Gresham College Lectures

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/W5EKhMWdjP4 In this lecture we will discuss a hierarchy of rights. Is the American First Amendment the most important of all, given its five foundational rights – no establishment of religion; free exercise of religion; freedom of speech and the press; the right peaceably to assemble; the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances....

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/TRCkgDWKTdY Mapping the stars is, perhaps, the oldest of astronomical pursuits, but it has been perfected by the European Space Agency's Gaia mission, which is providing an exquisitely precise map showing the positions and movements of the nearest two billion stars. Starting with a history of mapping the cosmos, this lecture describes the new a...

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/7mW52bW23go It 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 be infinitely re-usable. It has enabled the creation and reinforcement of collective memory. It has been documented in innumerable formats, from maps to databases, taxonomies, and infographics. We make sen...

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/IAilwM_WdbI Until the nineteenth century, the favourite ancient pagan gods in Western culture were those related to human qualities and activities. During that century, especially in Britain, attention switched to a horned divinity associated with the countryside and wild nature, usually personified as the Greek Pan. This lecture explores how and wh...

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/Et8_myknHq8 Most of us rarely think about plant immunity. But, like us, plants can distinguish between different pathogens, trigger a ‘bespoke’ immune response and retain a memory of past infections to boost future immunity. However, plant immune systems also exhibit enviable features like the ability to inherit immunological memory from a parent, o...

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/gQdabAQT3Jw Sophocles’ Antigone refers to “unwritten laws,” as does Thucydides’ Pericles. From the late fifth century BCE, the idea that laws are more effective when learned by memory and observation than when put into writing, forms a distinctive current in political reflections. Plutarch would even claim that the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus had proh...

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 negotiated, and its success is measured by the interactions that take place in it: the passage of the sun, the root of trees, and even the way they are used by child...

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. Furthermore, weak income growth since the mid-2000s has disproportionately affected younger cohorts. This lecture unpacks these economic trends to revea...

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 ‘Great Stink’ in London in 1858 that led to the construction of Bazalgette’s sewer. Consequently, many cities took utilities into public ownership in the la...

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/7pvF4FdbYWU This lecture explores how information asymmetry leads to adverse selection and moral hazard, with a focus on their presence in financial markets and institutions such as insurance and credit markets. It will examine how regulations intended to solve a particular set of issues might exacerbate problems, potentially resulting in financial...

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/gWJmpSO4WZI Finance involves a group of people attempting to make rational decisions on valuation, but people are complicated. People can be self-interested, they can make mistakes, or, in stark contrast, they can act altruistically. This lecture will introduce the concept of agency problems in the finance sector, focusing on the conflicts that aris...

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/bKMV8i9Mq40 The brain is mostly organised in small modular regions connected to each other. Typically, each region performs different cognitive tasks, from image processing to language. This organisation leads us to model the brain as a network, the ‘brain connectome’. This fundamental view of the brain has become a central paradigm for neuroscience...

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 break the fourth wall, travelling through and blurring these conventionally separate worlds. By examining films through history from Blazing Saddles, Elf, The T...

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/LUyFLOUi-D4 This lecture traces the history of this famous series by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, starting from its conception in 1947. It describes the research and writing of the original forty-six volumes for England and the extension of the books to Scotland, Wales and Ireland. It then assesses their significance alongside a reflection on the 2024 achi...

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/t6kkq6dI6hc When and why do written laws emerge in ancient societies? This lecture will consider these questions in light of evidence including the law code of Hammurabi; the earliest attestation of written laws in Greek (found in Dreros on Crete); and the full-blown commitment to written laws by the Athenian lawgiver Solon. Such cases will be used...

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/pXoU-nZmhn8 Despite its familiarity, the Sun is a very different presence from the friendly yellow circle in children's paintings. Our star is a broiling mass of plasma, with its powerful magnetic fields, twisted by its rotation, capable of producing dramatic events of spectacular beauty and power. Using results from NASA's Parker Solar Pr...

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/lQBdqGrfWKU Over half the world’s largest companies have a net zero strategy. But what stops “Science-based Targets” from becoming box-ticking exercises too often immune to environmental scrutiny? Instead of decarbonizing companies and financial portfolios, this lecture will discuss the need to focus on decarbonizing products and services themselves...

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 up of the House of Commons balanced by the House of Lords; and the judiciary? And what role should the judiciary play? Have the British got confused about...

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/0ZK1Y1QnFDg This looks at how and why a particular form of the non-Christian divine feminine came to take over the Western European imagination from the beginning of the nineteenth century. This was a great goddess representing the natural world, or the moon and stars, or both. It traces the development of belief in the importance of this being, and...

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/d6Ao4KmGXBc Artificial 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 imagination, in art and literature. Others have seen the light of day as mechanical marvels, although a few were later exposed as elaborate frauds. The robots of today...

Watch the Q&A session here:  https://youtu.be/f6Z9L2dnxSA This lecture explores the emergence of the "femme au piano" genre in 19th-century French painting, depicted by artists like Renoir, Van Gogh, and Matisse. What suddenly made this topic so popular, and what does it tell us about the role of women in music-making at the time? Tracing the genre's roots from the Italian Renai...

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/wpF0oB9Mz-0 The US Constitution, both in its structural element and the Bill of Rights, reflect a catalogue of colonial complaints about the British system as well as centuries of evolution in the law. In general terms, contrary to the slightly complacent attitude of the British legal authorities. This lecture will demonstrate, most of the original...

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/JCTgxcPu78I The human immune system rivals the brain in its complexity. Billions of cells coordinate their activity with amazing precision to protect us from infection. Immune cells can respond to millions of different pathogens within seconds and yet rarely respond to a false alarm. This lecture explores how cells achieve this, what happens when th...

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 problem might create another. This lecture was recorded by Raghavendra Rau on 5th November 2024 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London Raghu is the Mercers School...

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/LW0DLhTxfCE This festive lecture explores the unusual roots of the song ‘White Christmas’ and its role in establishing the concept of the commercial Christmas song. It will explain how the song’s release during the summer months hints at how its potential as an enduring seasonal classic was not anticipated, and then examine how the music and lyrics...