The University of Edinburgh: The University of Edinburgh

Barbara Webb, Professor of Biorobotics, presents her inaugural lecture entitled "Robotic perspectives on biological systems".
Audio version.

Professor Christine Bell presents "Constitutional Futures and Political Imagination"

Professor Bell's inaugural lecture examines how societies with deep and violent divisions try to find ways of transcending conflict through constitutional innovation.

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Professor Harald Haas, Chair of Mobile Communications, presents his inaugural lecture "Shedding light on future wireless communications". Audio version.

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Professor Jolyon Mitchell delivered his inaugural lecture entitled "How can weapons be turned into art? How can swords be transformed into ploughshares?" on 15 September 2011. For some scholars and practitioners involved in building peace, the phrase 'Swords into Ploughshares' is an overused cliché that has lost its original force.

In this illustrated public lecture, Professor Jolyon Mitchell investigates how this ancient text is being brought to life in many different parts of the world through artistic projects promoting peace. He analyses how various artists are transforming weapons that used to kill into tools for farming, useful objects or symbols of peace. He explores how different museums, educators and film-makers are now using these pieces to envision peace.

Professor Mitchell considers the significance of these expressions of 'Swords into Ploughshares' in local, national and international peacebuilding.

Audio version.
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Professor Stephen Cairns of the University of Edinburgh's School of Arts, Culture & Environment delivers his inaugural lecture entitled, "The Architect Designs Everything from the Spoon to the City, and Other Urban Myths".

Recorded 8 March 2011. Audio version.

Professor Simon Kirby delivered his inaugural lecture entitled "The Language Organism: evolution, culture, and what it means to be human" on 22 March 2011.

For my public Inaugural Lecture, I will be trying to give a broad accessible summary of the importance of some of the recent research in the LEC. Our species can do something utterly unique in the natural world - a behaviour so transformative that it has reshaped the mechanisms of our own evolution. We are able to take a novel thought and cause another person to share that thought simply by recombining sounds we learned to make as children. Virtually all species communicate, but only humans have this trick called Language. But where does this unique trait come from? How did it evolve? Why are we the only species that has it?

Recorded 22 March 2011. Audio version.

The inaugural lecture from Professor Clive Bonsall from our School of Arts, Culture & Environment entitled "Farmers, Floods and River Gods: What happened at the Iron Gates of the Danube between 6300 and 6000 BC?"

Professor Bonsall (Personal Chair of Early Prehistory) delivered his lecture on 3 May 2011. Audio Version.

Prof Libkin delivered his Inaugural entitled "Separating possible from impossible, or why practical computing needs theory" on Tuesday 10 May 2011.

Leonid Libkin is Professor of Foundations of Data Management in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. He was previously a Professor at the University of Toronto and a member of research staff at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1994. Professor Libkin's main research interests are in the areas of data management and applications of logic in computer science. He has written four books and over 150 technical papers. He was the recipient of a Marie Curie Chair Award from the EU in 2006, a Premier's Research Excellence Award in 2001, and won four best paper awards. Professor Libkin has chaired programme committees of major database conferences (ACM PODS, ICDT) and was the conference chair of the 2010 Federated Logic Conference.

Recorded 10 May 2011. Audio version.

Inaugural lecture from Prof Timothy Bates of the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences.
Psychology in your world: What Twins, Genes, and Bodies tell us about Dyslexia, Coalitions, Architecture and Happiness.
Recorded 23 November 2010.

Audio version.

Inaugural Lecture from Prof Vincent Danos titled Information Carriers in Biomolecular Networks.
Recorded 16 November 2010.
Audio version.