The Bodleian Libraries (BODcasts)

The making, use and trade of manuscripts was an important part of Islamic culture, the technical developments influenced the making of books in the west from the later medieval period onward. When dominance of powers shifted, the perception of the Islamic manuscript tradition also changed. While intricately embellished bindings continued to receive attention, the majority of manuscripts were usually not studied as artefacts. Yet there is much to be learned from the methods and materials used to make these objects, and the traces of use that history left in them.

Professor Larry Schaaf delivers the 2020 Colin Ford Lecture, providing a fascinating insight into his work on The William Henry Fox Talbot Catalogue Raisonne. There are approximately 25,000 Fox Talbot prints known worldwide, these range from crude experiments through to highly accomplished works of art. For more than four decades Professor Schaaf has been examining and compiling information on Talbot images worldwide. Beginning in 2014, with the backing of the William T Hillman Foundation, the Bodleian Libraries began converting these private databases into a public resource. So far, images and data of more than 16,000 images and data have been freely made available online, allowing researchers to pursue their own questions and draw their own conclusions.

Dr Alexandra Lloyd, Lecturer in German, Magdalen College and St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, gives a talk on the White Rose Resistance Group. In 1943 five students and a professor at the University of Munich were arrested, tried, and executed. They were members of The White Rose (Die Weiße Rose), a clandestine group that wrote and distributed pamphlets calling on the Germans to resist Hitler. The pamphlets are fascinating texts, drawing on a range of philosophical ideas and influences. They urge readers to open their eyes to the atrocities being committed in the name of the regime, denounce the persecution of European Jews, and call for an end to the war. This talk introduces the White Rose group and examines the way they used the written word to inspire resistance.

6,000 surviving notes and drawings reveal Leonardo da Vinci’s way of thinking. This talk focuses on Leonardo’s second book, On Mechanics, and explores how he later applied mechanical laws to studies for 'useful inventions'.

Join Dr Donal Hill for a tour of the invisible, as he describes how particle detectors measure 3D information to help uncover the secrets of tiny fundamental particles.

Discover how researchers are using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to acquire images that show how the heart works on both a whole organ and cellular level. With Dr Kerstin Timm and Dr Justin Lau.

Dr Karl Kinsella introduces a 12th-century manuscript which explores the mystical visions of the prophet Ezekiel and contains some of the earliest architectural drawings in existence.

For 21 centuries, mathematicians worried about a fundamental assumption made by Euclid of Alexandria: that parallel lines must meet at infinity. Could geometry ‘work’ without this assumption? The answer caused mathematicians to reassess the nature of mathematics itself.

Professor Richard Sharpe, Lyell Reader in Bibliography 2018-2019 gives the sixth and final lecture in the 2019 Lyell series. Part of the series; Libraries and books in medieval England: the role of libraries in a changing book economy. The histories of libraries in medieval England offer an insight into the intellectual and cultural life of the period. This should not obscure the fact that books made for individual use were more common than books for communal use. In these lectures, Professor Sharpe explains what evidence we have from medieval libraries; how our views of these may alter in the light of recent research; and the changing nature of libraries in medieval England.

Professor Richard Sharpe, Lyell Reader in Bibliography 2018-2019 gives the fifth lecture inthe 2019 Lyell series. Part of the lecture series; Libraries and books in medieval England: the role of libraries in a changing book economy. The histories of libraries in medieval England offer an insight into the intellectual and cultural life of the period. This should not obscure the fact that books made for individual use were more common than books for communal use. In these lectures, Professor Sharpe explains what evidence we have from medieval libraries; how our views of these may alter in the light of recent research; and the changing nature of libraries in medieval England.