Gresham College Lectures

Francis Bacon's New Atlantis (1627) imagined a utopian island including an experimental garden, where plants could be made "greater much than their nature". These new plants were central to Bacon's dream of a better world, where hunger - and even death itself - might be conquered. Robert Sharrock's History of the improvement and propagation of vegetables (1660) attempted to apply Bacon's new learning and improve humanity's food supply.

This lecture will begin with Bacon's imagined garden, then consider the long-term promise of the experimental or scientific garden, which would eventually lead to today's biotechnologies.

A lecture by Jim Endersby, Visiting Professor of the History of Science 7 October 2019

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

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

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2019 marks 100 years since the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 when a woman was recognised as a ‘person’ in law. This groundbreaking Act enabled women to be awarded university degrees and to enter professions such as law and medicine from which they had been barred.

But women were excluded from the foreign and diplomatic service until 1946, and while they were allowed to sit on juries, they were widely excluded from cases involving sexual assault until 1972. What did the Act achieve and what barriers to equality still remain?

A lecture by Jo Delahunty QC, Gresham Professor of Law 3 October 2019

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:

https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/100-years

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk

Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

Classic time management frameworks advise us to focus on the important rather than the urgent. But these frameworks seem not to be applicable to the 21st century, where technology means that we are constantly bombarded with deadlines.

This talk will explain how to focus on important long-term goals but at the same time meet urgent short-term deadlines; how to use email as an effective communication tool without being overwhelmed by it; and how to outsource and automate routine tasks.

A lecture by Alex Edmans, Gresham Professor of Business 2 October 2019

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:

https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/time-management

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk

Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

2019 marks 100 years since the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 when a woman was recognised as a 'person' in law. This groundbreaking Act enabled women to be awarded university degrees and to enter professions such as law and medicine from which they had been barred.

But women were excluded from the foreign and diplomatic service until 1946, and while they were allowed to sit on juries, they were widely excluded from cases involving sexual assault until 1972. What did the Act achieve and what barriers to equality still remain?

A lecture by Jo Delahunty QC, Gresham Professor of Law 3 October 2019

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/100-years

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

Support the show

The speed of light has fundamental significance.

This talk will explain how the speed of light was first measured, and how an obscure but brilliant patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland by the name of Albert Einstein deduced that the speed of light is the upper speed limit for everything in the Universe.

Interesting effects occur when particles are accelerated and achieve speeds close to that of light; these unusual phenomena take place not only in particle accelerators here on Earth but out in space that we can observe using our telescopes. It is even possible for things to be measured as travelling faster than the speed of light and the lecture will explain how that is permissible and understandable in an Einsteinian worldview.

A lecture by Katherine Blundell OBE, Gresham Professor of Astronomy 2 October 2019

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:

https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/faster-than-light

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk

Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

THE 2019 ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLIN MATTHEW MEMORIAL LECTURE

PART OF OUR BLACK HISTORY MONTH SERIES

In the years after 1945 successive British governments set out to weaponise the nation’s immigration policy. To maintain historic ties to the Old Commonwealth, and shore up Britain's position as a ‘world power’ they encouraged and even subsidised the emigration of over a million Britons while simultaneously recruiting thousands of East Europeans for new lives in Britain.

Yet in 1948, with the arrival of the Empire Windrush and the passing of the British Nationality Act, another, unplanned and unwanted migration was set in train.

A lecture by David Olusoga OBE, University of Manchester 1 October 2019

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:

https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/human-traffic

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk

Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

Classic time management frameworks advise us to focus on the important rather than the urgent. But these frameworks seem not to be applicable to the 21st century, where technology means that we are constantly bombarded with deadlines.

This talk will explain how to focus on important long-term goals but at the same time meet urgent short-term deadlines; how to use email as an effective communication tool without being overwhelmed by it; and how to outsource and automate routine tasks.

A lecture by Alex Edmans, Gresham Professor of Business 2 October 2019

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

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

Support the show

The speed of light has fundamental significance.

This talk will explain how the speed of light was first measured, and how an obscure but brilliant patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland by the name of Albert Einstein deduced that the speed of light is the upper speed limit for everything in the Universe.

Interesting effects occur when particles are accelerated and achieve speeds close to that of light; these unusual phenomena take place not only in particle accelerators here on Earth but out in space that we can observe using our telescopes. It is even possible for things to be measured as travelling faster than the speed of light and the lecture will explain how that is permissible and understandable in an Einsteinian worldview.

A lecture by Katherine Blundell OBE, Gresham Professor of Astronomy 2 October 2019

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/faster-than-light

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

Support the show

Spain became a byword for cruelty in much of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, whether it was the brutality of American colonisation, the tyranny of the Spanish Inquisition or the horrors of the Eighty Years’ War in the Netherlands.

This lecture will survey this ‘black legend’ and ask what made it so enduring – and why some parts of the story, such as the Inquisition’s genocidal campaign against Spanish Jews, received so much less attention than others.

A lecture by Alec Ryrie, Gresham Professor of Divinity 25 September 2019

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:

https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/spains-black-legend

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk

Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

The great Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev didn’t have the talents to become an artist or the money to become a patron. His gift was to inspire, facilitate and market artistic projects that were highly colourful and distinctive. In this lecture we follow his early years, when he published The World of Art, a provocative Russian journal, exhibited Russian visual art in Paris, and then brought Russian music there, culminating in his production of Musorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov.

A lecture by Marina Frolova-Walker, Gresham Professor of Music 24 September 2019

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:

https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/diaghilevs-beginnings

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk

Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege