Gresham College Lectures

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. How does the stock market work - what happens when you trade shares, and why do some companies raise money on the stock market and others don't? Can ord...

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 about what a child should be told. The overall law on consent has changed markedly in England and Wales since Montgomery (2015), and requires doctors to share a...

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 tomography reveal about the injuries that were inflicted on him, and his probable cause of death; and how well the findings align with the historical record. A lecture...

This event will focus upon mathematics as expressed in different languages and cultures. A lecture by Karine Chemla The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/numbers-cultures Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five...

This event will focus upon mathematics as expressed in different languages and cultures. A lecture by Karine Chelma The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/numbers-cultures Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five...

This event will focus upon mathematics as expressed in different languages and cultures. A lecture by Manuel Medrano The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/knot-just-numbers Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our fiv...

Dr Anuj Misra will discuss Sanskrit Mathematics in the Language of Poetry (4pm). A lecture by Dr Anuj Misra The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/sanskrit-mathematics Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or s...

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? A lecture by Farah Karim-Cooper The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gre...

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 painting of the Florence Baptistery, and then the real building, to appreciate the realism made possible by the technique. This lecture explores the maths of p...

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 state? The lecture will trace the contours of a wide-ranging debate on these issues, that shapes both Israeli and Middle Eastern politics...

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 infected by someone you have never met, often over wide distances. The advantage to humans is that we can act on the insect vector and break the cycle of t...

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 watch, your phone, your computer all have GPS receivers and everyone knows where they are all the time. But how does this technology work? And are there situ...

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 many times. What do changes in the advice given in these and other manuals tell us about the way sexual mores and practices have shifted betwe...

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 assess the myth of England's story as a 'sacred white space' and examine the evidence for diversity in medieval and early modern...

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 both humanity and the planet's ecosystems. Natural capital provides design parameters to track the quality and quantity of ecosystems and resources, includ...

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 Act 1962, which were broadened by the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 to deprive East African Asians of the right to settle in the UK. Its shameful succ...

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 characteristics of the nature of the Universe. A lecture by Katherine Blundell OBE The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are avail...

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 contemporaries used apes to embody racially charged fantasies of bestial brutality. These conflicting views shaped the numerous versions of King Kong and the Planet...

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 culture was undergoing a vigorous renewal at the time, and these composers worked across several arts: Shostakovich's absurdist opera The Nose extends th...

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 to spread 'civilisation' as a prerequisite for conversion, or seeing these efforts as part of a global apocalyptic conflict. This lecture...

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 shares give you, both in normal times and in bankruptcy? We'll explore how both inflation and taxes erode investment returns - and how to invest in a tax-ef...

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 ESA-Russia Rosalind Franklin rover to be launched next year arriving on 10 June 2023. At this exciting time, will we soon be able to answer the gre...

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, Stravinsky to Tchaikovsky, Sondheim to Ravel, and Barry Manilow to Chopin. This lecture observes how music is a highly effective tool in the promotion of...

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 study art, architecture and court ceremonial made a profound impact on the 23-year-old Charles, and it influenced his own taste when two years later he inh...

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-Cave The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/law-complexity Gresham College ha...