Gresham College

Gresham College Lectures

#121 in Education · 🇮🇹 #159 in Education · 🇬🇧

About the show

Gresham College has been providing free public lectures since 1597, making us London's oldest higher education institution. This podcast offers our recorded lectures that are free to access from the Gresham College website, or our YouTube channel.

Newest episodes

Rather Trivial Things? Finding the Precious in an Alternative Museum History - Kate Hill

Nov 10, 2026 44 min

This lecture was recorded by Professor Kate Hill on 14th of October 2026 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, London. Kate is Professor of History at the University of Lincoln, UK, where she teaches modern British history and heritage. She researches the history of museums and heritage in the UK and beyond; among her books are Women and Museums 1850-1914: Modernity and the Gendering of Knowledge (Manchester University Press 2016), and Museums, Modernity and Conflict: Museums and Collections in and of War (Routledge 2020). She recently led the project Making Museum Professionals 1850-the present, investigating the history, present and future of curating and allied professions. She is Co-Editor of the Museum History Journal, and chaired the Museums and Galleries History Group for over a decade. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/trivial-precious Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham College's mission, please consider making a donation: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today Website: https://gresham.ac.uk X: https://x.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: https://instagram.com/greshamcollege Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/greshamcollege.bsky.social TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@greshamcollege Support Us: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today Support the show

What Do You Need a Mathematician For? Perspectives from the 17th Century - Volker Remmert

Nov 6, 2026 50 min

In the early modern period, it was common practice to praise the mathematical sciences, a typical example being Martinus Hortensius’ Inauguration Speech on the Dignity and the Usefulness of the Mathematical Sciences (Amsterdam 1634). This lecture explains how "mathematical sciences" were understood in the 17th century, before exploring the arguments which were used to advocate for the use of the mathematical sciences, using visual materials such as title engravings of 17th century publications. Can previous answers to the question “What do you need a mathematician for?” help us understand our need for mathematicians today? This lecture was recorded by Volker Remmert on the 7th of October 2026 Volker Remmert has been trained as mathematician and historian. He teaches history of science and technology at the University of Wuppertal, Germany. His research interests are in the history of early modern science, with a focus on the mathematical sciences (Picturing the Scientific Revolution: Title Engravings in Early Modern Scientific Publications, Philadelphia 2011), and in the history of mathematics in Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries (with Ute Schneider: Eine Disziplin und ihre Verleger – Disziplinenkultur und Publikationswesen der Mathematik in Deutschland, 1871-1949, Bielefeld 2010). He has recently co-edited volumes on the history early modern science (with Julia Ellinghaus: Manipulating the Sun: Picturing Astronomical Miracles from the Bible in the Early Modern Era, Leiden 2024, with Jeanne Peiffer: A Cultural History of Mathematics in the Early Modern Age, vol. 3 of the Bloomsbury Cultural History of Mathematics, London 2024) and, together with Maria Remenyi, on the early workshops at the Mathematical Research Institute Oberwolfach (https://doi.org/10.14760/978-3-00-082798-3). The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/what-mathematician Gresham College has offered free public...

What is the Purpose of Yoga: Transcendence or Transformation? - Jim Mallinson

Nov 3, 2026 53 min

This lecture was recorded by Professor Sir Jim Mallinson on 5th of October 2026 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, London. Jim Mallinson is the Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford and a Professorial Fellow at Balliol College. His research focuses on the history and current traditional practice of yoga and his primary methods are philology, ethnography and art history. Prof. Mallinson led the Haṭha Yoga Project (2015–2021), a six-person research project on the history of physical yoga funded by the European Research Council. The project’s core outputs are ten critical editions of Sanskrit texts on physical yoga and four monographs on its history and current practice. Together with Professor Jürgen Hanneder (University of Marburg), Prof. Mallinson led the Light on Hatha Yoga Project (2021–2024) which will result in a critical edition of the Haṭhapradīpikā. Prof. Mallinson’s publications include the following: The Khecarīvidyā of Ādinātha, a Critical Edition and Annotated Translation of an Early Text on Haṭhayoga (Routledge, 2007), a revision of his doctoral thesis, which was supervised by Professor Alexis Sanderson at the University of Oxford, where Prof. Mallinson also read Sanskrit as an undergraduate; Roots of Yoga (Penguin Classics, 2017, co-authored with Mark Singleton), The Amṛtasiddhi and Amṛtasiddhimūla: The Earliest Texts of the Haṭhayoga Tradition (École française d’Extreme- orient, Pondicherry, 2021) and The Dattātreyayogaśāstra (École française d’Extreme-orient, Pondicherry, 2024). Prof. Mallinson has spent many years living in India with traditional ascetics and practitioners of yoga, and at the 2013 Kumbh Mela was awarded the title of Mahant by the Rāmānandī Saṃpradāya. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/yoga-purpose Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are c...

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All episodes

The newest 50 of 1,000 episodes

Rather Trivial Things? Finding the Precious in an Alternative Museum History - Kate Hill

Nov 10, 2026 44 min

What Do You Need a Mathematician For? Perspectives from the 17th Century - Volker Remmert

Nov 6, 2026 50 min

What is the Purpose of Yoga: Transcendence or Transformation? - Jim Mallinson

Nov 3, 2026 53 min

Rethinking Deterrence for a Disrupted World - Martin Connell

Oct 30, 2026 44 min

The unipolar world of American military dominance, which characterised the relatively stable 35-year post-Cold War period, is now well and truly over. This lecture reveals how nation states face a series of geostrategic shifts and challenges, combined with rapid technological change. The world has now entered a highly disruptive and volatile period which will be defined by complexity, competition and conflict. How nations credibly deter will not be straightforward, but failure to do so could prove to be catastrophic. This lecture was recorded by Martin Connell on the 27th of October 2026 Sir Martin Connell joined the Royal Navy straight from school and went on to command at every rank from lieutenant through to vice admiral. Initially flying helicopters, he went on to be a captain of warships ranging from patrol vessels and frigates through to aircraft carriers, commanding military operations all around the world. Later in his career he worked in various shore-based roles including as a diplomat in Washington D.C. and numerous senior command and staff roles in the Ministry of Defence in London which included a period in 2025 as the Interim First Sea Lord and Chief of the Royal Navy. He has advised the highest levels of UK and allied governments and industry leadership on all aspects of deterrence, national security, major procurement programmes and the defence nuclear enterprise. Martin is now a strategic advisor specialising in defence and international security. The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/rethinking-deterrence Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham College's mission, please consider making a donation: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-in...

Shakespearean England and Views of the Irish Language - Mícheál Ó Mainnín

Oct 27, 2026 45 min

The Irish language has been associated with politicisation and conflict, particularly in the context of contemporary Northern Ireland identity politics. However, debates around the language extend much further back in time and some key elements of the discourse may be traced to the sixteenth century in particular. This lecture looks at the portrayal of the Irish language by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and the motivations for some negative stereotypes which were to prove resilient and enduring in later centuries. This lecture was recorded by Mícheál Ó Mainnín on the 1st of October 2026 Professor Mícheál Ó Mainnín works within the School of Arts, English and Languages at Queen's University Belfast. His principal research interests lie in the areas of linguistics (particularly onomastics and historical linguistics); Irish and Scottish Gaelic literary texts; language politics; Irish and Scottish identity and relations in the medieval and modern periods. The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/shakespeare-irish Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham College's mission, please consider making a donation: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today Website: https://gresham.ac.uk X: https://x.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: https://instagram.com/greshamcollege Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/greshamcollege.bsky.social TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@greshamcollege Support Us: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today Support the show

The Gods of Ancient Greece | Gresham College Podcast with Prof Melissa Lane and Prof Ronald Hutton

Oct 23, 2026 48 min

This episode of the Gresham College Podcast features a conversation between two Gresham Professors: Melissa Lane, Gresham Professor of Rhetoric and Ronald Hutton, Gresham Professor of Divinity. Together they explore the gods of ancient Greece: where deities come from, why the same god could have several different parents, stories and personalities, and why the Greeks never expected their gods to be good. Ronald explains why Greeks addressed their deities as "sir and madam" rather than "Lord God", how blood sacrifice worked more like a community barbecue, and how ordinary people struck deals with the gods for help with toothache, childbirth or a safe voyage. Melissa traces how philosophers from Xenophanes to Plato began to question the poets' badly behaved gods, and how religion collided with Athenian democracy, from the law courts to the trial of Socrates. The conversation then turns to the mystery religions, from the Eleusinian Mysteries to the women-only rites of Dionysus, the role of blindfolds and ordeal in initiation, and the gold leaves buried with initiates as calling cards for the underworld. It closes with the Greek view of the afterlife, and the story of the goddess Athena, evicted from the Parthenon, knocking at the philosopher Proclus's door. Further Viewing: Watch Ronald Hutton's Gresham College lecture, Mithras: Master of Mystery: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/god-mithras Watch Melissa Lane's Gresham College lecture, Cicero In and On Political Crises: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/cicero Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: https://gresham.ac.uk/support/ Website: https://gresham.ac.uk Twitter: https://twitter.com/greshamcollege Faceb...

Women of Bath and Willesden: Ordinary Women in English Literature - Marion Turner

Oct 22, 2026 44 min

In this lecture, Professor Marion Turner explores ‘ordinary women’ in English literature, arguing that Chaucer’s 14th-century Wife of Bath was the first such woman: a middle-aged, sexually active working woman who tells the outrageous story of her own life. Zadie Smith’s 21st century translation of her story demonstrates the ongoing relevance of thinking about the space we have for women’s voices in theatre, poetry and public life. This lecture discusses the historical context for the emergence of the voices of ‘ordinary women’ in literature and considers what has and hasn’t changed across time. This lecture was recorded by Marion Turner on the 30th of September 2026 Marion Turner has published several award-winning books including Chaucer: A European Life (Princeton, 2019) and The Wife of Bath: A Biography (Princeton, 2023). She curated a major exhibition at the Bodleian Library, Chaucer Here and Now, in 2024. She is deeply committed to public engagement, working regularly with schools and with adult education as well as talking at literary festivals such as Hay on Wye, the Edinburgh festival, the Cheltenham festival, and the Oxford literary festival, and on the radio, e.g. Start the Week, the Today programme, Women’s Hour, You’re Dead to Me, Ian Hislop’s Oldest Jokes. She holds the senior chair in medieval literature at the University of Oxford – the J.R.R. Tolkien Professorship of English Literature and Language. The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/women-bath Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham College's mission, please consider making a donation: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today Website: ...

AI as Therapist? Intimacy Without Understanding - Matt Jones

Oct 16, 2026 50 min

AI systems are increasingly positioned as supports for anxiety, loneliness, and distress. This lecture examines large language models trained to simulate therapeutic dialogue alongside biofeedback systems that modulate physiological states. We distinguish responsiveness from empathy, asking where AI may scaffold reflection and where automated comfort subtly displaces responsibility. This lecture was recorded by Professor Matt Jones on the 29th of September 2026 at Barnard’s Inna Hall, London Matt Jones is a computer scientist at Swansea University - and a Fellow of the British Computer Society - who works alongside colleagues from many other disciplines and directly with everyday folk across the world to explore the future of digital technologies. Over the last 30-plus years, this human-centred approach has led to novel approaches for, amongst other things, mobile phone-based information searching and browsing, pedestrian navigation, voice assistants and deformable displays. Much of his work has been driven by intense and sustained engagements with “low resource” communities from informal settlements in India, South Africa, and Kenya. Through their generous and gracious participation, these extra-ordinary users with the fresh and diverse perspectives have stimulated insights into the future of digital technologies for everyone, globally. In all this work, Matt works as part of a long-standing collaborative team with Jen Pearson, Simon Robinson and Thomas Reitmaier (from Swansea) and colleagues in India (including Dani Raju) and South Africa (including Minah Radebe). His work has been supported by the UK’s science funders (EPSRC and UKRI). Currently, this funding includes a Fellowship to explore the future of interactive AI and leadership roles in responsible AI and inclusive digital technologies. This funding has led to a series of impactful publications, talks and influences on people, policies, and practices. Matt has collaborated with private, public an...

Where is Queer Love in the Shoah History? - Anna Hájková

Oct 13, 2026 37 min

Where are the stories of great queer love in the Shoah? There are almost none. Anna Hájková explains why the history of same-sex desire in the Shoah, that is, queerness among Jews persecuted by the Nazis for their race, has been excluded and marginalised, and how its return to our understanding of the Holocaust can offer an inclusive and feminist history of this genocide. Based on original and extensive archival research, this lecture offers a concise insight into the queer history of the Holocaust. This lecture was recorded by Dr Anna Hájková on 28th of September 2026 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, London. Dr Anna Hájková is Reader for modern European continental history at the University of Warwick, where she co-directs the Centre for Global Jewish Studies. Her first book, The Last Ghetto: An Everyday History of Theresienstadt, came out in 2020 with Oxford University Press. Her second book People Without History are Dust: Queer Desire in the Holocaust (University of Toronto Press, 2025) was awarded the National Jewish Book Award 2026. She is a pioneer of queer Holocaust history and her work has been awarded the 2020 Orfeo Iris Prize. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/queer-shoah Support the show

Carbon: Our Flexible Friend that Built the Natural World - Helen Czerski

Oct 9, 2026 1 hr 0 min

Carbon used to be something that was only mentioned in school chemistry classes, but now it seems to be everywhere: on the news, in political debate, in discussions on health, and as a framework for thinking about our civilisation’s future. But the carbon that’s the focus of most of that debate is what’s in the atmosphere, and that’s only about 2% of the accessible carbon on Earth. This lecture puts that 2% in context, showing how the whole carbon cycle works, how we’re affecting it, and looks at the proposed strategies for deliberately manipulating carbon reservoirs in the future. This lecture was recorded by Helen Czerski on the 24th of September 2026 Helen Czerski is a physicist and oceanographer with a passion for science, sport, books, creativity, hot chocolate and investigating the interesting things in life. She is a Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University College London and her research focus is the physics of breaking waves and bubbles at the ocean surface. These bubbles change underwater sound and light, help transfer gases from ocean to atmosphere (helping the ocean breathe) and also eject ocean material into the air. She has spent months working on research ships in the Antarctic, the Pacific, the North Atlantic and the Arctic, and is an experienced field scientist. Helen has been a regular science presenter on the BBC for 15 years, covering the physics of the natural world in BBC2 landmark documentaries (including ‘Orbit’, ‘Operation iceberg’ and ‘Supersenses’), and the physics of everyday life in a range of BBC4 documentaries (including ‘From ice to fire: The incredible science of temperature’, ‘Sound waves: The symphony of physics’, and ‘Colour: The spectrum of science’, along with many others). She currently co-hosts BBC Radio 4’s flagship climate and environment programme Rare Earth. Helen's first book Storm in a Teacup won the Italian Asimov Prize and the Louis J. Battan Author prize from the American Meteorologic...

Cosmology’s Mad Idea: Inflation & the Creation of Our Universe - Chris Lintott

Oct 6, 2026 50 min

Our expanding Universe only makes sense if, early on, it expanded rapidly in a period of cosmic inflation. In this lecture, we consider the evidence for this apparently arbitrary idea, and asks whether we are on the brink of finding inflation’s signature in our observation. As the story moves from theorist's blackboards to desert observatories, and from the cosmos’s first moments to the far future, we question the nature of the Universe, its eventual fate and even the form of scientific enquiry itself. This lecture was recorded by Chris Lintott on the 23rd of September 2026 Professor Chris Lintott is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford, and a Research Fellow at New College. Having been educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge and University College London, his research now ranges from understanding how galaxies form and evolve, to using machine learning to find the most unusual things in the Universe, to predicting the properties of visiting interstellar asteroids. He was the founder of the Zooniverse citizen science platform, which provides opportunities for more than two million online volunteers to contribute to scientific research, and which was the topic of his first book, 'The Crowd and the Cosmos’. His latest book is ‘Our Accidental Universe’. Professor Lintott is best known for presenting the BBC's long-running Sky at Night program, and as an accomplished lecturer. Away from work, he cooks, suffers through being a fan of Torquay United and Somerset cricket, and spends time with a rescued lurcher, Mr Max. He can often be found at the helm of Oxford’s science comedy night, ‘Huh, That’s Funny’. The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/cosmology-mad Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportun...

The Future of Creativity - Daniel Susskind

Oct 2, 2026 45 min

This lecture was recorded by Daniel Susskind on the 23nd of September 2026 Dr Daniel Susskind is a writer and economist. He explores the impact of technology, and particularly AI, on work and society. He is the Mercers’ School Memorial Professor of Business at Gresham College. He is also a Digital Fellow at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University, an Associate Member of the Economics Department at Oxford University, and a Research Professor at King’s College London. He is a member of the UK Government’s Expert Panel on AI and the Future of Work. His new book, Growth: A Reckoning (2024), was chosen by President Obama as one of his ‘Favourite Books of 2024’ and was a runner-up for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year 2024. He is also the author of A World Without Work (2020), described by The New York Times as "required reading for any potential presidential candidate thinking about the economy of the future” and a runner-up for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year 2020, and co-author of the best-selling book, The Future of the Professions (2015). His TED Talk, on the future of work, has been viewed more than 1.7 million times. His next book, What Should My Children Do? How to Flourish in the Age of AI, will be published in 2026. And his first novel, The Basilisk Stare, will be published in 2027. Previously he worked in various roles in the British Government – in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, in the Policy Unit in 10 Downing Street, and in the Cabinet Office. He was a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard University. The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/future-creativity Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to le...

The Myth and Promise of the U.K. Jury Trial - Clive Stafford Smith

Sep 29, 2026 46 min

The Lammy plan to eliminate half of U.K. criminal jury trials has provoked a rebellion among many lawmakers. Recent Palestine Action cases highlight the jury’s moral role, with several “perverse verdicts” acquitting activists despite clear evidence. Yet those charged with the lesser offence of “supporting” PA have been denied a jury trial and the chance of acquittal. Compared with U.S. constitutional protections, including impartial juries, vicinage rules, challenges to biased pools, and post‑trial juror inquiry—the U.K. system appears increasingly problematic. In this lecture, Professor Clive Stafford Smith makes the case for stronger jury protections. This lecture was recorded by Clive Stafford Smith on the 17th of September 2026 Clive Stafford Smith JD OBE is a dual UK-US national, the founder and director of the Justice League a non-profit human rights training centre focused on fostering the next generation of advocates. He was the Senior Prefect at Radley College, where he studied maths and science; then a Morehead Scholar at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), where he took a degree in Politics; and a Stone Merit Scholar each of his three years at Columbia Law School, graduating in 1984. He previously founded and directed the legal action charities Louisiana Capital Assistance Center (1993 in New Orleans) and Reprieve (1999 in London). Since 1984 he has tried many capital cases, and helped to represent over 400 people facing execution in the US and elsewhere. He also brought the first challenge to Guantánamo Bay, where he has secured the release of 87 detainees, and continues to assist the remaining 15. In all five of the cases he has helped bring to the U.S. Supreme Court the petitioner has prevailed. He has recently taken on the case of Aafia Siddiqui, the woman who has most suffered from the US rendition-to-torture program – abducted with her three children. He continues to work on capital cases in the US, including a Post-Mortem Project...

Is the HIV pandemic over? - Matt Higgins

Sep 25, 2026 45 min

A stark advert picturing a gravestone chiselled with ‘AIDS: DON’T DIE OF IGNORANCE’ captured the horror of this disease in the 1980s. Now, for HIV-infected people able to access anti-retroviral therapies, life expectancy is normal. How were these amazing medicines developed and how have they transformed lives? Why is it so difficult to eradicate HIV or to develop a vaccine to prevent infection? What does the future hold in the quest to stop the global scourge of AIDS? This lecture was recorded by Matt Higgins on the 16th of September 2026 Matt studied natural sciences at Christ’s College in the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. in structural biology at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology. He started his research group with a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2005 and moved to the University of Oxford in 2010. He is currently the E. P. Abraham Professor of Structural Biology and a Professorial Fellow at Merton College, Oxford. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation. The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/hiv-pandemic Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham College's mission, please consider making a donation: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today Website: https://gresham.ac.uk X: https://x.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: https://instagram.com/greshamcollege Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/greshamcollege.bsky.social TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@greshamcollege Support Us: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today Support the show

Cracking the Whip: Strings, Chains and Dinosaurs - Alain Goriely

Sep 22, 2026 52 min

This lecture was recorded by Alain Goriely on the 15th of September 2026 Alain Goriely is a mathematician with broad interests in mathematical methods, mechanics, sciences, and engineering. He is well known for his contributions to dynamical systems, mathematical biology, as well as fundamental and applied mechanics. He is particularly well known for the development of a mathematical theory of biological growth, culminating with his seminal monograph The Mathematics on Mechanics of Biological Growth (2017). He received his PhD from the University of Brussels in 1994 where he became a lecturer. In 1996, he joined the University of Arizona where he established a research group within the renowned Program of Applied Mathematics. In 2010, he joined the University of Oxford as the inaugural Statutory Professor of Mathematical Modelling and fellow of St. Catherine’s College. He is currently the Director of the Oxford Centre for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. In addition, Alain has enjoyed scientific outreach based on problems connected to his research, including tendril perversion in plants, twining plants, umbilical cord knotting, whip cracking, the shape of seashells, brain modelling, and he is the author of a Very Short Introduction to Applied Mathematics (2017). His work has been recognized by a Sloan Fellowship, a Royal Society Wolfson Research Award, the Cozzarelli Prize from the National Academy of Sciences and the Engineering Medal from the Society of Engineering Sciences. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2022. The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/cracking-whip Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham College's mission, plea...

The Sky at Night, Tonight: A New View of the Changing Sky - Chris Lintott

Sep 21, 2026 49 min

On a remote mountain top in Chile, scanning the sky with the largest astronomical camera ever built, the Vera Rubin Observatory is conducting the deepest and most sensitive survey of the sky yet. This lecture covers whatever it’s found in the previous week, from supernovae to asteroids, giving us a glimpse of science in action. This lecture was recorded by Chris Lintott on the 14th of September 2026 Professor Chris Lintott is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford, and a Research Fellow at New College. Having been educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge and University College London, his research now ranges from understanding how galaxies form and evolve, to using machine learning to find the most unusual things in the Universe, to predicting the properties of visiting interstellar asteroids. He was the founder of the Zooniverse citizen science platform, which provides opportunities for more than two million online volunteers to contribute to scientific research, and which was the topic of his first book, 'The Crowd and the Cosmos’. His latest book is ‘Our Accidental Universe’. Professor Lintott is best known for presenting the BBC's long-running Sky at Night program, and as an accomplished lecturer. Away from work, he cooks, suffers through being a fan of Torquay United and Somerset cricket, and spends time with a rescued lurcher, Mr Max. He can often be found at the helm of Oxford’s science comedy night, ‘Huh, That’s Funny’. The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/sky-night Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham College's mission, please consider making a donation: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/...

Cello - In Search of a Voice - Kate Kennedy

Sep 15, 2026 49 min

How do we tell stories of past voices through a cello, the voice of its player? This lecture explores what it means to be separated from your voice, and to find it again. Dr Kate Kennedy traces a journey she took across Europe with her cello, to uncover the stories of instruments and their players. The result was a host of eccentric, sometimes tragic, always extraordinary accounts of silencing and survival, from the Auschwitz orchestra to a shipwreck, and even a cello full of bees. This lecture was recorded by Kate Kennedy on the 9th of September 2026 Dr Kate Kennedy is a biographer, cellist, and broadcaster. She is one of the foremost critics of twentieth-century music, and lectures in Music and English at Oxford University, and is a regular presence on BBC Radio 3. Kate is the Director of the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing and a Supernumerary Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford, having previously held Research Fellowships in English and Music at the University of Cambridge. She is also Director of the Centre for the Study of Women Composers, Director of the Museum of Music History, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Her most recent book Cello: A Journey Through Silence to Sound was published in August 2024 with Head of Zeus / Bloomsbury. It is a group biography that weaves together four narratives of cellists who suffered various forms of persecution, injury, and misfortune. She is also the author of the Dweller in Shadows – A Life of Ivor Gurney (Princeton University Press), and editor of Literary Britten, Lives of Houses (co-edited with Dame Hermione Lee), and The Silent Morning – Culture and the Armistice 1918. Both Cello and Dweller in Shadows were shortlisted for the Royal Philharmonic Society prize. The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/cello-voice Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. The...

Why Do We Need Empathy? - Jane Shaw

Sep 11, 2026 45 min

This lecture was recorded by Jane Shaw on Monday, 07 Sep 2026. Professor Jane Shaw is Provost of Gresham College and Professor of the History of Religion at the University of Oxford. Professor Shaw was formerly Principal of Harris Manchester College and Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Oxford. She has also served as Dean for Religious Life and Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford; as Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco; and, prior to her time in California, she taught history and theology at the University of Oxford for 16 years. Her books include Miracles in Enlightenment England (Yale 2006); Octavia, Daughter of God: The Story of a Female Messiah and her Followers (Jonathan Cape and Yale 2011); and the co-authored Gen Z, Explained: The Art of Living in a Digital Age (Chicago 2021). She is currently writing Seeking Infinity: Mystics in the Modern World (forthcoming with Penguin Allen Lane) and has received Fellowships to support the completion of that book from the Leverhulme Trust and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. Professor Shaw was educated at Oxford, Harvard, and U. C. Berkeley. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/why-empathy Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: https://gresham.ac.uk/support/ Website: https://gresham.ac.uk Twitter: https://twitter.com/greshamcollege Facebook: https://facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: https://instagram.com/greshamcollege Support the show

On the Nature of Time According to Modern Physics - Jim Al-Khalili

Sep 4, 2026 46 min

This is the Annual Sir Thomas Gresham Lecture. What does modern physics have to say about the meaning of time? Is it a fundamental feature of reality or merely an emergent property from something deeper? Does time flow, and is the present moment special when Einstein tells us that all times coexist. Where does the arrow of time come from if all the fundamental laws of physics are symmetric in time? This lecture will examine many of these issues and give our best guess answers as we understand the universe today. This lecture was recorded by Jim Al-Khalili on the 23rd of June 2026 Jim Al-Khalili is a quantum physicist, author and broadcaster. As an academic, he is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Surrey. He received his PhD in nuclear physics in 1989 and has published over 150 papers in the field. His current research interests are in the foundations of quantu mechanics and the exciting new field of quantum biology. As a science communicator Jim hosts BBC Radio 4’s long running show, The Life Scientific, which attracts two million weekly listeners. His many TV science documentaries over the past two decades include Atom, The Story of Electricity and the Bafta nominated Chemistry: a volatile history. His fifteen books on popular science and the history of science have been translated into twenty-six languages. He is currently working on an ambitious new book on the nature of time due out in Autumn 2026. Jim is a past president of both the British Science Association and Humanists UK and is a recipient of the Royal Society Michael Faraday medal and the Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar medal, the Institute of Physics Kelvin Medal and the Stephen Hawking medal and has ten honorary doctorates from UK universities. He received an OBE from the Queen in 2007 and later a CBE in 2021, both for ‘services to science and public engagement in STEM’. He is a trustee and commissioner on the board of the 1851 Royal Commission and a Fellow of the Science Museum...

Music of Sleep and Dreams - Milton Mermikides

Aug 21, 2026 49 min

This lecture was recorded by Professor Milton Mermikides on the 19th of June 2026 Milton Mermikides is a composer, guitarist, technologist, academic and educator in a wide range of musical styles and has collaborated with artists and scientists as diverse as Evelyn Glennie, Tim Minchin, Pat Martino, Peter Zinovieff, John Williams and Brian Eno. Son of a CERN nuclear physicist, he was raised with an enthusiasm for both the arts and sciences, an eclecticism which has been maintained throughout his teaching, research and creative career. He is a graduate of the London School of Economics (BSc), Berklee College of Music (BMus) and the University of Surrey (PhD). He has lectured, exhibited and given keynote presentations at organisations like the Royal Academy of Music, TEDx, Royal Musical Association, British Library, Smithsonian Institute and The Science Museum and his work has been featured extensively in the press. His music, research and graphic art are published and featured by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Deutsche Grammophon, Sony and more, and he has won awards, scholarships and commendations for writing, teaching, research and his charity work. Milton is Professor of Music at the University of Surrey, Professor of Guitar at the Royal College of Music, Deputy Director of the International Guitar Research Centre, an Ableton Certified Trainer, and lives in London with his wife, the guitarist Bridget Mermikides and their daughter Chloe. He is also a Vice-Chair of Governors at Addison Primary School, a state school which foregrounds music education, offering free instrumental lessons for all on Pupil Premium. The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/music-sleep Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should h...

The Morrigan: The Nightmare Queen - Ronald Hutton

Aug 7, 2026 53 min

This lecture was recorded by Ronald Hutton on the 17th of June 2026 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London Professor Hutton is Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He took degrees at Cambridge and then Oxford Universities, and was a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. He is now a Fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society, the Society of Antiquaries and the Learned Society of Wales, and has won awards for teaching and research.He has lectured all over the world, authored twenty books and ninety-six essays, appeared in or presented scores of television and radio programmes, and sits on the editorial boards of six journals concerned with the history of religion and magic. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/goddess-morrigan Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: https://gresham.ac.uk/support/ Website: https://gresham.ac.uk Twitter: https://twitter.com/greshamcollege Facebook: https://facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: https://instagram.com/greshamcollege Support the show

There Must be a Better Way: Thoughts on the Future of Family Law - Sir Andrew McFarlane

Aug 4, 2026 52 min

This is the Annual Gray's Inn Reading 2026. The lecture was delivered within three months of Sir Andrew McFarlane’s retirement after 21 years on the Family Bench. Whilst the phrase ‘un-plugged’ may not be appropriate, it is anticipated that the lecturer will no longer feel restrained by judicial caution when commenting upon the future development of Family Justice. In addition to a focus on the future of adoption law and the need for significant reform in relation to the financial rights of cohabitants, the lecturer will use a perspective gained from 8 years as the judicial Head of Family Justice to offer suggestions for reform of the system itself. This lecture was recorded by The Rt Hon Sir Andrew McFarlane on the 15th of June 2026 Andrew McFarlane was called to the Bar in 1977 and practiced in chambers in Birmingham until 1993 when he moved to specialist family law chambers in London. He appeared at all levels of court including the House of Lords and the European Court of Human Rights. He was appointed as a QC in 1998. In April 2005 he was appointed to the High Court, Family Division and was for 5 years the Family Division Liaison Judge for the Midland Circuit. He was the legal member of the Government ‘Family Justice Review’ Panel. In July 2011 he was appointed to be a Lord Justice of Appeal sitting full time in the Court of Appeal. On the 28th July 2018 Sir Andrew succeeded Sir James Munby as President of the Family Division and Head of Family Justice; he is due to retire as President at Easter 2026. Together with the late David Hershman he is the co-author of a loose-leaf legal text book entitled “Children: Law and Practice”. In addition, he has contributed to other publications and lectured throughout the UK and abroad. Sir Andrew has been a trustee of YoungMinds (the national young person’s mental health charity) and is Patron of HOPE Family Centre (Bromyard) and of a prisoner support charity ‘Not Beyond Redemption’. In addition to being Chancellor of the...

Education - And Its Limits - Daniel Susskind

Jul 31, 2026 52 min

This lecture was recorded by Professor Daniel Susskind on the 26th of May 2026 Dr Daniel Susskind is a writer and economist. He explores the impact of technology, and particularly AI, on work and society. He is the Mercers’ School Memorial Professor of Business at Gresham College. He is also a Digital Fellow at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University, an Associate Member of the Economics Department at Oxford University, and a Research Professor at King’s College London. He is a member of the UK Government’s Expert Panel on AI and the Future of Work. His new book, Growth: A Reckoning (2024), was chosen by President Obama as one of his ‘Favourite Books of 2024’ and was a runner-up for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year 2024. He is also the author of A World Without Work (2020), described by The New York Times as "required reading for any potential presidential candidate thinking about the economy of the future” and a runner-up for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year 2020, and co-author of the best-selling book, The Future of the Professions (2015). His TED Talk, on the future of work, has been viewed more than 1.7 million times. His next book, What Should My Children Do? How to Flourish in the Age of AI, will be published in 2026. And his first novel, The Basilisk Stare, will be published in 2027. Previously he worked in various roles in the British Government – in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, in the Policy Unit in 10 Downing Street, and in the Cabinet Office. He was a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard University. The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/education-limits Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to...

The White Knight: Ice - Helen Czerski

Jul 28, 2026 57 min

The polar regions are still some of the most inaccessible and least touched by humans, but they are deeply linked to the rest of Earth. We will cover the history of exploring them, the challenges of measuring this environment, and the current state of knowledge about the ice at both poles. We will also cover the likely future for the polar regions – the incentives driving different actions, what science suggests about the consequences, and coming events to look out for. This lecture was recorded by Helen Czerski on the 21st of May 2026 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, London Helen Czerski is a physicist and oceanographer with a passion for science, sport, books, creativity, hot chocolate and investigating the interesting things in life. She is a Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University College London and her research focus is the physics of breaking waves and bubbles at the ocean surface. These bubbles change underwater sound and light, help transfer gases from ocean to atmosphere (helping the ocean breathe) and also eject ocean material into the air. She has spent months working on research ships in the Antarctic, the Pacific, the North Atlantic and the Arctic, and is an experienced field scientist. Helen has been a regular science presenter on the BBC for 15 years, covering the physics of the natural world in BBC2 landmark documentaries (including ‘Orbit’, ‘Operation iceberg’ and ‘Supersenses’), and the physics of everyday life in a range of BBC4 documentaries (including ‘From ice to fire: The incredible science of temperature’, ‘Sound waves: The symphony of physics’, and ‘Colour: The spectrum of science’, along with many others). She currently co-hosts BBC Radio 4’s flagship climate and environment programme Rare Earth. Helen's first book Storm in a Teacup won the Italian Asimov Prize and the Louis J. Battan Author prize from the American Meteorological Society. Blue Machine won the Wainwright Prize for Conservation Writing. She was awarde...

Cicero In and On Political Crises - Melissa Lane

Jul 24, 2026 43 min

This lecture was recorded by Melissa Lane on the 11th of June 2026 Melissa Lane is the Class of 1943 Professor of Politics, Princeton University and is also Associated Faculty in the Department of Classics and Department of Philosophy. Previously she was Senior University Lecturer at Cambridge University in the Faculty of History and Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. She studied for her first degree in Social Studies (awarded summa cum laude) at Harvard University, and then took an MPhil and PhD in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, where she was a student at King’s College, supported by appointments as a Marshall Scholar, Truman Scholar, and Mary Isabel Sibley Fellow of Phi Beta Kappa. Professor Lane is an author, lecturer and broadcaster who has received major awards including being named a Guggenheim Fellow, and the Lucy Shoe Meritt Resident in Classical Studies at the American Academy in Rome. She has published widely in journals and authored or introduced nine major books including Greek and Roman Political Ideas; Eco-Republic; and most recently, Of Rule and Office: Plato’s Ideas of the Political, which was awarded the 2024 Book Prize of the Journal of the History of Philosophy, and was published in a paperback edition with modifications in 2025. Professor Lane is the only person ever to have delivered both the Carlyle Lectures and the Isaiah Berlin Lectures at the University of Oxford. The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/cicero Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham College's mission, please consider making a donation: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today Website: https://gresham.ac.uk...

Forging Better Futures for You and AI - Matt Jones

Jul 21, 2026 50 min

In this last lecture, I will work to wake us from the AI as Overlord spell. We will explore other possible futures, looking first look at the potential of AI fitting in with us: things we can chat to; humanoid robots; or even devices that draw on understandings of pets to make them more palatable and pleasing. Secondly, I’ll suggest a way to weave AI into everyday life: as a “simple” instrument to enable our souls to sing. This lecture was recorded by Professor Matt Jones on the 2nd of June 2026 at Barnard’s Inna Hall, London Matt Jones is a computer scientist at Swansea University - and a Fellow of the British Computer Society - who works alongside colleagues from many other disciplines and directly with everyday folk across the world to explore the future of digital technologies. Over the last 30-plus years, this human-centred approach has led to novel approaches for, amongst other things, mobile phone-based information searching and browsing, pedestrian navigation, voice assistants and deformable displays. Much of his work has been driven by intense and sustained engagements with “low resource” communities from informal settlements in India, South Africa, and Kenya. Through their generous and gracious participation, these extra-ordinary users with the fresh and diverse perspectives have stimulated insights into the future of digital technologies for everyone, globally. In all this work, Matt works as part of a long-standing collaborative team with Jen Pearson, Simon Robinson and Thomas Reitmaier (from Swansea) and colleagues in India (including Dani Raju) and South Africa (including Minah Radebe). His work has been supported by the UK’s science funders (EPSRC and UKRI). Currently, this funding includes a Fellowship to explore the future of interactive AI and leadership roles in responsible AI and inclusive digital technologies. This funding has led to a series of impactful publications, talks and influences on people, policies, and practices. Matt has c...

Current Challenges to the US Constitution - Clive Stafford Smith

Jul 17, 2026 44 min

The Americans are very proud of their written constitution. During the first 3/8 of President Trump’s second term of office, the constitution has been severely tested. Where has the Constitution succeeded in providing legal safeguards, clarity and stability, and where has it failed? How will the remainder of this presidency look? And what is coming after Trump? This lecture was recorded by Clive Stafford Smith on the 4th of June 2026 Clive Stafford Smith JD OBE is a dual UK-US national, the founder and director of the Justice League a non-profit human rights training centre focused on fostering the next generation of advocates. He was the Senior Prefect at Radley College, where he studied maths and science; then a Morehead Scholar at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), where he took a degree in Politics; and a Stone Merit Scholar each of his three years at Columbia Law School, graduating in 1984. He previously founded and directed the legal action charities Louisiana Capital Assistance Center (1993 in New Orleans) and Reprieve (1999 in London). Since 1984 he has tried many capital cases, and helped to represent over 400 people facing execution in the US and elsewhere. He also brought the first challenge to Guantánamo Bay, where he has secured the release of 87 detainees, and continues to assist the remaining 15. In all five of the cases he has helped bring to the U.S. Supreme Court the petitioner has prevailed. He has recently taken on the case of Aafia Siddiqui, the woman who has most suffered from the US rendition-to-torture program – abducted with her three children. He continues to work on capital cases in the US, including a Post-Mortem Project where he is investigating the claims of innocence of 184 people executed since 1977. Clive has published a number of books including Bad Men (2008, describing work in Guantánamo) and Injustice (2012, on the capital case of Kris Maharaj), both of which were short-listed for the Orwell Prize; and most re...

Shock of the Nude: Pioneering Women Artists and the Cultural Politics of Modern China - Di Wang

Jul 14, 2026 36 min

This lecture was recorded by Dr Di Wang on the 8th of June 2026 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London Dr Di Wang is an art historian and curator. Her work focuses on art and culture of East Asia from the late-nineteenth century to the present. Following her doctorate at the University of Oxford, she has taught as a departmental lecturer and research associate at the Department of History of Art at Oxford. Her first book project reveals the surprising entanglement of medicine, science, and revolutionary politics in the genesis of a socially engaged modern art and visual culture in China, offering the first inter-disciplinary history on how science and medicine shaped the contours of avant-garde thinking in China during the modern period. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/nude-china Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: https://gresham.ac.uk/support/ Website: https://gresham.ac.uk Twitter: https://twitter.com/greshamcollege Facebook: https://facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: https://instagram.com/greshamcollege Support the show

Pluto Isn’t a Planet - Chris Lintott

Jul 10, 2026 51 min

This lecture was recorded by Chris Lintott on the 3rd of June 2026 Professor Chris Lintott is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford, and a Research Fellow at New College. Having been educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge and University College London, his research now ranges from understanding how galaxies form and evolve, to using machine learning to find the most unusual things in the Universe, to predicting the properties of visiting interstellar asteroids. He was the founder of the Zooniverse citizen science platform, which provides opportunities for more than two million online volunteers to contribute to scientific research, and which was the topic of his first book, 'The Crowd and the Cosmos’. His latest book is ‘Our Accidental Universe’. Professor Lintott is best known for presenting the BBC's long-running Sky at Night program, and as an accomplished lecturer. Away from work, he cooks, suffers through being a fan of Torquay United and Somerset cricket, and spends time with a rescued lurcher, Mr Max. He can often be found at the helm of Oxford’s science comedy night, ‘Huh, That’s Funny’. The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/pluto-planet Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham College's mission, please consider making a donation: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today Website: https://gresham.ac.uk X: https://x.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: https://instagram.com/greshamcollege Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/greshamcollege.bsky.social TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@greshamcollege Support Us: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/s...

Plato to Polybius on Constitutional Change - Melissa Lane

Jul 3, 2026 47 min

This lecture was recorded by Melissa Lane on the 28th of May 2026 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London Melissa Lane is the Class of 1943 Professor of Politics, Princeton University and is also Associated Faculty in the Department of Classics and Department of Philosophy. Previously she was Senior University Lecturer at Cambridge University in the Faculty of History and Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. She studied for her first degree in Social Studies (awarded summa cum laude) at Harvard University, and then took an MPhil and PhD in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, where she was a student at King’s College, supported by appointments as a Marshall Scholar, Truman Scholar, and Mary Isabel Sibley Fellow of Phi Beta Kappa. Professor Lane is an author, lecturer and broadcaster who has received major awards including being named a Guggenheim Fellow, and the Lucy Shoe Meritt Resident in Classical Studies at the American Academy in Rome. She has published widely in journals and authored or introduced nine major books including Greek and Roman Political Ideas; Eco-Republic; and most recently, Of Rule and Office: Plato’s Ideas of the Political, which was awarded the 2024 Book Prize of the Journal of the History of Philosophy. Professor Lane is the only person ever to have delivered both the Carlyle Lectures and the Isaiah Berlin Lectures at the University of Oxford. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/plato-polybius Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: https://gresham.ac.uk/support/ Website: https://gresham.ac.uk Twitter: https://twitter.com/greshamcollege Facebook: https...

Going Global: Chinese Independent Documentary - Luke Robinson

Jun 30, 2026 45 min

This lecture will focus on independently produced Chinese documentary cinema as it has entered the Anglophone industry market. Using “Plastic China” by the award-winning director Wang Jiuliang as a case study, I will explore what the implications of cross-border collaborations are for documentary form and content, and how this may encourage a particular set of viewer responses. This will allow me to locate the documentary form in relation to broader liberal arguments over China’s place in the world system and assess the limitations of this approach to “going global” for independent Chinese documentary. This lecture was recorded by Luke Robinson on the 27th of May 2026 Luke Robinson is a Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor in Film Studies in the Faculty of Media, Arts, and Humanitiies, University of Sussex. He is the author of Independent Chinese Documentary: From the Studio to the Street, and the co-editor of two further collections on Chinese film culture: (with Chris Berry) Chinese Film Festivals: Sites of Translation and (with Chris Berry, Lydia Wu and Sabrina Yu) Chinese Independent Cinema: Past, Present, and a Questionable Future. His writing has appeared in books and journals including DV-made China, The New Chinese Documentary Movement, Vocal Projections, Screening China’s Soft Power, positions: Asia cultures critique, Film Studies, Screen, and Journal of Chinese Cinemas. Between 2019 and 2025 he was co-investigator on the AHRC-funded project, “Independent Cinema in China: State, Market, and Film Culture”. One of the outcomes of this grant was the establishment of the Chinese Independent Film Archive, located at Newcastle University. The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/chinese-documentary Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone...

Should We Manipulate People’s Emotions? - Robin May

Jun 23, 2026 45 min

This lecture was recorded by Robin May on the 20th of May 2026 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London Professor of Infectious Disease at the University of Birmingham, and (interim) Chief Scientist at the UK Health Security Agency, Robin May was appointed Gresham Professor of Physic in May 2022. Between July 2020 and September 2025 he served as Chief Scientific Adviser at the Food Standards Agency (FSA). Professor May’s early training was in Plant Sciences at the University of Oxford, followed by a PhD on mammalian cell biology at University College London and the University of Birmingham. After postdoctoral research on gene silencing at the Hubrecht Laboratory, The Netherlands, he returned to the UK in 2005 to establish a research program on human infectious diseases. He was Director of the Institute of Microbiology and Infection at the University of Birmingham from 2017-2020. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/peoples-emotions Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: https://gresham.ac.uk/support/ Website: https://gresham.ac.uk Twitter: https://twitter.com/greshamcollege Facebook: https://facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: https://instagram.com/greshamcollege Support the show

Society and Survival During the Holocaust - Mary Fulbrook

Jun 19, 2026 45 min

This lecture focuses on experiences of hiding and help during the Holocaust across Europe, including the German Reich itself, to highlight the significance of surrounding societies for the survival of Jews. In a broad comparative analysis, going beyond a focus on individual rescuers and getting away from generalisations about supposed ‘national characteristics’, Mary Fulbrook illuminates how local power structures and sense of community shaped non-Jewish responses to antisemitic policies, and affected the choices, experiences and chances of Jews attempting to evade persecution in different regions during the war. This lecture was recorded by Mary Fulbrook on the 18th of May 2026 A graduate of Cambridge and Harvard universities, Mary Fulbrook is Professor of German History at University College London (UCL) and a Fellow of the British Academy. Her current research is on rescue and survival across Europe during the Holocaust. She is the author or editor of some 29 books, including Bystander Society: Conformity and Complicity in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust (2023); the Wolfson History Prize-winner Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice (2018); and the Fraenkel Prize-winning A Small Town near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust (2012), as well as, most recently, Ten Moments that shaped Berlin (2025) and, edited with Jürgen Matthäus, The Cambridge History of the Holocaust Vol. 2: Perpetrating the Holocaust: Policies, Participants, Places (2025). One of her major research areas has been the GDR, on which she wrote Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR, 1949-89 (OUP, 1995) and The People’s State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker (Yale UP, 2005). Dissonant Lives: Generations and Violence through the German Dictatorships (OUP, 2011; 2 vols. 2017) traces distinctive generational experiences across this traumatic century, from before World War One until after German unification in 1990. She has also written on German Na...

Music of the Body - Milton Mermikides

Jun 16, 2026 46 min

Music and biology are profoundly entwined. The heart beats, footsteps fall into familiar tempi, and even the movement of our limbs follows a natural rhythmic hierarchy—as if we shape music in our image. The rise and fall of breath, the cadence of laughter, and the wail of a cry all carry musical gestures, woven into our being. Yet our bodies do not just dictate music—they respond to it, from calming stress to thrilling chills. Beyond this, the biological world itself pulses with music: DNA sequences become melody, disease growth swells into an orchestral crescendo, and a hidden music emerges from within us. This lecture was recorded by Milton Mermikides on the 13th May 2026 at LSO St Lukes Milton Mermikides is a composer, guitarist, technologist, academic and educator in a wide range of musical styles and has collaborated with artists and scientists as diverse as Evelyn Glennie, Tim Minchin, Pat Martino, Peter Zinovieff, John Williams and Brian Eno. Son of a CERN nuclear physicist, he was raised with an enthusiasm for both the arts and sciences, an eclecticism which has been maintained throughout his teaching, research and creative career. He is a graduate of the London School of Economics (BSc), Berklee College of Music (BMus) and the University of Surrey (PhD). He has lectured, exhibited and given keynote presentations at organisations like the Royal Academy of Music, TEDx, Royal Musical Association, British Library, Smithsonian Institute and The Science Museum and his work has been featured extensively in the press. His music, research and graphic art are published and featured by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Deutsche Grammophon, Sony and more, and he has won awards, scholarships and commendations for writing, teaching, research and his charity work. Milton is Professor of Music at the University of Surrey, Professor of Guitar at the Royal College of Music, Deputy Director of the International Guitar Research Centre, an Ableton...

The Pill and the Planet - Ian Mudway

Jun 12, 2026 58 min

Modern medicine's success in extending lifespans comes at an environmental cost. This lecture explores the pollution from single-use plastics, pharmaceuticals and medical waste, questioning whether we can sustain this model. It examines the impact of drugs and their metabolites on ecosystems, the carbon footprint of healthcare and the ethical dilemma of balancing individual health with planetary health. This talk explores potential solutions, including green pharmacy, innovative materials and responsible waste management, asking if a future with both healthy aging and a thriving planet is achievable. This lecture was recorded by Ian Mudway on the 12th of May 2026 at Bernard’s Inn Hall, London Dr Ian Mudway is Visiting Professor of Environmental Health. He is a senior lecturer in the School of Public Health at Imperial, a member of the MRC Centre for Environment and Health; MRC & Asthma UK Centre in Allergic Mechanisms of Asthma and the NIHR-PHE Health Protection Research Units in Environmental Exposures and Health and Chemical and Radiation Threats and Hazards. He has over 25 years of experience researching the impacts of air pollution on human health and in the development of assays to quantify the toxicity of the chemical cocktails that pollute the air we breathe. Over this period Dr Mudway has published over 100 research papers, reports and book chapters on these topics, as well as providing advice to the local, national and international governments and NGOs. Dr Mudway is passionate about the communication of science to lay audiences and has worked extensively with artists and educationalist to promote the public understanding of the risks associated with environmental pollutants. Currently his work is focused on understanding early life impacts of pollutants on the development of the lung and cognitive function in children living within urban populations, as well as furthering our fundamental understanding of the mechanisms that drive these adverse effects a...

How Hard is too Hard? An Introduction to Complexity - Colva Roney-Dougal

Jun 9, 2026 44 min

This lecture was recorded by Colva Roney-Dougal on the 11th of May 2026 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London Colva Mary Roney-Dougal OBE is a British mathematician specializing in group theory and computational algebra. She is Professor of Pure Mathematics at the University of St Andrews, where she is first female Head of Pure Mathematics. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/hard-complexity Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: https://gresham.ac.uk/support/ Website: https://gresham.ac.uk Twitter: https://twitter.com/greshamcollege Facebook: https://facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: https://instagram.com/greshamcollege Support the show

Making Memory Visible Through Photograph - Julia Winckler

Jun 5, 2026 1 hr 1 min

With an academic background in social, cultural anthropology and photography, I have spent the last twenty-five years working on projects that have bridged photographic and archival research. I have witnessed the power of photography as a means to connect communities. I have experienced first-hand the benefits to participants of enabling an emotional connection and inspiring a sense of validation, of feeling seen and valued and heard. That their story matters. That they matter. In this talk, we will explore the creative mechanisms involved in making memory visible through photography, stimulating engagement in the present. This lecture was recorded by Julia Winckler on the 7th of May 2026 Julia Winckler is a photographer, writer, curator and Principal Lecturer at the University of Brighton's School of Art and Media, where she teaches on MA Photography and MA Fine Art and supervises PhD research. She has exhibited and published widely on memory and migration narratives, contested topographies, émigré photographers and photography as activism. With an academic background in cultural anthropology, social work and photography, she has spent the last 25 years developing projects that bridge photographic and archival research. The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/making-memory Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham College's mission, please consider making a donation: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today Website: https://gresham.ac.uk X: https://x.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: https://instagram.com/greshamcollege Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/greshamcollege.bsky...

Dionysus: Lord of Misrule - Ronald Hutton

Jun 2, 2026 46 min

This lecture was recorded by Ronald Hutton on the 6th May 2026 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, London Professor Hutton is Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He took degrees at Cambridge and then Oxford Universities, and was a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. He is now a Fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society, the Society of Antiquaries and the Learned Society of Wales, and has won awards for teaching and research. He has lectured all over the world, authored twenty books and ninety-six essays, appeared in or presented scores of television and radio programmes, and sits on the editorial boards of six journals concerned with the history of religion and magic. He is currently working on the third volume of his biography of Oliver Cromwell. The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/god-dionysus Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham College's mission, please consider making a donation: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today Website: https://gresham.ac.uk X: https://x.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: https://instagram.com/greshamcollege Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/greshamcollege.bsky.social TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@greshamcollege Support Us: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today Support the show

A Living Planet - Helen Czerski

May 29, 2026 59 min

Earth is a living planet. But how much life is there, and what is it doing? We will discuss the distribution of biomass on Earth, and compare the effects of microbes, wild animals, domesticated animals. The aim of this lecture is to provide concrete examples of how life is woven in with the rest of the planetary engine, expanding the importance of biodiversity from sentiment alone to a matter of survival for both whole ecosystems and our own civilisation. This lecture was recorded by Helen Czerski on the 23th of March 2026 at Bernard’s Inn Hall, London Helen Czerski is a physicist and oceanographer with a passion for science, sport, books, creativity, hot chocolate and investigating the interesting things in life. She is a Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University College London and her research focus is the physics of breaking waves and bubbles at the ocean surface. These bubbles change underwater sound and light, help transfer gases from ocean to atmosphere (helping the ocean breathe) and also eject ocean material into the air. She has spent months working on research ships in the Antarctic, the Pacific, the North Atlantic and the Arctic, and is an experienced field scientist. Helen has been a regular science presenter on the BBC for 15 years, covering the physics of the natural world in BBC2 landmark documentaries (including ‘Orbit’, ‘Operation iceberg’ and ‘Supersenses’), and the physics of everyday life in a range of BBC4 documentaries (including ‘From ice to fire: The incredible science of temperature’, ‘Sound waves: The symphony of physics’, and ‘Colour: The spectrum of science’, along with many others). She currently co-hosts BBC Radio 4’s flagship climate and environment programme Rare Earth. Helen's first book Storm in a Teacup won the Italian Asimov Prize and the Louis J. Battan Author prize from the American Meteorological Society. Blue Machine won the Wainwright Prize for Conservation Writing. She was awarded the Institut...

Music, Death and Afterlife - Mieko Kanno

May 29, 2026 40 min

This lecture was recorded by Mieko Kanno on the 5th May 2026 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, London Mieko Kanno is a violinist and an academic, active in both capacities as Professor of Artistic Research in Music Performance at the Sibelius Academy, the University of the Arts Helsinki. Her main interest concerns artistic musical practice as a field and vocation in contemporary settings, with topics ranging from notation and technology to education. She first came to international attention in the 1980s when she won prizes in international competitions including the Carl Flesch and Queen Elisabeth of Belgium. Later she developed an interest in performing contemporary music and won the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis from the Darmstadt New Music Institute in 1994. Since her doctorate in 2001 she held fulltime positions at the University of Durham and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, alongside a freelance career as contemporary music specialist both in performance and scholarly work. The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/music-death Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham College's mission, please consider making a donation: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today Website: https://gresham.ac.uk X: https://x.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: https://instagram.com/greshamcollege Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/greshamcollege.bsky.social TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@greshamcollege Support Us: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today Support the show

Give Peace a Chance: Legal Implications of the Israel-Palestine Conflict - Clive Stafford Smith

May 22, 2026 41 min

This lecture was recorded by Clive Stafford Smith on the 30th of April 2026 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London Clive Stafford Smith JD OBE is a dual UK-US national, the founder and director of the Justice League a non-profit human rights training centre focused on fostering the next generation of advocates. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/israel-palestine-law Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: https://gresham.ac.uk/support/ Website: https://gresham.ac.uk Twitter: https://twitter.com/greshamcollege Facebook: https://facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: https://instagram.com/greshamcollege Support the show

The Shape of Tiles: Regular and Irregular, Hard and Soft - Alain Goriely

May 19, 2026 50 min

Tiling involves filling a plane or space with repeated elements, known as tiles. This simple concept is deeply embedded in the natural world and human design, appearing in structures as varied as the hexagonal wax cells of a beehive and decorative wallpapers. While regular hard tiles—geometric shapes with straight edges that fit together without gaps or overlaps—are common in human-made designs, nature often favours soft or irregular patterns, shaped by physical forces. In this lecture, I will explore how both regular and irregular tiling patterns, hard and soft, emerge in nature and the underlying mathematical principles that govern their formation. This lecture was recorded by Alain Goriely on the 28th of April 2026 Alain Goriely is a mathematician with broad interests in mathematical methods, mechanics, sciences, and engineering. He is well known for his contributions to dynamical systems, mathematical biology, as well as fundamental and applied mechanics. He is particularly well known for the development of a mathematical theory of biological growth, culminating with his seminal monograph The Mathematics on Mechanics of Biological Growth (2017). He received his PhD from the University of Brussels in 1994 where he became a lecturer. In 1996, he joined the University of Arizona where he established a research group within the renowned Program of Applied Mathematics. In 2010, he joined the University of Oxford as the inaugural Statutory Professor of Mathematical Modelling and fellow of St. Catherine’s College. He is currently the Director of the Oxford Centre for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. In addition, Alain has enjoyed scientific outreach based on problems connected to his research, including tendril perversion in plants, twining plants, umbilical cord knotting, whip cracking, the shape of seashells, brain modelling, and he is the author of a Very Short Introduction to Applied Mathematics (2017). His work has been recognized by a Sloan Fellowship, a Roy...

The Ground We Stand On - Helen Czerski

May 15, 2026 53 min

This lecture was recorded by Helen Czerski on the 19th of February 2026 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London Helen Czerski is a physicist and oceanographer with a passion for science, sport, books, creativity, hot chocolate and investigating the interesting things in life. She is a Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University College London and her research focus is the physics of breaking waves and bubbles at the ocean surface. These bubbles change underwater sound and light, help transfer gases from ocean to atmosphere (helping the ocean breathe) and also eject ocean material into the air. She has spent months working on research ships in the Antarctic, the Pacific, the North Atlantic and the Arctic, and is an experienced field scientist. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/ground Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: https://gresham.ac.uk/support/ Website: https://gresham.ac.uk Twitter: https://twitter.com/greshamcollege Facebook: https://facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: https://instagram.com/greshamcollege Support the show

Tales from Television: Bringing the Natural World into Your Home - George McGavin

May 12, 2026 58 min

New camera technology can help make stunning footage for natural history programmes but the key to success is down to a lot of hard work, planning and a bit of luck. In this lecture we take a ‘behind the scenes’ look at some of the highs and lows of making television natural history documentaries. This lecture was recorded by George McGavin on the 3rd of October 2017 Professor McGavin is a British entomologist, explorer and author. He is an Honorary Research Associate at Oxford University Museum of Natural History and the Department of Zoology. He is also a Fellow of the Linnean Society and the Royal Geographical Society. Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham College's mission, please consider making a donation: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today Website: https://gresham.ac.uk X: https://x.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: https://instagram.com/greshamcollege Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/greshamcollege.bsky.social TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@greshamcollege Support Us: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today Support the show

Science behind Love and Grief - Podcast with Robin May

May 9, 2026 41 min

This episode of the Gresham College Podcast features an interview with Robin May, hosted by Jeoffrey Sarpong. Professor Robin May is a Professor of Infectious Disease at the University of Birmingham, and (interim) Chief Scientist at the UK Health Security Agency. We cover what's actually happening in your brain when you lose someone, why grief is hardwired from childhood, whether animals grieve, and what ancient burial sites tell us about human emotion 78,000 years ago. Then we shift to love — the physical symptoms of infatuation, why your amygdala shuts down around a new partner, why the honeymoon phase lasts 12–18 months, and why heartbreak can literally feel like withdrawal. Plus: audience questions on anxiety and love, chatbot grief, abusive relationships, and whether oxytocin is really a "love drug." Watch Robin's Gresham College lectures here: https://youtu.be/5Yrf8IBn9gk https://youtu.be/5uQWglAwlps Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: https://gresham.ac.uk/support/ Website: https://gresham.ac.uk Twitter: https://twitter.com/greshamcollege Facebook: https://facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: https://instagram.com/greshamcollege Support the show

Why Do We Love? - Robin May

May 8, 2026 49 min

This lecture was recorded by Robin May on the 22nd of April 2026 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London Professor of Infectious Disease at the University of Birmingham, and (interim) Chief Scientist at the UK Health Security Agency, Robin May was appointed Gresham Professor of Physic in May 2022. Between July 2020 and September 2025 he served as Chief Scientific Adviser at the Food Standards Agency (FSA). Professor May’s early training was in Plant Sciences at the University of Oxford, followed by a PhD on mammalian cell biology at University College London and the University of Birmingham. After postdoctoral research on gene silencing at the Hubrecht Laboratory, The Netherlands, he returned to the UK in 2005 to establish a research program on human infectious diseases. He was Director of the Institute of Microbiology and Infection at the University of Birmingham from 2017-2020. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/music-mind Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: https://gresham.ac.uk/support/ Website: https://gresham.ac.uk Twitter: https://twitter.com/greshamcollege Facebook: https://facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: https://instagram.com/greshamcollege Support the show

Taming AI - Matt Jones

May 5, 2026 53 min

Watch the Q&A session: https://youtu.be/gj4d75_Clgg In this lecture, we look at proposals to limit AI powers and impacts, so bad outcomes are outweighed by social benefits from the technology. I’ll explain design processes (such as Human-Centred AI and Responsible AI) and technological approaches for AI system qualities like trustworthiness, explainability and “human in the loop”. We will explore how we, as individuals, can use AI based systems in discerning ways; and look at what governments can do to help their citizens thrive in an AI-future. This lecture was recorded by Professor Matt Jones on the 21st of April 2026 at Barnard’s Inna Hall, London Matt Jones is a computer scientist at Swansea University - and a Fellow of the British Computer Society - who works alongside colleagues from many other disciplines and directly with everyday folk across the world to explore the future of digital technologies. Over the last 30-plus years, this human-centred approach has led to novel approaches for, amongst other things, mobile phone-based information searching and browsing, pedestrian navigation, voice assistants and deformable displays. Much of his work has been driven by intense and sustained engagements with “low resource” communities from informal settlements in India, South Africa, and Kenya. Through their generous and gracious participation, these extra-ordinary users with the fresh and diverse perspectives have stimulated insights into the future of digital technologies for everyone, globally. In all this work, Matt works as part of a long-standing collaborative team with Jen Pearson, Simon Robinson and Thomas Reitmaier (from Swansea) and colleagues in India (including Dani Raju) and South Africa (including Minah Radebe). His work has been supported by the UK’s science funders (EPSRC and UKRI). Currently, this funding includes a Fellowship to explore the future of interactive AI and leadership roles in responsible AI and inclusive digital technologies....

A World Without Work - Daniel Susskind

May 1, 2026 50 min

In the future, we may face ‘structural’ technological unemployment in the labour market – where there is no longer enough work to occupy the human workforce. This lecture explains how such a phenomenon is possible at all, particularly given that repeated bouts of automation anxiety in the past have turned out to be wrong. Understanding this challenge is critical given recent claims by the leaders of the large technology companies – that they hope to build an AI that can outperform human beings at every economically useful task, within a decade. This lecture was recorded by Daniel Susskind on the 20th of April 2026 at Bernard’s Inn Hall, London Dr Daniel Susskind is a writer and economist. He explores the impact of technology, and particularly AI, on work and society. He is a Research Professor at King’s College London, a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University, a Digital Fellow at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, and an Associate Member of the Economics Department at Oxford University. His new book, Growth: A Reckoning (2024), was chosen by President Obama as one of his ‘Favourite Books of 2024’ and was a runner-up for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year 2024. He is also the author of A World Without Work (2020), described by The New York Times as "required reading for any potential presidential candidate thinking about the economy of the future” and a runner-up for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year 2020, and co-author of the best-selling book, The Future of the Professions (2015). His TED Talk, on the future of work, has been viewed more than 1.6 million times. He is currently working on his next book, What Should Our Children Do? How to Flourish in the Age of AI. Previously he worked in various roles in the British Government – in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, in the Policy Unit in 10 Downing Street, and in the Cabinet Office. He was a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard University The transcri...

The Dictionary City: Londoners and the Oxford English Dictionary - Sarah Ogilvie

Apr 28, 2026 52 min

Londoners who helped create the world's largest English dictionary. She has unearthed a fascinating group of people across all social classes who represent some of the most interesting contributors to the Dictionary from all parts of this great city one hundred and fifty years ago. From a pornographer living in Bloomsbury who sent in sex words, to a servant in Eaton Square, a suffragist in St John's Wood, a plant expert at Kew Gardens, a coin specialist at the Royal Mint, and - yes! - a Gresham Professor of Geometry, this is a people's history of one of our most famous books. This lecture was recorded by Professor Sarah Ogilvie on the 16th April 2026 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, London Sarah Ogilvie is Professor of Language and Lexicography at the University of Oxford. A specialist in technology and linguistics, she has previously taught at Cambridge University and Stanford University, and worked at Lab 126, Amazon's innovation lab in Silicon Valley. A former editor on the Oxford English Dictionary, her most recent book is The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the OED (Chatto and Windus). She is also author of Words of the World (Cambridge University Press), co-author of Gen Z, Explained (University of Chicago Press), editor of The Cambridge Companion to English Dictionaries, and co-editor of The Whole World in a Book (Oxford University Press). The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/living-planet Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham College's mission, please consider making a donation: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today Website: https://gresham.ac.uk X: https://x.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: ht...

Music of the Mind - Milton Mermikides

Apr 24, 2026 45 min

This lecture was recorded by Milton Mermikides on the 15th of April 2026 at LSO, London Milton Mermikides is a composer, guitarist, technologist, academic and educator in a wide range of musical styles and has collaborated with artists and scientists as diverse as Evelyn Glennie, Tim Minchin, Pat Martino, Peter Zinovieff, John Williams and Brian Eno. Son of a CERN nuclear physicist, he was raised with an enthusiasm for both the arts and sciences, an eclecticism which has been maintained throughout his teaching, research and creative career. He is a graduate of the London School of Economics (BSc), Berklee College of Music (BMus) and the University of Surrey (PhD). He has lectured, exhibited and given keynote presentations at organisations like the Royal Academy of Music, TEDx, Royal Musical Association, British Library, Smithsonian Institute and The Science Museum and his work has been featured extensively in the press. His music, research and graphic art are published and featured by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Deutsche Grammophon, Sony and more, and he has won awards, scholarships and commendations for writing, teaching, research and his charity work. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/music-mind Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: https://gresham.ac.uk/support/ Website: https://gresham.ac.uk Twitter: https://twitter.com/greshamcollege Facebook: https://facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: https://instagram.com/greshamcollege Support the show

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Created by: Gresham College
Status: Active
Latest episode: Nov 10, 2026
Episodes: 1,000
Release period: Several times a week
Avg. episode length: 51 min
Explicit: No
Language: English

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