Talking Humanities

Aeneas  article ( Nature , 2025): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09292-5 Predicting the Past  free online interface: https://predictingthepast.com/  (with links to the teaching syllabus and code base) Aeneas  release blogpost: https://deepmind.google/blog/aeneas-transforms-how-historians-connect-the-past/ Birthday Invitation of Sulpicia Lepidina, one of the earliest known examples of w...

A visit to St Paul’s Church, Jarrow, to hear how Rivers of Ink reimagines the Codex Amiatinus through projection, sound, and scholarship. Find out more about Transformative Humanities

In this episode we bring together Professor Francis Watson from the department of Theology and Religion and Lauren Randall, a Phd researcher at Durham University. They are both working on the manuscript Codex Amiatinus, the world’s oldest bible and about to tour their latest project, Rivers of Ink which looks at the making of the Codex Amiatinus and how it came to be produced in the North East of...

Our guests: Dr Nikita Chiu Dr Chris Cowie Dr Vladimir Brljak     Find out more about Transformative Humanties.

Please visit the website for the walking trail:  https://durhams-black-history.humap.site/ Link for Sean Creighton and also relevant media links:  https://durhams-black-history.humap.site/about   Link to Durham's Palatinate Newspaper:  https://www.palatinate.org.uk

Overview: The Black Death of 1348–9 stands “unchallenged as the greatest disaster in documented human history,” yet the characteristics of the disease that killed approximately half the population of Europe in just a handful of years have long confounded academics. Although largely thought to be caused by Yersinia pestis , it is still unclear how the disease spread so quickly in a preindustrial so...

A map of the full Coal Stories route can be found here .  For the podcast we walked from Market Place (13 on map)) past St Mary-le-Bow Church (1) and down to the coal seam (2). You can find the guide at the following shops: Palace Green Library shop Durham Cathedral shop Beamish Museum Shop Or you can email  durhamminingmuseumsecretary@gmail.com  to request a copy of the book.

In this episode of Talking Humanities, Dr. Alistair Brown, Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities and Modern Literature at Durham University, discusses the importance of studying English in today’s world. Walking along the River Wear, he explains how English fosters empathy and story craft—skills crucial not only to personal development but also to modern industries like tech, where understandi...

Welcome to our final podcast from the BFI Reuben Library. In this episode we join Dr Ladan Cockshut and Professor Simon James from Durham University in conversation with Stuart Burnside, Video Games Manager in the certification unit at the British film Institute. Their discussion centres on the legitimisation of gaming research and its connection to science fiction. It also addresses the loss of g...

Visit the Transformative Humanities website.

This is the second in a series of conversations with specialists from the BFI and is a discussion between the BFI Reuben Library’s Senior Librarian Katie Reddington and Professor Simon James. Simon James is Professor of Victorian Literature in the Department of English Studies. He has edited five H. G. Wells novels and six numbers of The Wellsian, the learned journal of the H. G. Wells Society, an...

  More information about Transformative Humanities Find out more about the BFI  

  Watch a short film from Durham University produced by Professor Arlene Holmes-Henderson. Classics in The North East: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTRtSzhuzZI&t=32s

Read about Margaret Bradshaw's Honorary Degree from Durham University. Read more about Transformative Humanities at Durham University.  

Content warning: topics discussed in this episode include death, deaths during Covid and infant death. Listeners who may be sensitive to these topics, please take note.

In this episode we are in Durham with Professor Giles Gasper and Professor Brian Tanner. Giles is Professor in High Medieval History specialising in the intellectual history of the high middle ages and particularly in the development of theology. Brian is an Emiritus professor in the department of physics. They are both member of the interdisciplinary Ordered Universe project which studies the sci...