10-Minute Talks

In this 10-Minute talk, Laura Mulvey FBA responds to three key questions regarding her 1975 essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’. Returning to the origins of the essay and the concept of the ‘male gaze’, Mulvey explores the cultural climate of feminism and Hollywood which drove the conception of this now-cult term and the newer, controversial term ‘female gaze’.    Speaker: Laura Mulvey FB...

‘Genocide’ (meaning “to kill a group”) was first used as a legal term in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin in the hope that it would come to signal the agreed limits of sovereign power, alongside the parallel developments of the concepts of human rights and crimes against humanity. Professor Philippe Sands Hon FBA explains the origins of the term, its implications and consequences in this 10-Minute Talk.   S...

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was one of the most influential political theorists and philosophers of the 20th Century. In this 10-Minute Talk, Professor Lyndsey Stonebridge FBA explores three of Arendt's key concepts – totalitarianism, statelessness and the banality of evil – to explain the importance of her thinking for our times.  Speaker: Professor Lyndsey Stonebridge FBA, Professor of Humanities...

In a famous 1963 letter, Martin Luther King Jr. argued that ‘extremism’ is not an inherently bad thing because it can be a way of describing radical action for the extension of justice. Professor Quassim Cassam FBA explores what we mean by extremism, what makes an ideology or course of action extremist, and whether King was right.  Speaker: Quassim Cassam FBA, professor of philosophy at the Univer...

Following the partition of India in 1947 and the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, what was once one nation became three. Presenting anecdotes from her book 'Shadows at Noon' – a rich history sharing the stories of South Asia from the 20th century – Professor Joya Chatterji FBA discusses her view that India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have remained more similar than different, while acknowledging th...

The question of what makes you ‘you’ has been a central theme in philosophical thought since ancient times. In this talk, Professor Richard Swinburne FBA takes us through the debates on personal identity, which were first had between Plato and Aristotle in the Western tradition. Through questioning the strength of the physicalist view, which says our personal identity is based on physical factors,...

Traversing the history of coffee through several literary examples, Professor Wen-chin Ouyang FBA explores coffee as not only a drink, but as tradition, commodity, and source of controversy. From the works of Mahmoud Darwish to Haruki Murakami, coffee has persisted as a social and intercultural tool. Hear more in her 10-Minute Talk.   Speaker: Wen-chin Ouyang FBA, Professor of Arabic and Comparati...

Sharing insights from his book 'Why Politics Fails', in this 10-Minute Talk Ben Ansell FBA unpacks the challenges of democracy. Given that humans rarely agree, there can be no such thing as the ‘will of the people’ – which is why it’s so difficult to override individual self-interest in favour of our collective interest in resolving some of our most pressing political problems. From the Polish-Lit...

How we understand autism has changed greatly over time. In this talk, Uta Frith FBA discusses developments in the scientific study of autism and its re-evaluation from a rarely diagnosed disorder to being conceptualised as a spectrum of neurodiversity. Autism can now be explored in relation to the mentalising system and other internal mechanisms that make us social.   Speaker: Professor Uta Frith,...

Gary Younge Hon FBA explores the French Liberation of 1944 and the story of Georges Dukson, "le Lion du 17ème", a soldier from French Equatorial Africa (now Gabon) who fought for the Free French forces during the liberation of Paris. Almost a million Africans, more than a million African Americans and roughly 16,0000 Caribbeans served in the Allied forces in the Second World War, but – often partl...

In this talk, Ato Quayson shares insights drawn from his book Tragedy and Postcolonial Literature . He argues that disputatiousness is one of the starting points that connects Greek and postcolonial tragedy. Speaker: Professor Ato Quayson FBA , Professor of English, Stanford University  Image: Tragic mask in hand of greek statue of Melpomene. Via Getty Images 

In this talk, Georgina Waylen discusses hypermasculine leadership within the context of the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Speaker: Professor Georgina Waylen FBA , Professor of Politics, University of Manchester Image: Donald Trump Holds Rally At Iowa State Fairgrounds. © photo by Scott Olson via Getty Images

The modern history of humiliation is different from the history of public shaming; both share certain features and practices, but differ as to intentions and goals. In this talk, Ute Frevert argues that liberal societies have made some progress in abolishing public shaming. But they have failed to bring about “decency“ in Avishai Margalit’s terms – a general refusal to humiliate others.     She is...

In this talk, Professor Kathleen Coleman FBA highlights certain paradoxes at the root of Roman civilisation, specifically those related to the staging of violent displays in the arena. Virtually everything that fueled Roman society can be implicated: ideology, religion, class structure, environment, economy. The Romans, evidently, tolerated these paradoxes. Can we learn anything from them? Speaker...

In this talk, Professor Julian Hoppit FBA introduces his new book, The Dreadful Monster and its Poor Relations. Taxing, Spending, and the United Kingdom, 1707-2021 , which explores the geography of public finances in the United Kingdom over the last three centuries. Why do some places feel they pay too many taxes and get too little public expenditure? Public finances have been at the heart of the...

Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) is, in terms of sheer achievement, the greatest English commoner of all time and yet remains a deeply controversial figure. He represented himself, apparently compellingly, as an honest, pious, modest, and selfless servant of God and his nation, and yet most of his contemporaries found him ruthless, devious, and self-promoting. In this talk, Ronald Hutton sums up the fi...

In this talk, Derek Attridge addresses the question: "What is a poem's mode of existence?" Using a poem by William Wordsworth as an example, he argues that poems are not fixed lines of words but human experiences of language and the power of language.   He is the author of The Experience of Poetry. From Homer's Listeners to Shakespeare's Readers .  Speaker: Professor Derek Attridge FBA, Professor...

In this talk, Jane Lightfoot considers what a particular corner of the classical world, astrology, thought about disease – how it classified it, what mental models it built around it, and how it might have coped, or failed to cope, with the situation that is facing us today. Speaker: Professor Jane Lightfoot FBA , Professor of Greek Literature; Charlton Fellow and Tutor in Classics, New College, U...

In this talk, Peter Gatrell discusses the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, signed in Geneva on 28 July 1951. He explains the circumstances leading up to the Refugee Convention and considers what it was designed to achieve: a commitment to recognise and protect refugees who have a well-founded fear of persecution. At present, although many of the world’s refugees live i...

Syntax is the cognitive system that underlies the patterns found in the grammar of human languages. In this talk, David Adger explains what syntax as an area of study is, why he finds it important and fascinating, and why it is central to what it means to be human. The paperback edition of his book, Language Unlimited. The Science behind our most creative power was published in July 2021. His Brit...

This talk introduces research on the sign languages of deaf communities: natural, complex human languages, both similar to and different from spoken languages. It includes discussion of sign language and the evolution of human language; sign language and the brain, and sign language acquisition by young children, as well as the history and future of British Sign Language (BSL). Speaker: Professor...

Over the winter of 1610-11, a magnificent telescope was built in London. It was almost two metres long, cast in silver and covered with gold. This was the first telescope ever produced in such an extraordinary way, worthy of a great king or emperor. Why was it made, what was its political significance and who was it going to? In this talk, Timon Screech explores why the East India Company, which b...

J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur (1735-1813) was a farmer as well as a complex thinker of the contradictions of American identity as described in his famous Letters from an American Farmer and, more strikingly, in his French texts which develop his description and analysis of the New World and its peoples. Many readers of his English work have focused on his wishful story of the land of the free, a...

Goods and possessions offer us ways into understanding how late medieval people saw the world and their position in it. In this talk, Christopher Woolgar discusses objects of daily life, their significance and the meaning of material culture (what we might understand as ‘people’s stuff') in late medieval England, to reveal changes in mentality that came with a long-term social revolution, in the q...

The British Academy is the UK's national academy for the humanities and social sciences and was founded in 1902. In this talk, Professor Sir David Cannadine discusses undertaking the task of writing the history of the Academy and why it is worth doing so, the importance of engaging with the challenging moments it has faced and how these were navigated, and if the history of the Academy is merely t...