Gresham College Lectures

What is the role of the judiciary in England and Wales, how did it develop, and how does it compare with other countries?

This lecture will examine how judges are appointed, whose interests they serve, and who they are accountable to. It will examine the relationship between an independent judiciary and the rule of law, and what ideological assumptions underpin the judicial function in modern liberal democracies. Do our judges have the training, understanding and skills to perform their roles?

A lecture by Leslie Thomas KC

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/judges

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/

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The name might sound forbiddingly technical, but the chord is immediately recognisable and it has played a hugely important role in tonal music. This is a chord of action and motion: it sounds unstable and incomplete, leading the listener to expect the particular triad that is its normal target. Without this chord, what we call Viennese classicism (Haydn-Mozart-Beethoven) would have been impossible.

We will also look at how composers play with the expectations generated by the chord. 

A lecture by Marina Frolova-Walker

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/dominant-seventh

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
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Invisible microbes have created some of the largest structures on the planet. Mycorrhizal fungi form extraordinary subterranean networks that associate symbiotically with plant roots. Most land plants, including many human crops, need mycorrhizae for optimal growth, but recent research has shown they also play important roles in forest-wide communication and may even turn some trees into carnivores. More dramatically, microbial communities have created global landmarks ranging from the White Cliffs of Dover to the Great Barrier reef.


A lecture by Robin May

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/microbial-megastructures

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
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The Alfred Wiener Holocaust Memorial Lecture

This lecture highlights the experiences of Jewish refugees fleeing from antisemitic persecution and from World War II to Portugal. It describes how they were treated, how they attempted to escape Europe, and how they struggled in a “no-man’s land” between a painful past and an unknown future. Listening to their voices may help us to understand Jewish heartbreak and perseverance in the 1940s and encourage us to listen compassionately to refugees’ stories today.

A lecture by Marion Kaplan

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/refugees-portugal

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
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Before net zero, climate policy was all about contraction and convergence of emissions between rich and poor to achieve, in the words of the Rio Convention, “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere” at a safe level. But scientists struggled to establish what that “safe” level was, making little progress in over a quarter of a century. And it was not because we were incompetent: for fundamental reasons in physics and probability theory, we were asking the wrong question.

A lecture by Myles Allen

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/atmospheric-zero

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
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When we buy, sell, bargain, barter, bid at auctions, and compete for resources, we want to be sure that we are using the best strategies. Game theory can help us understand precisely these kinds of situations. That’s why in 1994, the Nobel Prize for Economics was won by a mathematician – John Nash.

Using games like the Prisoner’s dilemma, this lecture explains the work of game theorists such as Nash, David Blackwell and John von Neumann.

A lecture by Sarah Hart

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/game-theory

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
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Britain before 1914 was convulsed by the Irish Question. Since the Act of Union of 1800, Ireland had been governed without the consent of the vast majority of Irish Catholics, who comprised around 3/4 of the population. Home Rule was the suggested solution. But there was a second question, the Ulster Question arising from the presence of a large Protestant minority in the north east of Ireland, who rejected rule from Dublin.

This lecture asks whether better answers are available today.

A lecture by Vernon Bogdanor FBA CBE

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/irish-ulster

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

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The crypto movement began as a reaction to the concentration of economic power in the traditional financial system (and associated financial crises). It involved the creation of a new type of financial recording system, that did not depend on any one individual keeping records, did not allow falsification, and prevented fraud and double spending.

Crypto is underpinned by public-private key encryption, hashing and mining and allows a completely decentralised system to write enforceable contracts that cannot be altered once written. But how does the technology actually work? How would the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet have played out had crypto been around in the sixteenth century?

A lecture by Raghavendra Rau

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/trust-crypto

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

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The levels of income in parts of China and India were similar to those in Europe in the middle ages, until the Mediterranean pulled ahead – followed by northern Europe, initially Holland and then Britain. This ‘great divergence’ was one of the fundamental shifts in history – and is only now being reversed.  

Did the divergence arise from imperialism and a 'drain' of wealth from Asia, or did it arise from internal features of Asian and European Society?

A lecture by Martin Daunton

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/diverge-asia

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

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Alexei Navalny is the leading opposition leader in Russia. He is also currently serving a lengthy prison sentence in a Russian correctional colony.

This lecture will look at the use of the processes of the law by the Russian state to silence and isolate Navalny and to neutralise other forms of internal dissent. It will consider more widely the state of the rule of law in Russia since its invasion of Ukraine.

A lecture by Thomas Grant KC

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/navalny-trials

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