than about anything else. Can the teachings of a penniless ancient ascetic be applied to debates about Brexit, protests about global capitalism, and wider investment not only in defence, alcohol or tobacco but also po...
The Ending of World War I: The Road to 11 November
This lecture will re-examine how the First World War ended, anticipating the centenary commemorations in 2018. It will discuss both why Germany requested a ceasefire, and why the Allies and America granted one. It will argue that the German army w...
Shakespeare's Stages
Leading actor and Shakespeare scholar Michael Pennington discusses the direct effect on the dramatist's writing of the theatres he wrote for, so different from ours. From cinematic intimacy to heroic spaciousness, his plays reflect his actors' tec...
Making Information Personal: Companions
Professor Wilks will discuss the notion of an artificial Companion, a long-term software agent that could be present in any device: a screen, handbag or even a furry toy - and which understands the person it 'lives' with and whose memories and kno...
How the Reformation Trained Us to Be Sceptics
The Protestant Reformation confronted Europeans with a clamour of religious alternatives. Catholics and Protestants taught their people to doubt the other side's religion (while still believing their own) and taught them to be incredulous while ma...
Performing Medicine, Performing Surgery
Medicine demands factual knowledge, physical skill and the ability to work with patients and colleagues. Most of the time clinicians learn from other clinicians, studying hard within a frame that discourages exploration outside medicine. F...
Bribery and Corruption in the City
Crime thrives in a social environment which is conductive to its commission, and it harms the society which spawns it most of all. That is as true of bribery and corruption as it is true of knife-armed postcode gangs. If the common ethical code th...
Strategy and Democracy
THE 2018 PETER NAILOR MEMORIAL LECTURE ON DEFENCEToday's cry in democratic states, and not just from representatives of populist parties, is government with the people rather than government for the people. This presents a problem for issu...
Haunted by Christ: Modern Writers and the Struggle for Faith
In his new book, Haunted by Christ, Richard Harries explores the role of faith in the lives of twenty novelists and poets. Non-believers like Samuel Beckett and Philip Pullman as well as believers like T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden all struggled with ...
Mathematics in War and Peace - Stories about Mathematicians Killed in WW1
THE 2018 BRITISH SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS / GRESHAM COLLEGE ANNUAL LECTUREAs a commemoration of the end of the First World War, the event will focus on the theme of mathematics in war and peacetime. The main speaker, ...
Mathematics in War and Peace - Flying Mathematicians
THE 2018 BRITISH SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS / GRESHAM COLLEGE ANNUAL LECTUREAs a commemoration of the end of the First World War, the event will focus on the theme of mathematics in war and peacetime. The main speaker, ...
Mathematics in War and Peace - Euler's Work on Ballistics
THE 2018 BRITISH SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS / GRESHAM COLLEGE ANNUAL LECTUREAs a commemoration of the end of the First World War, the event will focus on the theme of mathematics in war and peacetime. The main speaker, ...
Dark Matters
The dark side of the universe is pervasive. Most of the matter in the universe is dark, most of the energy in the universe is dark. Many searches are underway, on mountain peaks, in deep underground mines, and in space, to discover more about dark...
It from Bit: The Science of Information
Physicist John Wheeler asked the famous 'It from bit?' question: what if at its heart the universe is not a collection of particles, forces and fields but rather a collection of bits? If this is true, it leads us to new insights in compression, ma...
The 'Autism Advantage' in the Workplace
Adam Feinstein will examine the strengths of many people on the autism spectrum which make them an untapped human resource in the workplace. Using case studies, he will analyse potential employment openings across the autism spectrum and demonstra...
State Torture
Torture was officially outlawed in France in the 1780s and in Europe during the nineteenth century. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, it has returned as an instrument of state policy.The defence of torture is no longe...
How Natural is Natural? Historical Perspective on Wildlife and the Environment in England
THE 2018 ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLIN MATTHEW MEMORIAL LECTUREWe often think of the British countryside as 'natural' but it is anything but. Not only its fields and hedges, but also its woods, heaths, moors, and fens are largely the prod...
Wordsworth, Coleridge and the Poetic Revolution
'The sense of a new style and a new spirit in poetry came over me', wrote William Hazlitt, recalling the day in 1798 when he heard William Wordsworth reading aloud from Lyrical Ballads, 'It partakes of, and is carried along with, the revolutionary...
Epidemics, Pandemics and How To Control Them
Some infections come in repeated epidemic waves, others are new to human populations. A known human threat such as influenza may mutate or a new infection jumps the species barrier from animals to humans: recent examples include HIV and Ebola, and...
Brexit: Recovery of Sovereignty or Loss of Rights?
Was Brexit (the 2016 referendum) argued on the basis of accurate information fairly presented? Slogans were, and may always be, better at gathering votes. With the reality of Brexit a few months away, a sober look at what we actually gain or lose ...
Can Maths Predict The Future? The Maths Behind Chaos Theory and Sudden Change
Since Newton, we are used to science making confident predictions about the future. For example, the motion of the planets and the times of the tides. However, some things seem very hard to predict, such as the stock market, or the weather in six ...
No Listening, No Music: Why Listening Matters
What does it mean to listen to music? How might the concepts and practices of 'listening' and 'music-making' have first emerged in the story of human development? We journey back in time, to the origins of human society - in the company of...
Ethics In and Out of the Court Room
If you are a barrister you will be asked 'how can you act for someone who is guilty?'. This is just one of the ethical questions the Bar has to confront. Barristers have a Code of Ethics that governs the working relationship with the client, the c...
Purposeful Business: The Evidence and the Implementation
Do businesses exist to make profits, or to serve a purpose? This talk will present rigorous evidence showing there need be no trade-off between purpose and profit, contrary to conventional wisdom. It will then turn to the practical 'so wha...
Ultra-Compact Objects: Astronomy with Gravitational Waves
The most compact objects that shine in the universe are neutron stars. Black holes are even more compact objects that we view indirectly as matter accretes and heats up around them.Professor Silk will describe the state of our knowledge of...
How To Be An Atheist In Medieval Europe
There was no intellectually sophisticated or articulate 'atheism' in the Middle Ages, but there was plenty of raw scepticism and incredulity. Church courts regularly heard blasphemy cases which went as far as outright denial of God.This le...
Antibiotic Resistance: Calling on Citizens to Help Tackle the Problem
Antibiotic resistance has emerged as an issue that threatens public health around the world. Even simple operations may no longer be possible due to the risk of lethal infection. What is less well-known is the role of environmental components in a...
Gothic London: Recreating the Ancient City on Screen
The earliest London-made films showed the Victorian city doing everyday business, before its fictional screen image became increasingly shadowy and sinister. Gothic or 'gaslight' visions of London have remained popular with cinema audiences, provi...
Painting, Patronage and Politics under the Tudors
Tudor England was a dangerous place for the wealthy and powerful. The cultural ambitions of the elite open a window into contemporary attitudes. A lecture by Professor Simon Thurley CBE, Visiting Professor of the Built Environment 19 Septe...
The Origins of Romanticism
"What is 'Romanticism'? Jonathan Bate goes in search of what Isaiah Berlin described as 'the greatest single shift in the consciousness of the West'.A lecture by Sir Jonathan Bate CBE FBA, Gresham Professor of Rhetoric 18 September...
The Gray's Inn Reading - The Rule of Law: Good for the Economy?
It has become the conventional wisdom that the rule of law is a necessary ingredient of economic progress. Along with an independent judiciary, individual rights, a free media, free association, strong political parties and a rich civil so...
Terrorism in Historical Perspective
THE PROVOST'S LECTURE Terrorism has become one of the most destructive and worrying aspects of life in 21st-century European cities. Seemingly random and unpredictable attacks have placed us all at risk of injury or death. How new is this ...
Climate Change: A Defining Challenge for the 21st Century
THE SIR THOMAS GRESHAM ANNUAL LECTURE 2018 The scientific evidence for climate change will be examined, describing how simulations of the Earth's weather and climate are constructed and how these can be used to make assessments of what our...
The Conversion of T.S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" was the voice of a disillusioned generation and reflected a world in disarray. Then in 1928 Eliot announced to a startled world, and the disapproval of his contemporaries, that his general point of view could be descr...
Computers and the Future
The invention of the computer in 1948 has changed our world radically but we are only in the early years of this industrial revolution. What disruptions will quantum computing bring? What else can we foresee and what can we learn from the ...
Remembering London: The Story of the Faith Communities of London and their Prospects
Bishop Richard Chartres will present a survey in five acts of the history of London's faith communities, with a word about their prospects in the 21st century.The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the G...
The British Economy: Can We Build a Successful Future?
The challenges faced by the UK are very large. And they have not been convincingly challenged for a generation or more. We may have suffered from short-termism and an inability to develop a balanced economy. In this final lecture we will c...
Nelson Mandela in the 21st Century
To mark the 100th anniversary of his birth, the legacy of Nelson Mandela (1918-2013), first president of democratic South Africa, will be considered - both within his country and in the wider world. Mandela's was famously a world life, that is, he...
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Who's to Blame for Britain's Floods?
In the last ten years, the UK has been devastated by floods that have caused enormous physical and economic damage, seriously affecting the mental health of local residents. Media coverage has included allegations about the incompetence of scienti...
Russia After Communism
Russia's emergence from Soviet Communism, 'a revolution without shots', did not result in civil war and bloodshed, as in 1917. But the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 still came as a shock and the subsequent chaos (with hyperinflation, politi...
Computers and Warfare
Stuxnet, the attacks on the Ukrainian power grid, and autonomous armed guards are only the beginning. Computers are changing warfare profoundly because military strategy has always been geographically based but there are no borders in cyberspace. ...
The Riddle of Ancient Sparta: Unwrapping an Enigma
Ancient Sparta has been handed down in a tradition radically conflicted and confused by rival political and social ideologies. A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, one might say. This Spartan tradition is still alive and lively today. <...
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Transparency in the Family Court: What Goes On Behind Closed Doors?
Who does the story belong to: the family or society? Where and how are the lines drawn? Until relatively recently the Family Court door was closed to all save the parties and professionals involved in the case. A 2014 initiative aimed to secure 'a...
Media Reporting of Medical Advances: Helpful or Misleading?
The media and medicine have different perspectives. At least in part, this is due to a preference for individual human stories over detailed analysis of results. This lecture will use examples of how the public may be misled and consider t...
The 30 Years' War (1618-48) and the Second Defenestration of Prague
Professor Wilson will examine the causes, conduct and consequences of the Thirty Years' War, Europe's most destructive conflict prior to the two 20th-century world wars. The talk takes place on the 400th anniversary of the defenestration of three ...
Mathematical Research from Toy Models
JOINT LONDON MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY/ GRESHAM COLLEGE ANNUAL LECTURE 'Toy' here has a special sense: an object of daily life which you can find or make in minutes, yet which, if played with imaginatively, reveal behaviours that keep seasoned ...
Samuel Pepys the Guitarist
At first, Samuel Pepys could see no virtue in the guitar at all and regarded it as a toy or 'bauble'. Yet he soon changed his mind as he became more interested in Italian music. He arranged for an English merchant in Italy to send him an instrumen...
From Two-Party to Multi-Party Politics
Between 1951 and 1959, over 95% of voters supported the two major parties. Since 1983, fewer than 80% have voted Conservative or Labour. How is the decline of the two party system to be explained?The transcript and downloadable versions of...
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China: Art, Power and Revolutions, 1950-1976
The establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 gave Chinese artists a government that had explicit policies for the arts, seeing them as an essential part of the creation of 'new China'. Resources were put into the support of art and ...
Speechwriting: Creating Authenticity
The image of the speechwriter in televised programmes (such as The Thick of It, The West Wing or Yes Minister) is something of a puppeteer, a sinister figure operating in the shadows, malevolently manipulating our political masters. Simon Lancaste...
Shakespeare's Fame
Ever since classical antiquity, poets and playwrights have written about famous heroes and anti-heroes, lovers and politicians. But they have also yearned for posthumous fame themselves. How do they achieve it? This final lecture will show...
Facts Matter, But They Aren't Enough: Science, Faith and Meaning in Life
In our post-truth age, facts often don't seem to meet the deepest human longings. So do we need to go against facts, or beyond them? What does the relatively new discipline of the cognitive science of religion, which suggests that human beings are...
Karl Marx - 200 Years On
To mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx (5 May 1818) and 150 years since Das Kapital was published in 1867, the lecture will explore the possible affinity between Marx's work in human history and Darwin's in natural history. Enthus...
In Search of the Medieval Outlaw: The Tales of Robin Hood
The rulers of the medieval English kingdom discouraged resistance to authority by the widespread use of execution, outlawry, and exile. Yet medieval English society also applauded such resistance. Encapsulated in the tales of Robin Hood, the good ...
What Really Happened at the First Moving-Picture Shows
The reception of moving pictures in 1894-96 has been much mythologised. Were spectators really frightened of an approaching train? Did they imagine seeing their departed relatives reanimated on screen? How much attention was actually paid to this ...
The Child in the Family Court Room: Whose Child is it Anyway?
What role do children play in the family trial? The case concerns their future: how is their voice heard? What happens if they hold the key to the issues before the court? Should they give evidence, hear evidence? Should they meet the judge decidi...
Air Pollution: Its Impact on Health and Possible Solutions
Lung disease, heart disease, stroke, dementia and learning difficulties have been associated with different forms of air pollution including gasses and particulate matter. It is a difficult policy area because there is an economic and social cost ...
Minor Political Parties
In the past, these were of two types (1) Breakaway parties such as the Liberal Unionists before the First World War and the SDP in the 1980s or (2) Extremist parties such as the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s and the Communist Party. Most ...
Can You Do Mathematics In A Crowd?
We all find ourselves in crowds every so often. Whilst human behaviour in general can be very hard to predict, it is possible, to a certain extent, to predict the behaviour of large numbers of people in a crowd. In this lecture I will explain the ...
Regional, Industrial and Infrastructure Policies
There are large disparities in economic performance at the regional level in the UK. We need to consider what kinds of policies might raise regional performance and the extent which directed industrial policies and infrastructure spending might be...
The Birth of Modern Theatreland: Covent Garden and the Two Theatres Royal
London is home to two of the oldest working theatres in the world both founded by Charles II's patents. They shaped a whole quarter of London, and continue to do so today. In a second lecture on 'Buildings in the West End of London', Profe...
King Henry III and the Communication of Power
Against the backdrop of King John's ignominy and the political challenge posed by Magna Carta, which encouraged demands for greater representation in parliament, King Henry III used art, architecture and apparel to exalt his authority and to commu...
The Philosophy of Time: Does Physics Have The Last Word?
Time's mysteries seem to resist comprehension and what remain can stretch even the most profound philosopher. Professor Tallis seeks to rescue time from the jaws of physics, examining the claims that time is merely the fourth dimension of ...
How Spontaneous Gestures Connect to Thinking
Human beings often make frequent hand movements whilst they are talking. There has been considerable psychological debate about their function, but it is now clear that they often convey core parts of the underlying message. Since we have little c...
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Existential Risks in the Solar System
There are strong reasons to believe that the survival of life on the Earth is under threat. Human activity is one example that we are able to control, at least in principle. We might irreversibly pollute, or destroy the planet with thermonuclear d...
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The USSR in the Cold War Years
After Stalin's death in 1953, successive leaders tried to find ways to revitalise the Soviet regime and rethink its promises to the Soviet people. Life within a system no longer based on terror and intense industrial transformation (yet still stri...
Shakespeare's Ghosts and Spirits
Where do the ghosts in Shakespeare come from? And what about the magic? In this lecture, Jonathan Bate will summon up the ghosts of Old Hamlet, the victims of Richard III and Julius Caesar, revealing their origins in the bloody plays of Seneca. He...
Are We Lost In The Cosmos?
There have been dramatic changes in our scientific understanding of the universe in the last hundred years. It used to be thought that the universe was eternal; now it is thought that it came into being in the 'Big Bang'. So what does this say abo...
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Is 'Green Business' a Contradiction in Terms?
Posters in shops and on trucks shout 'carbon neutral business', and more organisations are boasting of reducing their environmental impact by using environmentally-friendly, responsibly sourced materials. And yet we also have diesel car emission f...
The Guitar at the Restoration Court
When the most famous diarist in English, Samuel Pepys, accompanied Charles II back to London for the Restoration of the monarchy he was given the task of carrying the king's guitar. From this moment on, the instrument had a the royal seal of appro...
The Internet of Things
Many televisions, baby monitors, central heating and even light-bulbs are already connected to the internet but this is only the start. Over the next few years, many billions of devices will be connected and machine-to-machine data will become the...
The Structure of Finance
In the traditional model of finance, households saved and firms borrowed through financial intermediaries. Those financial intermediaries might be banks or pension funds but the experience of intermediation in the UK does not encourage the thought...
Personalised Medicine - Made For You
Everyone is different, and treatment options increasingly reflect that. As we understand more about our genetic makeup, our varying response to conventional therapies means that we can design drugs and build devices tailored for individuals ('besp...
Architecture and the Edwardian Era
Descriptions and reconstructions of houses can illuminate other histories and provide a sense of the relationships between people and places. Edwardian architecture in particular provides a fascinating commentary on broader historical themes - not...
The Quantum Mathematician
Quantum science has been one of the most successful and useful theories ever invented. Indeed quantum technology was added as the ninth of the original eight great technologies. However, quantum mechanics is also, at the same time, one of the most...
Trust-Busting or Trust-Building: How Can The City Earn Trust?
In recent years, the reputation of the financial services and related professional services industries has been corroded by a series of scandals. In 2017, the largest ever decline in trust across the institutions of government, business, media and...
Slave Stories: Aesop and Walter Crane
In 1887 the influential arts-and-crafts book illustrator Walter Crane published The Baby's Own Aesop, bringing the homespun wisdom of ancient Greek peasants to a new generation of children. This lecture uses these fables to tackle the least attrac...
Palace, Park and Square: St James's and the Birth of the West End
Based on new research into the origins of St. James's, Simon Thurley looks into the ingredients that went into making a court quarter there and the way it formed a blueprint for the new West End of London. This is the first of two lectures...
Nationalist Parties
Between 1886 and 1914, British politics was dominated by the Irish Question, and the Irish nationalist party exerted considerable pressure on British governments. Since 1974, the rise of the SNP has brought the Scottish Question into the forefront...
Grasping Shadows: The Dark Side in Painting
FULBRIGHT LECTURE What's in a shadow? Danger and death? Or the vital life-force of whatever object casts it? Are shadows seductive nothings or truth-telling images of repressed sexuality and violence? Starting with literary example...
Dealing with Sex Abuse: How Does the Family Court Assess Risk?
Sexual abuse is always an abuse of power. It can be opportunistic or premeditated; furtive intra-familial abuse or acts shared online. It can be multigenerational and inter-sex: grandmother to grandson; father to daughter; sibling to sibling. The ...
Training in Violence: An Essay in Military Hazing
How have the British and American armed forces been taught to fight and kill in conflicts from 1914 to the present? What role have psychology and technology played in military training? How do combatants contribute to, and endure, harsh military d...
Elementary Particles and Their Interactions
Matter consists of a mêlée of elementary particles. There are protons and neutrons, made up of quarks, and many other short-lived massive particles. All atoms consist of protons, neutrons and an accompanying cloud of electrons - then there are ele...
Shakespeare's Politics
It is well known that Shakespeare lived in an age of monarchy and wrote powerfully in his English history plays about the duties of the sovereign. In this lecture, Jonathan Bate will tell another, forgotten story: of how Shakespeare was al...
The 19th Century Craze for Stereoscopic Photography
Stereoscopic photography rapidly became a worldwide craze after the Great Exhibition of 1851. Cheap viewers and mass-produced stereographs brought startlingly vivid images within reach of a mass audience, making this the form in which most people ...
Asthma and Chronic Airways Disease
Asthma, an intermittent disease, is the commonest lung disease in the UK. The second is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), now the 4th leading cause of death globally. In both a combination of environmental and genetic factors are impor...
Justice Online: Getting Better?
In 2017, the Government paved the way for the civil and family courts of England and Wales to provide 'innovative methods of resolving disputes.' New legislation will underpin a £1bn investment in digitising the courts, that may see defendants con...
If Humans Are So Great, Why is the World Such a Mess?
Human beings often have generous views of themselves - not always easy to defend. Massive scientific advances are sometimes used for destructive purposes. This lecture looks at our changing understanding of ourselves, focussing on Charles ...
China: Art, War and Salvation, 1933-1949
After the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, many artists and intellectuals in China saw the overthrow of 'tradition' as the means to rescue the nation from poverty and backwardness. Rejecting what thev saw as irrelevant avant-garde ...
Euler's Equation: 'The Most Beautiful Theorem in Mathematics'
Euler's pioneering equation, the 'most beautiful equation in mathematics', links the five most important constants in the subject: 1, 0, π, e and i. Central to both mathematics and physics, it has also featured in a criminal court case, on a posta...
Does a Good Bedside Manner Matter?
There is an apparent conflict between the increase in technology in medicine and the importance of a relationship between patient and doctor. This Valentine's Day lecture considers the importance of that relationship.The transcript and dow...
Should We Vote Online?
Online voting in local and national elections could be more convenient, greatly increase voter turnout and deliver results within a few minutes of the polls closing. Some countries have adopted online voting and some have regarded it as extremely ...
Is a Mathematician a Robot?
Robotics is another of HM Government's 'eight great technologies'. Is it possible that in a few years we might have machines with artificial intelligence? In this lecture I will describe the mathematics of machine learning and explain its ...
National Parks and National Park Cities
National Parks were designated to protect some of the world's most loved landscapes from being eaten away by industrial and housing development. But Britain's National Parks are exploited by intensive agriculture and sucked dry of their water for ...
An Englishman (with a Guitar) Abroad
In 1643 an English landowner, Sir Ralph Verney, fled to France in the depths of the Civil War. He settled in Blois and, while there, amassed a vast archive that is still unpublished. The letters Verney kept, and his financial accounts, show that a...
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How Energy Flow Shapes the Evolution of Life
Despite the explosion of genetic information in recent years, we have surprisingly little insight into the peculiar history of life on our planet. Most genetic variation - natural experiments in evolution - is found in simple bacteria, yet they ha...
Computer Bugs in Hospitals: A New Killer
Computer bugs, reported in heart pacemaker software and many other devices, are but one example of the risks that IT systems can create for patients. The extent of the problem of software bugs in the medical arena, and elsewhere, suggest an increa...
