Gresham College Lectures

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/gQdabAQT3Jw

Sophocles’ Antigone refers to “unwritten laws,” as does Thucydides’ Pericles. From the late fifth century BCE, the idea that laws are more effective when learned by memory and observation than when put into writing, forms a distinctive current in political reflections. Plutarch would even claim that the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus had prohibited the writing down of his laws. This lecture will present Greek authors’ reflections on the interplay between writing and orality remain relevant to debates about ethical formation today.

This lecture was recorded by Melissa Lane on 20th February 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London.

Melissa Lane is Gresham Professor of Rhetoric.

Melissa is also 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.

Having previously held visiting appointments at Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford, she will be Isaiah Berlin Visiting Professor in the History of Ideas in the Faculties of Philosophy and History at Oxford University, and a Visiting Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in Michaelmas Term 2024.

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/unwritten-laws-legacies-antigone-and-lycurgus

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://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today

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As we navigate towns and cities, public spaces are all around us. These offer a respite from our often-busy routines. Public spaces are more than just the leftover areas between buildings; they depend on how interests are designed and negotiated, and its success is measured by the interactions that take place in it: the passage of the sun, the root of trees, and even the way they are used by children. However, these areas are constantly threatened by the way local and commercial funding invest in it.
Using recent projects, primarily in London and North America, this lecture will invite audiences to think about public space beyond the space between and around buildings; to view public spaces, their design and their constructions, under a new light.

This lecture was recorded by Liza Fior on 28th January 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London.

Liza Fior is a founding Partner of muf architecture/art, and Professor of Architecture and Spatial Practice at the University of the Arts London. She was previously a visiting professor at Yale University.

muf architecture/art are internationally acclaimed for their hyper-local approach to design; exclusively working in the public realm - including on streetscapes, parks and open spaces, buildings masterplans, temporary commissions and furniture.

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/public-space

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://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today

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The UK's income inequality has remained stable since the 1990s, but household wealth has nearly doubled, mainly driven by soaring house prices. This has widened the wealth gap between generations, with younger people less likely to own homes. Furthermore, weak income growth since the mid-2000s has disproportionately affected younger cohorts. This lecture unpacks these economic trends to reveal how they have created tensions between generations by exacerbating disparities in their respective living standards.

This lecture was recorded by Mike Brewer on 18th February 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London.

Mike is Interim Chief Executive of the Resolution Foundation. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Department of Social Policy at the LSE. Between 2011 and 2020, he was a Professor of Economics at the University of Essex. He has also worked at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and HM Treasury.

Mike is interested in all aspects of inequality in income and wealth, including the role of the labour market and the tax and benefit system. He also has a long background in using microsimulation methods. He is the author of a book, What Do We Know And What Should We Do About Inequality?, published by SAGE in 2019.

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/uks-generational-wealth-gap

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://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today

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The discharge of raw sewage into rivers, and the financial problems of major water companies, have become serious political and social concerns for the public. British cities have faced similar challenges in the past, most notoriously with the ‘Great Stink’ in London in 1858 that led to the construction of Bazalgette’s sewer. Consequently, many cities took utilities into public ownership in the late nineteenth century in what is termed ‘gas and water socialism’. Why did this happen, and why were utilities returned to private ownership in the later twentieth century? The lecture will conclude by assessing the success or failure of the current system of regulated private ownership. Should there be a return to public ownership?

This lecture was recorded by Martin Daunton on 11th February 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London.

Professor Martin Daunton is Visiting Gresham Professor of Economic History.

He is a British academic and historian. He was Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, between 2004 and 2014. He is Emeritus Professor of Economic History at the University of Cambridge.

He has written two books on the history of taxation in Britain – Trusting Leviathan and Just Taxes, and co-edited with colleagues in Berlin a volume of essays on the political economy of public finance in leading OECD countries since the 1970s. His book The Economic Government of the World, 1933 to 2023 was published by Allen Lane in 2023.

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/water-sewage-crisis

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://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today

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Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/7pvF4FdbYWU

This lecture explores how information asymmetry leads to adverse selection and moral hazard, with a focus on their presence in financial markets and institutions such as insurance and credit markets. It will examine how regulations intended to solve a particular set of issues might exacerbate problems, potentially resulting in financial crises or other disastrous events.

This lecture was recorded by Raghavendra Rau on 20th January 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London

Raghu is the Mercers School Memorial Professor of Business

He is also the Sir Evelyn de Rothschild Professor of Finance at Cambridge Judge Business School.

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/hidden-risks

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://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today

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Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/gWJmpSO4WZI

Finance involves a group of people attempting to make rational decisions on valuation, but people are complicated. People can be self-interested, they can make mistakes, or, in stark contrast, they can act altruistically. This lecture will introduce the concept of agency problems in the finance sector, focusing on the conflicts that arise between different groups of stakeholders. It will discuss examples of fraud, insider trading and other types of human behavior that can reduce the public's trust in the markets.

This lecture was recorded by Raghavendra Rau on 21st October 2024 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London

Raghu is the Mercers School Memorial Professor of Business

He is also the Sir Evelyn de Rothschild Professor of Finance at Cambridge Judge Business School.

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/hidden-conflicts-finance

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://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today

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Support Us: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today

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Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/bKMV8i9Mq40

The brain is mostly organised in small modular regions connected to each other. Typically, each region performs different cognitive tasks, from image processing to language. This organisation leads us to model the brain as a network, the ‘brain connectome’. This fundamental view of the brain has become a central paradigm for neurosciences linking topological properties of networks to brain functions. This lecture presents ideas from graph theory to study this network and understand the way that the brain learns and operates.

This lecture was recorded by Alain Goriely on 4th February 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London.

Alain is Gresham Professor of Geometry.

He is currently the Director of the Oxford Centre for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and 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/connected-brain

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://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today

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Support Us: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today

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Sound and music hold a strange and powerful role in film, TV and video games, aiding narrative and emotional impact. They can even exist in the world of ‘the film’ – heard by the characters – or in the world of the audience. Music can even break the fourth wall, travelling through and blurring these conventionally separate worlds. By examining films through history from Blazing Saddles, Elf, The Truman Show to Birdman, we explore this ‘fantastical gap’ and its transformative effect on the audience.

This lecture was recorded by Milton Mermikides on 16th January 2025 at Rich Mix, London.

Milton Mermikides  is Gresham Professor of Music.

He is Associate Professor in Music at the University of Surrey, Professor of Guitar at the Royal College of Music and Deputy Director of the International Guitar Research Centre.

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website:
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/sceen-music

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://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today

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Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/LUyFLOUi-D4

This lecture traces the history of this famous series by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, starting from its conception in 1947. It describes the research and writing of the original forty-six volumes for England and the extension of the books to Scotland, Wales and Ireland. It then assesses their significance alongside a reflection on the 2024 achievement of the full updating of the English series.

This lecture was recorded by Charles O'Brien on 5th December 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London.

Charles O’Brien FSA is Listing and Architectural Research Director at Historic England. Until 2022 he was the  joint Series Editor of the Pevsner Architectural Guides.

He graduated with a degree in History of Art from University College London before joining the series in 1997, where he worked fulltime on the research, writing and editing of the new editions. As author and co-author he has written the revised volumes to East London, Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire and Peterborough,Hampshire and Surrey. He is a former Commissioner of Historic England and former chair of their London Advisory Committee and has served as an adviser to government on local heritage. He is also a liveryman of the Mercers Company and member of their Heritage and Arts Committee

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/pevsner-buildings

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://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today

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Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/t6kkq6dI6hc

When and why do written laws emerge in ancient societies? This lecture will consider these questions in light of evidence including the law code of Hammurabi; the earliest attestation of written laws in Greek (found in Dreros on Crete); and the full-blown commitment to written laws by the Athenian lawgiver Solon. Such cases will be used to explore how writing bears on the the functions of law more generally, in light of debates in contemporary legal philosophy.

This lecture was recorded by Melissa Lane on 23rd January 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London.

Melissa Lane is Gresham Professor of Rhetoric.

Melissa is also 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.

Having previously held visiting appointments at Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford, she will be Isaiah Berlin Visiting Professor in the History of Ideas in the Faculties of Philosophy and History at Oxford University, and a Visiting Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in Michaelmas Term 2024.

The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/writing-laws

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://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today

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Support Us: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today

Support the show