Gresham College Lectures

** 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 century, dedicated to better understanding the human body. With colleagues, Wren contributed to: the near-discovery of oxygen; the first human transfusion of blood; the...

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 hospitals. This lecture will look at the importance and legacy of Nightingale’s work, which led to her becoming, in 1858, the first woman elected to the Royal Stati...

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-delivery’ machines or self-replicating microbial vaccines? What will the first human-created lifeform mean for our understanding of biology? Will humanity end with...

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 by infections, drugs or other inherited or acquired diseases. All of these can cause heart failure or death if not treated. This lecture will consider the p...

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? This talk presents ideas for how we might empower people to protect themselves and help address human issues in the IT sector by thinking differently about how we po...

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 “labels” make – “melancholy”, “lunacy”, “dotage”, and “senility”, for example? The lecture uses the historical development of the science of geriatrics to reflec...

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 avenues such as conceptions of women and gender in Muslim theology, using the theological debate on whether women could be prophets as a case study. How might thi...

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 defined this iconic medical institution. Sir Thomas Lauder Brunton's work in vascular pharmacology, Sir James Paget's discovery of bone and breast disease...

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 projects by Foster + Partners, and set out his vision for the future of tall buildings, the new technologies that are improving them, and the benefits they offer t...

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 has been challenged. These books deal with magic and enchantment and contain vivid characters such as Rhiannon, the proud and wilful Arianrhod, the beautifu...

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 have elevated the impact of infrastructure projects. Looking at both policy and projects, from the National Infrastructure Strategy policy document for the NIC, t...

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 British coronation, from its 10th -century origins to the present day, and explores how its meaning has changed over time. It will focus on moments when this r...

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, mothers, and sisters; sex workers and foreign agents; prophetesses and queens; wise women and witches; victims and heroes and so much more, their stories reveal to...

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 are the alternatives to criminalisation, such as restorative and transformative justice? Should we abolish or reform criminal law? How should a just legal sys...

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 Celsius. So, to stop global warming, we need net zero carbon dioxide emissions. And to limit warming to 2°C, we need to limit the total amount we emit to around...

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 carbon energy. The lecture will discuss the progress made in development of Small Modular Reactors which make these systems promising for future deployment...

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 technologies, our capacity to edit our DNA has become both more accessible, more accurate and consequently, more powerful. Gene editing could be used to prev...

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 expectations. The lecture will explore the rise of the indeterminate ending, from Henry James on. And it will suggest how an ending can, for worse as well as...

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 speech was domestic. If it was inappropriate for women to speak in public, they could not be priests or bishops. However, this lecture will reveal how some Chris...

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, The Mystic Chord and several others, with names that are sometimes helpful, and sometimes misleading or downright silly, looking at how such a thing as a c...

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, the “Colossus of Roads” and Britain’s Poet Laureate, to undertake one of the greatest road trips of the Picturesque era? Landscape historian and Fulbright scholar P...

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 parts of the empire, and different social groups, as they were drawn into a global economy? A lecture by Martin Daunton recorded on 4 April 2023 at Barnard&a...

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 events are likely and which are not. [It will not consider anthropogenic means by which life on Earth might end]. A lecture by Katherine Blundell OBE recorded on 29 M...

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 leaders Sitting Bull and Red Cloud. For many years, these portraits were not properly understood, reducing many of the sitters to simple exemplars of the ‘...

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, through an exploration of dose, detoxification and elimination mechanisms, antioxidant defences and innate immune mechanisms. A lecture by Dr Ian Mudway recorded...